Ep 410 – Scaling While Black: What It Really Takes to Build And Sustain a 7-Figure Business as a Black Woman
This episode is powered by The Ascension Archetype Quiz.
Unless you have been under a rock, over the last few weeks you’ve likely heard about a few black women founders who are experiencing business challenges publicly. Rather than take to social media, I decided to create an episode to share my thoughts. If you are a Black woman building a business and quietly navigating pressure that no one is talking about, this episode will feel like someone finally told the truth out loud. The internet celebrates Black women founders when we are winning, but the moment something shifts, the conversation turns into critique, judgment, and public dissection. In this episode, we unpack the real realities of scaling a business as a Black woman including economic disparities, access to capital, leadership pressure, public scrutiny, and the emotional cost of building in environments that were never designed to support you. We are talking about entrepreneurship, market shifts, business sustainability, leadership identity, and what it actually takes to build a seven-figure company when the odds are statistically and systemically different. If you’ve ever felt the pressure to succeed without struggle, this conversation will meet you exactly where you are.
Here’s the truth: Entrepreneurship is not linear, and it was never meant to be. Markets shift. Revenue fluctuates. Business models evolve. And for Black women founders, those realities are compounded by limited access to capital, higher scrutiny, and fewer safety nets. What the internet calls failure is often adaptation. What people label as mismanagement is often recalibration. And what looks like struggle is often leadership in motion.
You’ll walk away with a grounded, honest perspective on what it actually takes to build and sustain a business at the highest levels. This episode will help you release unrealistic expectations, understand the economic and leadership realities of scaling, and begin thinking about your business through the lens of sustainability, alignment, and legacy instead of performance and perfection.
Grab your Move to Millions Podcast Notebook, a pen and your favorite beverage and listen in to discover:
✔ How to separate public perception from the real work of building and sustaining a business
✔ How to understand market shifts and economic changes without internalizing them as personal failure
✔ How to build a business that supports your life, identity, and long-term sustainability
✔And so much more
This episode is a call to disrupt the narrative that Black women must be exceptional without ever being human. It challenges the double standard that allows some founders to pivot, restructure, and evolve while others are publicly questioned, criticized, and reduced the moment they face a challenge. This conversation is not about defense. It is about truth, context, and reclaiming the full spectrum of what entrepreneurship actually looks like.
This is your invitation to stop measuring your journey against a highlight reel that was never designed to show you the full picture. If you are building, leading, navigating change, or recalibrating in real time, this episode will help you understand that you are not behind, broken, or failing. You are in the process of building something real.
- “The internet celebrates Black women when we win, but critiques us when we struggle.”
- “You are allowed to succeed, but not allowed to struggle — and that expectation is impossible.”
- “Entrepreneurship is not failure. It is adaptation in real time.”
- “What people call failure is often just a market shift.”
- “If it were easy, you would already be there.”
- Where have I been holding myself to a standard of perfection instead of growth?
- Do I believe I am allowed to struggle publicly and still be successful?
- Am I building a business that supports me or one that is slowly draining me?
- How do I interpret setbacks — as failure or as part of the process?
- What would it look like to build my business in a way that actually honors me?
- Take the Move to Millions Ascension Archetype Quiz
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- Apply for a Soul + Strategy Conversation
- Move to Millions: The Proven Framework To Become a Million Dollar CEO With Grace & Ease Instead of Hustle & Grind by Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon – Get Your Copy
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Company website: https://incredibleoneenterprises.com/
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Darnyelle: [00:00:00] Let me start by saying something that might make some people a little uncomfortable. The internet loves celebrating black women founders when we are winning, but the moment that something goes wrong, all of a sudden the conversation changes.
Suddenly people become critics. Suddenly everyone in their grandmother has an opinion. Suddenly our struggle becomes public entertainment. And I wanna talk about all of that and so much more today, and I don't wanna talk about any one founder, but about what black women entrepreneurs are actually navigating right here and right now.
Because the truth of the matter is this. Most people watching entrepreneurship from the sidelines have no idea what it actually really takes to build and sustain a real business. And if you happen to be a black woman founder in this moment, then you already know that the landscape is shifting in ways that people are not actually talking about.
So today I wanna tell the truth about the pressure, about the economics, [00:01:00] about the leadership that is required, and most importantly, about how black women can build businesses. That actually honor and support who they are. I wanna welcome you to the Move to Millions podcast. I am your host, Dr. Darnyelle.
