We were lucky to catch up with Charon King-Willis recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Charon , thanks for joining us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.
Our mission is to tap into the untapped labor pool of individuals begging for an opportunity.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
It’s true what they say, every successful person had to sacrifice something. The days where you thought that you couldn’t make it where actually the days you needed the most.
I always knew that I had a purpose on earth, I just couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t raised in a typical mommy and daddy household. I was raised in a mommy doing it all on her own kind of households. I had the essentials, as a family we went out to eat often, went to church every Sunday, mama kept me looking nice and clean, we stayed with a roof over our heads because of public housing and transportation (my mom never had to catch the bus with my siblings and I), but I wasn’t being taught financials, anything about credit, paying bills on time, the power of the mind, believing in yourself, having goals. I just knew to go to church, school and get a job.
Got pregnant with my first child when I was 16 and had my daughter when I was 17. Yes, it was unexpected and unforeseen circumstances made me a single teen mom, but I didn’t let that stop me. I worked for a small (at the time) family restaurant after school up until I had my daughter. By the time I was 25 I done had 4 kids but by this time three of my children were by my husband at the time. Life happens and moves so fast that we don’t realize that we are living out the same traits we have seen as a child. I was a mom, I worked, attended college, met up with the in laws almost every weekend getting drunk and repeat. That was my life. What was I really showing my children? The life I was living wasn’t me, it had no purpose. I went into a depressive state for weeks and wouldn’t really get out of bed, I would take things out on my children because I was unhappy. I wasn’t growing, I wasn’t becoming better I was miserable. I wasn’t equally yoked in my marriage; I just couldn’t do it. I took my children, left my husband, and never looked back. This is my story of how a divorced mother of 4 made a way out of no way.
Mother of four, going through a divorce, working job to job, getting evicted and moving house to house. I was just tired, tired of having to always struggle. Tired of not being able to provide for my children the way I really wanted to. I was financially illiterate, having fun first then paying bills last which led me to pay more for bills because now late fees were occurring. They are so right; it is expensive being broke. When I was 27, I started working at a call center as a customer service representative and at this call center they had incentives. Once I started hitting those goals and getting those incentives, I was promoted to supervisor within six months of working there. And at that call center as a supervisor, at the age of 27 I was finally starting to believe in myself and get a sense of purpose. The CEO of the call center was about the same age as me. He drove this fancy foreign car that he will park in the undercover parking away from all the other cars. I would think wow if he can do it then I could do it too and that was all the inspiration I needed. I got the idea to open a second chance staffing agency that assisted individuals who struggled with locating employment due to their background while working at this call center. This call center it was background friendly, so I’ve met all kinds of people. I too had a criminal background, so I was there for the same reason as them an opportunity to provide for my family. I applied for my first LLC on their computer when I was supposed to be working but I didn’t have a computer at home so that was my only time to. Second Chance Staffing was the name, and I researched the heck out of that industry on the call centers time. I was no longer interested in working for someone else, I was no longer in punching in and out, I was yearning for the money that came along with freedom. If my boss could do it, then I could do it too. I was intrigued, it had my full attention. I was a business owner, so I thought.
A colleague seen what I was doing and gave me some advice that I will never forget. He said, stop working on your business and read The Secret, it will help you build your business. Instead of reading the book, I listened to, The Secret by Rhonda Byrnes on YouTube and after that it seemed like God was placing random strangers in my life that gave me a little bit to the puzzle at a time. I was eventually fired from the call center, but I didn’t mind because in my head, I was a business owner. After being fired I called my business mentor at the time with some concerns on how I was going to provide for my children and build my business. The money I was making at the call center I used to buy little things for my business such as my LLC, logo, and laptop but I needed more things. He asked so what are you going to do now? I responded, I’m going to go harder now I have the free time and that was the last 9-5 job I have ever worked. It was like God just planted the idea in my head. From there my life has changed dramatically.
Thinking I was going to be up and running in 60 days was a lie I told myself. After reading The Secret I became more in tuned with my mind, messages from the universe, and people around me. I was becoming unavailable to my family and friends, my children and I had to move in with an ex-in-law because my business wasn’t taking off as fast as I thought it would have. I was being forced to have faith. God gave me the vision, I was ready, I had the idea all planned out why isn’t this is working. Why isn’t this as easy as I thought it would be. I then started to doubt myself once again. I started to ask family and friends for assistance with my business, so desperate I was giving out ownership percentages like water, but I needed the help. I knew that an idea so big I couldn’t do it on my own but the support and assistance from my own tribe just wasn’t there. I was trying to get mentally conditioned workers to fit into my entrepreneur vision and it just wasn’t the type of supported I was aiming for. So, I started meeting and networking with strangers. I went to the SBA of Arizona and met with a mentor. The SBA is the Small Business Association where they have retired entrepreneurs help upcoming entrepreneurs with their ideas and how to pursue them. I remember the mentor that was selected for me was an old white man with white hair. I remember me telling him my business idea and thinking he was going to give me resources on how to pursue them, he told me, that my business was not going to work. Then he asked me why would companies go through a staffing agency to hire felons when there are staffing agencies that have people that don’t have criminal backgrounds? He suggested that I opened a nonprofit and help ex-offenders with their job hunting needs by assisting them with resume writing and job preparation. I left that meeting more inspired than ever. He said I couldn’t do it, so I had an even bigger itch it to prove him and everybody wrong. Just because someone made a bad choice doesn’t make them bad people and those people too deserve a chance. That was my mission, and I was going to see to it.
