Entrepreneur Is Grateful for Failures and the People Who Kept Her Believing (Video)

Jewelry entrepreneur Emily Moon describes several moments when she almost threw up her hands and quit, and why she’s glad she didn’t.

Transcript:

We totally failed in the beginning. I do want to mention that because I think that is so important. Learning from other people’s failures is really great.

We started in dresses with By Grace Ghana. We got the dresses back and there was no way that we could sell them. Zippers were falling apart. And the order had cost us a lot. We had gone out there. We had gotten sewing machines. We were paying for their instruction, their learning. And we got them back and it was just a total disaster. There was no way that this was going to work.

And for some incredible reason we didn’t just throw up our hands and say, “Okay, well, we’ll quit.” We just kept going.

We actually tried again. We tried one more time. We got patterns made. We got better sewing machines. We did all of these steps and we tried again and it still didn’t work.

During that time we found what Dylan and Molly were doing in India. And so we decided, “Let’s learn from them. Let’s support their mission. Let’s grow what they’re doing.” Because they were doing what we wanted to do but way better.

We did that. And through this stream of income through India, we were able to support our operations, and then kind of take a pivot in Ghana and switch into zip bags and jewelry – into areas that could actually have a market and could sell, and not these complex dresses that we thought in the beginning. Women’s apparel is one of the hardest things you could possibly do. I don’t know why we thougth we should do that.

But it was a total bust in the beginning. But we really didn’t quit. We just said, “That was terrible. That was embarrassing. But you know what? We’re going to find something else that maybe does work.”

If anybody has started a business, I can guarantee you they’ve walked through failure at some point. That is inevitable. You are going to fail on some scale.

I think that during that failure it taught me a lot. God was refining a lot in my character and strengthening me. I am so thankful for the failure that I’ve had to walk through, because it taught me so much more than any of our winning ever did.

And so I would just say the only way to fail is to quit. Just don’t quit. Get somebody to believe in it when you don’t. And you can believe in it when they don’t. Kelsey and I – that’s a lot of our relationship. When I was ready to throw in the towel, she said, “Nope, we’re going to try one more thing.” And when she was ready to quit I said, “Nope, we’re going to do one more thing and see if that works.” And eventually we started to see these small successes.

I just hope that is encouraging to somebody. Don’t quit.

This video is a production of Nazarene Theological Seminary. Used by permission. Click here to learn more about Nazarene Theological Seminary.

This video serves as an illustration to the TOW Bible Commentary: Grace Transforms Suffering in Our Life in Christ (Romans 5:1–11).