Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success, but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit, just working in your business and start working on it, join us here, where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media, and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Siva about to bring you what I think will be your favorite episode I’ve ever shared.
I have realized in a big, huge way recently, how much I am lacking as an educator, and for years, my entire career as an educator, I felt confirmed in the fact that I was only teaching what I knew. I couldn’t teach from things that I hadn’t experienced. And there were a lot of stylists who hadn’t ever done textured hair, like I have never done and so I thought that’s just how it goes. How naive and how foolish.
I realized the error of my ways now and I reached out to six of my students and I asked if they would sit down with me and just have an open conversation about what it’s been like to learn from me, what it’s been like to be a black stylist in this segregated industry, what their experiences have been like. I’ve never walked in their shoes. All I can learn from is hearing their stories. Somehow they graciously accepted and I am forever thankful to these six women you’re about to meet right now because they came up so big and they shared so openly and so vulnerably, and this was a huge ask. It’s a tremendous gift that they’re sharing their voices and experiences with us today.
So I’m very proud to introduce to you six of the most amazing women I’ve ever coached to Juana Java or JC by arena, Nicole, Chrystal, and Kiki. These ladies have touched my heart and I’m sure they’ll do the same for you as well. So sit down, relax, and get ready to listen to my favorite interview I’ve ever showcased on the show.
Britt: Ladies, how are you today?
Chrystal Graves-Yazici: Good. Good.
Britt: Good. I first want to thank you so much for taking the opportunity to join me here. I’ve known all of you, I think for at least a couple of years, and I just want to apologize. It’s taken me so long to put this room together, but thank you for being here to share openly and connect and just have this conversation with me. So I’d love to go around the room and have you all just introduce yourself and I’m going to start with crystals and my top coronary crystal. Thanks for being here.
Chrystal: Thank you. My name is Chrystal Graves-Yazici. I am a salon owner, hair stylist and wedding guru in Columbia, Missouri. I’ve been in the industry 11 years and I am a Thriver fall 2018.
Britt: Woo. Thanks for being here. Okay, Towanna, I have you next.
Towanna Dunn: I am Towanna Dunn. I’ve joined Thrivers, I believe in fall 2017 and I am currently working in a salon in Montclair, New Jersey.
Britt: Beautiful. Thank you for being here and I should actually have everybody clarify too. Are you in a booth rental salon studio, suite or commission salon?
Towanna: I am right now in a commission salon.
Britt: Beautiful, thank you. Okay, Nicole.
Nicole Jamerson: Hi, my name’s Nicole Jamerson and I am a newly fresh newly owner of a three chair rental salon. I’ve been in the industry for 28 years.It’s been a long journey. The great thing is I love this industry. I specialize in all texture hair with the main focus of ethnic texture. So that’s me
Britt: Beautiful. Congratulations in your salon. That’s so exciting. All right, Java. You’re up next.
JC Dobson: My name is Java Dopson. You can call me JC. I am the owner and stylist at Freshly Rooted in Oklahoma, and I have been in Thrivers since fall of 2015. Focus on all the hairs, curly hairs in particular.
Britt: Beautiful. And thank you. I mean, you’re one of my original Thrivers, you’ve been around with me since the early, early days. I’m so thankful for you. Um, and my beautiful Bayyinah..
Bayyinah Marbury: Oh, thank you. Hi, I’m Bayyinah Marbury and I’m out of Maplewood, New Jersey. I’ve been in the industry 28 years this year. I’ve been a thriver since, I can’t remember it’s 2016 or 17. I believe it’s 17. I specialize in a short, relaxed hair color, like the little pixie cuts and stuff like that. And I just absolutely love the guest experience so that’s one of my specialties.
Britt: Thanks for being here. All right. And Ms. Kiki,
Kiki Williams: My name’s Kiki Williams. I have been a prior since fall of 2016. I’m a studio suite owner and I specialize in multicultural multi textural hair.
Britt: Beautiful, beautiful. I’d love to start. Can you guys just tell us what the last couple of weeks have been like for you?
Kiki: Exhausting.
JC: Very exhausting. Draining.
Bayyinah: Emotionally exhausting. I can say that.
JC: Filled with, anger, bewilderment and just, you know, draining,
Towanna: Yeah. I think one of the places it comes from is why does this keep happening and how did you guys not know?
Kiki: Yeah. Right. That’s the thing.
Nicole: I’m sad that it took for everyone to be at home a long period of time, just to have an open mind about what’s going on because of the pandemic. I believe that if not for the pandemic, I don’t think anything would have happened differently.
Chrystal: People would be busy, right. We would be absorbed with sports and life and outside of the house and wouldn’t already be angry, right. So we’re already angry with how things have played out. So I think on top of that it’s created the perfect storm that needed to happen a long time ago.
JC: Yeah. That is definitely the emotion about, with being black is that… I mean, we’re angry, you know, we’re — what they say, incredible Hulk, he’s always angry. We’re always angry to some degree.
Bayyinah: And for me, I feel like I want to believe that America’s eyes are open and you actually do see it and you actually feel what we’ve been going through for so long. I want to believe it, but I feel very guarded. I feel very guarded when I see all the black boxes go up on social media. It made my heart happy in one sense, like, “Oh good.” And then I go, “Wait a minute.” I just want to make sure it’s real. I just want to make sure.
Chrystal: I’m from the Show-Me state, so gotta show me. You can talk all day long, but you have to show me and even then it has to be not just one voice or two voices. Again, it’s the voices of the known and the unknown. And I think that’s where our industry, from where I’m sitting, has — it’s still failing us. It is still saying that we, because of women of color all have the same story. I think the time and effort that we put into a hair show, that time and effort could be put into a multicultural gathering so you really can have some conversations and some real education on different levels.
Britt: I’ll be honest and say like, as you guys are saying, this is the first time ever, everybody’s been a captive audience to any conversation. And it is a shame that it took that for everybody to actually open their ears and open their minds. But you’re exactly right.
Can you explain — everybody echoed when I said, what have the last two weeks been like exhausting was the word that came up for everybody. Is there any way to pinpoint what about it is exhausting specifically?
Chrystal: I know for me, what was most interesting is that we are the marginalized people, but then you also want us to give you the answer. That’s what was hard for me, that I got text messages about “What can I do? How can I help?” And I’ve said this a few times, like Google it. We are a resourceful community. We Google, we research, we learn, we follow hashtags of anything else we want to learn. So if you really want to know, use your privilege to find out. It’s not my job as a marginalized individual to help you figure out how you can help or how we got here or what you can do. So that’s what’s been most frustrating for me and most draining.
Kiki: I second that. I definitely had a lot of clients reach out to me and say, “Hey, is there anything that I can do?” “Do you want to talk about it?” “Can we meet up for coffee?” And I’m like, I can’t, I just don’t have the energy to do that. I just cannot do it. With everything, with quarantine, and now with everything with this, it is just exhausting. I know that all my sisters on here, we are just exhausted. It takes a lot of energy to be a black woman, to be a black human. It’s draining. And so I don’t have anything to give anybody who was texting me and asking me, “Would you like to talk about it?” I just didn’t have it. I’m a pretty positive person, but I did not have anything for anyone.
