[Nitin Bajaj] (0:02 – 0:12)

Hey everyone, welcome to The Industry Show. I’m your host Nitin Bajaj and joining me today is Darnyelle. Darnyelle, welcome on the show.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (0:12 – 0:16)

Thank you so much for having me, Nitin. I’m so excited to be here.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (0:16 – 0:21)

Likewise, pleasure is all mine. So let’s start with, who is Darnyelle?

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (0:22 – 0:46)

Wow, that’s always such a loaded question. First and foremost, I am a child of the most high god. I am a wife, a sister, a bestie, a CEO, and a woman who just really wants to help as many people as I possibly can experience abundance in their life because of their business.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (0:47 – 1:01)

I love that. I love the spread, the depth, but also the purpose. And I’d love to learn more about what you do. So please tell us about Incredible One.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (1:02 – 2:16)

Yeah. So I run Incredible One Enterprises. It’s a business transformation company. We work with six-figure service-based entrepreneurs. Our companies are, by and large, coaches, consultants, attorneys, and accountants, but any service-based business is who we love to serve. And we help them transform from entrepreneurs into CEOs who run businesses that make, move, and will ultimately leave millions of dollars. What I find, and what I love about our work, we’ve been in business for 16 years, and we’ve been doing this work since 2011, is I meet a lot of mission-driven, heart-centered entrepreneurs. They are amazing at what it is that they do, and they have hearts of gold. And what they really need support around is the right business acumen so that they are not hustling and grinding and overworking in their business at the sacrifice of everything that’s important to them. So we want to show them how to set their business up to have an infrastructure that will support them, allow them to build a team, so that not only can they actually be the CEO and not just CEO on their business card, but they can build a company that is going to help them to establish financial legacy so that they leave more than recipes to their family at the time that their sun sets.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (2:17 – 2:42)

I love that. How do you, you know, when you capture the impact of what you’ve done over the past 16-year journey, what’s the best way to share that? Is that a number in revenues, a number of employees through all of these companies, or some other metric? How would you share the impact of the work you have done?

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (2:43 – 3:45)

That’s a good question. Let me tell you how we have shared it because I think it is really hard to conceptualize and to even put a number behind the level of transformation that we watch come into the lives of the people that we work with, but we can. So over the last 12 years, our clients have done a combined $365 million in revenue and a half a billion dollars in sales, which is ridiculous, like just to think about it.

 

And we’re not talking about thousands of clients. We work with on average about a hundred clients a year. So $365 million over maybe a thousand people total is what we’re talking about that have accomplished this. And what I love most about this is that we’re teaching them to fish. So they’re not building their business only when they’re in community with us. When they decide to move on for whatever reason, they have transferable skill sets that they can continue to leverage that are going to continue to allow them to grow, to scale, and ultimately sustain their companies.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (3:46 – 3:58)

Those are massive numbers. So congratulations to you. That’s really impressive. And of course to your teams and the entrepreneurs that you help support. So that’s really amazing.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (3:58 – 4:06)

Thank you. I don’t do it by myself. I definitely have a powerful team of people who help me to impact all of the lives that we get to touch.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (4:07 – 4:28)

Now, those are very impressive numbers and you should be proud. And so should the team of what you’ve been able to accomplish. So one thing I’d be very curious to hear is across the multitude of challenges that small business owners, entrepreneurs face in their day-to-day, what’s the one big challenge you face?

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (4:29 – 5:51)

Oh, gosh, that’s a good question. Personally, I think the biggest, there’s probably two, if I can share two challenges that I face. I think the first one is as a leader, continuing to find the right people to support us on this journey of the work that it is that we do. Making sure that the team members that we bring on, they understand our vision and our mission, and they have an aptitude to serve our clients. So that’s an always revolving door. We will have great team members that come in and then we’ll have team members for one reason or another that will decide that either they’re ready to start entrepreneurship for themselves or whatever, they’re moving on to their next opportunity and the work that we do doesn’t stop.

So I would say that that’s the first one. And then the second one is always finding new ways and new opportunities to let people know that we exist. We’re totally not a best kept secret.

We are out there, people know who we are, but there are so many more entrepreneurial lives that we have the ability to influence. And so finding ways to create visibility and opportunities to get in front of more people who have the problems that we are very amazing at being able to solve so that they can stop having these problems. So those would probably be the two. Team or leadership and marketing, which I think every business probably has a marketing problem at some level.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (5:52 – 6:03)

I agree with that. On the flip side of challenges come opportunities, I’d love to hear what’s that one most exciting opportunity that you’re targeting?

