In this episode, Darnyelle and I get real about what it takes to build a business that feels good inside, not just looks good on the outside. We talk about everything from scraping by (yes, including bankruptcy) to shifting money beliefs, setting up systems that don’t burn you out, and what success really means when you're living it your way. If you’re creating a course, running a membership, or coaching clients—and you want both growth and heart—this one’s for you.

 

Don’t build a business purely for revenue—clarity on what you really want (freedom, purpose, legacy) will drive more consistent, fulfilling decisions.

Many blocks live in our beliefs about worthiness, safety, and identity. Shifting these unlocks more possibilities than just increasing efforts or marketing.

What you believe is possible financially becomes a ceiling unless intentionally expanded. Recognizing and shifting money beliefs (especially those rooted in childhood or culture) is powerful.

Working on mindset alone isn’t enough; you also need business systems—processes, finances, team, operations—that support growth without burnout.

Success doesn’t always mean “seven figures.” It might mean freedom, alignment, making an impact, or living on your terms. It’s okay (and powerful) to define it for yourself.

Women, people from marginalized backgrounds, or those with less financial inheritance often have additional layers of challenge. Recognizing this helps in compassionately dismantling barriers.

 

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

 

Connect with Darnyelle Jervey Harmon on Website, Facebook, X, Linkedin, Instagram

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list,  Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

 

Transcript

Darnyelle: No one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. And so in the first iteration, it took me nine months to make any money, and by the end of nine months I was out of all of my cash. I had emptied my 401k and I was living client to client. I was trying to figure out how to make this thing work. It was not working.

So I did the unthinkable. I filed bankruptcy and I went back to work.

Teresa: Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host res Heath wearing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the of life that.

So I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and [00:01:00] strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started.

Welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. It's funny as I was prepping to do the intro for today's episode, it kind of really reminded me why it's called the Your Dream Business Podcast, and if you're new around here or you haven't been listening long, or you've just never heard me talk about it, the reason it's called your dream business is because I am very much an advocate of creating your dream business.

What does it look like to you? I have many kind of things I say about this, but one of the things I talk about is measuring your success by someone else's ruler. When I first came into the online space, one of the things that came up a lot for me was other people telling me what a successful business look like.

You should charge more. You [00:02:00] should do this, you should do that. You're not successful unless you're having a six figure launch. You're not, you know, you need a massive audience. You need to do your business this way, that way, whatever it was, you need to use this strategy, that strategy. And i, after many years of being in this hole and thinking and FYI, trying all these things and them not working for me or creating a business that I didn't love, and then finally went, hang on a minute, like I'm listening to people who are not like me, who are not in my world, who do not share the same season of life that I I'm currently in.

Why am I paying attention to them and what they deem as successful? So I bought in the whole concept of your dream business. Obviously it's not my concept, it's just a concept and very much talked about. What does this look like for you? So some people's dream business is seven, eight figures. Some people's dream business is not bothering so much about how much they earn, as long as it can keep their lifestyle that they want, but making a difference.

Some people wanna work part-time and earn good money [00:03:00] for it. Some people want to take six months of the year off. Some people wanna be the face of their business. Some people wanna hide behind something and have someone else do it. Like it's whatever matters to you. And also that changes, like when I started my business, I was a single parent of a 4-year-old.

I'm now a married mom of a 15-year-old, like with stepchildren and dogs and you know, so what our priorities are, change massively. And as I was re-listening to today's episode, I, it kind of really reoccurred to me that, you know, this is why I'm so passionate about this because in today's episode I interview Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon, and she, it, it's not very often I get people to tell their story, but I get her to tell her story. She tells the very honest story of building a business, it not being right, starting again, building another business. Earning loads of money. I think she hits seven figures and basically [00:04:00] goes, Nope, this isn't right.

And it just, like I said, really reminded me of the fact of sometimes when we think, because everyone tells us that that's what a perfect business looks like, it actually isn't. And it, when we get it, sometimes we need to get it to go, oh, this isn't what I wanted. But it's a really, really cool story. I think you're gonna get lots from it.

She's got lots of good advice. Without further ado, here is the very lovely Darnyelle. Welcome to the podcast, Darnyelle, how are you doing?

