From the Founder of TOMS: No Magic Pill with Blake Mycoskie

Sara Blakely (0:00)

I have just spent 16 years of my life being taught what to think, and no one has ever taught me how to think. Instead of being the passenger of my thoughts, I became the driver. And I never knew I could be the driver.

Blake Mycoskie (0:12)

My guest today is Sara Blakely. The woman who started Spanx with $5,000 built it into a billion dollar company and became the youngest woman to make the Forbes billionaire list. After selling Spanx, she went on and did it again with her new shoe company, Sneaks.

Sara Blakely (0:27)

When I first started Spanx, two men came up to me at a cocktail party. One guy looks at me and he goes, Yeah, well, I hope you're ready because business is war. And they both kind of laughed and then walked off. And I remember thinking, I don't want to go to war.

Blake Mycoskie (0:39)

She also has an incredible marriage to another serial entrepreneur and coach, Jesse Itzler, and four amazing kids.

Sara Blakely (0:54)

I have all the resources and I still couldn't see my way through it or get the right help that I needed because it's not on society's checklist to check in on someone whose society kind of is like thinking just made all this money and has achieved their goals. It's not on the checklist of like grief.

Blake Mycoskie (1:13)

For almost 15 years, we've been checking in on each other. And today's conversation will take us back to some of those conversations and what resulted from the advice we shared.

Sara Blakely (1:22)

I checked in with you after I sold Spanx because I was in a tremendous amount of grief. So I called you in a moment of deep, deep pain.

Blake Mycoskie (1:30)

I remember that.

Sara Blakely (1:30)

And was like, hey, I'm struggling. I'm in a lot of pain. Talk to me.

Blake Mycoskie (1:44)

Okay, Sara, welcome to the show. And my first question is, do you remember how we met?

Sara Blakely (1:49)

Did we meet at Bill Gates?

Blake Mycoskie (1:50)

We did.

Sara Blakely (1:52)

That's right.

Blake Mycoskie (1:52)

Good.

Sara Blakely (1:52)

Not many people can say that. I was wild. I do remember. I wasn't sure if that was the first time it was at his house.

Blake Mycoskie (1:58)

And do you remember when we met? This is the thing I love about this story. As I was thinking about it is we met at Bill Gates, which was totally random. I mean, it was like these, all these like CEOs, like the most powerful people in the world. You and I were by far the youngest people there.

Sara Blakely (2:12)

We were like totally the outsiders a little bit at that group. The founder bootstrappers or something like in it. We were younger.

Blake Mycoskie (2:19)

Yeah. And we were just at the beginning of our journeys. And I remember when I met you for the first time, I was completely out of breath. So there's the other question. Do you remember why I was completely out of breath?

Sara Blakely (2:29)

The staircase?

Blake Mycoskie (2:30)

No. I had found a secret room in Bill Gates' house. There was a trampoline room.

Sara Blakely (2:37)

Oh, right, right, right.

Blake Mycoskie (2:38)

The trampoline room. And there was the whole floor was a trampoline and the walls were padded. And I had been bouncing around and I came out of the door and there you and Jesse were. And I was like, hi, I'm Blake.

Did you go in the room?

Sara Blakely (2:50)

Oh, yeah. I was doing flips.

Blake Mycoskie (2:52)

It was so fun.

Sara Blakely (2:53)

I forgot about the trampoline room.

Blake Mycoskie (2:55)

There's a lot of interesting things you could do when you have that much money, but a trampoline room is one that I never would have seen coming.

Sara Blakely (3:01)

I remember also their movie theater was just to the side of the trampoline room and they had Dorothy's original Ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz and a case there. And then their library had like all this Michelangelo original sketches. It was like, it was not your average house.

Blake Mycoskie (3:16)

No, not at all.

Sara Blakely (3:18)

But I remember meeting you and just thinking like everyone did like, wow, this is the guy who created this really beautiful philanthropic arm to business in a way that was one for one. And like, I was so excited to meet you.

Blake Mycoskie (3:29)

Well, thank you very much. As we were saying earlier, one of the things that I think we initially connected on was our companies were growing very rapidly and we had no investors. And so we didn't have a board of directors. We didn't have like people to call. And so we kind of exchanged numbers and said, hey, I'm here if you need me. And that kind of started was really a unique relationship. I was telling my partner about it. We know each other not that well, but we've had these conversations over 15 years at pivotal moments in our life because we were kind of the only people we knew that could relate in the exact same situation of building these fast growing companies with no investors, no board members. And so I really appreciated how we have been connected all these years, but not like a normal friendship where you talk all the time. It's like we talked during the really important times.