One of those Partnerships I feel especially proud of is one with Kendra Scott.
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| Image of Kendra Scott from Success Magazine |
People in Texas are very familiar with Kendra since she launched get jewelry business out of her bedroom in Austin.
She is building an empire that I believe will be in the same scale as some other great girl bosses at companies like Rent-the-Runway, Spanx, etc. (These companies are also partners and you can support their companies on our "Shop & Give Grace" page.)
I wanted to focus on Kendra for this post to highlight her feature on the cover of Success Magazine.
Read Summary below and see full feature in Success...hope it inspires you:
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| Kendra Scott (Instagram) |
Kendra Scott turned out the lights.
For the last time, she flipped over the sign in the window of her failed retail hat store that read, “Sorry, We’re Closed.” Then she shut the door and locked it.
It was 1998. She had lost her life’s savings—and those of her stepfather, whose battle with cancer had inspired her to start the Austin, Texas, business.
As if on cue, it started raining. “I just sat there and cried like a baby on the steps,” Scott says, “feeling like I was the biggest failure on the planet. I had let everybody down."
Then something amazing happened. “I heard steps behind me,” and when she looked up, the sign was flipped over and read, “Yes, We’re Open.”
“It was a literal sign.” She laughs. “It was a sign! I looked and I just started laughing because I’m like, Is this some kind of joke? But all of a sudden, it was almost like God talking to me: ‘You have to be open.’ ”
Looking back, Scott—42 in late March—believes that amazing moment happened for a reason.
“If you look at the struggles in your life, they have all happened because there’s something amazing waiting for you. There is an open window. This moment is going to make you stronger in the future.”
Soon, Scott picked herself up and moved forward.
“OK, I had to wallow for a minute,” she admits. But then Scott regained her determination. Over the next few years, she held onto the idea that her failure was a moment of impact that would alter her life for the better.
“And it did. That store was the greatest gift that ever happened to me. I’ve been able to run a business so much differently and so much smarter because I had that tough experience. It was an MBA in the school of hard knocks. It’s an incredible university.”
Scott tells me she believes the failure of her first business was instrumental in the success of her second one: “Experience is something that you can’t teach. That feeling of how are you going to make payroll? How are you going to pay your rent? How are you spacing out paying your vendors? Those are things you can never learn in a book. That knot in your stomach that wakes you up in the middle of the night is something that, unless you’ve lived it, you don’t understand how to navigate through. And when you get yourself in a business—a business that is growing as fast as we’re growing right now—I think having that basis and remembering that knot, remembering what it feels like, has made me be so thoughtful and so careful about how we’ve grown and what we’ve done.”
Scott says failure also gives you a determination that you can get through anything. “No matter what comes at you, you can get through it. You will overcome. There is a reason this is happening, and the sun will shine again.” She says it’s crucial to focus on how you can move forward in a positive way.
“I'm putting all my chips on the table, and it's go big or go home.”
What will you do the next time you feel like you've failed in reaching your Dreams?
Let this post be your "sign" that "Yes, We're Open"...keep going!
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