Minority Consultant Shares Thoughts on Dynamics in Entrepreneurism
Karyn’s work through Beyond Blind Spots seeks to help women uncover their inner selves to make an impact on their businesses.
For more than 15 years, Karyn K. Pettigrew, founder/chief executive officer for her Black-owned Chicago business called Beyond Blind Spots, developed a process for women entrepreneurs to identify and challenge their interests, motivations and inherent values to feel more connected to their work and move beyond the factors creating problems for them. While entrepreneurs contribute to the global economy's success, the female and minority experience manifests an enduring struggle towards fair opportunity and scaling their businesses.
To Pettigrew, female entrepreneurs should place emphasis on believing in themselves in pursuit of their career goals despite the burdens they carry.
“If your dream is important to you, nobody’s going to fight harder for it than you will,” she said.
Pettigrew pursued marketing and strategy roles for Gatorade, the Illinois State Lottery and People’s Gas after earning her MBA from Harvard University. After leaving the corporate world, she published a book, “I Quit and Choose Work that Aligns with My Soul,” and participated as a coach for entrepreneurs in a public-private partnership. Throughout the course of writing, she worked as an executive coach and consultant for minority entrepreneurs through the Next One Program. She currently works in her two entrepreneurial ventures: Beyond Blind Spots and Zoe-Goes.
Pettigrew realized in conversations with numerous clients that many shared similar roadblocks in designing or having an impact on their businesses. Fascinated by the use of intuition to help them achieve greater results, she studied the mind-body connection as well as energetic and meta-physical principles. She saw their connection to guiding the external experience and launched Beyond Blind Spots in 2003, incorporating the intuitive model in her programs which she holds virtually.
The “blind spots” in the name signals clients to look closely at themselves — the hidden biases, judgements, and ways of thinking they can’t see. She explains this process helps them in acting upon their true calling and articulating that to the audience looking for them.
“Your business is a physical manifestation of you in the world. There is no separation,” she said. “I think that when you make a connection in what you do to your purpose and the thing that drives you and the place where you want to make an impact, you can still have a dynamic impact on the people that you serve.”
Pettigrew further embraced the idea of connecting with our inner selves and work at a time in her career when her work no longer aligned with her interests, culminating in the decision to shift from corporate to entrepreneurship. Her clients expressed dissatisfaction across the spectrum pertaining to work disparities, the direction of their business, accessibility to resources, and more. She felt compelled to publish her book after realizing these barriers to communicate her mission of helping them find and “do what they love.”
The 2019 State of Women-Owned Business Report highlights that the number of women-owned businesses grew 21 percent while minority-women-owned businesses surged double that rate at 43 percent between 2014 to 2019. The trend for African-American women, 51 percent, supports a faster growth for that race making up women-owned businesses. Minority female entrepreneurs overall are the highest growing group.
While the future looks promising to entrepreneurs who are women and particularly women of color, equality and fairness hasn’t been reached.
One of the factors leading female entrepreneurs to start a business stems from experiencing income inequalities in the workforce. According to the Journal of Business Research, the United States sees a 17.5 percent gender wage gap, a country with growing female entrepreneurship.
Photo Credit: Kersti Niglas
A big part of Pettigrew’s mission in championing female-minority entrepreneurs is through helping them create secondary sources of income to feel more optimistic in their financial independence, a stable living, and breaking free of the prevailing wage gap.
“The system that’s just been unfair has no power over you anymore and can’t intimidate you the same way because you had something going on that was making money for you,” she said. “That mindset of thinking about how differently you want to walk, that energetic point of view requires people to feel safe and confident in taking care of themselves.”
Even funding opportunities puts a developing business at a standstill. The average loan amount for women-owned businesses was 31 percent less than the amount generated among their male counterparts ($70,239) in 2018 according to Biz2Credit, an online business credit provider that studied 30,000 companies in more than 20 industries.
Pettigrew noted that the lending gap is more pronounced among Black and Brown women and recalls the experiences several women in the National Association of Women Business Owners shared about getting denied from their institutions.
“Most people don’t have money they’re sitting on to start businesses. They may be really passionate about an idea or about a concept, but quickly the business can get away from them,” she said. “Women just need, and brown women especially, a fair opportunity at access to the cash. They need assistance in applying for it. So there should be more vehicles for helping women get access."
Like the wage gap, access to finance for women- and minority-owned businesses still has a long way to go in order to level the playing field among entrepreneurs. Reasons such as no bankroll, lack of collateral, or a complex application process intervenes in the path towards business growth and development. The U.S. Senate kicked a breakthrough in 2019 by passing a bipartisan legislation aimed at improving the underfunding gap by increasing access.
Through all the challenges minority-female entrepreneurs endure in their careers, Pettigrew’s concept for Beyond Blind Spots allows women to recognize the value they have in society and support each other to achieve the freedom and flexibility they want.
“I do believe that every person is born worthy, you’re born worthy and deserving of your chance, your opportunity, your paths,” she said. “Which circles me right back to, we have to do this ourselves. Women have to support other women.”