What’s the connection between Clearwater real estate and Sara Blakely, the youngest self-made billionaire on Forbes’ 2012 List of Top Female Self-Made Billionaires?
It was in Clearwater, Florida where Sara Blakely was born in 1971, where she spent her childhood, where she touched her Clearwater High classmates with her early enterpreneurial endeavors, and from where she took off to attend and graduate from Florida State University with a legal communications degree.
Perhaps people in the Clearwater real estate business can take time to read her story, learn from her struggles and success, and get inspired to work smarter and be also successful as a Clearwater real estate investor, broker or realtor.
One can also explore the motivational cassette tape set titled How to Be a No-Limit Person that Blakely reportedly listened to over and over, enabling her to imprint in her mind concepts such as high expectations, clear sense of direction, self-actualization, total control of one’s life, positive action-oriented steps, breaking out of one’s comfort zone, and wiping out of erroneous zones. The tape set was written by well-known self-development author and speaker Wayne Dyer.
This personal development tape series is available at Amazon.com for $53 in the paperback and audiobook formats and for $16 in the CD format. Dyer, who is often referred to as the Father of Motivation by his admirers, also wrote the New York Times bestseller The Power of Intention and Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling, and has appeared on various television and radio programs. Listeners of Dyer’s tapes gush about his ability to present concepts in funny, lively and interesting ways.
Blakely runs her billion-dollar shapewear and undergarment enterprise Spanx from Atlanta, Georgia, but she still maintains her link to Clearwater. She has a house in Clearwater, near where her mother and grandmother lives, and where her childhood friends are.
It was also in Clearwater where Blakely learned to master the art of cold calling, selling fax machines to strangers over a period of seven years. With her tenacity and persuasive talents, she overcame lots of rejections and accumulated clients, and in just a few years, she became the national sales trainer for her company Danka Business Systems, which was later acquired by Japanese multinational printer maker Ricoh.
Blakely’s experiences in Clearwater and in the national sales arena, her grasp of all concepts needed for success and her own natural talents and assets made her recognize a hint of opportunity when it presented itself and pursued it despite initially resistant forces in the business world.
As has been widely described in plenty of articles, the seed of her billion-dollar company Spanx was planted when Blakely had a problem with her pantyhose, thought of a practical way to eliminate the problem and make it useful, and then saw a need that she could fill and that could fill her coffers in ways beyond her initial expectations.
Spanx, the company that Blakely started with $5,000, is now a billion-dollar
company that creates 200 kinds of spandex-pantyhose shape enhancers and other undergarments for thousands of new and repeat customers in 35 countries.