Ep 128: Black Girl Making Millions

“Being the CEO of your own company is about defying the statistics, not becoming them.” – Darnyelle Jervey Harmon

Episode Summary

This episode is powered by the  God Girls Making Millions, The Mastermind

Recently I had a revelation. According to a report published by American Express, black women owned businesses generate an average of $24,000 per year.  Yet me and my clients blow that amount away in just one month. Listen to me: this revelation sparked an immense amount of gratitude because I am not only a black girl making millions, but I am also my ancestor’s wildest dreams.  In this episode, I continue to unpack more of my own journey to and beyond the million-dollar mark and I share some other startling statistics that my work and forthcoming book, Move to Millions are annihilating!  We also get into the elephant in the room of many entrepreneurs – the money mindset elephant and how not doing your money mindset work is causing women to shrink away from making, moving and leaving millions.  I have to be honest, it feels so good that to know that my work is literally shifting generational trajectories and I know that if you are millions minded, black or not, this episode just might become your new anthem!

Grab your pen and paper and listen in to discover

  • Just how bad the small business statistics are and the method we are using to shift that for our clients
  • Why you have to make the decision to become a million-dollar CEO today
  • 3 things you can focus on to shift the way you see money so you open up space to bring more in
  • And so much more

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Powerful Quotes from the Episode

  • “The move to millions starts in your mind before it ever manifests in your bank account”
  • “I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams.”
  • “Defining the statistics is what I was born to do.”

Want more of Darnyelle?

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Black Girl Making Millions

This episode is powered by God Girls Making Millions, a brand new luxury high-end mastermind experience for high-level conversations, connections and community. If you are finally ready to get in a room that is ready to help you to go to your next level, then you want to beat us to GodGirlsMakingMillions.com.

I am excited to be with you. Before we jump into this episode, I need you to do me a favor. Would you please stop what you’re doing and take a moment to rate and review this amazing, powerful show that you tune into, to see whether or not I’m sharing something about myself or I’m talking to an amazing business owner. We are in 39 countries around the world and with your help, we will further expand our reach to help more people get access to a message that offers the convergence of spiritual principles with a business growth strategy in a way that is helping you make the move to millions.

If you left a review in the past, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. If you’ve never taken a few moments to leave me a review, would you please do me a favor and do so? I am honored and grateful. We hit 200,000 downloads and we are moments away from that turning into 250,000 downloads. Thanks to all of you. If this show has touched you in any way, given you a big a-ha moment, or introduced you to someone that you are now following, please repay us by leaving us a review.

Can you do me a second favor? I know I might be asking too much, but I’m going to go with it because I know you love me. Would you also make sure that you join us in our free online community so that we can continue the conversation? I’m going to start with you in this episode by going to MoveToMillionsGroup.com. That will put you into our private Facebook community, where we keep the conversation going.

In this episode, I want to invite you into my world. “I hear you already, Darnyelle. You always invite us into your world.” That is true, but we’re going to talk about something that I haven’t shared publicly very much. If you happened to be at Move To Millions Live 2023, then you already know where I’m going with this because I talked about this for the very first time in public in that forum, but I haven’t talked about it a lot out in the world and not for any particular reason. We’re going to end why I hadn’t been talking about it as much as I should be, and I will be going forward as a result.

Black Girl Making Millions

My name is Darnyelle, and I am a Black girl making millions. I wanted to let that breathe for a moment because there are some truly alarming statistics that are plaguing the business landscape for business owners who look like me. I want to take some time to share some of those statistics with you. Did you know that the average Black woman-owned business only makes $24,000 a year? When I say to you that a low six-figure business is a small business, that’s for those who have made it there.

I was in Chicago at my Move To Millions Mastermind retreat. That mastermind has 45 women and men in it. Each of those 45 men and women does more than $24,000 in a quarter. On average, the clients in our mastermind are doing about $50,000 to $100,000 a quarter. We have our top ten. Our number one person is doing $250,000 a quarter. Our number ten person is doing $100,000 a quarter. Why am I saying this? My mastermind is defying the average of what is happening in the business landscape for Black-owned businesses, and 95% of our clients look like me. We have an opportunity to teach business owners how to defy the odds.