JC: She seconded. I third it. I consider myself to be a very positive person. I could find a silver lining in, you know, crap just because that’s just the way things work out sometimes, clearly. But, I definitely didn’t have the energy to educate to, you know, for something that I quite honestly feel as though should already be known. I’m like “Do smart things with your smartphone.”
Get on Google and figure all of this thing out, because here’s the thing: our history and experiences have been so tucked away and hidden from us. Somebody put it in a dirty, moldy basement and we had to figure out some things ourselves because it’s not in the books, it’s not in the books. What is in the books is it’s a half a lie and a half a lie as a whole truth. So, I mean you have books, you know, it’s just absolutely ridiculous.
So do the homework — first of all, doing the homework is going to let me know that you are more real than a black square on your posts or posting up a few black faces on your social media or shouting me out. I can’t… I have so many emails from different companies that have their black community initiative and it’s like, “Okay, do it, just dang do it.”
Towanna: It definitely makes you question if people are coming in genuine because I am in a very diverse area. I’ve had mostly diverse, cultural hair. I’ve done diverse clients and majority of my clients are Caucasian, but I work in a very diverse area, a lot of people that are mixed persuasion and I find it real interesting. It’s like you don’t know how to take it so it’s very confusing.
Cause I can’t tell you, I think I’ve gotten followed by two local photographers that have reached out to me in the past two days. And they’re like, “Hey, love you work. Just wanted to see if you want ever [work together]?” And I’m like, “Yeah, sure,” and then I look at their page and I’m like, “Oh, so you want to do a black wedding,” or you don’t know. You hope that it’s because, hey, I do do weddings and that is on my timeline.
At this point, it’s gotta be confusing on both sides. Cause we don’t know how to take it and you don’t know how to come at it without seeming like it’s the shiny new toy that everybody’s waving around right now saying, “Hey, I got a black friend, I got a black connection.” You’re guarded, but you don’t want to be because I, for one, am hopeful. And I’m not going to lie, when I first got your email, that was my first thought. Like, “Oh.” I have been watching a couple of the same people going behind the chair going on this place, going in that place. And I’m like, “Oh, now it’s our turn.” But then it’s also, talking to my husband, I have said these things to you as far as not seeing reflections of us in certain parts of my industry. So now if I’m being invited to a conversation, I don’t want to complain about people not knowing, but then also be willing to be open. So I thank you for putting this together, but that was my first thought, you know what I mean? I will say that.
And I will mention your podcast that you do today. I loved it. I liked that you addressed the people that are saying, “We don’t know what to say.” I understand that because I’ve heard some from some people also. But because I’ve always been the only black stylists in my salon and I have a majority of Caucasian clients, I was actually surprised of the people I didn’t hear from. And I think it’s more because I’m in a diverse area. They’re like, “Well, she knows. She knows.” And again, this is not a point, a moment, to be quiet. This is a moment to say, even just a little nudge, “Hey girl,” you know what I mean? But it is not here. It was like, “Oh, all right, that’s cool. ” You know, like you need to tell your kids you love them every now and then, you need to tell your black friends, “I love you, girl.”
Bayyinah: The silence was hard for me because I’m vocal with so many of my friends, my white friends in particular. And when everyone got so quiet and didn’t say anything when I know you saw it, I know you felt it. It took me forever to watch the video, honestly, because for me it was just another and my heart couldn’t take it.
I have 10 black men in my immediate family — siblings, husband, daddy, nephew — very close. 10. Every time they go out the door, it’s in the back of my head, it’s the concern, it’s the worry. I pray every night, I pray every morning, and I always cover them, but when you don’t say anything to me that speaks volumes. To me. In this particular situation.
And I get that you don’t know what to say. I do. I do. I feel like I have grace for that. I do. I just need you to say something. Even if you reach out, like with all the Thrivers that stood up and said something on Java’s post, you know, I cried with every one of them because I’ve never felt that before. I’ve never seen anyone stand up and take up for us before. You know, you tell your children that if someone’s bullying your friend, you stand up for them and I’ve never seen anyone stand up for us like that all of a sudden. And so while it did my heart good, it goes back to the guarded.
Towanna: Like, you know, are you going to do the work?
Bayyinah: Right. My heart says, you’ll do the work, like Chrystal says, show me.
Chrystal: I’m with Towanna and Bayyinah; I’ll just be honest with you, Britt, I wasn’t here for it. When you reached out at first, I was like, “no,” because I honestly just felt like it was as an opportunist. I’m just saying, keep it 100. Like, we’ve been here. I know that these women on the screen, and some that I knew before and some that I’ve met recently were active. Like I was very active in Thrivers and I think that even when I first started in 2018, I even wrote a post in 2018 asking like, where are all the other stylists who do all hair like me so I could make a community because I knew I was not going to necessarily find that in my class.
So when you first came, it really took talking to, and then I think today listening to your podcast really solidified it for me that okay, she’s here for it. She’s genuine. I can let that guard down. But I’ll tell you, it took a minute because I feel like so many people are just like, “I got to do something now I got to jump on this trend.” I don’t want to make sure I want to make sure. But, I think you said it perfectly like, I could have jumped on and did all these things, but being in your program, you are that kind of person that you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to do my research. I’m going to come at it correctly or know how to come in.” So I do appreciate that, but I still want to see that, I want to see what’s next for me.
JC: I’m with Nicole and Towanna on flipping because when you had contacted me about doing it, I immediately, I was like, “Yeah, for sure,” only because my experience with you, Britt has never been anything like that.
Now, as far as the group goes, it’s been a little difficult having to tweak things and stuff like that because it is not speaking to my major demographic. I’ll say that it’s not speaking to those things that people with my kind of hair are dealing with. And then I spoke to my husband. I started feeling some sort of way. I was like, “Babe, I don’t, I don’t know. Now I’m feeling the guard, you know?” He was like, “Just go ahead and do it.” I’m like, “Okay.”
I had the reverse reaction. It was like, “Oh yeah, sure. You don’t get it. Most definitely. I totally understand.” But then being black women, especially in this time, especially in this industry, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place of teaching to the white privilege — because that’s what it is. But if we don’t say it, then, well then can they say, “Oh, we didn’t know this.” It’s a lot that goes on. It’s not just as simple as yes or no all the time.
Chrystal: What about you, Nikki? I know you have a whole different target market. Like your whole thing is completely different from some of us.
Nicole: Well, let me just say I’m fall 2016, so that’s when I joined and right now I am so happy that, because I opened up my salon in March of this year. Being the only black girl out of 16 and I was one of the first people to ever start at our particular salon. So when new girls came and rent a booth or whatever, it wasn’t as hard. I mean, I would get the look of “I’m about to work with a black girl, how’s that going to be?” And I catch you sometimes talking to your clients and they may say, “Well, how is it working with a black girl?” “Oh, she’s good.Oh, you don’t get that type of conversation.” But I’m so glad that I’m not there now because of everything going on and I don’t have to be the voice of all black people.