Darnyelle: I am so excited to be here, Teresa. I'm doing great today.

Teresa: Awesome. Well, you look great.

Darnyelle: Thank you.

Teresa: If anybody wants to see how you look, then head over to my Instagram 'cause you look wonderful.

Just brilliant. I wanna start off because I have been down a rabbit hole of looking at you and looking at what you've done, and although I don't necessarily anymore. Do the whole tell us how you got to do the thing you did, which I used to do for many, many episodes. We've done over 400 episodes now, so.

Darnyelle: Wow.

Teresa: Yeah. Like, although you've done a lot as well. I was looking.

Darnyelle: Yeah. But not 400. Yeah. I think we're at [00:05:00] like 3 35 ish.

Teresa: That's still a huge amount.

Darnyelle: Yeah.

Teresa: So, but I think because I've just been down a rabbit hole of looking at who you are, I'd actually really love you to just start by introducing yourself and tell everybody what you do.

Darnyelle: Absolutely. I am Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon. I am the award winning CEO of Incredible One Enterprises. We are a business transformation company and we help six figures, service-based entrepreneurs connect their soul and strategy so that they can scale to and sustain a business that generates seven or eight figures a year creating financial legacy.

Teresa: I mean, that was the most polished introduction I have ever heard. That's amazing.

Darnyelle: Thank you.

Teresa: How did you get to do this? Like what? Just give me a brief history of like. Because you don't wake up one day. Well, maybe you did and if you did you entire secrets.

Darnyelle: No, I didn't. I did not wake up like this. This is definitely lots of trial and error.

So professionally, my career [00:06:00] started probably just like many of your listeners in corporate America. Mm-hmm. Or corporate, wherever they might be listening in from around the world. 'cause I know you have a global audience.

Teresa: I do.

Darnyelle: And I was 12 years in a Fortune 500 financial services company, and I literally woke up one day and said.

There's gotta be more to life than this.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm gonna go in pursuit of it. So I was in my late twenties. And I just made a decision. I did the unthinkable. I walked into my boss's office one day in 2004, and I quit my good job without a plan, without a safety net, without a clue about what I was going to do, but I was willing to bet on myself, and I figured that if worse came to worse, I'd be able to get another job.

Because I had an MBA at that point, I was marketable, but I would never knew because I wasn't married, I didn't have children. I would never knew if I know if I had what it took to be an entrepreneur unless I tried at this particular moment in [00:07:00] my life history.

And so I did. I quit my job, and while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up, I sold Mary Kay Cosmetics. Full-time. So I had been a part-time beauty consultant. Yeah. I decided to become a full-time sales director in Mary Kay. And within five months I was picking up my first pink Cadillac.

I ended up doing Mary Kay full-time for two and a half years. And then I had a similar experience, so I called my first moment and some of the people around the world may be familiar with this artist, Keith Sweat. He's an r and b artist who has this song called Something Just Ain't Right.

Teresa: Okay, fantastic.

Darnyelle: So I called my first moment the Keith Sweat moment. Yeah. And then I called my second moment when I realized that I still was technically sitting behind someone else's desk. I called that my Britney Spears moment. My, oops. I did it again. Right. And so I, I literally was like, Darnyelle, you've merely traded one desk for another.

You are not [00:08:00] operating in your God-given gifts and talents and really impacting the world the way that you were uniquely born to impact the world. So I ended up sending my pink Cadillac back to Mary Kay Cosmetics and I made the decision to start the first iteration of what is today incredible one Enterprises.

First iteration because listen, again, I did not wake up like this. No one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. And so in the first iteration, it took me nine months to make any money, and by the end of nine months, I was out of all of my cash. I had emptied my 401k and I was living client to client.

I was trying to figure out how to make this thing work. It was not working, so I did the unthinkable. I filed bankruptcy and I went back to work.

Teresa: Wow. And that, yeah, I was not expecting that by the way. I was expecting month nine, something clicked and suddenly all the money came right in it.

Darnyelle: No, no. Now 'cause, and here's the thing, Teresa, like how are we going to [00:09:00] change anyone's life if we only tell the upside of the story?

Teresa: A hundred percent. I am with you completely.