I’m going to hit you with some more statistics because they alarm me. If they alarm me, they’ve got to alarm you, or maybe you’re not privy to them. I need you to know about them so that we can finally get you on a trajectory with things to change. Before I even jumped into the statistics, I wanted to sidebar because I had this thought cross my mind. I often say, “I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams.” I got a glimpse of my ancestors and the pride and celebration that would be sitting in their hearts if they knew that Darnyelle is a Black girl making millions.

I’m inviting other Black girls and boys to come on this million-dollar journey with me. I’m not keeping it to myself. I want to spread the magic. I want to share our Move To Millions Method. I want to share what we have gotten down to a science with anyone who will listen so that we could have more Black girls and boys making millions. That’s what I’m doing. Do you realize that we’ve created $30 million CEOs in the history of our business and not the full history? You know the story.

I started the company in 2007, floundered massively, and filed for bankruptcy, ramen noodles, peanut butter and jelly. I went back to work for two years for someone else, trying to figure out how to get this business to the point where I could be unemployable. I was successful because on January 1, 2011, I came back out into full-time entrepreneurship, and three short years later, I passed the $1 million mark for the very first time myself.

Since 2011, we have helped 30 CEOs become million-dollar CEOs, both men and women, mostly business owners of color, but we have one. She’s a Latina. Thirty of our clients got to the $1 million mark throughout our trajectory. I’m only counting since 2011, and in those years, $30 million CEOs have been created. They are working directly with us, going through our programs, taking our courses, and leveraging what we teach to help businesses grow. We are defying the odds and turning the statistics on their heads inside of our community, Incredible Factor University.

Black Women Business Statistics

Let me share some of these Black woman business statistics with you, primarily because I want you to understand that by reading this right now, you are on the verge of shifting a generational trajectory. You had heard me say before that if you didn’t come from millions, millions got to come from you. Just because you keep company with the show, listening to the Black girl who’s out here making millions, you are on the precipice of also defying some of these alarming statistics.

Three percent of the Black women business owners run mature businesses. Depending upon who you talk to, a mature business means something different. For the purposes of this particular statistic, we’re talking about businesses that have been around for five-plus years. Did you know that 17% of businesses started each year are started by Black women compared to 42% of all businesses being women? The majority of Black women-owned firms grew by 67% from 2007 to 2012, compared to 27% of all women, and 50% growth from 2014 to 2019, representing the highest growth rate of any female demographic during this time.

You do not want to get to the million-dollar mark by yourself because you will have just created a good-paying job for yourself, but you won’t have time or energy to enjoy it.

I don’t say this often and I may never say it again. There has never been a better time to be a Black girl in the business. That’s why I’m sharing my story about being a Black girl making millions because I want those of you who desire millions to desire them unapologetically and to know that there is someone out there just like you, who looks like you, who probably has experienced the same things that you experienced.

I was born to drug-turned-crack-addicted parents in the projects of Wilmington, Delaware. My mom went to jail when I was eight. I was raised by my dad and my step-mom, who didn’t want me. I would hear her on the phone telling her mother every day that she wished Jeannie would come and get her kids. That’s where I come from and yet still, I’m a Black girl that’s making millions.

I’m going to keep saying that because I hope that the hairs on your arm, if you’re hairy like me, stand on end at the thoughts of someone who looks like you, who comes from an environment like you come from, who has experienced the kind of loss and struggle that you may have experienced, and thought that counted you out is out here making, moving and preparing to leave millions. I’m not just a Black girl who is making millions. I’m also a Black girl millionaire.

