{"id":12279,"date":"2026-05-06T05:23:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T05:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=12279"},"modified":"2026-05-06T05:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T05:23:53","slug":"sara-blakely-credits-this-habit-from-her-teen-years-with-empowering-her-to-build-spanx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=12279","title":{"rendered":"Sara Blakely credits this habit from her teen years with empowering her to build Spanx"},"content":{"rendered":"


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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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Blakely spoke about the tape while addressing the graduates at Florida State University\u2019s spring 2026 commencement ceremony<\/a>. She told the crowd that when she was 16, her father gave her a tape called How to Be a No-Limit Person<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard a man\u2019s voice talking about the power of your own thoughts and visualizing the future you want\u2014manifesting, not fearing failure, and not caring what other people think about you,\u201d Blakely told the audience. She explained that she would play the tape over and over, and that \u201cwhile everybody else was listening to Bon Jovi and Madonna\u201d during high school, it was \u201call<\/em> Dr. Dyer all<\/em> the time\u201d when they were passengers in her car.<\/p>\n

In time, Dyer\u2019s words became a part of her mindset, which taught her crucial concepts that would lead to her later success. On Instagram,<\/a> Blakely has thanked Dyer (who died in 2015) for teaching her how to become a \u201cno limit\u201d person\u2014an important part of his insights that she clung to.<\/p>\n

Dyer\u2019s 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\u2014like roadblocks or other people\u2019s opinions\u2014can\u2019t keep you down as long as you continue to believe in yourself and your mission.<\/p>\n

For Blakely, the \u201cno limit\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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\u2019s white pants looked like with and without Spanx underneath, the exec was sold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blakely told the FSU audience that she did something deeply important from the jump. \u201cThe most critical thing that I did\u2014the thing that everyone here can do\u2014is I made one big investment early on. I invested in me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she calls having a positive mindset<\/a> \u201cthe single greatest asset any entrepreneur has.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Because at the end of the day, if you don\u2019t believe deeply in your own work, why should anyone else?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n