Bayyinah: Right. Because now with all the other pressure, now we’re looked at as the people to educate you on how to figure it out. And that’s more pressure, more pressure. No, just we still have to work to get you to understand and all that. And it just makes it heavy. It makes it heavy.
Britt: I’d imagine it would feel like people are still trying to take a shortcut. Like, well, if you could just tell me what to do, how do I fix it.
Chrystal: Yeah. I don’t know, for me being back in the salon, I think Kiki, you back in the salon too. It almost felt like, and I ain’t trying to be funny, like going to battle because I had to really mentally prepare myself. Because I work in the salon with three other white women, who I love, who are my tribe. Love them to death. So one, they didn’t know what to say, right. So they were kind of tiptoeing around. And then as in our town, there were protesting. There were some windows broken and we’re in the downtown area. Clients would come in and they might say something that them as a stylist don’t agree with, but they’re like, “What do I say to not offend my client?”
It’s like, you don’t talk about religion. You don’t talk about politics, but now it’s like that’s all there is: there’s the pandemic and then there’s the protest. So like you don’t have a whole lot to say. That was what was hard for me.
There’s a fellow Thriver who’s in there with me. It probably took her three days and she was like, “You know what? I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know what to say. I just want to tell you, I love you and I support you.” And that’s all you have to say. That’s it. That’s all I want to know. That’s all I want to know. So I think that was really hard for me cause I’m in a predominantly white space.
JC: I’m going to be totally honest, when I went back to the salon, after everything had happened, I – like you said, you have to get your mental, have to get it right and everything. So when I say you, I mean, cussing, like, y’all listen. I’ve been working on my cussing real good for the past couple of years, like working hard, okay? Let me tell you something. These past two weeks, I’ve been cussing strong, like cussing real hard and crying. I am not that person. That’s just be crying all the time and I’ve just been crying. I said, “You know what? I quite honestly, I don’t want to see any of my white clients today,” dead serious.
I’m very open. I talk, this is my space in my salon. I will talk about the things that I want to talk about. And if you don’t vibe with that, that’s cool. It’s okay. But you got to go. I don’t need your money. I don’t want your money. You have to go. And it’s like that with everything and my people, my for real, my tribe and, and they vibe with me. And so I’m like, I don’t and I had a couple of new people in there. I said, “Listen, if I get an all lives matter, it’s about to be some smoke in the city. I’m just like, I just don’t have it in me to fight that particular battle. We can talk about the situation. I don’t care about talking about it. It’s just the fact of, we need to be here with this conversation. I need to make sure that if you sit in my chair, you with me for maybe between one to three hours, depending on what it is you’re getting, it does not need to feel like pulling teeth. It just does not need to feel like that. And I honestly, that’s just putting everything on the table. I didn’t want to see them.
I didn’t want to see them at the time because I will tell you something, I have felt the love from them on my social or, you know, the ones that still have my old number, they’ll text me or call me or email me or something like that. And I haven’t went live or anything like that because I don’t want to fire off too bad. I said, “I’ll just wait just a little bit.” I thought it was going to be a little more calm, but I’m still a little up there. But I was like, it’s a little better than the first day, but they have been giving me the love and stuff. I mean, since that post and my purging and everything. Obviously my, white clients, they’ve come in and all this other stuff, we’re here. The ones that are the ones that have sat in my chair, we’re here. So, I really do appreciate that. Like cause we’ve been saying, you never know, you never know. So it’s a little nerve wracking.
Towanna: Definitely never know. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve had… you think, cause you have a client who is open to somebody, not of their race to do their hair, that you’re on the same page, but there’s a reason why we say don’t talk about certain things. And I, for one, am very happy that I am not in the salon right now. Jersey doesn’t open up for two more weeks. So this should all simmer down.
Chrystal: I hope not.
Towanna: I’m talking about this thing, I’m talking about in a sense of, by that time, you should have talked to that black person in your life that you should talk to. So if I get back to the salon and everybody feels obligated to talk to me, it’s like, “Oh no, you haven’t reached out to anyone? No, not the mail man, not the grocery clerk? I know UPS, everybody’s UPS man. Like what? I don’t understand. You know what I mean? So I’m kinda happy that I’m not in there because I wouldn’t have that option to not see my white clients. Yeah.
Kiki: I’m in St. Louis, Missouri, and my salon is in Chesterfield and it’s predominantly white. About 90% of my clients are Caucasian. I am the only black stylist in the entire studio suite.There’s 20 suites. So what I have noticed is, okay, so we were friendly faces, so we are approachable. Everybody’s not approachable because of our skin color. One thing that that is kind of tough is that now we have to wear a mask. So people can’t really see how friendly you are. Oh, that’s a tough thing. I do notice there’s, there’s this guy that is two doors down for me and I noticed that he closes his door a lot because of the kind of clients that he has in his salon. So I am a black girl walking down the hall, everybody else is white, and he closes his door when there’s a conversation that shouldn’t be heard by me. That’s been going on for quite a while. It is political and all that, but I just don’t let those things bother me. I just wish that people wouldn’t judge you just off of your skin color, because we – I always said that if you judge people solely on their skin color, you are missing out because there are some incredible black humans. A lot, majority of us are absolutely incredible and you’ll never have the opportunity to know and to feel our vibe if you just go solely off of our skin tone. And so that’s where I think that a lot of people are missing out.
Nicole: Yeah. We have to become so adaptable to everything. Oh, I’m going to this Matrix pair class, or I’m sorry, Brand A hair class and I know in my heart that it may just be two black women there or whatever. And then you just gotta adapt to the situation. You know, you gotta adapt to the look, you got to adapt the instructor who’s only teaching a particular way. And then if you ask, “Do you have any questions?” “Well, my question is, how does that translate on this type of fabric of hair? This texture here.” “Oh, um, well, we can talk more about that. Let me do, uh, get back to such and such and maybe I’ll have an answer for you and I’ll email you.” I just hate that we have to adapt everything.
I chose to work in all white salon — and I chose it for my personal reasons cause I didn’t want to go into the city. I wanted to go somewhere closer to my home and I knew that there was a black community also didn’t want to travel. And so I set up faith at this particular time, but I got to adapt things around me. But the only thing I can protect is my circle. I can protect the station. I can protect, you know, wherever, it’s going to Starbucks or whatever. So that’s one thing I just hate.
Chrystal: Like Nikki said, it’s so interesting. We have to adapt to everything, but no one else has. I think I was talking to Towanna the other day that I find it so interesting, and I think you talked about this a little bit on your podcast today, Britt — like, “Well, I don’t want to do textured hair.” You don’t have to, but what people have to realize is that hair is hair. Like it doesn’t have a skin color. There are people who are white who have really more wavy, coarser, textured hair. There are people of color who have fine hair. There’s so many different things that has nothing to do what you look like. And what I struggle with the biggest part. It’s has levels, right? So if you are in a town and you know you’re never gonna see it, it’s not something you’re ever going to have to encounter. I kind of get that.