Making More Black Girls And Black Boys Millionaires

It’s important that I shared that with you because, being a millionaire, the definition is by having an accumulation of assets that are greater than $1 million. I’m a millionaire ten times over. Did you catch that? The real estate that I own, the cash that we have, the investments, those things add up to about $10 million. When I say leaving millions, the children I haven’t even birthed yet are going to be trust fund babies. They’re going to have access to more money than I know what to do with. I’m starting my foundation, The Incredible Factor Foundation, whose purpose will be to teach entrepreneurship to the children of incarcerated parents so that they will have alternatives to follow in their parents’ footsteps.

I want to make some more Black girls and boys make millions. We do all of this with the Move To Millions Method. It’s a five-part framework. We focus on strategy. It breaks down into packaging, pricing, promotions and positioning. We focus on sales infrastructure and making sure that you are using the right sales tool for your ideal client. We talk about having the right systems and automation set up, and there are two different types of systems. There are operational systems and tools, and make sure that both of them are tight and right inside of your business or organizational infrastructure.

We talk about support, making sure you have the right team, because you do not want to get to the $1 million mark by yourself because you will have just created for yourself a good-paying job, but you won’t have time or energy to enjoy it because you’re trying to be all the things. Your first goal, as you’re building out your team is to reduce your personal service delivery and the amount of time that you spend inside of your business to half. That’s the first milestone, then you want to get half of that or 25% quickly. You want to ultimately be down to 10% to 15%, no more than 20% of you spending time in your business. That can only happen if you are building a team.

We then have a success mindset that runs up, in and through all of this. If you go and grab my Move To Millions Method, then that will break all the way down for you how I did it and how I’m helping others to become million-dollar CEOs. Here’s what I know. It is not just for me and those who’ve made the decision to work with me. Working with me will likely accelerate how long it takes for you to get there. Another thing you need to know about me is that I am out of prophetic anointing on my life and on my soul, which makes me a prophet for profit.

I can give you an idea or a strategy that will make you money faster than you could say, unleashing your incredible factor. It’s the fact. Let me get back to these statistics because I need you to understand how big of a deal. I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was that I am a Black girl making millions because it has become normal for me. My whole existence is about normalizing wealth and legacy, so it has become normal. Even when I had filed for bankruptcy or eating ramen noodles, peanut butter and jelly, do you know what I used to speak to myself? I used to thank God in advance for having more money than I could give, spend, invest or save.

I would encourage you to try that and start speaking that over yourself every single day, refusing to allow what you see to hinder what you believe so that you might come out of these statistics and into the ones that make you a Black girl or boy making millions. This is not just set aside for those of us who are people of color. The Move To Millions Methodology is agnostic. It doesn’t matter who you are, but because I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams right now and I’m defying, the statistics are crazy.

Let me go back into the statistics. I’m only sharing statistics specifically about Black women in business because I want you to understand that it is a big deal to be me and to have also created $30 million CEOs, not just Black girls, but we’ve got a couple of Black boys in there too that we’ve helped become million-dollar CEOs and millionaires as a result of the process and the work that we do. We would love to help you too.

Just 4% of startups are founded by Black women and 35% of Black business owners are women. That’s important to know. Businesses owned by Black women earn significantly less than businesses run by other women. The average Black woman-run firm makes $24,000 a year. I’m blown away by that because I look at what our mastermind does every quarter. Everybody did a report. We had 45 people in the mastermind. We probably got numbers from about 30 of them. Those 30 people together did a combined $2.5 million in cash and $15 million in sales.

The reason why the numbers are so different is that first of all, you can’t spend sales. You can get a sale, but if all the money doesn’t come in for the transaction, then that becomes lagging revenue. You can only count what has already come in. Black-owned businesses employ approximately 920,000 people. Seven percent of Black-owned employer firms have 6 to 10 employees compared to the national average of 12%. We have nine full-time employees. We’re in that 7%.

Black business owners receive less business financing, often at higher rates. Also, 37.9% of Black business owners say that they are discouraged from applying for loans. Let me be clear. Access to capital helps you to scale. The average level of startup capital for Black entrepreneurs is $35,205. One percent of Black business owners obtain business loans in their first year. I didn’t even try to get a business loan in my first year of business. I took the path of creating it myself. I had very low overhead to start. Now, we have substantial overhead because we have nine full-time employees, including me, but I took the road less travel and we made it to millions.

