Episode 1

Success Leaves Clues. Most Women Are Following the Wrong Ones

It’s not just about what other women before you did. It’s about how they think.

When Sarah left her Fortune 500 sales and marketing career, her plan was simple. Study successful people, copy what they did, get the same result. It had worked her whole career. So she read the origin stories, the strategies, the founder profiles, and told herself it was preparation.

It wasn’t. And it cost her a lot of time before she understood why.

Here’s the problem with copying a strategy. Everything that actually made it work for her is the part you can’t see on paper. Her timing. Her network. Her experience. The opportunity that showed up at exactly the right moment.

Sarah walks through two women you already know. Sara Blakely built Spanx with $5,000 and a pair of cut-up pantyhose, and got a handwritten note in front of Oprah’s stylist. You could copy every move in that story and never reproduce the result. What you can’t see is the seven years she spent selling fax machines door to door, getting her business card ripped up week after week, until hearing no stopped scaring her. Or the Wayne Dyer tapes her dad handed her as a teenager, that she played on repeat in her car for years while her friends listened to pop radio.

Then Oprah. You could get the communications degree, get on local TV, even land the local talk show. But you cannot plan for Quincy Jones being in town, catching your show, right when he’s casting The Color Purple.

You can’t plan for Quincy Jones. You can only build the mindset that’s ready when something like him shows up.

That’s the clue worth following. Not the tactic. The way successful founders think about money, about opportunity, about what’s possible for them, and about their business as a way to serve rather than a way to get.

The strategy is different for every woman. The mindset is the one thing they all share, and the one thing you can actually build.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• How to Be a No-Limit Person by Wayne Dyer, the audio program Sara Blakely credits
• Sara Blakely and the founding of Spanx
• Oprah Winfrey, The Color Purple, and Quincy Jones

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So glad you’re here. I’m Sarah Janzen.

Corporate ladder-climber turned 7-figure entrepreneur. Inspiring and helping other women make their own successful leap. Taking my Fortune 500 sales. & marketing experience + Master Coach credentials to help other women with the clarity, confidence, and strategy to build a business they love.