Moneypenny CEO on why we need an American mindset to failure

The chief executive of Moneypenny, one of the country's fastest-growing businesses, has said that the UK should look to learn from the US and change the culture around how it sees success and failure.

Joanna Knight, who has been chief executive of Moneypenny since 2018, says business leaders should see that “failure is just the next step towards success” and not be “embarrassed or ashamed about it”.

Knight was running her own start-up business before joining Moneypenny. However, the business was struggling and her mother urged her to “go and get a proper job”.

Moneypenny is based in Wrexham, north Wales, and employs more than 1,000 people. It runs customer services for businesses in the UK and the US. Knight initially joined the business in 2005, becoming its first salesperson. She was named chief executive in 2018, taking charge of the business from the founders, Ed Reeves and Rachel Clacher, who are brother and sister and launched the business in 2000.

Knight has overseen the expansion of Moneypenny to the US and was appointed to the prime minister’s business council, an advisory board on business for the government, in 2022, alongside the bosses of the biggest companies in the country.

“Sometimes we need to be more American, to see that failure is just the next step towards success,” Knight says. “I don't think British people are very good at patting people on the back and saying: ‘Well done for trying. Now head up, crack on, let's go and do it again.’

“It's all about: ‘Well, so and so tried and it didn't do very well.’”

Knight adds: “If there's one thing that we can teach our kids, whether it's in school or their home lives, it's just try, try and try. If you fail, it's fine.  Talk about it. Embrace it. Learn your lessons. Know what you're going to do differently next time. Dust yourself up and get on. I don't think it's anything to be embarrassed or ashamed about. But I think culturally we find it very difficult over here. We're getting better at it. But the Americans are so much better.”

Of her own setback with a start-up, Knight recalls: “I decided I was a bit rubbish. I needed to be paid a proper salary and I didn't want to take the risk anymore.”

Moneypenny, says Knight, “was an incredible opportunity on my doorstep”. She adds: “I could, for all intents and purposes, act like it was my own small business. That, to me, was the golden egg.”