[7] Although Blakely planned to become an attorney, she reconsidered after scoring very low on the Law School Admission Test; she instead accepted a job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, where she worked for three months.

[5] After her short stint at Disney, Blakely accepted a job with office supply company Danka, where she sold fax machines door-to-door.

[5][9] At age 27, Blakely relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, and while still working at Danka, spent the next two years and $5,000 savings (equivalent to $9,300 in 2023) researching and developing her hosiery idea.

Blakely further explained in 2011 that the experience of developing her idea also revealed to her that the hosiery manufacturing industry was overseen solely by men who were not using the products they were producing.

[5] Around this time, Blakely sent a basket of products to Oprah Winfrey's television program, with a gift card that explained what she was attempting to develop.

[9] Blakely was contacting friends and acquaintances, including those from her past, and asking them to seek out her products at select department stores in exchange for a check that she would send to them by mail as a token of appreciation.

[9] In November 2000, Winfrey named Spanx one of her "Favorite Things," which led to a significant rise in popularity and sales, as well as Blakely's resignation from Danka.

[4] In 2015, Blakely and her husband Jesse Itzler were part of a group led by Tony Ressler that purchased the Atlanta Hawks for $850 million.

[20] To celebrate the transaction, Blakely gave each of her 750 employees $10,000 in cash and let them purchase two first-class plane tickets to any destination they desired.

She later starred as one of the judges on ABC's reality television series, American Inventor, alongside George Foreman, Pat Croce and Peter Jones.