This is the place where we normalize wealth, leadership and legacy for millions minded entrepreneurs. Every week I get to explore what it really takes to build a seven figure company with grace and ease instead of hustle and grind.
Sometimes we talk strategy. Sometimes we talk leadership. Sometimes we get to talk about your nervous system and being safe, and we always are talking about spiritual alignment and what is required to sustain the level of success that you say you desire. If you are ready to move from six to seven figures or from chaos to clarity in your leadership style, then this is exactly where you should be.
Now let's jump into today's topic, and I have to be honest with you, this is a little bit different. It's an episode that I felt called In my Bones to record to for [00:02:00] you because there's something that is happening right now in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that deserves a deeper conversation, especially if you are a black woman founder.
And I wanna be very clear why not just because I am a black woman founder who has built a company and a portfolio of businesses, have led my own teams navigated market shifts and sustained multimillion dollar growth. Multiple seasons of the economy, but also because today I lead a movement that equips women entrepreneurs to build seven figure businesses and companies with stability, alignment, and legacy.
So when conversations begin circulating about black women founders struggling or navigating public challenges, I cannot sit silently by on the sidelines. Not because I feel the need to defend anyone, but because I understand firsthand what it actually takes to build and sustain a real company.
Let's talk statistics for a moment. There are [00:03:00] 33 million small businesses in the United States alone, and of that 33 million, according to multiple sources, only 4.2% ever crossed seven figures. That's of the sum total of the 33 million. In addition to that, 1.9% of women owned businesses cross seven figures.
0.9% of black owned businesses cross seven figures and 0.5% of black women owned businesses cross seven figures. So that means that roughly 165,000 businesses in the United States are ran by black women like me. Who are making seven figures or more in a year. Bottom line, there's not a lot of us out here holding it down.
And because I also happen to be a member of the BO Collective, a collective of 300 plus black women owned businesses in 23 industries across 28 states generating $1.7 billion in economic impact every [00:04:00] year. I felt compelled to have this conversation because I'm tired of watching black women founders.
Be dragged on the internet by strangers who don't know what in the world they're talking about. So when I talk to you about this, I'm not just theorizing, I'm literally looking at my peers. I'm looking at women who are navigating the same leadership realities that every serious entrepreneur or small business owner in the market faces.
Is facing or will eventually face. Because here's the thing, markets shifts. Operational organizational infrastructure, they are complex. Cash flow does bring pressure sometimes, and sometimes you have to pivot. And there are a lot of people who are out here sharing their 2 cents that don't really understand and have never actually built and sustained a real company themselves.
I felt compelled to speak on it because enough is enough. Most of the [00:05:00] things that I've been seeing and commentary, it doesn't even make sense right now. A lot of people are talking about a few black women founders in particular. You've likely seen it. A company shuts down, a founder files bankruptcy, A business struggles publicly, and the internet is responding with judgment.
But here's what I think is fascinating. It's how quickly the tone of the conversation shift. Because when certain founders struggle, people call that innovation when certain founders pivot, people call that experimentation or rebranding. But when black women founders struggle, suddenly the conversation becomes about their competence or their character or whether or not they deserve to succeed in business in the very first place.
And what most people don't realize is that black women are building businesses in an environment where the odds. Are very different and often extremely stacked against us. According to data [00:06:00] from Crunchbase and the Harvard Business Review, black women founders receive less than 1% of that of venture capital funding in the United States, less than 1%.
So that means the vast majority of black women are building companies are doing it. Without massive capital backing, without venture runway, with no investor cushion, just the revenue they bring in and resilience. Now, let's pause for a moment and actually celebrate that because to be a black woman in business who happens to get your business to seven figures, that means only 0.5% of us have actually done this.
That is a huge deal. It's literally history. We're in Women's History Month as I record this episode, and that is literally history in the making. So I want you to just pause for a moment and think about that. We are often judging founders who are building companies with dramatically fewer resources.[00:07:00]
Than some of their counterparts and it needs to stop. But even that isn't even the whole story because right now we are also witnessing a major economic shift that is vastly impacting and affecting many black women entrepreneurs. Yes, I'm talking about the collapse of DEI and DEI budgets now, over the past several years, I know I have watched many black women build successful businesses service.
Successful businesses serving corporations through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. From consulting to leadership development to advisory work to organizational transformation, literally entire companies were built around helping organizations create more equitable environments. But in the last year, we have seen a dramatic shift, like literally budget shrinking programs disappearing.
