In 1993, a senior from Florida State University took the LSAT—and failed. Undaunted, she enrolled in an LSAT prep course, studied hard and took the test again. This time, she failed and did one point worse.
Ready to take a break from broken dreams, she drove to Disney World and applied to play the part of a Disney character she adores—but she was too short and was given a brown polyester uniform and told to buckle guests into a ride at Epcot.
Disillusioned by Disney, she returned home to Clearwater Florida and applied for a “real” job. Danka, an office supply company, hired her and for the next seven years she sold fax machines door-to-door in the humidity and stifling heat. In 1998, she was invited to a company party at a swank rooftop bar—and she was ready to make a good impression.
Dressed in a summer blouse and strappy sandals, she wanted to complete the outfit with a pair of white pants. The only problem? The white pants were, ahem, unforgiving. They revealed panty lines, and in a later interview, she confessed that there was “some cellulite on the back of my thighs that you could see through the pants.” Her solution? She grabbed a pair of scissors, cut the feet off her control-top pantyhose and wore the new undergarment under her pants. It was an immediate success—the bulges and bumps were now smooth and slim.
She knew she was onto something—but she needed to go from “idea” to “product”—so she made a plan.
She cold-called all of the hosiery mills in North Carolina and asked for a meeting. All of the representatives rejected her. So she took a week off work and visited every single mill. She got an audience with the managers, pitched her product, and again was told no.
Two weeks later, in what she’d later call an “act of pity,” Sam Kaplan of Highland Mills in Asheboro, North Carolina, called her back and said he’d agree to make the prototype. She asked why he changed his mind. He explained that he had three daughters, and he’d told them about her idea for shapewear and his daughters encouraged him to pursue it.
With prototype in hand, and a patent, she pitched her idea to Neiman Marcus—and they agreed to stock her shapewear.
The product was so successful they couldn’t restock fast enough.
In November 2000, Oprah Winfrey named the shapewear one of her “Favorite Things” and sales exploded across America. The shapewear was nicknamed “Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret”, and became a household name.
The name of her product?
Her “cut-off pantyhose turned pretty undergarment” was cheekily named Spanx.
In 2012, the inventor of Spanx landed on the cover of Forbes magazine for being the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.
Her name is Sara Blakely.
Celebrate Failure–How Did You Fail Today?
In the book, The Spanx Story, authors Stephanie and Charlie Wetzel note that Sara’s father began teaching her something that not only increased her speaking and debate skills, but also her creativity: he celebrated failure.
Sara explains, “My dad taught me that failure is not an outcome..[rather it is] not stretching yourself far enough out of your comfort zone and attempting to be more than you were the day before.”
Every week, Sara Blakely’s father would ask her a simple but powerful question: “What did you fail at this week?” And whatever she had chosen as her “failure of the week” he would first give her a high-five, celebrated the fact that she tried something, and asked her to find something good in that failure. He was only disappointed when she had no failures to share.
And it’s not just Sara Blakely who has learned to make failure an ally rather than an enemy.
Failed dreams can lead to bigger and better things. Ask Vera Wang.
Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
Vera Wang—haute couture wedding gown designer—was a hopeful Olympic figure skater who placed fifth in the U.S. National Championships at age nineteen. Knowing 19 was “old” in that arena, Vera decided to quit…and this felt like failure to her.
Reminiscing about that time in her life, Vera recalls, “quitting was a sign to me that I failed. I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to find something else in my life that meant quite as much. I knew no other life.”
And yet she allowed this failure to give herself time to heal, to move on and to try new experiences. Those new experiences lead to her current fame as a household name, with a line of bridal wear, jewelry, fragrances, as well as winning many awards including the Sandra Taub Humanitarian Award in 2019 for her kindness and generosity.
Vera states it this way: “Don’t be afraid of failing. I think not trying is worse than failing. Have the courage to try. Otherwise, what are we here for?”
Like Sara’s father, Vera believes that not trying is more damaging than failing. In fact, if you allow it, failure will be a wise teacher, for it will teach you about yourself.
“Your life isn’t always measured by tangible results,” says Vera. “What it really is in the end is the process, and what you learn about yourself and your life.”
Feel Like a Failure? You’re in Good Company
A billionaire with her own TV channel and a very generous heart, Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a television anchor because she was too emotionally involved, and took too much pity, on the people she was reporting about in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2013, at a Harvard commencement speech, she said, “There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”
Cut from his high school basketball team, Michael Jordon went on to play for the NBA, and six championships and five MVP’s later, Jordan arguably became the greatest basketball player of all time. Famous for allowing failure to shape and strengthen him, Jordan has stated, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
As the saying goes, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Find the Hidden Gift
Neville Bergin, a mining professional with forty years of experience, explains that it often requires more than 34.559 tons of ore to produce one troy ounce of gold.
Yet Bergin is also quick to point out that “it depends on the mine.”
The Grasberg Milne in Indonesia takes 62 tons of ore to recover one ounce of gold.
On the other hand, Fire Creek mine in Lander County Nevada, produces 1.4 ounces of gold per 1 ton.
We learn from this metaphor that although success may come quicker and easier for some people, there will always be failure involved in the process; yet if we are patient and willing to endure the “ore” we will one day find our own ounce of gold.
As Sara Blakely once said, “Every terrible thing that happens to you always has a hidden gift and is leading you to something greater.”
And as we often learn in life, mirco-suffering can lead to macro-rewards.
An Unlikely BFF
Moaning Myrtle may not be the personage prefere in the Harry Potter series, but without her help, Harry may have never opened the golden egg underwater, nor solved the riddle of the Polyjuice Potion, nor found the Secret Diary of Tom Riddle when it was lost.
May we, for a moment, indulge the metaphor: failure is a lot like Moaning Myrtle. Who really wants to hang out with a depressed misanthrope full of self-pity and inextinguishable-angst? And yet it is failure that often points to success. It is failure that whispers—perhaps through tears and tantrums—that the golden egg of opportunity needs to be opened in an unlikely venue. It is failure that gurgles morosely yet confesses the hiding place of the dream you’re pursuing. It is failure, the glum face hidden behind thick glasses, that sulks yet whispers the secrets to your success.
What if, instead of ridiculing failure, we sit down and talk to her.
Listen to her.
Without condemnation, without judgement.
Perhaps what she has to say is the most important advice in the world—because in her sulky yet strikingly brilliant way—she is helping us change our world. And that’s the only world we have control of changing.
Listen to Your Unlikely BFF
If you want to summarize the urgent need for failure in your life into one phrase, it’s this: make failure your best friend, for if you listen, she quietly whispers the secrets of success.
Remember that we all fail. Yet it’s those who actually sit down and listen to failure—without anger, contempt or impatience—that will hear her beautiful secrets.
And those quiet secrets will surely lead you to success.