Best 61 quotes of Sara Blakely on MyQuotes

Courage is doing something despite the fear, and I've worked hard on being a courageous person.

Don't be intimidated by what you don't know.

Don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.

Don't solicit feedback on your product, idea or your business just for validation purposes. You want to tell the people who can help move your idea forward, but if you're just looking to your friend, co-worker, husband or wife for validation, be careful. It can stop a lot of multimillion-dollar ideas in their tracks in the beginning.

Embrace what you don't know, especially in the beginning, because what you don't know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.

Embrace what you don`t know

Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' is my go-to song to pump myself up if I'm having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.

Ensure that you do things differently from everyone else

Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson - from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.

Every time I went on stage I was so terrified I almost threw up.

Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

Failure is not the outcome - failure is not trying. Don't be afraid to fail.

Failures are life's way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.

Having a mental snapshot of where you are, where you are going, and what you are moving toward is incredibly powerful.

I always joke and say I want to invent a comfortable stiletto and then retire.

I couldn't figure out what to wear under my clothes. The body shapers were too thick at the time.

Ideas, even million-dollar ones, are most vulnerable in their infancy; don't share them with too many people. However, don't hide your plan from people who can help you move it forward.

I'd get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It's a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.

I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.

I didn't like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn't find anything to work underneath them.

I didn't want women to walk out of the dressing rooms feeling depressed and wanting a cocktail.

I'd never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn't exist.

I feel that women have been neglected, unnecessarily neglected and mistreated personally by the fashion industry and shapewear in that entire category was a definite place that we were neglected.

If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you've got to let it go.

If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.

I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, 'Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,' and he would high-five me and say, 'Way to go.'

I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it's a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma going, I say.

I knew that I wanted to start my own business. I knew that I wanted to work for myself. I was no stranger to the word no. You just have to keep going.

I'll mix a lot of things. I'll wear a Temperley dress with flip flops, or I might be in head-to-toe Gucci and have on a ring that I got from a gumball machine for 50 cents.

I made a conscious decision not to tell anyone in my life. Now I tell people - don't tell anyone your idea until you have invested enough of yourself in it that you are not going to turn back. When a person has an idea at that conception moment it is the most vulnerable - one negative comment could knock you off course.

Instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying. And it forced me at a young age to want to push myself so much further out of my comfort zone.

I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick - it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.

I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let's bring joy back to the experience.

I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course.

I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.

I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.

It's important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.

It's really a full-time job to manage our lives.

I've always leaned toward a feminine, funky style, even in business settings. I used to paint my nails blue in 1993, before it was mainstream.

I would say where I feel like I'm struggling the most in learning and giving myself permission to fail is in finding the balance in life. There are different aspects to women: there's the mother, there's the working woman, there's the wife, the friend, the sister, the daughter and so just figuring that all out. I continue to want to try new things and give myself permission to not be great at it.

Most of the reason we don’t do things is because we’re afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not not going to do things in my life because of fear.

Most of us want to tell our coworkers or friends, or husbands or wives, our ideas. For what reason? We want validation. But I feel ideas are most vulnerable in their infancy. Out of love and concern, friends and family give all the reasons or objections on why [you] shouldn't do it. I didn't want to risk that.

My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?

My husband is such a healthy eater. Except when it comes to sweets. He never consumes anything except fruit until noon. And then from noon on he might have some brown rice and some tofu, and then, come eight or nine at night, he orders three mud-pie double-chocolate pieces of cake and eats all three of them.

My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.

Perseverance is the key to starting a successful business.

Shapewear is the canvas and the clothes are the art.

There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, 'Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?'

The thing about fashion - it's like ducks going quack, quack quack. It's being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.