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (6:04 – 8:02)

Yeah. So right now I’m really excited about my brand new book, Move to Millions. It’s in the background.

 

You can see it there. The proven framework to become a million dollar CEO with grace and ease instead of hustle and grind. There is a massive opportunity with the introduction of this book. This book is going to be like the other books that are in your professional library that people tell you, you need to have. And what I love about it the most Nitin is that it doesn’t matter what kind of business you have. It doesn’t matter which business model you’ve chosen for your business. Our framework is based on the five pillars that every business from the micro is of entrepreneurs to the largest of corporations, even the government, everyone needs to look at the strategy, the right sales infrastructure, the right systems, the right support, and the right success mindset. So we’ve been able to create a framework that is agnostic and covers all business, which gives us such a wide appeal so that we can reach the multitude. I’m excited just the early reviews that we’ve gotten, people who’ve gotten advanced copies or who are listening to my private podcast that I recorded of the book and just hearing how they’re seeing the lights come on and they’re learning a simplified way to build out a business infrastructure that doesn’t require that they work all their time and sacrifice their family, their freedom, their faith, their finances, or their ability to have fun as entrepreneurs. I believe that all of us who are entrepreneurs and small business owners, we quit our good job in search of an opportunity to experience a lifestyle that is unparalleled. This book and this process, this methodology that we use is going to give that back to people so that they no longer have to sacrifice and decide, do I work really hard or do I experience the best that life has to offer? I believe you don’t have to choose. I believe you can have both. And this book and the case studies that we highlight throughout it is a demonstration of that.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (8:03 – 8:07)

I love that. I can’t wait to get my copy of it. So looking forward to it.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (8:08 – 8:09)

Yes, you’re going to love it.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (8:10 – 8:41)

I’m sure of it. But let’s, as we look forward in the future, I want to take a moment and look back in the rearview mirror. And I’d love for you to share two instances. One in which things blew your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination. And another one where things did not work out as you had planned. And it either became a failure or at least a lesson.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (8:43 – 12:51)

Absolutely. Let’s start with the lesson first. So, and I have a lot of them. And I think it’s important to say that because I think often people will see someone like me who has been very successful in our company. You know, the last two years we’ve been on the Inc. 5000 in the top 25% of the fastest growing companies in the United States. And so it’s really easy to look at where we are today and say, oh, they’ve never been through anything. And so the first one is at the onset of starting my business back in 2007 and 2008, I spent the first nine months getting ready and preparing what I thought the market would want to receive from me. When I finally introduced myself to the market, I heard crickets so much so that the lack of income coming in, put me in a position where I ended up having to file bankruptcy.

 

Now bankruptcy almost living in my car, eating ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly every other day for 18 months. And what I love about that and why this was a lesson and not a failure is because during this process, the bankruptcy trustee, I reside in the state of Delaware required that I take a financial literacy course. And that is the best thing that ever happened to me. I come from a family where money was taboo. You didn’t talk about it. All you knew is that you had to work really hard in order to get it. And so to be forced fingers in the air quotes, to learn about money and become financially literate is the reason why just three years after filing bankruptcy, I was a millionaire running a million dollar company. And so that’s the biggest lesson that I’ve had. And I love to talk about it. I used to be ashamed of it, but what I recognize is that me keeping something that I’ve been through that I’ve overcome to myself doesn’t help anyone else. And so now I openly share being vulnerable and transparent about my own inconsistencies with money and how today that’s not my story. And then the biggest celebration, if you will, thus far inside of the business happened last December or last quarter, last fourth quarter, fourth quarter, 2022. I said what I thought was a big, hairy, audacious goal for my team and I to generate a million dollars in cash in the fourth quarter. Now we’ve done a million dollars in a year. Once we did a million dollars in a day. And so I’m like, let’s do a million dollars this quarter. And what was really great about it is that when we did it, we did not hold a launch. So just by reaching out to previous clients and customers, leveraging relationships that I had and speaking opportunities that I already had on my calendar, we were able to generate a million dollars in cash in the fourth quarter of 2022. And what’s exciting about that for me is again, we didn’t have a major launch planned. It was just through the relationships that we already have and reaching out and connecting to people. So I share that for those of you who are watching this, and you think that you’ve got to plan a big launch and you need a website and you need amazing branding and topography and all of these things while they are nice to have in order to generate money, new money in your business. All you need is someone to call a phone and what you’re going to say to them, because that’s exactly what we did. We dialed and we smiled. And the result at the end of the quarter was a new million dollars that came into the company, which I’m really, really excited about. And I love to play this game where I like to see how I can collapse time to make money, because I do believe that money is an energy. It is a currency. It is available to us all the time. There’s no shortage of it. And our ability to be creative and understanding what money is and how we can leverage it and create it. It’s really fun for me. And so I’m always looking for opportunities to collapse time. How quickly can we get to the milestone that has been maybe something that we used to think it to take us a whole year to do? How can we do it in a shorter period of time? And how can we do it without overworking, staying in integrity and allowing ourselves to really do some deep transformational work with others?

