Episode 52: How To Stop Standing In Your Own Way
Do you know who Sara Blakely is? If not, she is an INCREDIBLE businesswoman (and now billionaire) who invented SPANX.
You know, it is SOOOOOO easy to tell ourselves all kinds of stories about people who’ve achieved success….
“Oh, she was lucky.”
“He had all the connections.”
“It was a different time.”
“I could never look like her.”
“I could never be as impressive as her.”
“He had a lot more support than I’ll ever have.”
That’s why I love hearing origin stories from successful people themselves because I can see that Sara, Oprah, and all of our favorite success stories out there are all just people.
People just like you and me.
People who had an idea, maybe even a crazy idea, but they decided to dig in their heels and do the work to bring that idea to life.
And now, we can’t imagine life without their thing. I mean, can you imagine life without Spanx? Well, if you’re a guy, probably. But if you’re a lady, you know the power of this invention.
I always told myself stories about Sara, like she’s beautiful, thin, smart, etc. So when I saw a recent Inc Women’s Summit video of her talking about everything she had to overcome to make Spanx into Spanx, I just HAD to watch it.
I HIGHLY encourage you to watch it as well.
Biggest Show Takeaways:
- What am I good at? How can I create a different life for myself?
- Get clear on what that ‘thing’ is and then figure out what YOU want to do with it.
- Sara says the ONLY thing she was good at was sales, so she got curious. Why did she like sales? She liked helping people see that she had a product they didn’t know they needed that then dramatically improved their life.
- She wrote in her journal “I am going to invent a product that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.”.
- Then she asked for inspiration from the Universe with a super clear intention.
- The idea for Spanx then came 2 years later when she cut the feet out of panty hose to wear white pants to a party. How’s THAT for inspiration?
- Do the work on yourself and prepare for the moment.
- Be open to receive and listen to guidance. Sara was introduced to Wayne Dyer at the age of 16 and it set the stage for living an entrepreneurial life that includes:
- Risk taking.
- Courage.
- Not caring what others think.
- Being willing to do things differently.
- What you don’t know can be your greatest asset if you let it.
- You’ve got to let the self-doubt go and this can be your biggest asset.
- What you don’t know means you can do it differently than everyone in the industry.
- Use your gut and intuition as your compass.
- The biggest revelation is that Sara even now says she can have crippling self-doubt. Even with all her success, Sara admitted that she still struggles with doubt and fear.
- Her biggest piece of advice, the thing she says is holding so many people back from fully realizing their potential is this: Your negative self-talk is the No.1 barrier to success.
- We all have, at one time or another, been held back by the lies and the terrible things that go through our minds… things like…
- Who am I to do this?
- Other people are so much better/further along/fancier than me.
- I’m not good enough.
- I’m not rich enough.
- I’m not talented enough.
- I’m not skinny or pretty enough.
- I’m not good at sales or tech or writing or whatever.
- REDEFINE FAILURE. Failure isn’t the outcome. It’s NOT TRYING.
- People don’t buy products – they buy the problems you solve.
- Sara says that the work – the inner work – is critical to our own success.
- I wanted to share with you a few of my own favorite inner work resources.
- One is James Wedmore’s Mind your Business podcast. This is one of my must-listen podcasts each week.
- Visualizations.
- Meditations. Youtube has so many good ones and the Deepak/Oprah 21 day challenges are some of my favorites.
- Finding & building courage. Do things that scare you all the time.
- Writing my “Be – Do – Have” list.
- Want to know which marketing funnel is right for you and your business? Take this free and easy quiz and in less than 5 minutes you’ll know EXACTLY which funnel is right for you.
Links mentioned in this episode: