Spanx Founder Sara Blakeley: How She Turned $5,000 Into A Billion [VIDEO]

Spanx founder Sara Blakeley recently made it onto the Forbes World's Billionaires 2012 list, following the success of her company's line of shapewear clothing products. In an on-camera interview with Forbes, the 41-year-old business mogul talks about the philosophy and life experiences that helped her succeed.

I feel like money just makes you more like who already were, Blakeley told Forbes. It just holds a magnifying glass up to the person that you are. I don't subscribe at all to money as the root of all evil. I think money is a wonderful thing. It's great to share, it's fun to spend and it's fun to make, and I've always had a very positive outlook about what money can do.

Blakeley's path to financial success was not a direct one. She had grown up with dreams of becoming a lawyer but when it came time to take LSAT necessary to apply to law school, she was unable to pass the test after repeated attempts.

When it didn't go as I planned, I asked myself a lot of questions like, what is life trying to tell me? Do I have a different path? Maybe I'm supposed to be open to something else,' said Blakeley. And that's what set me on the journey that ended up creating Spanx.

With only $5,000 in the bank at age 29, she was able to leverage it into marketing her invention of comfortable body-forming undergarments and creating a billion dollar business by age 41.

During the Forbes interview, Blakeley talks about her feelings about her path to achieving financial success.

The things that I'm most proud of achieving are achieving this level of success that is beyond my wildest dreams and doing it in a way that I feel like I can still look at myself in the mirror and feel really good about how I got here, she said.

Watch the whole interview below: