Steps to Success, Plus a Blog Giveaway Winner

Driving home from work yesterday afternoon, I listened to a radio interview with Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx, those bodyshaping undergarments many women swear by. At the relatively young age of 41, Sara is now a billionaire, thanks to her simple idea of coming up with an undergarment that helps a woman look better in her clothing.

Now, I've never worn Spanx a day in my life. The undergarment that would help me look better in my clothes hasn't been invented yet. But I really enjoyed listening to Sara talk about the steps she took to grow from a simple idea to a successful and lucrative business.

Step one was deceptively simple: come up with a great idea. Sara said that too many people worry about things like focus group and what's selling, rather than depending on their own experiences. Sara created Spanx because she hated the way she looked in her white pants, but she didn't like wearing pantyhose with sandals. She tried cutting the feet out of pantyhose at first, but the hose kept rolling up her legs. So she set out to create a garment that would give her the barefoot look she wanted while still shaping her body more flatteringly underneath her clothes. Sara saw a need that she knew other people shared, and she took steps to fill that need. That's the essence of a great idea, isn't it?

Step two, for her, was finding a way to create the garment she envisioned. She had to go to a lot of textile mills before she found one that could help her make a prototype. Most of them told her no, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. Let me repeat that: she wouldn't take no for an answer. To achieve success at anything, you can't give up when you hear the word no.

Finally, once she got her prototype made, she threw herself into selling her idea to companies that could help her get it out to the buying public. Thinking about this from a writer's viewpoint, it's not enough for me, at least, to just write a good book. I want to share that book with people who read, which means I have to put myself and my work out there to be judged and consumed.

I loved Sara's story about approaching a buyer at Neiman Marcus, trying to convince the woman to distribute her product in their stores. She said she convinced the woman to come to the ladies' room with her so she could show her the before and after. As Sara put it, "Talk about putting your butt on the line."

No matter what your dreams and goals are, I think you can learn a lot from Sara Blakely's steps to success. Every once in a while, you can come up with an answer that nobody's asked the question to. But most of the time, success comes from finding a need to fill and then filling it better than anyone else.

I love a good success story, as this blog post would attest. What about you? What are the success stories that have inspired you?

And before I forget it, so sorry I haven't posted the winner of my last blog post drawing. I can only blame it my book deadline and edits deadline, which converged at the same time and have driven me insane for the past two weeks.

So, without further ado...the winner of my last blog post drawing is MarcieR! Marcie, I need you to email me with the email address to which you want the e-giftcard to go. You can find my email address on my website: just click the "contact" button on www.paulagraves.com.

Congrats on the win!