Sharing my takeaways from the webinar "Stories of Resilience: A Conversation With Sara Blakely" hosted by Salesforce
Yesterday, I attended a live webinar "Stories of Resilience: A Conversation With Sara Blakely" hosted by Salesforce. I can say, this one is the best of the many I've attended during COVID-19 period so far. Sara Blakely, Founder and CEO of SPANX talked about her journey, roadblocks, challenges, resilience, humor (very interesting and unique), motivation, learnings, philanthropy and more. It was such a candid talk, everything she shared was so practical and drawn from her own experiences. So, it was easy for me to relate.
Running a tech company, Sreeal Technologies that is enabling Digital Transformation of businesses and organizations, I liked Sara Blakely's precise response to what her advice would be to Small Businesses today who are looking to implement tech into their businesses.
She said she would bucket it in the following three main Categories.
- Tech you need for Operations, Inventory management, Financial side of the business.
- Tech you need to Communicate and Connect with your customers and sell them your product.
- Tech you need for generating awareness.
Do a lot of research and find out the best options that you can afford now but that allow you to scale.
Self-doubt is common and natural, isn't it? I loved how she would leverage her language to speak confidently to the manufacturers and not let them get a hint of her self-doubt.
Sharing a few of my favorite lines in Sara Blakely's words from this webinar.
"When you are doing something and your purpose is greater than yourself, it will give you courage you never knew you had."
"Resilience is like a muscle. The more you just gut through something and not let it get you down or defeat you, the stronger your resilience muscle will become."
"There's moments in the journey when roadblocks come and they become opportunities and that's part of being a really good entrepreneur."
"Work on your mindset daily because it is really going to be, at the end of the day, what differentiates you between other entrepreneurs or other businesses that you are up against."
"Entrepreneurs who are successful are people who have found white space and created something that didn't already exist and fill it or, they take something that already exists and make it exponentially better."
"You don't have to act serious to be taken seriously. There can be a lot of silliness and a lot of joy and a lot of laughing at yourself and still a lot of amazing results and earning respect and delivering and exceeding customers expectations."