Money is an energy that will take on whatever meaning you give it. The way you see money is the way you see yourself.

That’s why it’s so significant. I was having a conversation with my publicist and she was like, “You have to talk about this.” I don’t think you realize how big of a deal it is to be a Black girl who’s making millions. I want to be an example for those of you who are out there praying and hoping that you might get to the point in place when. I want you to know that it is possible. What I did is what I teach.

It’s the Move To Millions Methodology. I have taken the time to tighten the strategy and the sales infrastructure, set up the right systems, operationalize them with the right tools, and build the team. No one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. It’s a journey and a process, and yet we are still doing it. We are showing up fully and we are doing the work and constantly working on our success mindset. That is what’s making the difference.

Our clients are at six figures. What I’m very clear on is that you can oops your way to six figures, but you cannot oops your way to seven. Often the clients that come into work with us had million-dollar businesses when they enroll, they’re just not priced in positions right. That is often a result of their relationship with money. I’m not casting stones or throwing stones. I too had lived in a glass house because I can remember when I didn’t believe in myself and the value of what I put out into the world enough to charge appropriately for it.

The Money Mindset

This is not just something that Black women struggle with because we worked with White women who also struggled with pricing themselves correctly. This isn’t just a Black woman thing. This is about a money mindset thing. We have to remember that money is just an energy and it will take on whatever meaning you give it. The way you see money is about the way you see yourself, but it is more importantly about what you were taught about money when you were a child. You’ve heard me talk before about your inner seven-year-old. When you’re born, you’re only born with a subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is formed based on everything your subconscious takes in.

You start to make decisions. Those decisions start to become habits. Those habits start to become patterns. Those patterns start to keep you from what it is that you’re supposed to experience because you’re taking all of that in based on the people that you’re spending your time around. Let’s be clear and face it. We all come from dysfunction. Whatever your mom, dad, aunties or nana’s relationship with money is, it is most likely what you inherited. It is from that lens and vantage point that you decide to become an entrepreneur, or you hold fast to your employee mindset.

When you work for someone else or you go and you work in Corporate America, they are going to give you a role that they have deemed a value, a pay scale for. That may or may not be in congruency with the gifts and talents that you bring to the table. If you are charging by the hour as an entrepreneur, it will delay your move to the $1 million mark. It all stems from the way you see money, which is about the way you see yourself.

If you knew that you were the best thing since pockets, and trust me, you are. If you knew that down in your soul, then you would charge high end because you would understand the significance of you taking your time to work with or on behalf of someone else. That’s that time you can’t be doing what you would much rather do. There are days that I don’t even want to get out of bed. Now I do because our clients pay me to do so, but there are days when I don’t want to do anything. That is why I cannot undercharge.

I started the business in 2007. I went back to work in late 2008 and filed bankruptcy very soon thereafter because I wasn’t priced right. This is why I’m so adamant about not having sevens at the end of your prices. When I first came into the marketplace, I was charging $97 a month for three coaching sessions a month. I was spending three hours with a client for less than $100. As I think back on it, that was less than what I made when I was in Corporate America. When I left corporate my “hourly rate,” if I were paid by the hour, was around $50.

I came out into entrepreneurship and charged less because of my relationship with money. I told myself there was no way that I could make more than that. Your relationship with money will keep you from making the move to millions. It’s going to be essential that you do this work so you can defy these statistics. Can I share a couple of more statistics with you? There are more than two million Black-owned businesses in the United States. Black-owned businesses had generated $150 billion in gross revenue in 2012.

This is an interesting statistic. The most popular category for a Black-owned to start is healthcare. We have quite a few clients in our programs that run healthcare agencies or are medical professionals. Washington DC has the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses. Seventy percent of Black business owners are happy with their business, and 58% of Black business owners said their business’ financial health is at risk or distressed during COVID-19.

