'Make it Happen'

Undergarment billionaire and Clearwater native Sara Blakely credits her parents for a lot of her success, and she readily admits her first few customers were her mom's friends.

So it was a big deal one night in 2000 when Blakely came home to her Atlanta apartment and got the news from an email: Spanx, the slim-down shapewear business she founded on $5,000 in savings and a reservoir of guts, had sold its first pair of footless pantyhose to someone who wasn't a family connection. “I thought that's when I really arrived,” Blakely quipped to a crowd of hundreds at a recent Spanx store opening at the International Plaza in Tampa.

In the 14 years since that sale, Blakely, 43, has become a unique self-made American businesswoman success story. One of many highlights was being named a Forbes magazine billionaire in 2012, the rare woman on the list who got there without help from a husband or inheritance. Then there are these morsels: She sold nearly 10,000 pairs of Spanx in less than 10 minutes when she debuted the product on QVC in 2001; she was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002; and she's had lunch with Bill Gates and tea with Sir Richard Branson in a hot air balloon.