Some companies quietly scaling back on these initiatives while others completely [00:08:00] dismantling the initiatives altogether. And the result has been many women entrepreneurs who built business in that space. Now, navigating a rapidly changing market. Trust me when I tell you this is not personal failure.
This is what economists call a market shift, because let's be clear, markets evolve, industries change, and entrepreneurs, we have to adapt. But the emotional reality of these shifts often gets ignored because when the work that you do is tied to identity, to justice and impact. Those changes can feel deeply personal.
And I know this firsthand. I've worked with corporate and government clients that are navigating these exact conversations and scenarios, and I've watched how quickly priorities have to shift. And let me also be very, very clear. I'm not speaking about this as an observer on the outside of entrepreneurship.
I am speaking as someone who has built a company through multiple economic cycles. I bootstrapped my business for [00:09:00] years. I'm talking every contract, every client, every piece of growth came from revenue in and reinvestment out, and in 2025, I personally lost a government contract that was valued at over $1.5 million in revenue in 2025 to my company Now, because I was in a good position financially.
Losing that contract was not the end of my company, but not every business can say the same. That's probably another episode for another day, but personally, when I filed bankruptcy back in 2010. I vowed that I would personally become financially literate and I would learn how to navigate different markets and build sustainability into my businesses so that I would never be caught off guard if something like what is happening right now ever happened.
And it's why I train my clients the way that I train them. And I was fortunate when programs like the EIDL became available during the pandemic. I made the strategic decision to use those resources to strengthen my company's infrastructure and to [00:10:00] position my portfolio for future growth as a responsible founder.
That's what I did. Responsible founders look at the tools that are available in the moment, and we make decisions to stabilize and expand our businesses. But here's what most people on the internet don't understand. Entrepreneurship is not linear. Market shift industries evolve. Entire categories of business can expand rapidly and then can track just as rapidly and when that happens, founders are not nega.
Let's do that again. Founders are not navigating failure. They are adapting. That is the real work of entrepreneurship. Now there's one more piece to this conversation that we need to address because it is being talked about online in a way that is incredibly uninformed. Bankruptcy. Right now, people are acting as if bankruptcy is the ultimate sign that a business has failed.
That is simply not true. Bankruptcy is actually a legal protection that exists inside of our economic system specifically to give businesses a chance to [00:11:00] reorganize and reset. Many people do not realize that there are different types of bankruptcy, both personally and in business.
For example, a chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is the one that most businesses use, is not about shutting down a company. It's about restructuring debt. Renegotiating obligations and creating a pathway for the business to continue operating while it stabilizes financially. Some of the most recognizable companies in the world, but specifically here in the United States, have gone through bankruptcy at some point in their trajectory.
Airlines, retail giants, automotive companies, entire industries have used bankruptcy protections to reorganize and survive during difficult seasons. And when those companies do it, we consider that to be strategy. We call it restructuring. We call it smart financial management. But when a black woman founder recently did.
And experience financial pressure and uses the same legal tools that are available to every other business in the country. [00:12:00] Suddenly the narrative becomes personal. Suddenly her que suddenly people are questioning her intelligence, her integrity, her legitimacy as a leader. That double standard has got to stop.
It is exactly why we need more informed conversations about entrepreneurship because building a business is not linear. It has never been. Every founder will experience seasons of expansion, seasons of recalibration, and sometimes seasons where financial restructuring becomes mandatory now, using legal protections that were designed for this exact purpose.
Is not moral failure. It is a part of the reality of building in a complex economic system. Now, here's the thing. I need to cyborg for a moment because I think that I am part of the reason that y'all think getting a business to seven figures is easy. Now listen, social media gives the highlight reel and it makes it [00:13:00] seem like everybody in their grandmother is making seven figures.
But I already told you, for black women founders, that's only 165,000 businesses that are actually doing seven figures every single year. And when you are in a microcosm, it can feel like everybody is doing it. But I assure you, most people are not. The vast majority of businesses in the United States are not making six figures a year.
The vast majority, and if we look at non employer entities, which are solopreneurs, the majority of the businesses that you likely see from your limited worldview, 90% of those businesses are not doing six figures a year. And you already know how I feel about six figures. Six figures. A low six figures is small business poverty.
