Spouse entrepreneurs design jewels and charms for the military community.
Never underestimate the power of a story shared…
Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christy Dewitt, the director of business development and sales for Nomadés LLC. She is a pastor’s kid turned military spouse with an amazing entrepreneurial journey. Christy is one of four owners of Nomadés, a sterling silver jewelry company that specializes in the art of telling the stories of military community members across the globe.
When I jumped online to check out their website, I was floored by the beautiful selection of jewels and charms. Nomadés has an active trademark with all five service branches. They can design charms of their emblems, logos, or dog tags. The site even features tons of custom charms made to represent various duty stations—both CONUS and OCONUS. I found myself shopping for my own personally curated bracelet that showcased the stations our family called home. Charms for all the branches, life events, and even war memorials are available in their ecommerce shop.
While having a fun and light-hearted conversation with Christy, we talked all about the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur—especially in the midst of a global pandemic. She shared that the COVID-19 pandemic, while presenting some frequent challenges, has also shown the executive team how strong their business had become. They were able to “land” the proverbial plane to fix a few things on the ground. Business processes were streamlined, they switched to the Shopify platform, and really learned how to engage with their audience on social media.
One of the most encouraging parts of this interview was hearing Christy’s passion and care for the core team at Nomadés. She described her co-owners as resolute and creative go-getters. As a team, they strategized how to bring their gifts together and learn how to grow this company into a place of flourishing.
“I believe our success as a company comes from our integrity. We believe in helping and building others up. We want to leave a legacy for those coming behind us. We invest in individuals and organizations that are making an impact, but just need a little bit of help.”
These pioneers in military spouse business ventures have been committed to serving those in our community by enabling them to celebrate their stories together. By dreaming up beautifully crafted artisan jewelry, Nomadés creates space for spouses, draws on common ground, and encourages military community members to follow their own dreams.
The journey, while unbelievably amazing, has also had its ups and downs. For the first few years after the business launched in 2009, Nomadés operated in a direct sales format. The process of transitioning and growing has been a learning experience and also resulted in long daily work hours. In addition, they took some turns that needed to be recalibrated after a bit of bad advice. But none of the speed bumps deterred these scrappy Marine spouses and community members away from a challenge.
When I asked Christy to share some encouragement with the hopeful, hustling, and hurried spouses of today, her answer was very poignant.
She said “You don’t have to do it all today. We have this mentality as military spouses that we have to ‘go go go’ and ‘do do do.’ Steady growth and passion can be beautiful.” I have found in my own daily life that this “run at a breakneck pace” becomes second nature. We have habitually learned to do what we can do when we can do it, or else we might miss out.
Christy’s advice to start slow and grow steady is a sage reminder that we don’t have to have everything done today. We can build our companies, grow our ideas, and sift through our opportunities with an expectation to move without running ourselves into the ground.
As we finished our time together, we talked all about the impactful organizations that exist today—resources that were not available when Nomadés launched their line of jewelry. Companies like AMSE, the Association of Military Spouse Entrepreneurs, guide new business owners through legal jargon, start-up costs, budget information, and scaling tactics. Organizations like this one and many more are helping bridge the gap for today’s workers and companies like Nomadés are paving the way for us all.
Shop now at nomadescollection.com.