Black women business owners are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. Yet we are earning substantially less than our White counterparts, $24,000 on average per firm, but all other women-owned businesses only average $142,900. This has got to stop. That’s why with God’s help and direction, we created the Move To Millions Method. It’s why I’m hosting God Girls Making Millions because we’ve got to normalize access to more money and to be able to see my clients defy the odds. I think about Crystal who held a live event and did $525,000 in three days, or Dr. Shameeka, who also had a live event and did $305,000 in three days. Those are just a couple of examples.

Move To Millions

I think about Jasmine, who was our number one revenue-generating business in our mastermind in the second quarter doing $254,000 in 90 days. I think about our own business and our ability to make more than most make in a year, more than some make in five years in one quarter. I am blown away at what is possible. Early in 2023, two powerful things are going to happen. Number one, I’m going to be releasing my brand-new book. It’s called Move To Millions. I’m also going to be releasing a docu-series. I’ve spent 2021 traveling throughout many US states working with several of my clients and helping them make the move to millions inside of their businesses.

We recorded the whole thing. We chronicled the whole journey so that you could see firsthand that people like you are creating legacies. I think about Marissa, who said that she is creating trusts for her grandbabies that don’t exist yet. She was asked the question by Judah, our creative director, if she ever thought about a time of not working with me. She started to tear up and said that that was the dumbest question he could ever ask her. She has never thought about it because her life has changed in so many ways.

Black women business owners arethe fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. Yetwe are earning substantially less than our white counterparts.

I’m a Black girl making millions creating other Black girls who are making millions. I’m excited for you to see the Move To Millions docu-series, to get your hands on the book and learn the blueprint of me breaking down exactly what I’ve done. This book is powerful. I’m enjoying writing it. It’s part memoir. I’m telling lots of stories and anecdotes about my own journey, my mindset with money, how things have changed, how we’ve grown the team, as well as highlighting many of my clients, so that you can see the journey and the trajectory that none of them woke up like this. We have shown up consistently and are doing the work because even though we didn’t come from millions, millions are going to come from us. That’s the decision that we made.

We all know that once you decide, God rearranges the whole universe to bring you what you decided. It’s important for you to understand that it is possible for you. If it could happen to the Black girl from the projects of Wilmington, Delaware, with drug-addicted parents, a mom who went to jail, a dad who was a functional addict her entire life up to now. To be able to come out of that environment and get to the point where I am a philanthropist, creating my own foundation, giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, creating set-asides, and teaching Black women how to make millions.

I am sitting in the significance of the realization of who I get to be on this planet. It wasn’t my intention. My intention was just to live better, make some commitments to myself, create an environment to be able to truly live my best life, and leave something to someone else when I was no longer here. I have to be honest. It feels good to be a Black girl making millions. It feels good about the possibility of helping other girls, Black, White, Latina, all the girls and boys, to be able to make millions. That is so remarkable to me. I am a belief barrier breaker. I have been breaking beliefs since I got here. You know the story.

To some of you, this might be your first time here. Let me quickly share this piece of the story with you. I learned this when I was a young child before my mom went to jail. It was reinforced to me when I was in my twenties that my mom didn’t know she was pregnant. She was partaking in the activities that she partook. The doctors thought that if I survived, I wouldn’t know life like most life. My mom stopped immediately once she knew I was there, but the doctors did think the damage had already been done, but there’s nothing cognitively wrong with me.

That’s because there’s purpose all my life. I’ve now realized that that purpose as a Black girl making millions is to help other little girls or boys who dreamed of life better, who once upon a time said to themselves, “There’s got to be more to life than this,” to help them also make the move to millions. I hope you are as inspired by this story and as outraged by the statistics as I am. I hope you’re equally as committed to showing up fully for yourself and putting yourself in a position to work the Move To Millions Methodology so that you too can get on your own trajectory to making millions. I’ll see you next time. Take care. 

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