(Kyra Renel Hardwick: Photo courtesy of KTA Media Group)
Black women are not just tearing the game up in politics.
They are also doing their thing in the business world.
One such businessperson is Kyra Renel Hardwick of The Kyra Company, who recently received the 2024 Entrepreneurial Woman of Impact Award, sponsored by JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking, for her work helping take other companies to the next level.
In a statement, the Detroit native said, “I am incredibly grateful for the impact that The Kyra Company team has made to change the lives of small business owners across the nation. Thank you for recognizing our work. My life’s work has been dedicated to helping other business owners and CEOs soar. I am honored to be recognized for the vital contributions I’ve made to the business community.”
She received the award along with 24 other women entrepreneurs on Sept. 11 in Philadelphia.
Known as a game changer and change agent in corporate America, Hardwick started The Kyra Company nearly 10 years ago.
The Kyra Company is headquartered in Houston.
Hardwick told RegalMag.com, “The Kyra Company is a full-service international consulting firm. We provide organizational development and strategic planning for businesses really focusing on growth stage organizations or small businesses that are really working to build their operations. We focus on three main areas; people, process and profitability. We want to make sure that businesses have strong models.”
Hardwick often emphasizes to aspiring entrepreneurs that businesspeople can either do things the right way when starting their business or they will have to do it over.
Therefore, it is important for an aspiring entrepreneur to do things the right way, initially.
The Kyra Company once worked with an 8-year-old company that had multiple firms within the healthcare space.
However, the company could not sustain payroll and needed to reduce their workforce.
As a result, The Kyra Company looked at the company’s profit and loss statements to decide what the company’s issues were.
Hardwick gave them 90-day turnaround plan.
After 90 days, the company regained its financial footing and experienced more success.
One of the biggest issues that Hardwick sees amongst business owners is that many underestimate how much work goes into having the role of chief executive officer.
Hardwick said, “We spend a lot of time mentoring and cultivating the leaders that run the organizations, which then allows us to take their organizations through transformation if they’ve been in the organization for a while…
“You got the same leadership, a lot of them have the same kind of mom-and-pop strategies. Those don’t work anymore. We need to enterprise, we need to share resources, we need to expand, it’s time to acquire a company, it’s time to sell and prepare for succession. But there’s so many different layers and we’re privileged to walk with organizations through those processes.”
Through their affiliation with The Kyra Company, companies have earned larger business contracts and earned larger shares of the market.
Hardwick added, “So we are all about growth and sustainability in the middle market with your small businesses, with your growth stage businesses. And so that’s how our corporate partnerships work as well.”
Those that work with Hardwick say that she has an innate ability to see the holes in companies and knows immediately what to do to plug those holes, getting those companies in a better position for long-term success and profitability.
Her clients often say that Hardwick changes lives by changing a company’s bottom line.
She also started programs like the Smart CEOs Accelerator Program: The Capacity Builder, which empowers growth stage businesses through a comprehensive curriculum, mentorship, and networking opportunities.
One big dilemma that many aspiring entrepreneurs find themselves in is deciding whether there is a market for their vision and if they should have a steady job, or plan B, just in case their business dreams do not take off immediately.
Hardwick said, “I am not the business developer that strongly recommends that folks just leave their job and jump into their dream. I want you to have a transition plan.
“And so, one of the things that I would say is do the market research, and all of our access to social media and all of these tools make the market research so much easier to do now.
“So, test it. Ask 10 friends and then test it. Find out what their needs are. Do some surveys. Have some conversations. Get some preliminary data to determine what people need.”
The Kyra Company came about because Hardwick listened to people, learning about some of their business struggles after she left corporate America.
She said, “And then what I started doing was problem solving for them operationally. And my methodology started to form.”
Her conversations become a form of market research because the people she interacted with asked her why she did not turn her expertise into a business that would help other companies go to the next level.
What one friend had contemplated for two years about restructuring her company, Hardwick had figured it out in 20 minutes.
“Then slowly but surely we formed The Kyra Company to consult and help people understand how to use operational thinking and leverage their skill set to actually build strong business operations,” she added.
And there is no doubt that Hardwick knows how to build a strong company because in 10 years, her company has gone from simple conversations with friends to changing the lives of countless entrepreneurs and business leaders.