Entrepreneurship isn’t for the everybody or else everybody would be doing it. The entrepreneurship journey/life isn’t for the weak. It’s going to stretch and test you, it’s going to reveal people true colors, and it’s going to make you sacrifice something. Everybody can ask for a business, career or to become better at sports but how bad do you really want it? What sets you apart from everybody else? What are the steps you are going to take to achieve it? Everybody say they want more but how many are willing to really work for it? People try and use their current circumstance as an excuse for not obtaining their goals, but they fail to realize that their current situation is all the reason they need to pursue their dreams. Once you get on the other side of fear, magical things start to happen.
Just a girl that came from a single parent household, a divorced mother of 4 and homeless. With no job, no income, no loans, no investors, no family/friends, support. I was starting to give up, my drive and motivation died, I was broke and couldn’t provide for my children. All the books, prayers, motivational speeches I was listening to just wasn’t motivating me. I was becoming depressed and losing focus.
After that breakdown I was back on my grind. I met my first business partner/investor and was using public transportation to go to my then office that I was sharing with him and to different companies to obtain contracts to send our associates. I spent more time one the bus then I did in the actual office. However, I still got up everyday because I knew, what I put out in the universe it would meet me halfway. I knew something was going to work. My gross profit that year in 2018 was a little over $4k. I then went on to do $135K the following year. I’m not perfect nor do I pretend to be, and I don’t have it all figured out. I am still learning and evolving. I can only speak on my experiences and what has helped me. I’ve had bad business partners, was a bad partner due to my lack of knowledge and I just winging it with YouTube and Google as my business guide. I have never worked in the staffing industry before opening my business, so I really was going off faith.
I was contacted by a much larger staffing agency that was already doing millions in gross revenue. The CEO, Greg Johnson loved what I was doing with the Second Chance niche and wanted to be a part of it, which he was already in the works of adding it before he came across me. I ended up selling and closing my agency to join his and become his Second Chance Department. I loved what I did and worked so hard to be put in the light for him to even consider me for such opportunity, but I was worn out and couldn’t do it alone any longer. Since being with StaffNow, my gross revenue (sales) went from $135k (on my own) to $482k in 2021 with the help from StaffNow. The company when I joined them in 2020 was already over 2 million in gross revenue, we’re now at almost 5 million for 2022 and ranking #475 on the Inc. 5000 list as the fastest growing small business.
“At StaffNow, we are casting off the traditional recruiting model and embracing cutting edge recruiting tactics and technology to reduce employer costs and shorten the time it takes to hire quality workers. We approach staffing with a compassionate, mission driven approach designed to help both our clients and associates. We are a technically advanced, mobile centered firm, dedicated to fast and efficient placement within the supply chain industry. Our proprietary mobile app allows us to stay engaged with employees after the recruiting and hiring process. It also benefits clients with the ability to track worker’s hours and location, real time. StaffNow has created a Second Chance staffing division. As a firm believer in fair hiring practices, we recognize that there is a wealth of overlooked talent with criminal records, in recovery, or who are dealing with the ramifications of past choices. We believe the negatives of the past should not limit one’s future work opportunities.”
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
Man, I did not like sales. Just the thought of going into an already established business that was way bigger than mine and selling my services. Telling these people why I’m there, what I have to offer and what makes me different from the completion frightened me but I knew as an up and coming business I had to look, feel and believe the part. If I didn’t believe in myself how was I going to convince someone else to. So I made it into a personal game. I told myself to just go into a business and talk. See what worked and what didn’t work and apply it to the next Company. Before you knew it, I went from grossing $4k in sales to $135k in a year and I didn’t go to school or work in sales previously. I was just doing what worked and what didn’t work.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to learn, everybody that starts with you are not the same ones that will be going with you. When you are on a different path that’s out of the norm you’ll get support from your family and friends because that’s what they’re “supposed” to do, but as time and you progress that support slowly falls off. People will support you until you start doing better than they thought you would. I begged for help, offered percentages of my company, lost everything and I still didn’t get any help or assistance from my tribe. It was the outside support/strangers that came in and helped me advance to the next level and they didn’t even want half of what I was willing to give to my “tribe” just for some assistance.
Contact Info:
- Other: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charon-king-402a16213/