But I just find it so interesting on these big brands, right? So when you decided to be a platform artist, right, that means that you are excellent. You are supposed to be on a higher, held to a higher standard. How are you going to be a platform artist with the only thing you know how to do is this, you’re a specialist at this one thing, but you can only do it on this one kind of hair? That’s crazy. If you are a specialist, you should be able to do it on all levels. So I’m a specialist in color. I can do it everywhere in weddings. I can do it everywhere. Towanna is specialist is in extensions. She can do them on all hair. Kiki and color on all hair, you know, JC on all things, Nikki, Bayyinah. So it’s so interesting that we have to, right, but you privileged people don’t and then still, get put above us on a higher, on a platform and light is shined on you.
And then when platform people hire us, they only hire us to do the hair of people who look like us. Like, no, we ain’t trying to hire you to do everything. They just want you to take care of that one model with the textured hair, just that one, or you can do a bunch of shampoo and prep work, but you’re not going to be on stage.
Britt: Do you think the assumption is that as the only hair you do?
Chrystal: Oh yeah,
Towanna: Absolutely. I know I feel like a lot of stylists, black stylists that go and work in a majority of white salons are put into the box of either that’s all you do or we don’t have that clientele, so just do this. It’s not really an idea to what are we doing to market now? That’s the story that I have heard. I must say speaking, from my own experience, I worked in and I’ve listened to you talk about the salon you worked in for since 2017 and ever since the first time I heard you say that. I said, I worked in the salon at Britt, worked in, in New Jersey. I worked there for 12 years. I cannot say that I’ve had too many issues. Cause like I said, being where I am in New Jersey, it’s pretty diverse, but I worked in the least diverse area of New Jersey, let’s say it like that. I feel like having a lot of, you’re forced to do certain things, but at the same time I had an owner who I feel like at the time was progressive. My owner took my strengths and used them. He saw that I had an interest for extensions. He asked me if I wanted to be an educator. When I got hired at my salon, I actually went there, because I’ll be going back into the industry from corporate America. I went there for a part time job for customer service and I saw a monster, and when I went, he said, “Why are you here? Why are you interviewing?”
Towanna: And I’m like, “You’re hiring a receptionist.” He’s like, “Yeah, but you do hair.” And my first thought was, “You’re not hiring me, like you clearly, you don’t.” And he said, he has a smile. And he said, “No, I need someone like you to do hair here. I have women going in and out of my spa and I don’t have anybody to service their hair.” So he was a little bit more open and spoke up: I have the clients, I need you here to do it. And then he also in seeing that I want it to do extensions. He allowed me to be an educator. I had a distributorship, which I was able to work for three different hair companies working under his distributorship on. But what I find ironic with bouncing off the other side of what Nicole said, when she said she’s going to the classes and she’s the only one there, I find it humorous when I go to classes and you know, everybody comes in and they’re like, okay, so we got someone here, she’s here, cool, she’s learning everything. Cool. And then I walked through the front of the class and I set mannequin up and they’re like, yeah. “I’m the teacher of this.” It’s amount of shock for about a few minutes. And then they’re like, “Okay, well, this makes sense. Because you do extensions. So it makes sense.” So it’s always a shock the first 10 minutes that I walked into this class and I’m not student; I’m the teacher. Because then I would say 98% of my students are Caucasian or not black. Spanish girls, Asian, whatever.
Britt: To what you’re saying. I’ve heard in the last couple of weeks that there’s this huge divide, particularly in the education space, exactly what you’re experiencing. What have you ladies experience walking into a class or facilitating a class?
Chrystal: I mean, I am huge on education. I did not do the traditional paths of cosmetology because I knew the segregation. I’m from St. Louis, Missouri, like where Kiki is, and it’s a town of segregation. I did these things all the way up until I was in fifth grade. So I was busted out to Chesterfield on a bus with the other 45 people of color to an all white school. So segregation was, has always been, been known to me. So when I went into the industry, I knew I wanted to do all hair and I was not going to do hair school because if I went to a predominantly, hair school of color, let’s keep it 100, I was not going to have the opportunity to do all textures. And if I went to a predominantly white school, I was going to have the opportunity to do only do white textures and then teach all my white counterparts how to do textured hair. So those were my options.
So I chose to do an apprenticeship. So I learned in a salon under a white stylist who did all hair. And so when I finished, I went on to managing booth rent at that salon. And then my goal was to have my own. And I was like, “Well, I’m going to hire people that I had a basic minimum.” So if you were a white girl, you needed to know how to do a basic blowout on textured hair. And if you were a stylist of color, you had to have at least experienced and understood the diversity of hairs. So it was this common thing and it was a struggle to find people that were willing to do those bare minimum. So I had to hire an apprentice. I have an apprentice who is a full fledged stylist in my space who learned under me and she’s a white girl and she does all hair.
It’s like, you have to go create, you got to build someone because our cosmetology schools are a joke, you know? I actually, um, ended up calling the state of Missouri Board of Cosmetology. I had a long phone call and they were like, it’s not us. We just set the regulations. There are 900 hours in Missouri that are miscellaneous. So the schools choose what they put in those hours. So your best bet would be to contact the cosmetology schools. And so I’m a doer. So that’s, I’ve been doing the last three or four days because I feel like nothing’s going to change if it doesn’t change on the ground level, like education,and I feel like, again, we are exhausted. So we are as stylists, who’ve been in the game for a while, we don’t necessarily want to go into, you know, the education space. Not all of us want to do that, but if I’m paying you $15,000 for cosmetology school, you need to do your job, but you have to require. So I think as a global industry, we are going to have to almost in the same way that we are — like I’m not trying to compare the same way that we are protesting and standing up against what’s going on. We need to do the same thing in our industry because we can talk, but until we knock down their doors and make a change and require a change, we going to be having the same conversation in five years,
Bayyinah: While we’re waiting for the change to happen, the beauty of our people is that we’re resourceful people. We make it happen. We go out and create the platforms like Chrystal has, you know, is working on her own stuff. And we create what we don’t see.
So when I would avoid going to the white hair shows, because I didn’t see anybody that looked like me, nothing that served the clientele that I had, I was forced to just figure it out. Like all of us, black people, we just figure it out. It takes us two times as long to do it as you guys, probably, but we do it. We’re very smart people. And so we create our own. We figure out that’s where, you know, the Bronner Brother hair show came from, right. They didn’t have what we needed, what we were looking for, so we made, right? We created the platform. And so we want to be inclusive, but we don’t sit around waiting for it to be inclusive. We go out and buidl and make it happen because that’s just who we are and we need, but we need to go get it. That’s just what we’ve always done.