Darnyelle: Right?

Teresa: We need to know that. It's not as easy as it looks on paper.

Darnyelle: It's not as easy as it looks. And I went back to work for two years. I figured it out in this business on nights and weekends, and I tell anybody, listen a job if you have to work for someone else, use it as your primary fundraising opportunity.

I had to do what I had to do 'cause I didn't wanna live in my car and I wanted to make sure that my basic needs could be met. So I took my butt back to work because the business wasn't working. But while I was in the job for two years, 'cause I signed a two year contract. I was fully committed to learning what I couldn't figure out on my own initially, because at the end of the two years, I declared myself unemployable and I was never gonna work for anyone else again.

So on January 1st, 2011, I came back into my business full-time and we have not looked by 2014. I had a seven figure [00:10:00] business before you get too excited and, and celebrate me. It was short-lived by 2016. Or early, late 2016, early 2017, I was back into a mid six figure business. You might be wondering why.

Teresa: Yeah.

Darnyelle: Because I hated my seven figure business.

Teresa: Okay.

Darnyelle: It was a monster, a circus. It was not sustainable. I hustled my way to seven figures.

Teresa: Right?

Darnyelle: And I could not keep all the balls in the air, and I burnt out. I got sick and I said, you know what? You can have this business. I'll go back happily to a mid six figure business if it allows me to keep my sanity and have some semblance of a life.

And so I went back and I was totally fine with it. I didn't feel embarrassed or anything, but I started to get this little gnawing I used to, it started as like a, a really faint, distant whisper.

Teresa: Mm-hmm.

Darnyelle: And then it [00:11:00] started to get a little bit louder and a little bit louder, and then eventually it was a shout.

Not only was I supposed to be operating a company that did seven figures a year, but I was supposed to be teaching other people how to do the same thing. And so I had to figure out how was I gonna go back into a seven figure business? 'cause I didn't want it to be like it was the last one. Mm-hmm. And that is where the Move to Millions Method came from.

I figured out how to build a business sustainably with Grace and E instead of hustle and grind, putting the right systems and infrastructure in place. We got back to seven figures in late 2018. We worked, well. 2018, we were at like 9 63, 963,000. And honestly, if I really pushed, I could have done the other 47,000, but I was like, you know what, this was great.

By 2019 we had done $2 million in the business, so, and we had done it in this foreman. So right around that time, I [00:12:00] had started really praying to God and asking God, okay, I think I got myself together. What is it that you would have me do? Mm-hmm. And that is when he gave me move to millions as my movement.

So we started going through a rebrand, and as a result of the rebrand, I started working with clients directly on the auspices of helping them to get to seven figures. And since late 2021, we have helped 77 entrepreneurs cross their first or next seven figures, and the majority of them have sustained it over time.

Teresa: Right. So there's so much, so much in there that I want to cover. Okay. The first thing I wanna touch on is how awesome it is that you talked about hitting seven figures, which for so many business owners, whether it's seven figures, six figures, eight figures, whatever the number is, there's like a number in our head.

Yep. That goes, if I hit that, life will be amazing. Yeah. And you hit it and you [00:13:00] did not like it, right?

Darnyelle: No. And I thought if I hit, I thought many things. I thought if I hit it all of a sudden I would be worthy, I would be deserving. And, and you know, that's an issue that's unrelated to the money, but it absolutely impacts the money.

Yeah. I thought if I hit it, all of a sudden the heavens would open, the seeds would part, and they'd ride in on a donkey and my life would be forever changed. Yeah. And it wasn't, you know, having all the money and having no one to share it with. I was single. I was. Living out of a suitcase. I was always on a plane going somewhere to talk to somebody about something.

I did not have any love in my life. The only person I had to call when something amazing happened was my mama. Yeah. I needed more to life than that. Right? Yeah. And so I think that money by itself, it's, it's a tool. It's not a measuring stick. It's not an identity marker. For me at that point, it was an identity marker.

Yeah. I thought it made me who I [00:14:00] was, and so I really had to dismantle the blocks and the beliefs so that I could build myself back up into a woman who knew, just like she knows her name, that she is worthy and deserving of making money at that level. Yeah, and that took a lot of inner...