The Virtue of Failure: Billionaire Sara Blakely’s Success Recipe

In the realm of capitalism, failures serve as stepping stones to success as I pointed out here here and here

Take for example, billionaire Sara Blakely, founder and owner of garment company Spanx, who in a CNBC interview said that a key ingredient to her career success emerged from her string of initial misfortunes.

CNBC’s Robert Frank reports

"What have you failed at this week?" Blakely recalled in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" n Wednesday. "My dad growing up encouraged me and my brother to fail. The gift he was giving me is that failure is (when you are) not trying versus the outcome. It's really allowed me to be much freer in trying things and spreading my wings in life."

Blakely's embrace of failure has helped make her the youngest self-made female billionaire in America. The 41-year-old Florida native was selling fax machines door-to-door before she came up with the idea for Spanx, the body-shaping undergarments that have become a global sensation.

Her string of early career failures eventually led Blakely to the Spanx idea. She said wanted to be a lawyer but "basically bombed the LSAT twice," she said. "I ended up at Disney World trying out to be Goofy. They wanted me to be 5' 8", but I was 5' 6". They wanted me to be a chipmunk."

Ms. Blakely's determination in the face of the lack of knowledge and experience...

Like many entrepreneurs, Blakely said that not knowing industry practices—and the things that supposedly can't be done—is critical in starting a business.

"The fact that I had never taken a business class, had no training, didn't know how retail worked," she said. "I wasn't as intimidated as I should have been."

And a memorable gaffe...

Her rise was filled with little failures—some of them humorous. When she went to London in an early sales trip to promote the product, she was interviewed by the BBC. She described the benefits of Spanx by saying, "It's all about the fanny. It smooths your fanny, lifts and separates your fanny."

Suddenly, the interviewer lost all color in his face.

"I had no idea," Blakely said, "but fanny apparently means vagina in England."

The tolerance of or the virtue of failure is founded on learning and building from them

As American industrialist and founder of the Ford Company Henry Ford wrote as one of his Principles of Business

An absence of fear of the future or of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.

On the other hand, in the world of politics, failure has frequently been used as an excuse for political agents to grab control of society.