JC: I think also there has to be some sorta honesty too, with — obviously we know it in this room, we realize it — there’s honestly, the beauty industry has purposely excluded black faces, black voices for centuries. This is not a past one, five, 10, 20 years situation. It is literally for centuries. You know, even though we are the largest consumers of all things beauty, okay? We spend the most in the monies with the monies, we are the tastemakers, right. So we make the trends and things like that, but they don’t want to show us in any aspect. I mean, you know, some have argued, “Why would you think that you are the largest in, you know, in spending money on beauty?” Well, because of the fact that we have to assimilate to everything. We have to get this cream and this, this potion and this lotion and this whatever, so that we can assimilate, because if we don’t, we’re not beautiful. Right? Right?
So if we don’t look like the masses and look like the default we’re, we’re not considered beautiful. We don’t get the attention. We won’t get that promotion. We won’t get, you know, those things. I mean, for crying out loud, the Crown Act just passed. First of all, why does it have to be a Crown Act? I’m just saying. I think it’s like five states it passed in, I think it was New York and California – of course it would be New York in California – last year. But in five states, it has been a thing five states like for a piece of paper, essentially saying that I can not be discriminated against in the workplace for my hair, alone. I mean, it’s just, it is absolutely ridiculous. It’s really belittling to when you think about it.
We’ve just been ignored. And the interesting thing is I don’t think that they see the revenue. It’s like, who’s in the room doing the numbers because if I know that you are making sure… no, you need to purposely make sure that there is a black face, there is a black voice in the room at all times. So just saying you won’t be in the predicament that Dove has been in a couple of times and some other companies. Yes. I said it because it’s a real thing. If you have that, I’ll give you my money because I see that you care about what it is that’s going on. I see that you care about my voice, not saying, one black person to black people, even five black people speak for the whole community. However, it would be nice to show that.
Towanna: And don’t just show that in the sense of putting braids on hair. One thing that I don’t know, my coworkers a couple of years ago were like, “Why are you all in arms?” I’m like, “Because this is just literally highway robbery.” When there was a certain influencer that came out and called her hairstyle boxer braids.
JC: I’ll call that Kim Kardashian. I’ll say it.
Towanna: I was that girl. I was like, “These are cornrows. These are cornrows.” How do you change something that has been of years by a culture to a different thing? You can’t just change the name and make it less of whatever you don’t want it to be. It is what it is. If you’re going to use it, use it. The same way that I love how people refer to the extensions hand-tied weft as a method.
Chrystal: Not a method.
Towanna: Drives me nuts. Hand-tied wefts is a type of extension. It’s a weave. You’re getting a weave. Anytime you’re taking thread and a needle and you’re weaving it to the hair, it doesn’t just need a break. So they’re keratin tips, there are I-tips, but that is a weave. Like everything is classified, that’s a weave, but hand-tied wefts sounds less ethnic.
JC: Yeah. Which I want to go on the record and say that I’m a black woman named Christina. She’s the one that created doing weaves without putting a braid. It’s called the pole weaving or the Christina method. That was another conversation in the Thrivers, I had to set some people straight. Listen, what you think is original is not…
Chrystal: But it’s all about because they have access, right? So it goes back to the access. It’s because they have a platform, right?
Nicole: They put in with a big name brand, and it’s glorified, now you sitting up there looking like, huh?
JC: The best marketer wins.
Chrystal: Yeah.
Britt: Did you see my eyes when you said hand-tied wefts aren’t like… I, I didn’t even realize, but you’re right.
Towanna: It’s the method. They make it with a machine or they make it go to hand-tied. What you buy in the store and what’s made out of a clip-in is usually that. So it’s just a different way of making.
Chrystal: And then the installation part of it, like JC said, the installation part has been around forever. I remember I actually got together with some girls who were certified, right. And I was like, “Yeah, this just can’t be, not where you’re paying all that money, just can’t be the same thing,” you know? So we got together and we shared some information and I was like, “Well, I hate to break it to you ladies, but this has been around and culturally for umpteen years.”
And then what’s even funny is the two people who created it and became popular, ended up suing each other. How you gonna somebody for something that wasn’t even yours? Like how can you, you know, and then people just believe it, right? And and even now I can show you what I can tell you.
You know, I don’t have that same clout because the color of my skin, which is bananas, but I mean, it’s our industry. It is literally our industry. And again, like I said, I don’t – it was funny because I don’t curse on social media. I am always politically. And I got so fed up. I remember I just went live on my Instagram and I went off and I have 18-year-old son who called me during my life and was like, “Mom, Oh my God, you must really be mad.” I’m like I am mad because people, and the biggest part that kills me is that people are pretending like “We didn’t know,” like we knew, we all knew. We knew you would have a conversation here and you would have a conversation there. I think people knew and it was just that nobody had the balls, I guess, to be that person that said, this is not right. And that’s just, that just infuriates me
JC: Because everybody was checking for self. Everybody’s checking for their own pocket. You know, it’s like, “Well, if they think that this black girl is better at me than whatever dot, dot dot, maybe she’ll get the money.”
First of all, nobody can get all of the money. Your pockets are only so big. They’re only so deep, you know what I’m saying? So no one can get all of the money. And also you don’t know what kind of partnership that can have in the future.
I just really wish that a lot of people in these spaces, they would really speak up and use their white privilege, their white voices, your white tears, if need be all of that stuff. I wish they would do that to put black voices, black faces in these places on stage in the boardrooms, wherever, in the salon, in management, any other type of where you can actually be promoted and things like that. Because it’s a thing of, “Okay. I see. I see you. You’re here. Okay, great.” But are we equal? Are you going to treat me the same? Are you going to give me the same? I want the same. I want the same. And honestly I want it right now and there’s enough of you to make it happen. You know what I mean? I’m just saying.
Nicole: That’s true story right here. I went back and got my instructor’s license cause I just wanted more training. So me and my classmates, she’s a have been like 10 years younger than I was, we both completed the program at the same time. She may have graduated maybe a week before I did. So they offered her a job to teach and they were willing to pay her, I think like $22 an hour. So once I graduated, I had to go ask, did they want, you know, my purpose is as a black instructor, I did program, I’m traveling a little bit. Maybe work two or three or four days out the week, they offered me $15 an hour.
Bayyinah: Wow.
Nicole: I have been in the industry longer than she has. Don’t you have black students that come to this class or this school? You have three locations and you offer me $15 an hour. That was ridiculous.
Kiki: Oh, I was going to say that, you know, we as black humans, we work double if not triple as hard as a privileged white person, just because of the color of their skin. And we get half the pay, half the acknowledgement and we’re just done. And we’re tired of it because a lot of the things that like these ladies have said extensions and all that, it comes from our culture and we just don’t even get the recognition for it. And we’re just tired of it. We’re just tired of it because a lot of things we don’t get credited for nor do we get paid for.
JC: Right. Right.
