When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ’charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.

Blakely recalls an early, childlike venture—designing and selling “charm socks”—to illustrate a pattern that later defined her career: noticing a simple product idea, prototyping it with whatever resources were available, and testing demand directly in a real marketplace (her school). The detail that her mother helped her source materials and sew the charms underscores the role of encouragement and practical support in nurturing entrepreneurial confidence. As an origin-story anecdote, it frames entrepreneurship less as a sudden adult breakthrough and more as a habit of creativity, initiative, and willingness to sell—traits that anticipate her later success building Spanx.