Now I get it. I have made it look easy because since 2021, we have helped 85 entrepreneurs and small business owners just like you have their first or next seven figure year. And we've done that through our move to millions methods, strategy [00:14:00] optimization, sales infrastructure, solidification. Systems and operational efficiency support, team alignment, success mindset, soul leadership, and self-care.
I have made it look easy if you've gotten a copy of my book, move To Millions, the Proven Framework to become a million dollar CEO with grace and Ease instead of hustling Grind. I wrote it all out and I made it look easy, but can we be honest for a second? It's not that easy because if it were that easy, we'd have more than 85 clients that we've helped get to Seven figures I've worked with.
Thousands, if not tens of thousands of entrepreneurs over the last 18 years. It's not that easy. So when we see a woman, a black woman, when we see anyone who's made it to seven figures and they are sustaining that thing, all we need do is clap our hands and celebrate. That's it, because it is much harder than you think.
And if it were that easy, you'd [00:15:00] already be there. You wouldn't be listening to this show trying to gain that one little nugget that's gonna make the difference for you. You will be actually coming to be a guest on this show 'cause you've been there, done that and gotten the T-shirt. And here's the thing, if we wanna see more black women build companies that last for generations, we have got to stop treating.
Every financial adjustment as if it is a character flaw. Entrepreneurship requires resilience. It requires adaptation, and sometimes it requires restructuring so that the next chapter of the business can be built from a stronger foundation. Ask me how. I know I have led many clients through this. I've experienced it myself, but beyond market shifts, there is another truth that people rarely acknowledge building a sustainable business.
Can be extraordinarily difficult. Now, I know that you think that entrepreneurship is easy peasy lemon squeezy because social [00:16:00] media has created a very distorted image of entrepreneurship. Listen online, we see the highlight reel, we see the revenue screenshots, we see the brand deals, we see the beautiful branding.
But what most people never see is the infrastructure that is required to. Day in a real company. I'm talking about payroll taxes, operations, hiring, leadership teams, leadership decisions, cashflow management. Do you realize that according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of new businesses fail within the first year?
And within five years, nearly half of those businesses have closed their doors, not because the founders lacked intelligence, not because they lacked vision, but because building a sustainable company is one of the most complex leadership challenges a person can take on. And yet the internet often treats entrepreneurship like it should be easy.
Like success should be effortless. Like struggle is proof that someone was never qualified to build a business in the first place. And it has got to stop. And I [00:17:00] apologize for the role that I have played and leading you to believe that getting your business to seven figures is going to be easy. Now, this brings me to something else that I believe we need to talk about and we need to talk about honestly, because when black.
Women founders are publicly criticized for struggling in business. It creates a ripple effect. It tells other black women watching that they are allowed to succeed, but they are not allowed to struggle. That you are allowed to build, but you are not allowed to learn in public. And that expectation is impossible because the unspoken expectation that is placed on black women founders that we must succeed without.
Friction that we must be brilliant, that we must be resilient, that we must do work twice as hard. Yo I, I'm having a trigger flashback. I can tell you of a million times growing up and my father would say, I have to work twice as hard for half as much, and I should be okay with it. And [00:18:00] we have all bought into the hype and the belief.
But here's what you need to know and understand. Yes, we need to be resilient. And in order to build a profitable company, it is going to take a lot it, it can be hard to be the black woman out front winning, which is why we need to celebrate and stop dragging. We must inspire everyone that is watching us, and we must do all of this without ever having any visible moment of struggle.
That expectation is not entrepreneurship. That expectation is perfection, and perfection is not a requirement placed on most founders. Do you realize that in Silicon Valley, failure is often framed as innovation? Investors talk about founders learning through iteration, companies pivoting strategies evolving.
But when black women navigate these same realities, the narrative suddenly shifts. Instead of iteration, people call it incompetence [00:19:00] instead of adaptation, people call it mismanagement instead of leadership. People question whether success was deserved in the first place. I'm sick of it y'all.
That double standard is something that we have to stop placating. Every founder learns through iteration failure comes before success everywhere, even the dictionary. We are gonna learn through mistakes, through pivots, through seasons where the strategy that once worked doesn't work anymore. Silicon Valley celebrates founders who fail and start again.
But black women are rarely afforded the same grace, and when the internet rushes to tear down black women founders, it discourages the next generation of women from building boldly. I could not continue to sit by and act like it was okay. I do not personally live everything that's going on in my life and my business out in the public on social media, but please know and believe that does not mean that every single day is sun shine and rainbows.
