Prioritizing People and Customer Connections

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Picture this: 2008 recession hitting hard, your business about to become another failure, and you walk into your office knowing you have to do something dramatic. Kendra Scott drew a line in the sand—literally invoked the Alamo—and asked her team if they were in or out. What came next defied every rule of the jewelry industry. While stores shuttered across Austin, she signed a lease. While everyone warned her about shoplifters, she put jewelry on open tables for customers to touch and try on freely. While traditional jewelry stores were stuffy and judgmental, she created a color bar where women could sip champagne, eat cupcakes, and watch their custom pieces being made right in front of them. People thought she was crazy. They had lines around the block. She started this company two months after 9/11 with $500 in a spare bedroom. And that 2008 recession everyone feared? She calls it "the greatest gift Kendra Scott ever got" because crisis forced her to see the blind spots in her business model and pivot before it was too late.

Here's what separates the million-dollar businesses from the billion-dollar ones, and Kendra doesn't sugarcoat it. Stop pretending you're a magical unicorn who can do everything. Know exactly what you suck at, then hire people who are phenomenal at those things. Build a team that covers your gaps instead of trying to be the hero of every chapter. And here's the thing that might save your business when the next crisis hits: stop being so obsessed with the transaction that you forget the connection. Kendra's team delivered food to elderly customers during the pandemic instead of trying to sell them jewelry. Why? Because for 20 years they'd shown up in hospitals with their Kendra Cares program, in oncology centers giving women battling breast cancer something joyful, consistently being there when nobody expected them to be. That authentic connection meant when the world shut down, customers showed up for her. Not because of clever marketing, but because she'd built something real. She still reads every single Instagram comment, still works in stores, still treats customers like the actual boss—because they are. Your name might be on the building, but your customer is signing your checks. The businesses that remember that during the scary, uncomfortable phases don't just survive economic challenges—they absolutely thrive coming out the other side.

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