We recently connected with Terrell Sherman and have shared our conversation below.
Terrell, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
My daughter Sydney traveled around the world after college and came up with the idea for a business we started together a few years later called Faire which was a marketplace for ethically produced products. She had another small business she was running at the same time which looked very overwhelming so I offered to help her run Admin Boutique but instead, she asked me to help her build Faire! At first, we thought it would be short-term, but soon we became business partners and I was responsible for finding the vendors that sold through our ethical marketplace, which in the end amounted to 200+! It was a huge undertaking of a business that would have required 10s of millions of dollars in investment which we did not see at the time. Sydney raised over $1mm for the company and although operations were going very well, we were struggling with how to figure out sales and marketing. We ended up partnering with someone who we thought could be responsible for that portion of the business and that is where things started to fall apart. This partner did not have the skills nor the relationships that they had represented and instead ended up draining our energy and bank accounts without contributing much of anything. There are many details that I won’t get into here as they are not important to the bigger picture but very soon into the new relationship I decided to leave the company which was an extremely emotional decision for me as it was something special my daughter and I had built together. However, I made one very good decision at this time that ended up saving both of us in the long run, without having an idea that there was something very valuable that would come from it!
Sydney started traveling to Guatemala in 2018 and we ended up starting a little business hand embroidering second-hand denim with local artisan women that we planned to sell through Faire called Montie & Joie. We didn’t separate this entity from Faire, meaning essentially it was one and the same so when I left Faire I requested that M&J come with me so that we could turn it into a legitimate business. Sydney was wrapped up in dealing with the unfolding of our first company which was emotionally, physically, and financially draining for her so M&J kept growing in one way or another without much intentional thought. It seemed that this business was not going to make it by the summer of 2022 but after so much failure, we sat down and got very serious about what we wanted to see and this is where the story really begins.
As we all know, strategy is very important to any business and M&J was always the ugly stepchild when it came to the time we spent really thinking about its future compared to Faire. Somehow we just kept moving forward on the track we were already on and were just supporting it out of pocket month over month without seeing any real traction with customers. The products themselves are unique, well done, and sellable, but it wasn’t what the two of us were meant to be doing so we couldn’t ever seem to find an open door, the universe’s unique way of telling us that we were on the wrong track. So in order to start solving our business problems, we first asked ourselves what we wanted to be doing and what we were both uniquely talented at doing. We love fashion, but neither of us have any business designing products in this category from a passion or skillset perspective. We then listed everything we did love to do and were uniquely designed to do and came up with home goods and interior design combined with ethical production in foreign countries. This came at an interesting time because as a family we had stumbled upon an incredible opportunity in real estate and Sydney & I were going to manage the interior design of the soon-to-be-built 7 buildings and were wondering how to force our values of ethical production into the project. So already, doors were beginning to open for us just weeks into the decision as now we were going to become the main provider of furniture and decor, using ethical-only producers! We knew that we were also not the best fit to be designing products from scratch so we started to look into other small, ethical producers and another door opened very wide. We simply Google searched producers and our very first meeting was with someone who had substantial experience with big-name brands, incredible design skills, relationships with artisans (and paying them fair wages) all over the world, and who knew how to manage logistics which was going to be another huge problem for us. And finally, we started strategizing financially. We couldn’t keep supporting the business out of my own pocket and had a check coming in every month for a small amount and so we decided to focus on our first client in this new direction, and not spend more than we had coming in every month. This seems like a no-brainer but it takes money to grow and we thought what we were spending money on was going to help that growth but a year in, it never did. By being strategic about what the company should be focusing on, doors were opening, and we could then see clearly that we should stay focused on what was working and stop doing everything else.
This was hard for different reasons. Number one, it meant we were shutting down all other areas of growth except this one project putting M&J at risk if something didn’t work out. Number two, we were killing a product that we loved and that also supported artisans in the very town Sydney lives in which was emotionally very challenging. However, in order to grow a successful business and make real change, we had to stay focused which is even more critical when resources are tight.
This is not our first rodeo in business so to speak. Both Sydney and I are serial entrepreneurs that have been involved in many businesses and we have both experienced success and failure. With all of that in mind, every business and business problem is unique so the issues we had at Faire and then M&J didn’t look like any other which at times caught us by surprise. We had to go back to the roots of starting a business several years in to make it work and by doing that, we are seeing massive progress in literally the span of weeks. We need to see much more growth to be sure of a success, but for the first time in years, we know without a doubt that we are on the right track again to create another successful company. It always takes hard work at one point or another, but our new motto is to “work smart, not hard” because that is what it really boils down to in the end.
Terrell, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Montie & Joie is an ethical home good and clothing brand that focuses on financially empowering women around the world. We pay fair wages, support traditional crafts, and use environmentally sustainable materials believing that fashion can and should be positive for the world we live in.
Terrell Sherman is a highly accomplished serial entrepreneur with deep experience in international real estate, start-up and corporate growth, and highly recognized kitchen and bath design. For over 20 years, Terrell has been an active partner in the custom home-building industry based in Houston, Texas, designing one-of-a-kind luxury homes, kitchens, bathrooms, and interiors. Terrell co-founded The Etho, an online marketplace for ethical products, Montie & Joie, and recently was Co-CEO of Design Basics, a home plan design company. She now focuses her time on Montie & Joie as the head designer and investing in other female entrepreneurs through The Helm which she is a founding member of. Terrell and her husband Myles have started, invested in, or ran over 50 businesses during their career together.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I have been a hard worker for nearly my whole life up to now and it has taken this long to learn that it is not serving me. What I didn’t mention in my story regarding Faire and Montie & Joie is that throughout all of that time, I was working more than ever. I was starting to feel extremely burnt out and was no longer able to think very clearly about what I was even working on. Other people could see that what I was doing didn’t make any sense but I couldn’t see it at all! As Sydney and I navigated the devastating end to our company, Faire, and the lack of success at what we hoped would fix it, Montie & Joie, we finally saw that working hard wasn’t working at all. Since then I have dedicated myself to only doing what I love, designing, and working a fraction of the time I was working before. It’s not as simple as just doing it, but with the right personal practices in place, I have finally started to work smart, not hard, and am already seeing the fruits of my labors!
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
For Montie & Joie we started the business “backward” so to speak. We had no intention of starting a business at that time but when Sydney met a group of very talented artisans that were in need of a more positive work environment and fair pay, we decided to get creative and build something that would support them. Because we had a sales channel with our other business, Faire, this seemed like a great solution to their problem. Everything we do is sustainable so we thought of bringing second-hand denim down to Guatemala on Sydney’s trips and having them sew designs into them and then bringing them back to sell through Faire and eventually in-person markets. We didn’t know what we were doing at first, so we had to learn about embroidery and also match our designs with the artisans’ skills. For example, we did some peaches at first that looked like round orange balls which was not very attractive on the back pocket of our denim. On the other hand, we did some incredible fists in different skin colors on a jacket and they nailed that! We also had a funny experience when we designed a variety of pieces with snakes and the women didn’t want to sew them because in their culture it was a bad omen! Matching skill sets on all sides is a big lesson we learned during this process, especially because none of us fluently speak the others’ language.
Contact Info:
- Website: montie-joie.com