We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stormi Banks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stormi, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Pink Print Firm was started to give women of color the opportunity to get well deserved funding needed to start or scale their businesses. In our community we receive less than 1% of funding and that needed to change. I spent months saving money to raise seed money to start my desired business just to have that money robbed by her best friend. This catapulted the necessity for traditional and non traditional backing from financial institutions. Seeing the difficulty in the process for a woman of color to obtain a simple loan or grant, I set out to educate women on how to prepare their business to obtain funding.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m not new to entrepreneurship, my first taste of entrepreneurship came about when my mom offered my siblings and I $50 each to start something for the summer. True to nature I started a flower business selling potted plants to locals and employing my 2 brothers at the age of 9. I had natural leadership and creativity that drove me to become an independent hair stylist in New York where I started my mobile hair salon company “Just Hair” and seasonal lemonade trucks “Summer Squeeze”. With over 20 employees and 10 years of experience it was only fitting that I start educating other women how to run successful 6-figure businesses, with my company Pink Print. As a new founder it can be difficult to know where to start and how or when to scale. Pink Print has become a go-to for women in business to find reliable resources, industry professionals, and proven education. Pink Print has helped thousands of women of color in business and raised $10M in funding for these individuals.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

It was 2020 and COVID had just hit the streets like fresh newspapers. I was at the top of my career 22 making high 6-figures as a hairstylist. I was no longer behind the chair. I was running my mobile hair company with 5 employees at the time. Business was great. We got the news that New York mandated all salons to close indefinitely. With these being my sole source of income you could ready the devastation on face. I had to buckle up and figure this thing out. I moved to TN where salons were still open to work from my friend’s salon. It was nice because my expenses had decreased more than half. I took it back to the beginning with just hustle and grit. I had my eyes set on opening a salon in ATL because business is just what I do! I saved up $50k for the seed money just to have my friend rob me of it. You could imagine after the COVID shock this was the last thing I needed, another dream stolen. Is what it felt like at the time. Later to find out it was the biggest blessing of my life. It fueled me to leave hairstyling behind and move into education through e-commerce which during COVID was the hot industry to be in. My business took off. We hosted webinars and provided digital ebooks on funding and credit and our customers loved their results. At this point I was in it to win. 12 months after being robbed $50k I made my first million dollars.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

Pink Print was started with a loan from Quickbooks. I spent from August 2020 to March 2021 building my credit both personal and business and was able to obtain a $60k loan to start my business. I decided for my breakout moment I was going to host this large event in LA with mansions and in house chefs and with notable speakers. This event really put Pink Print on the map. I could not have done it without funding.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pinkprintfirm.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stormibanks_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pinkprint.net
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stormi-banks-58ab93217/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@stormibanks8246