Right here in Chicago, there are many extraordinary people whose skills, talents, commitment, and dedication to success – their own and that of others – make them stand out.
Kristina M. Wynne is one of them.
There is an old adage that says, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Kristina teaches the mechanics of “eating for a lifetime,” through entrepreneurship development. She has helped countless women and men create, fund, grow and maintain businesses and acquire the kind of success that pushes them out of their 9 to 5’s and into full-time, successful entrepreneurship.
Kristina’s story is impressive. Born into a family of enterprising minds, Kristina’s uncles created a unique compounding pharmacy business over 40 years ago that
provided alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs. An example of this is their exclusive, topical ibuprofen. Kristina explains that in order to work as an anti-inflammatory and find its way to the pain, oral ibuprofen must first be metabolized by the liver. However, topical ibuprofen delivers its benefits directly to the site, which spares the liver and the digestive system, while delivering full pain-relieving efficacy. The pharmacists also consult on everything from weight loss to controlling high blood pressure naturally.
Originally located at 200 East 75th Street, 200 Pharmacy, Inc. has since relocated to 9133 South Stony Island, under its same name.
Kristina learned the pharmacy business at the age of fifteen, and at sixteen she received her license to become a pharmacy technician.
Later, she received her undergraduate degree in Biophysics and a master’s degree in Public Health. “I was over business development, and I wanted to understand how to maneuver the healthcare space,” she explains. “Therefore, it was important that I come in as a degreed professional.”
It was an opportunity for Kristina to come into the field a little more knowledgeable than the pharmaceutical sales reps vying for the doctors’ business. “With a master’s degree in public health,” she explained, “you don’t only learn about epidemiology and statistics, you also learn to understand the business of the health care system as a whole.” That, she said, helped her to become more strategic and effective overall.
After getting into the development end of the family business, Kristina began doing health education, going to doctors’ offices, and educating them about compounds. She soon realized that ability to educate physicians could be even more effective to a broader audience. Subsequently, she started her own education company to help grow the pharmacy through social media; addressing things that younger people might have problems with, such as weight loss, digestive health, and bacteria vaginosis (which is a big problem for many younger women).
Fully committed to her new mission, Kristina would sit down with large organizations to discuss the pharmacy’s services. She developed relationships with a number of organizations that were facilitating conferences, including the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois. But she says, “Specifically, there is an organization called the Chicago Minority Supplier & Development Council, as well as a National Minority Supplier & Development Council and their responsibility is to get businesses certified as MBEs (Minority Business Enterprises). MBE certification was established to ensure that at least five percent of a government contract was sub-contracted to a minority business, and three percent was subcontracted to a woman-owned business.
The Pharmacy did receive certification as an MBE through the Chicago Minority Supplier & Development Council, which led to the fateful introduction of Kristina to Randy Kravitz, the Executive Director of Goldman-Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses.
Recruiting for Goldman-Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses
Randy Kravitz was having problems getting minority businesses involved in Goldman-Sachs small business programs and was looking for a minority person, Outreach Director. Kristina was recommended for the position. Goldman-Sachs reached out to her. She interviewed and got the job.
In three years, she was able to take minority participation from an average of five percent representation in each cohort to close to 50 percent. Over the three years that she went through the program, the numbers continued to increase.
After two years with Goldman-Sachs, Kristina was promoted from Outreach Director to Outreach and Alumni Director, which meant she became responsible for not only recruiting businesses that went through the program but also for being their point of contact after they graduated from the program. In Illinois, there were 800 business owners that had gone through the program, so she was responsible for those 800 business owners if they had questions, needed connection, or wanted a little coaching session.
Full-time with the Wynners Club
Kristina left Goldman-Sachs in December of 2020. Kristina’s business, The Wynners Club, had grown to a point where she could no longer manage both her job and her business, so she made the difficult decision.
The Wynners Club started out as a health education program, but it didn’t stay there very long. It was being associated, almost exclusively with weight loss, which is not where Kristina wanted to be, despite the fact that she was very good at helping people lose and maintain their weight. She rebranded herself in 2018, established her company as an LLC, and The Wynners Club LLC was officially established as a Business Development Consulting Company. As Kristina tells it, “I learned that I know how to help businesses grow. I understand the landscape. I understand the ecosystem, and I know the players in the game. Because of Goldman-Sachs, I had relationships with decision-makers of the major players in the game, and now they know me. They’re calling out to me asking me to do stuff for them.”
When Kristina started her business in 2018, she had her first three clients, two of whom transitioned out of their jobs to become full-time business owners. Then in 2019, she met Jerome’ Holston, the Executive Director of the LGBT Chamber of Commerce. She and Holston had done shows together and built a rapport.
