Sara Blakely founded the $1.2 billion shapewear and apparel company Spanx with just $5,000 in savings, relying on offbeat marketing methods and a good bit of her own grit. The entrepreneur recently revealed that while working toward her success, she had help: a motivational cassette tape that shaped the way she thought about her future.
Blakely spoke about the tape while addressing the graduates at Florida State University’s spring 2026 commencement ceremony. She told the crowd that when she was 16, her father gave her a tape called How to Be a No-Limit Person, by Wayne Dyer, a self-help author, motivational speaker, and licensed therapist with an EdD in counseling who penned more than 40 books, most of which focused on the power of intention.
“I heard a man’s voice talking about the power of your own thoughts and visualizing the future you want—manifesting, not fearing failure, and not caring what other people think about you,” Blakely told the audience. She explained that she would play the tape over and over, and that “while everybody else was listening to Bon Jovi and Madonna” during high school, it was “all Dr. Dyer all the time” when they were passengers in her car.
In time, Dyer’s words became a part of her mindset, which taught her crucial concepts that would lead to her later success. On Instagram, Blakely has thanked Dyer (who died in 2015) for teaching her how to become a “no limit” person—an important part of his insights that she clung to.
Dyer’s focus was on shifting your mindset to one of deeply internal guidance, abandoning limits you may otherwise set for yourself, and living with a sense of purpose. Overall, the message is that external factors—like roadblocks or other people’s opinions—can’t keep you down as long as you continue to believe in yourself and your mission.
For Blakely, the “no limit” approach became more than the voice inside her head. It manifested into how she conducted herself when she was just starting out, attempting to get Spanx in front of the right people.
For example, she fought hard to land a 10-minute meeting with a Neiman Marcus executive. When the meeting started to go flat, Blakely asked the exec to join her in the bathroom so she could demonstrate how Spanx worked. After seeing what Blakely’s white pants looked like with and without Spanx underneath, the exec was sold.
Blakely told the FSU audience that she did something deeply important from the jump. “The most critical thing that I did—the thing that everyone here can do—is I made one big investment early on. I invested in me.”
That’s why she calls having a positive mindset “the single greatest asset any entrepreneur has.”
Because at the end of the day, if you don’t believe deeply in your own work, why should anyone else?
