She is beautiful and she has made women feel beautiful toO.  Forbes Magazine released its   list of the 100 most powerful women of 2014 that includes prime ministers, pop stars, media moguls and the woman who invented Spanx.  She is also only 43 years old.  She has   achieved the unique title of being the youngest female self -made billionaire.  What she makes is the not so secret   secret to women having sleek lines in their clothing.  I guess you call it   the latest girdle that all women seem to want to wear whether rich or   poor, large or small.  Her product does the trick to make all women feel beautiful.  It is that must have undergarment that even celebrity   women brag   about.

Sara Blakely now has an empire   built on undergarments and earned her   billions of dollars without spending a dime on advertising.  By word of mouth, Spanx has revolutionized the way women dress.  Over the last 10 years Spanx has drawn in  $250,000,000 in annual sales.  Spanx has expanded to over 200 products and 13 different countries.  Her   newest venture is to open stand   alone boutiques.  She is not just   selling   things to make a girl’s behind to   look as smooth as possible, but designing things like yoga pants and swimsuits and now even a bra   made out of pantyhose with no under wires or metal clasps to hold the line up at the airport.  She had a humble beginning growing up in Clearwater, Florida.  She must have always had an entrepreneurial spirit because when she was a young child Sara would draw pictures and then try to sell them door to door.  I never heard of a child being that industrious.

When she was faced with extreme sadness after her closest friend died, Sara  saw her get hit by a car while riding her bicycle just ahead of her on a street, she sought condolences in listening to   self - help  tapes which had  her cope  with failure and rejection after she could not get into law school. 

Sara kept on failing   the entrance exam.  For seven years she sold fax machines door to door.  A great moment came to her when she cut off the   feet part of pantie hose and wore it underneath a favorite pair of pants that always seemed to show   a pantie line.  She was so pleased with the feel and the look she then became determined to find a way to mass produce her   idea.  With $5000 of her savings she did random calls to hosiery mills where one decided to produce her design., It also helped immensely in that just two months after she was in business, Oprah found out about it and endorsed her product and sales have been rising ever since.

The footless pantyhose took her from being a one person business to now owning an empire. Her husband says she is a business tycoon because she still listens to her intuition.  She did not go to Harvard business school but was able to enter a male dominated industry and succeed.  Sara Blakely wants to give back by being a mentor to a new generation of female entrepreneurs so she launched a program called Legs Up to launch a new   generation of female entrepreneurs.  But it’s nice to see someone who has that light bulb moment and has been able to keep it glowing.