Bayyinah: And the change, the change to me seems to happen when you guys are affected versus just changing because it needs to happen. You know what I mean? So when you guys are affected and it does not work for you anymore and we don’t like, this change happens, change gets, stuff starts to happen.Things start to shake up and you know, things are implemented. But for us, just like she said, doesn’t matter how good you are. Doesn’t matter where you went to school. It doesn’t matter. A whole lot of stuff. The color of your skin gives you, makes you less equal. And most people, and it’s so sad because you can tell your children, work hard, do your part, you know, go to school, you study, we pay the same amount of money when we go to college, you know, when we go to beauty school, but it doesn’t matter.
You still gonna have to work three times as hard and you are still not going to be leveled up or equal or you’re going to still be less than them. It doesn’t matter. That’s why created our own.
JC: that’s it in a nutshell.
Bayyinah: And it doesn’t mean that we can’t take a program like yours and make it work for us. It doesn’t mean that, but we have to make it work. When I tell you I’m MacGyver with those hundred captions, I make it work, but I am manipulating them. And then I keep them in my note file so that I have them so that I can circle back because I don’t want that hard work to be in vain, you know? And then I twist those captions a little bit more, but there’s nothing in the hundred captions that’s so spot on outside of the meet the stylist, stuff like that, which I enjoy, but I do have to manipulate them.
Chrystal: But I think that was the big thing and I’m not gonna lie, I knew that coming in. I do, I have 50/50 clientele, so as I work through the modules, a lot of them did work for me, but a lot of them were like, well, that’s not going to work. There had to be absolutely no input from someone who is not doing a blonde balayage every day. And even as you do the target market or the website, all of those things, it was like, if I didn’t fit that mold, it wasn’t right.
And I’ve made all the way up to the highest, to Alumni. And I feel like, because I don’t necessarily do what 90% of the people in your program, I’m not viewed as great as the other stylists that are there. And that’s a struggle for me because I know my worst and I know I’m damn good at branding. I’m a great hair stylist. I know all hair. I have a great customer service experience. I booked six months out, I make six figures, but in the eyes of the people in my group, I’m less than.
Like I was Thriver of the Month for the month of May. And I even went back to compare, I’ll probably say 12 people commented on it through the whole month. I looked at June and April and girl had 46, 47. Congratulations. Congratulations. And for me, the only thing reason I can think of, I mean, the obvious one is that I’m just not as valued as my counterparts.
JC: And I think if it’s not being commented on also is not going to make its rounds because I never even knew that. I never, saw you were Thriver of the Month and all this stuff, because I have to say like, like the ladies were saying certain modules, you know, the retail therapy, that thing when you’re dealing with curly hair, you just want to have some SKUs. You’re going to have a little more than the norm. The pricing module. Yeah. My numbers had to go up because that, I mean, there was no way I was going to do someone with my hair, a blow out for $45. Let me tell you something, you shamed out of the salon. I refused, so that’s that, but then, with that being said, and knowing now that she was Thriver of the Month, and I’m assuming that’s all, all the Thrivers, I mean, it would be nice to see just within the cyber community, someone that looks like me, that I can talk to about certain things, that relates to what it is I’m going through. Not saying that the other ones don’t give great advice. Some of them miss the mark, but there are some that give really great advice that lean towards what it is that I’m needing them for, but it would be nice because the representation I have to say I mean, you know, that it’s hard to find black Thrivers.
Towanna: Well, one of the reasons why it’s hard to find black Thrivers, and Britt, I know the survey number taker that you are, I know that, you know better than us, who’s in it, and who’s not in it in comparison to your whole number and what demographic you have. I have because, just because I forced myself to, counted the black Thrivers that I have had interaction with. Some of them are not in there anymore. 21. There’s 800 in the alumni class alone. 21. And the reason why you don’t hear from them is because they feel like when they go on there, there is crickets, because they don’t see any of our posts. They’re like, “Well, I don’t want to post on here.” So they’re not interacting because they see that we’re not… Like, it’s funny, we have me Bayyinah, Nicole have another thread with Maxine, Phyllis, Wendy, who we freaking love so much. We’ve adopted Wendy, Wendy’s a black Thriver. I don’t know if you know it or not. Her whole clientele is black hair. So I mean, that’s all she does. But we’ll post something and we’ll be like, “Hey guys, I posted,” so we can make interacting because when we start interacting, other people are interacting.
I haven’t posted a Thrivers win in a long time. And my husband had these banners put up – I sent you a picture of it in your DM, I think – he had his base put up and he didn’t know what to put up. And I’m like, this is so, and then like within 48 hours, I had two clients texted me a picture of I’m like, “Oh my God, I saw this. I thought it’s so cool.” What’s even better is I didn’t even pay for it. Even better. It’s a long story. But I think maybe the post before, I might have got like 12, something like that, likes. After somebody posted something that was a similar marketing win and it’s like 40 likes. And it’s like, “Okay, now I remember why I haven’t posted a Thriver win. Nobody gives a shit. It’s really a win.” I’m sorry.
You know, is it really a win? You know, but it’s a win to us and we applaud for ourselves and we thought,you have a tribe within the tribe. We created try with that tribe. Yeah. We created a tribe within the tribe. I think I was talking to Chrystal this morning and she asked me how many black Thrivers were at drivers live. And I believe, I think it was that I knew eight.
JC: Wow.
Bayyinah: I counted nine, I think. Yep. And when we saw each other, like, it blew my mind that I was, there were nine or seven to nine black girls out of 450. And so many people, so many black women that are Thrivers that didn’t go because they didn’t want to be the only one or the fear – you’re one of them, Chrystal?
Chrystal: I was like, I would love to, but I’m like, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to go all the way to California and hope that I don’t feel marginalized.
Bayyinah: I will say, I didn’t feel like they’re going to Thriversas though… I feel like I have connected with Britt and a few other Thrivers that I didn’t. And I think that even if I didn’t, I would have had that issue just because I just, I don’t know. I think that’s just my personality. Um, I definitely felt like a unicorn there. I’d you know, I go into the bathroom and I say, hello, my bubbly self. And I didn’t always get a hello back. And duh, I continued to be surprised when that happens. It feels a little sad, but I do what I normally do. I move on, like, you know, but there were too many people that missed an, a great experience like Thrivers wise, because they would have been or thought they would be alone.
JC: That’s probably why a lot of the black women that probably were in there just in Thrivers period, left. I mean, I don’t know if you know that number Brit. I didn’t know there were 21 black Thrivers.
Towanna: There was one that I was expecting to see at Thrivers. I just connected with her towards the end of last year and then she had posted that she had gotten a suite, so I kind of connect with her on that cause I’m looking into stuff. I texted when I got back and I was like, “Hey, why didn’t you come for Thrivers?” And she said exactly what Chrystal said. And then she’s like, I’m tired of it a little. She’s a dreadlock hair. She has dreadlocks, she styles out of Brooklyn. And she was like, this is a little too much conversion for me. She’s like, I’m over it because I got to switch everything. And I mean, as black hair stylists, dreadlocks, alarm, we scared of doing those things. You know what I mean? So I can’t imagine a dread stylist and there’s another dread stylist in DC that I’ve talked to that struggles because it’s just so much of a conversion that they have to do because, so it’s such a unique thing.
