The Maker Of The Trillion Dollar Secret To Government Contract, A Founder’s Story with Karwanna D.

Karwanna D. is a leading small business government contract expert, the Founder of She’s Got Goals, LLC, and the Trillion Dollar Secret to Government Contracts. With over 2 decades of experience under her belt, Karwanna teaches small business entrepreneurs to grow and scale their businesses with government contracts. Over the past couple of years, she has helped 200+ small business owners secure over $3 million dollars in contracts that are set aside for women-owned and minority-owned businesses.

Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up

I grew up in a small urban community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of course where I lived the community was blighted with poverty, minimal resources and riddled with violence so my options were few. I knew at an early age that I didn’t want to become a product of my environment and I refused to let the statistics depict what my future was going to look like. So at an early age, I knew that in order for me to beat the “system” I had to work smarter and harder and I had to set dreams and goals that were well beyond what the expectations were for young black girls in the inner city. Initially, I thought that education was my way out but little did I know it was going to be the combination of education, entrepreneurship, influence, and motivation that was going to help me change my life and the future of my children’s children.

How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

Becoming a 1st generation college graduate who had not only obtained my B.A. in Communication but went on and obtain my M.S. in Business and now Ph.D. in Small Business Government Contracting…I was really proud of my 1st career position in working with one of the largest communication firms in the world and becoming one of the highest-paid minority women in my region. I thought I was living my dreams and had reached my highest potential. But what changed the game for me and the #1 reason why I started down the path to entrepreneurship was when I started having children. I found myself working 4–60 hours per week, which meant early mornings and long, late evenings and I was missing out on my baby’s 1st…1st words, 1st steps…etc and that’s when I realized there was something much more important to me than a top paying job. It was my family and being able to spend quality time with those who meant the most to me. My children were the reason why I wanted to start my own business. Because I knew that by being my own boss I would be able to set my own schedule and work around what I prioritized as values, which were God 1st, Family 2nd, and the business. I just wanted to be able to replace my income while having time freedom. Little did I know that this entrepreneurial journey was going to lead me to have such a global impact on tens of thousands of entrepreneurs across the nation and end up helping small business owners generate an additional $ 4 million dollars in business revenues for themselves with government contracts. Now I’m known as the #1 Government Contracting Expert in the US who teaches entrepreneurs how to leverage their business to create generational wealth. This is huge. That small dream turned out to bring me so much more value to give to the world and now I’m helping other small business entrepreneurs who may have once had a similar background and limitations….create generational wealth for themselves and their families that change the narrative.

What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?

The one business lesson I would tell a startup founder would be what I coin the Trillion Dollar Secret to Government Contracts. Most entrepreneurs go into business with the misconception about the expectation and steps to starting a business. In fact, it’s become the norm to think that it takes 2–5 years before you should expect to see a profit and that you have to either get start-up capital or bootstrap your way to the top when you’re starting out in a new business. I use to believe this too. In fact, like many others, this is exactly what I learned in business school. But what I’ve discovered is that it doesn’t take 2–5 years to grow a business and that any entrepreneur can be highly profitable within their first 30, 60, or 90 days if they understand this one secret. And that is, the US Government is obligated to spend a certain % of all their spending budgets with small business entrepreneurs. That earmarks trillions of dollars for those who are just starting and levels the playing ground for even the most disadvantaged small business owner to grow their business faster by landing lucrative contracts with the #1 largest purchaser of business products and services in the world. It’s a game changer. It’s the biggest kept secret to success that so many major brands that we all know and respect don’t share. But now you know. In my book entitled Don’t Duck The Government, They’ve Got Your Money, I tell you all about how government contracts took a little ol’ girl like me from an urban and blighted community in the San Francisco Bay Area just a few short years ago and completely changed my life and legacy for generations to come. And it can change your life just the same.