“I learned that I know how to help businesses grow. I understand the landscape. I understand the ecosystem, and I know the players in the game. Because of Goldman-Sachs, I had relationships with decision-makers of the major players in the game, and now they know me. They’re calling out to me asking me to do stuff for them.”
Eventually, he asked her to do a program for the LGBT Community, named the LGBT Biz Boot camp –specifically to jump-start businesses. Although she had never created a curriculum before, which she knew entailed creating homework assignments, activities, etc., she decided to give it everything she had – and it was so successful that several of the participants are now full-time business owners. “At the time, everybody had jobs,” she says, “because that’s what the program was geared toward – people who wanted to leave their nine to fives and become full-time business owners.” Out of 10 people in the program, 4 of them no longer have jobs. They are now full-time business owners, doing very well.
In 2020 Jerome’ brought Kristina back to facilitate Cohort 2 of the LGBT Biz Boot Camp. Now in 2021, she is facilitating this same boot camp for an additional two cohorts – one for downstate Illinois which will start in March 2021and the other in Chicago – their home base – which will continue to be in the September-October period.
Through that experience, Kristina branded her company to begin having online courses. In 2019, prior to COVID, the classes were in person. But in 2020, classes had to be facilitated virtually. By doing so, she was able to expand beyond Illinois. Of the five students in her first cohort of The Wynners Circle Online Course (same program as the LBGT Biz Boot camp), two live in Miami, one in St. Louis, and two in Illinois.
Her next cohort for The Wynners Circle Online Course will begin September 14, 2021. Each cohort for The Wynners Circle Online Course is eight weeks. A pitch competition with a prize is held at the end of each cohort.
Although Kristina said that most people come to her for business coaching, her advice is to start first with a business plan as opposed to a business coach. “With a business plan,” she explains, you know who your market is, where you’re going, what’s your budget, what’s your mission and vision statement. These are components of your business you can’t just haphazardly come up with as things occur.” With the business plan in mind, she brings in professionals that should be involved in the business, as guest speakers. “For instance, there should be an accountant, so we bring in an accountant,” says Kristina. “We bring in an attorney because there are contracts to be signed; most people need access to capital, so we bring in a business banker so one can understand what that business relationship should be and what the process of getting money should look like, and then we bring in a marketing specialist because marketing is a big part of your business growth.”
The Business of Grants
In 2019, the State of Illinois, through Pritzker’s administration, funded a $15,000,000 grant for minority businesses. Kristina and the Deputy Director of the Office of Minority Economic Opportunity, which is an office within the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, focused on capital – specifically for minorities – had a great relationship. She would support them with outreach efforts and speak to established business owners about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program. So, when it came time for him to figure out the strategy to get the word out about the grant that got funded through Pritzker and what people needed to do to access it he brought Kristina on to be a part of the brainstorming team. As they were putting the strategy together, one of the things Kristina told him was that most of these businesses would not have access to a grant writer.
Grants were an established part of non-profit businesses, which were in the business of fund-raising. For-profit businesses don’t necessarily think of grants as an opportunity for fundraising. Kristina told him that the worse thing they could do would be to provide the information to the businesses without closing the circle for them. One thing led to another, and Kristina, a certified grant writer, put a team of five grant writers together. Twenty people came to them, but because of the timing of the grant (60 days) they were only able to service 10, and out of those 10, one of their clients actually got funded for $500,000. In total, the State of Illinois received 590 grant applications and awarded 30.
During this experience and as part of the outreach, Kristina made videos. People began to associate the whole experience with her grant-writing, which became one of the other core services that is offered by The Wynners Club.
The Wynners Club has three main service buckets:
Business Coaching, Access to Capital (through grant-writing and loan-sourcing, and Business Education, which includes the Wynners Circle eight-week online course and weekly masterclasses, in which experts are brought in to facilitate two-hour online courses streamed live through Facebook and YouTube.
The Wynners Club also offers an “Entrepreneur Essential Bundle” which consists of:
- A Vehicle License Plate Frame
- A Coffee Mug
- A Universal Tablet Holder
- A Stylus
- And a Business Card Holder
“With a business plan,” she explains, you know who your market is, where you’re going, what’s your budget, what’s your mission and vision statement. These are components of your business you can’t just haphazardly come up with as things occur.”
Kristina feels strongly that Black people should have their own businesses but cautions that they should have a plan before leaving their jobs. They should not just take a leap of faith without a plan. She also advises that if you’re not working in the industry associated with the business you want to start, or you have never worked in that industry, you need to work in that industry at least six months to get some expertise, learn the business, make some contacts and learn the language.
Kristina M. Wynne is using her unique talents, expertise, and experience to help Black businesses grow. She is certainly a Chicagoan we should know.
Kay Humphries is a journalist and former advertising executive. She previously worked as a reporter for the Chicago Reporter Newspaper, and an associate creative director for Burrell Advertising, Brainstorm Communications, and E. Morris Advertising.
