Christian Entrepreneur Faced Delays and Failures with Healthy Long-Term Expectations (Video)

Kenton Lee developed a shoe that can grow with an impoverished child for over five years. As Kenton built his nonprofit Because International, he did not get discouraged by failure and setbacks, because he never expected success to be quick in the first place.

Transcript:

I really felt like I could do whatever I put my mind to, like whatever God was calling me to. I really felt like I could do it, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight.

People often ask me, “Why didn’t you quit?” Didn’t you get so discourage during those six years trying to work on this idea? We had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of rejection and failure during those six years. As people asked me that, I kind of said I never got discouraged really because my expectation wasn’t that this was going to happen overnight. I kind of knew this would probably take a little while.

And so anytime something bad would happen or it would be going slower than I wanted it to, I never got too low because I just knew it was going to take a while.

And so it did take 6 years. Maybe that was longer than I thought. But just having the right expectation - that if you start something I believe you can do it - especially if God calls you into it - you can do it. It’s going to happen. It just might not happen overnight.

That’s been a part of our story. Although now we’re so excited and we don’t even have enough time in the day. Now there’s too many things going on and not enough time. But for a while there it was kind of a grind.

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: A Diligent Worker Plans for the Long Term (Proverbs).