Photo by @rhaynacphotography
Minority-owned businesses face a unique set of challenges but there is a lot of opportunity in the area of government contracts. For the fiscal year 2020, the government awarded $7.285 billion in prime contracts to minority-owned small businesses. One woman helping minority owned businesses obtain those contracts is Karwanna D.
Karwanna is a 15+ year Biz Veteran, a certified business coach specializing in government contracting for small businesses, an entrepreneur, an author, and a fiery transformational speaker. Her greatest passion is helping other women and minority small business owners strategically grow their businesses with government contracts so they can have successful and sustainable businesses with consistent income.
Karwanna has been featured on many major platforms including CBS, NBC, FOX, and more. She is also the CEO of She’s Got Goals LLC, a consulting firm for the empowerment of women entrepreneurs. We had a chance to catch up with Karwanna and gain insight on how she found her passion and tips to help business owners thrive in any economy.
How did you discover your passion to help other women and minority small business owners grow their businesses?
I think it was the fact that I myself am a minority and a woman and over the years I’ve experienced so many setbacks and disadvantages from both demographics. Those setbacks made me want to find solutions and loopholes to get ahead and share those secrets with others who looked like me. I remember trying to build my business with no credit, no money, or no tangible knowledge of what it looked like to have success and I was thinking to myself, there’s got to be a better way. It wasn’t until I learned how to fix my credit and leveraged it to access capital to invest in training and tools to grow my business that things began to turn around for me. I began to realize that every hurdle that was systematically designed to make us fail, can be overcome. I developed my skills and surrounded myself with like-minded individuals and experienced what I call quantum leaps in my business and compound success from being consistent. As I was learning, I would always share with other people and that confirmed to me that I was born to empower and impact others by truly helping them.
What tips can you give small business owners to help them grow their businesses despite the rocky economy?
What I’ve learned is that you can make millions during rocky times. In fact, it’s during those uncertain times that new millionaires and billionaires are born. It’s all about how you view things and what you expect the outcome to be. I know for a fact that government contracts is one of the most powerful and strategic ways to fail proof your business regardless of what’s going on in the economy. The government spends more money with small businesses who can provide solutions to common issues that may arrive due to recessions and rocky times.
5 tips I can give a small business owner that will help them grow their business despite the rocky economy are:
1. Position yourself for government contracts. They will help you fail proof your business regardless of the economy. The government prints money and has to spend it with you. It’s a complete no-brainer business model to incorporate into your business plan. In my book Don’t Duck The Government, They’ve Got Your Money, I talk about how you can literally make millions pitching and winning government contracts even if you’ve never done business with the government before and have yet to make a single dollar in your business.
2. Think outside the box. Every time there’s talk about pandemics, recessions, or any drastic event happening in the world, there are also opportunities to provide solutions. Choose to be a part of the solution and you can make millions in the process. Most people stand in their own way with limited thoughts. And this is where having a coach can be beneficial. When you don’t have someone to help you think strategically about your business, you can easily disqualify yourself from a business method that can truly revolutionize the way you view business as well as your own value.
3. Don’t do business alone. Get connected to a mentor and a community where entrepreneurs are operating at a high level so that you can stay plugged in. When you’re alone in business it’s easy to think like a consumer because you’re surrounded by consumers. You can make wrong decisions that don’t serve you as an entrepreneur, but rather as a consumer yourself.
4. Don’t let somebody else’s “no” be your “no.” I hear so often how business owners are not taking a particular action because someone else told them they don’t qualify or that it’s not for them. Being an entrepreneur is a tremendous walk of faith and you have to know that you were called to walk this journey and be ready to dismiss every messenger who tells you otherwise. They may have good intentions and they may not mean any harm, but when the vision of starting a business was birthed into you, anyone who wasn’t given that same vision or gift, can’t possibly seed the right information into your life. So you have to give yourself permission to be great. And you have to shut out all the noise and stay laser-focused on the outcome that you desire because unless you quit, it will happen.
5. Invest in what you believe in. This has got to be one of the most important tips I can share. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking they have to save to get ahead and that it’s better to get something for free or cheap rather than make a serious investment into something. You must plant seeds to reap a harvest. And that saying is so true. In the biblical scripture Acts 20:35 it talks about how it’s better to give than it is to receive. That’s the principle I’ve learned to build my business by and it’s helped me to turn my struggling business into a multi-million dollar empire. Giving is the way to receive abundantly. There’s a transformation that happens during that transaction. That’s why the bible also refers to how when you give a man a fish, he’ll eat it for a day.
When you give beyond what you have and do the work that is necessary, you will always reap a tremendous reward as well as attract abundance into your life and business.
As a Mompreneur yourself, what advice would you give to current or aspiring Mompreneurs?
Building a business with a baby is definitely a challenge and most mompreneurs may find this difficult to navigate this landscape. But I want to encourage you to strap that baby on your chest and keep it moving. You don’t have to compromise motherhood for a business. What I’ve learned as a CEO Mom Boss myself is that it’s necessary to carve out quarterly retreats and weekly days off where I do absolutely nothing in business. And that gives me the time I need to spend quality time with my babies and my husband without feeling guilty while I’m working. It’s necessary. I also want to encourage mompreneurs who are reading this to work off a daily planner that not only includes breaks, but time in the morning and a cut off time to end your workday because it’s so easy to work from sun up to sun down when you’re self-employed. You have the power to plan your day as well as to design the life you want to have. So design it in a way that makes you both proud and fulfilled.
What do you love about helping fellow entrepreneurs build and sustain their businesses?
What I love most about helping fellow entrepreneurs sustain their business is knowing that I’ve created a system that works. The Trillion Dollar Government Contracts Accelerator System is proven to take small business entrepreneurs from barely making ends meet in business to landing the #1 largest purchaser of business products and services in the world as their client. I know what this system has done for me and how it’s completely changed my life. It has helped me to achieve dreams that most young black women from the inner city will probably never achieve. But seeing how I can help close that gap and make it more of a reality for more people across the nation is truly a blessing within itself.
You can find Karwanna D on social media under @KarwannadSpeaks on FB, Linkedin & IG. And on Youtube.com/Karwannad
