The Art of Turning Rejection into Billions: How Sara Blakely Built Spanx from a Pair of Cut-Off Tights

 

Special analytical material by the 100%NEWS.TV Editorial Department

Imagine a classic picture of apparent hopelessness: exhausting Florida heat, a heavy business suit, and an endless line of doors being closed before a young saleswoman could finish her pitch. For seven years, Sara Blakely sold fax machines door to door. Before that, she had twice failed the LSAT, the law-school admission test in the United States, and had even failed to secure a role as Goofy at Walt Disney World because she was not tall enough for the costume.

At first glance, this looked like the ordinary biography of a person moving from one disappointment to another. Yet two decades later, Forbes would place that same woman on its cover and describe her as the youngest self-made female billionaire. By the age of 41, the company she had created — Spanx — had become a billion-dollar business. It had been built without external venture capital, without an elite business-school background, and without family connections inside the closed world of fashion and retail.

Dr Olga Azarova: Five Scientific Truths About Your Inner Strength

“Why are some people so lucky, while others are not?” “I will try once more, and then decide whether to continue.” “Maybe I am simply not as strong as others.” “Perhaps we have a different mentality.” “Why does life give opportunities to some people and not to others?”

Have you heard such phrases before? Of course you have. They fill the air around us, because the world often contains more voices of complaint than voices of courage. Yet biology tells a different story. From the very beginning, life is not built on weakness. Life begins with energy, selection, interaction, movement and the extraordinary capacity to overcome resistance.

Dr. Olga Azarova: Full Potential begins from signs of viability

An excerpt from the book by renowned entrepreneur and innovator Dr Olga Azarova, The Full Potential of the Human Being: The Eight Intelligences, offers a clear conceptual foundation for understanding what it means to be “alive”. As an introduction to the methodology of MINIBOSS & BIGBOSS BUSINESS SCHOOLS, this text presents a broader vision of life itself — and of the kind of education humanity needs in order to understand, develop and consciously manage life for the benefit of the individual and the Planet.

A little science is useful for all of us, isn’t it? Yes, life is a remarkable journey — one that human beings instinctively wish to extend for as long as possible. Yet within this journey, some processes may be prolonged, while others may be shortened. In other words, the quality and duration of life can be consciously influenced if we understand three fundamental questions: who are we, how do we function, and how can we manage our organism and, consequently, our life?

Anne Applebaum: What, actually, is European Civilization?

 

Since 2019, the Institute for Human Sciences and the Erste Foundation have sponsored an annual Speech for Europe. The speech is always timed to coincide with the opening of the Wiener Festwochen, Vienna’s annual cultural festival, and is on or near Europe Day, which is also the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

The speech is held outdoors, on Judenplatz, the centre of the Viennese Jewish community during the Middle Ages and the site of an important Holocaust memorial today. Entry is free and the audience stands to listen. Hopefully it does not rain.

This year, Anne Applebaum gave the speech. American readers might note that she speaks here as a European and offers advice to Europeans. This is because she has a Polish passport, acquired in 2013, but also because she considers herself to be a patriotic citizen of the transatlantic alliance that America built together with Europe more than eighty years ago. She also believes that the ideas and values behind the American, Polish and British constitutions are the same.

A New Pause Between the United States and China: Why the World Has Received Not Peace, but a Temporary Architecture of Managed Rivalry

WORLD & ANALYTICS | 100% NEWS
Presented by Julian Fenwick, Senior World Affairs Presenter and Analyst, 100% NEWS

The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing was not a decorative diplomatic event of the day, but an attempt by the world’s two principal powers to install safeguards within a global system overheated by wars, energy risks, trade conflicts and the fear of a new major confrontation.

On 14 May 2026, the central issue in world politics became the meeting between the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, in Beijing. Formally, it was a bilateral summit. In substance, it was a test of whether the global system is still capable of producing managed stability at a time when the Middle East, Ukraine, the trading system and energy markets are all under simultaneous pressure.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, the parties agreed on a new formula for relations: “constructive strategic stability” for the next three years and beyond. This phrase matters not as diplomatic decoration, but as an acknowledgement of reality: the United States and China can no longer return to the old model of globalisation, in which economic interdependence was assumed to be a sufficient guarantee of peace. Yet they are also not ready for a direct rupture, because the cost of such a rupture would be systemic — for trade, currencies, technologies, logistics, raw materials markets and security.

Eduard Rubin: G2 or what did SI say to Trump in metaphors?

In global politics, where every word is weighed on an apothecary’s scale and a protocol smile can cost billions, the recent meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People predictably became the centre of gravity for all those trying to discern the contours of tomorrow. However, while analysts on live broadcasts argue over tariffs and trade balances, a much older and more dangerous play is unfolding behind the scenes. Chinese diplomacy rarely speaks directly — it paints ideograms of meaning, understood only by those ready to peer into the depths of centuries.

Xi Jinping began the conversation by mentioning the “Thucydides Trap”. To a person accustomed to the transactional politics of deals, this might seem like a beautiful historical quotation or an intellectual bow. But for Beijing, this is not just a phrase. It is the signature that Xi has placed under every address to American leaders for twelve consecutive years — from Seattle to the Oval Office.