Yeah, I only know of 20, 21 and that was including me cause I’m trying to make the numbers strong. I’m sure that there’s more and again, now that, that was me naming people that I’ve spoken to, at least once there’s probably another five that I haven’t spoke to.
Chrystal: Britt, do you know, do you know that number? That’s for me, what I find most interesting because I’m a, keep it 100. I feel like as I listened to your podcasts, as I hear you talk, you like me, I’m like a system, I want to know, I’m checking my numbers. Like, have you had it not cross your mind to really look and say, okay, you look at retention, right? Cause that’s the big R, we know that. Have you thought about that? Have you looked at those numbers, did it ever cross your mind that you know, why people left? And it being that as people of color there was something missing for us.
Britt: I will say that less than 5% of Thrivers are black, 100%, that’s for sure. And I’m ashamed of it. That’s not the program that I preach that I create. And it’s certainly not what I set out to create. And I am so aware of the fact that the program doesn’t have any texture services and the most embarrassing thing for me. But because I’m here with you, ladies, I have so much love for you, the most embarrassing thing for me is about two years ago, I was like, I need to figure out how to incorporate texture services. Obviously I’ve never done them. I’m not going to pretend like I was at a salon where I had the opportunity. And so I thought, but I’ve got to figure out a way to do it. And there was this embarrassing fear in me that was like, what if people think that because I incorporate services that would be welcoming to people in black salons, that would be inappropriate, that that in itself would be racist.
That was actually a thought that crossed my mind. And it was reaffirmed for me last week. Which was the most upsetting part is when I shared that I was going to be changing everything that I do, and I was not going to live in fear anymore of all of these bullshit stories I had been told or told myself when I opened up and I was like, it’s time. I don’t even care what anybody thinks more I’m doing it. Backlash I received that I was going to be incorporating texture services was major. But the difference of me now is I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m going to do what feels right to me and what I know I should’ve done all along. If I said I was going to create an inclusive program that any stylist could take and use their business, I have to walk in that and I have to own everything that I’ve done wrong up until this point, regardless of who’s going to take the journey with me.
And so, I’m the person who should have done all of these things years ago should have done it before I even launched an education platform and I have so much work to do. But the thing that’s upsetting for me as a white woman is that I’m seeing the post now a couple of weeks in to this movement of now that it’s calmed down a bit, or now that the, well, the edge is coming off, like I’m already seeing that on social media. Like, okay, now that we’re closing the chapter, it’s like, Oh, are we going to do the work? It’ll be interesting to see who actually steps up because we’re not even two weeks into this conversation and people are already taking a step back. It’s interesting
Towanna: I look at every single female on when you were talking and there was a certain point where every single body’s face went into confusion. And that point was the same way. You did a podcast about explaining to your people that are emailing you, what they should say and why they should. And they don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to show up. We just got confused when you said that, why would you be getting backlash, adding education for them to your platform?
It’s not like I’m adding a module, but you can only get it if you got brown skin. It’s for everybody. So I’m giving you information on how, if you have… I’ve had white women who have been getting a relaxer since they were 13. Sodium hydroxide. But there are also white women that get ammonium valeo, which used to be the bio ionic type of thing. So you don’t want to do textured hair, but like your aunt might have hair yhat’s just as thick as a Dominican. You don’t want to service her. You’re going to make her now go somewhere that she’s not comfortable. So why wouldn’t you want to just know for the two clients you might service in 10 years?
Chrystal: Well, you have to think about it on the level of like also, like they don’t need to, right? “I don’t need to know it because if I really want to advance or if I want to be a platform artist, that’s, that’s not a necessary thing.”
And then the other part, even for me, if you are really smart — in my thinking process, I’m always thinking ahead of the curve, right? So my thought process is, at minimum, we have all these interracial couples, right? So you have – let’s be 100 — all these white women who are marrying outside of their race who are then having children with curly hair or adopting. I don’t know how many — and I’m going to keep the 100 — I would probably say in the last five years, I have probably doubled my clientele because somebody called me about their daughter, you know, hair and want me to do the daughter, her, you know what I say?
I say, I only do the children whose parents have hair. I do. And I do all hair. So you’re more than welcome to book an appointment. And then we can go from there because I don’t do kids who are bad. Right. So like, I’m gonna know about the kids based on their parents. And I’m going to know how open they are to education because I’m an educating stylist. Or a parent will be like, Oh, okay, wow, you can do my hair too, so now we don’t have to go to three different salons. So if you really want to be a six figure stylist, you should at least know how to cut textured hair or be able to educate your white client on how to take care of their child’s hair.
So come on. Let’s think about where the world is going, right? What would they say by 2060, it’s going to be a very mixed culture.
Nicole: Through advertisement, on TV, magazine, my gym, I go to a state of the art particular type of gym and the advertisement that they have, there is the women got big, curly hair. So they’re the advertisements, they’re there, they’re putting it in. Like you got the black kids, have whitish, and all that type of stuff is coming up. To me, to know this hair, cause it’s coming for you. It’s going to be in your salon. So why wouldn’t you want to —
JC: Shoot, in your salon? It’s about to be in your family. Like I have a lot, so a lot of my guests that are white that I don’t do their hair, not the ones that I do that here, but the ones that I don’t do their hair, it’s because they have adopted black children from different countries – that’s a whole different podcast – and not understanding the experience, the culture, these children are growing up in a complete white period and they are clueless to that. I mean, they see nobody at home, but these little girls, they don’t see anybody black until they see me. And so listen, I can only give so much of my blackness. You know what I’m saying? Like within that two hour timeframe, there’s only so much black experience I can give this baby, you know? So it’s like, listen, you don’t know, you may go on a mission trip one day — y’all, that’s just a whole different podcast. I’m just my, my God – and, and be compelled or whatever, to adopt a black kid, or you go to your local,children’s services or whatever, and adopt the black kid or a biracial child or just the child with hair, like mine that’s that is non-black period. And you need to know a little something. We’re not asking that you whip it and, and you know all this, but you need to know something or you need to know someone to go find it. You need to go find it. Pull the first black person you see in your area, “Hey, where’d you get your hair done?”
I will walk up to them in Target, here’s my card, child’s hairs all over here. Here’s my card. A lot from there appreciate it. So it’s like this is the way that you have to do it.
And she pinpointed exactly. Why are you getting backlash? And I’m like, “What? Who’s giving you backlash?” The white women? I’m like, why aren’t they giving you backlash? It’s like, they’re like, “Oh, more work.”
