The Spanx Story

by Charlie Wetzel and Stephanie Wetzel

Published 27 October 2020

What can you learn from one of the most successful companies in the world? The Spanx Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled entrepreneur Sara Blakely to dominate the shapewear industry and become a billionaire.

Sara Blakely had a problem. She had a beautiful pair of white designer pants hanging in her closet just calling out to her to wear them, even though they accented her least favorite feature: cellulite. After searching high and low for a solution and coming up empty, an idea was born: Spanx.

The Spanx Story chronicles Sara’s journey from long nights researching patent and trademark law, to years of cold shoulders she received from the titans of the pantyhose industry, to the cold call that led to the shelves of Nieman Marcus. It was a long road of incredible hard work and determination that led Spanx to become the iconic brand it is today.

Through Sara’s story, you will learn:

  • How to develop an idea and turn it into a business.
  • How to start a company with very little capital by thinking outside of the box and dedicating every spare moment to your goal.
  • How to recognize when it’s better to hire a CEO than to be the CEO.
  • How to stay the course and continue to believe in your idea, despite naysayers and going against an industry resistant to innovation.

The Spanx Story educates and inspires entrepreneurs and innovators to find the problem for their solutions and persevere through the hard work that goes into building a billion-dollar company.


What can you learn from the world’s most successful companies? Marvel characters have been shaping pop culture for decades and when comic books were no longer keeping the company afloat, Marvel Studios was born.

Marvel Studios is the multibillion-dollar home to iconic franchises. They are known for creating brilliant multilayered worlds and storylines that allow their audiences to escape into a fantasy and inspire the creative side of every viewer. But, behind those visionaries is a well-oiled storytelling machine dedicated to getting the Hulk’s smash fists in the hands of every child and a sea of Spiderman costumes deployed every Halloween.

The Marvel Studios Story educates you on how one of the largest creative companies in the planetary universe runs their business and keeps their fans and their parent company, Disney, counting the profits. Through the story of Marvel Studios, you’ll learn:

  • How to recognize and pursue additional revenue streams.
  • How a company can successfully balance the creative with business to appease investors and fans alike.
  • And how to keep a decades-old superhero franchise new and exciting without losing sight of its roots.

The Marvel Studios Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled a struggling comic book publisher to parlay the power of myth and storytelling to become one of history’s most successful movie studios.


What can you learn from the most successful companies in the world? The Netflix Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that turned a mail-order DVD startup into a streaming media and studio disruptor that revolutionized the entertainment industry.

Just twenty years ago, if you wanted to watch an in-home movie, you had two choices: buy the VHS or DVD, or rent it from the local video store. Today, you don't even need to leave the sofa . . . unless the remote is across the room, and you don't have voice control set up yet.

A lot has happened in that short period of time. In this book, readers will:

  • Learn how Netflix entered a crowded marketplace with a now infamous red envelope.
  • Get the backstory of the infamous Blockbuster takedown.
  • Understand the "bet the company" shift Netflix made from the largest USPS customer to the largest user of internet streaming traffic in one year.
  • Discover how the company rebounded from their near demise in 2011.
  • Learn how the company has flourished as an original content provider and movie studio, and how they, along with new competitors Amazon Prime and Hulu, are completely changing the entertainment we consume.

This book teaches business owners and innovators what they need to know to launch, recover, survive, and thrive in a crowded marketplace.