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (12:52 – 13:54)

I super love, love, love that. One, congratulations on that milestone. And I know you’ll continue to speed on that, as you said, keeping the integrity, keeping the stress levels down and just not working harder, but working smarter. So love that, love the example of what you can accomplish, but just going deeper into those relationships. And you don’t, I mean, yes, having that structure, having that game plan helps, but you’re not restricted by them. You’re not restricted by those limitations that you seem to have created in your own head. So really love that example. Now, in terms of lessons, and in terms of, you know, what you’ve learned and what, what kind of decisions that have brought you to, to be where you are, I would love to take us into our favorite part of the show that we call the one line life lessons. And I would love for you to share a few of yours with us.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (13:55 – 15:42)

Oh, wow. I was looking forward to this. So I remember when you told me that you were going to give me a few things to share. And so I would say there’s three distinctly that are bubbling up to the surface for me right now. The first one is that you do deserve it and you are worthy, period. Like I think many of us grew up in households or in environments where our worthiness and our deserve level was questioned sometimes on a daily basis. And I just want to set the record straight. You do deserve it. You are worthy. That’s number one. Number two, you can do anything you put your mind to. It’s simple. And then number three, there is no, there’s no lack. There is no missed opportunity. There’s only opportunities to continue to learn and to win. And I believe that we don’t, we never lose. We’re either winning or we’re learning how to win the next time. And those have been the things that have really made a difference and helped me on my own journey over the last 16 years. We’ve had our fair share of opportunities to learn as well as we have had amazing opportunities to win. And I wouldn’t have it any other way because I think learning a lesson builds character. It also gives you a rubric to go back to the next time something presents itself. And if you, every single time you show up and you do anything, there isn’t an opportunity for you to learn. Then what you get on the other side of it is really hollow. And what is the point of that? You can’t lead anybody else to success of every success you’ve had is actually hollow. And so having those opportunities where you get to learn something and you can dissect it and apply it and figure out how to turn that loss into a win is really, really powerful.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (15:43 – 15:58)

I super love that. And I couldn’t agree more with it. And it’s, it’s only in quote unquote failure is where you get the learnings, right? Because success as many others have said, success doesn’t really teach you anything.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (15:59 – 16:05)

No, it doesn’t. And failure comes first everywhere, especially the dictionary, right? Like it comes first everywhere.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (16:06 – 16:21)

Yeah. So true. I love that. Darnyelle, thank you so much for making the time to be with us, to share your journey, to share your story and your successes and life lessons. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (16:21 – 16:35)

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a joy and an honor, and I’m just really excited for everybody who’s going to have an opportunity to watch this quick interview, get a powerful nugget that they can apply and take their business to the next level.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (16:36 – 16:42)

Thank you again. And once again, congratulations on your book and I can’t wait to get my copy of it.

 

[Darnyelle Jervey Harmon] (16:43 – 16:46)

Awesome. I can’t wait for you to get it either. It’s going to change your life.

 

[Nitin Bajaj] (16:47 – 16:49)

I bet. Thank you, Darnyelle.

 

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Darnyelle Jervey Harmon is a dynamic entrepreneur, speaker, and business growth strategist. She is the CEO of Incredible One Enterprises, a coaching and consulting firm focused on helping entrepreneurs and small business owners achieve rapid growth and success. Darnyelle is known for her expertise in marketing, sales, and business development, and she has a proven track record of helping clients double, triple, or even quadruple their revenues. She is also a sought-after speaker and has been featured in various media outlets. Darnyelle is passionate about empowering entrepreneurs to reach their full potential and create businesses that make a positive impact.