That is the nature of the beast. [00:20:00] Now, I am a person. I'm very. Positive minded. I do not think and lack in scarcity. I wear a bracelet at all times that says, what would abundance do? Because I operate through the filter of abundance, and even then I recognize that building a business can be challenging.
I'm gonna do a future episode where I'm gonna tell you a lot of things that I've never shared publicly on the show, but I'm gonna put it in its own episode so I won't spoil my own thunder right here. But I'm just here to tell you, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. I promise you that business online is cumulating seven figures.
They're adding up 300,001 year, 150,000 a year after that, 250,000, a year after that, and 400,000 a year after that, and calling themselves a seven figure business. But what I'm talking about, what I've always been talking about, what my book is talking about is a business that does $1 million or more in gross revenue [00:21:00] in 12 months or less.
An extra credit if you are netting $1 million a year or more in 12 months or less. Like we have done many years in our business' trajectory, which is why when we lost a $1.5 million contract last year. I didn't buckle under the pressure and start figuring out if I should start driving Uber. No shade to anyone who's driving Uber.
Listen, if you've got a family, take care of your family. If everyone should be an entrepreneur, then everyone would be an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurs need people working for them, supporting them to help them to get to where it is that they need to be. All I'm saying is that it's not as easy as it may look , and you are not doing black women a service.
You are not doing entrepreneurship, a service to act as if one person's failure is a sign of incompetence. Now, I'm not saying that there is not things that need to be done differently inside of their businesses. I don't know. I'm not their business coach and consultant. I'm not [00:22:00] looking at their p and ls.
I'm not looking at what's happening in their organizational infrastructure. There may be opportunities, and I'm also not saying that we don't need to be accountable, but what I'm saying is that we don't do anybody a service when we downplay, dismiss and drag just because we don't understand, especially if you haven't done it yourself.
So the real question becomes this, what do we do in this moment? Because moments like this in entrepreneurship are not just challenges, they are inflection points. Entire industries are shifting right now. The way founders access capital, guess what? It's changing. The way corporations spend money. Guess what?
It's changing the way audiences respond to leadership. Yep. That's changing too. And for black women founders, that means we are being invited into another level of evolution, not just in how we build businesses, but in how we design them, [00:23:00] how we fund them, how we lead them, and how we protect our peace while we are building them.
Because the truth is this, many black women have built extraordinary companies in environments that were never designed to support us. And if we were able to do that with limited capital, limited access, and constant scrutiny, imagine what becomes possible when we also build with alignment, sustainability, and internal safety.
Here's what I know. I would like to shift the conversation. Because while systems shift and markets evolve, there is something incredibly powerful that is available to every single one of us, and that is the decision to build differently. For me, That idea is captured in one powerful word. Sanctuary.
Sanctuary is about building businesses that support both your bank account and your nervous system. It means choosing sustainability over [00:24:00] performance. It means designing models that align with your capacity. It means leading from embodiment instead of exhaustion, because effort alone will not produce the kind of wealth
most entrepreneurs say that they want. Yes, effort will create burnout , but embodiment is what creates stability. Embodiment means your leadership identity is strong enough to hold the expansion. Your nervous system is regulated enough to sustain the growth, and your business model is designed with longevity in mind. When black women begin to build from this place,
Something powerful shifts. We stop chasing validation, and we start stewarding our vision. Black women have always been powerful and resilient. We build in environments that were not designed for us. We have always created brilliance with fewer resources. We have always turned vision into reality, and this moment is not the end of the story.
It is simply the next chapter. The invitation right now is not just to build businesses, but [00:25:00] to build businesses that feel safe businesses that allow our bank account and our nervous system to be comfortable and normalized the entire time because businesses are not just about building revenue, they're about building stability, building influence, and building legacy.
That if you ask me, is how we make the move to millions. This season on the podcast is all about what happens when success is no longer the question. Even for the black women founders who have recently been dragged online. There is a measure of success that is available to them that we should be celebrating them for.
And before you speak on it, make sure you know what you're talking about. That's all I'm saying, because you don't know what's going on inside of those business, behind the scenes. You only know what is narrated publicly and often, That is not the whole story. I believe that black women are [00:26:00] powerful beyond measure.
I believe that the businesses that we build are designed to shake the planet, and I believe that every single one of us has a responsibility to steward, to support, and to celebrate the black women and the businesses that they build. I'll see you guys next time. Take care.