I really want to know. I think that’s a real question to ask, like why the backlash? This is something big. So then when you give someone backlash or something like that, it turns my mind, this is what it does now. My mind is thinking, “Oh, she’s got the all life matters type of chick, huh? Okay. I see where this is going to go down. I see exactly what this is going to go down. And we may either have a for real serious deep conversation about that, or absolutely nothing at all. I go the other way, because you have completely turned your mind into a willful ignorance, willful blissful ignorance, and you don’t want any of it. It’s just, that is so funny. You pointed that out, Towanna, because that is for real. That is for real.
Britt: Well, ladies, I want to thank you for being here. I want to be really respectful of your time. Thank you for having this conversation with me.
The other thing I want to make sure we talk about is BOLD Academy. And if there’s anybody else who has anything that they want to share or celebrate, or get a little spotlight on today, I would love to do that too. But Chrystal, can you tell us a little bit?
Chrystal: I’m going to spotlight like two things, right? So BOLD is my nonprofit that I co-founded in 2016. BOLD is, black and brown opportunity leadership and development. Academy is two parts. The goal was to empower, enrich, nurture, and give leadership to black and brown girls in my community, ages 12 to 17. And we set up a 529 college fund for every single girl that joins our program. And if you’re not filled with 529, it is basically a tax free education fund that you can use for any post secondary education. So hair school, college, whatever. We have on average, anywhere from 17 to 22 girls. We have a hundred percent success rates. So my goal was actually to help pipeline black and brown girls into post secondary education colleges. I’m at a place where there are four or five dozen universities where they don’t recruit us. Same with the hair schools. They’re not looking for us. And so I wanted to bridge that gap. So we have had a total of nine graduates over the last four years. Every single one of our girls have gotten full rides when the university’s in our backyard.
I think I kind of told you guys too, and my goal was actually to make it a scalable thing when I started it. It’s funny because my counterpart is an educator. And so every time we’re talking, they’re always like, “It’s a four year college” and I’m like, “Or tech school!” because I’m of that, that is of my mindset. I have an 18-year-old son getting ready to go to a JuCo and because I think that we need to talk about it. And again, it’s the same thing, like cosmetology, if you don’t see anybody that looks like you doing amazing things, you don’t know that that’s your opportunity.
So we bring in doctors, lawyers, hair stylists, small business owners who are black and brown women so they can see that there are some bad ladies that look like you and your community, and you can achieve those things if you just have some socioeconomic equity and a system that is strategically pushing you toward that. So that’s about Academy. The website is theboldacademy.org. You can donate there.
And then my second one is that I’ve always wanted to be an educator. I went to school for education, and then I did my student teaching realized I liked my kids, not everybody else’s. So I am working on and have been for probably the last 18 months on some sort of close-knit mentoring program, for stylists who want to take their education to the next level and really learn how to market yourself to do all hair, no matter what it is you want to do and create systems so you can be a six figure stylist. If you go to my website, you can sign up for that at the bottom. It’s chrystalhairmakeup.com and it is the social media mini boot camp.
Britt: Anybody else? Is there anybody else who wants to share anything?
Kiki: For me, I am just in the beginning stages of putting together some Trello workshops. I love Trello. Everybody knows. I preach that all the time. So I’ve been kind of working on how I can get that figured out so that I can help other people get organized in Trello. So that’s something that I have that I’m working on in the background.
Britt: Beautiful. That’s exciting. That’s huge. I’m so excited for you. Towanna, I know you had something you wanted to share.
Towanna: I have two extension classes that I’m actually in the process of trying to convert into virtual because we don’t know how this stuff is going to go back. We don’t know if we’re going to be in the classroom, going to distributorships over certain spots anymore. So I’m in the process of writing it over.
But right now I have a curriculum for a hand — I call it The Weft Method, which I am teaching you two different ways to to attach hair with a weft.
And then I have a four-point extension class. I wanted to think of something that no companies were doing. It after working with all of these extension companies, one thing that I found out is that each and every company has the same application. And one thing that they also try to do is to get you to pick one. They want you to pay for this certification and that certification. My four points class is keratin tip I-tip, tape and one of the weft. That is a class that I am offering.
If anybody wants more information on it, I do have an extensions tab on my website, which is towannadunnhair.com and you can get more information under the extensions class.
Britt: Beautiful
Chrystal: One more thing, cause I’m going to do this shameless plug again. And I think I was telling everybody, so I had a salon space, I had employees and I learned real quick that I don’t like to manage people. But I wanted to create a system where I could still make that income off of, um, commission, right? Because that’s, I think we’re taught in cosmetology school, like you go to school, you build a clientele and then you open a salon, right? And then you have financial freedom, which is false. I wanted to figure out a way to do it. Well, I fell into weddings from doing style shoots. So I on average do about 15 to 35 weddings a year, depending on what I have going on. And I do it with the team of independent contractors who all work for me, but do not work in my salon. I have a team of seven. And I am able to make anywhere between, I would probably say $15 – 20,000 additional income because I just pay them commission. So I do all the branding. I do all the work, I do all the booking and then I have them come in and we do a big training. They’ve been with me for four years now, actually. And then they get paid, but they don’t have to do the work. They just show up and then I’m able to make that income. That was my first thing.
And then with weddings changing, I don’t know if weddings are going to be big anymore. So now I’m trying to pivot to figure out how that works. But anything you want to know about a wedding from contracts to procedures, I have literally in my six years of consistently doing them have had zero bridezilla because I do a lot of really interesting things that make it really stress-free. So again, you can go to the website and sign up to learn more about that too.
Nicole: I’m trying to just nurture my new baby, my salon, Nicole Jamerson Hair Studio. So that’s what I’m doing right now, because it was a long time coming trying to get the thing open. I think I started working on it three years ago and then they had to get this rebuilt. That’s what we’re doing over here. Yeah.
JC: I am currently working on a program that will help people with their natural texture hair, whether they want to wear it curly and out, or some sort of updo or some just things that’s going to help them out, manage your hair.
I’m also working on some workshops — corona kinda got in the middle of that — workshops to get with a lot of these mothers that have children with natural and curly hair, whether through a biological or adoption and so that they can understand, how to take care of their babies’ hair when I am unavailable. So they’ll be able to get into those things virtually through book or through a virtual class, virtual group, all these things. So definitely going to make that available. I am going to have that available on my website just to sign up for the newsletter to find out more about that.
Britt: Beautiful. I love it.
Bayyinah: And one of the things that I’ve been really passionate about just a more recent, I think it’s always been a natural thing for me, just how to properly care for my clients and make them feel welcome. And I think it’s been missing a lot in our community, the customer service and the guest experience. And it’s something that’s like been in the back of my, it’s been on my heart forever, because I know it’s missing. And so I want to kind of get back into my community and teach, and teach how to properly welcome and care for your clients so that you can retain them. So that they’ll feel comfortable.
One of the things I pride myself on when a client comes in for the very first time, when she leaves, it’s like we’re first cousins. And so I just want to pull on that. If that’s something that’s on my heart, I kind of wanted a baby in that, and just like working through how that would look, so you can find out more about me and what I love to do and love up on people at bchicsalon.com.
Britt: Thanks, Bayyinah. And I’m going to link to all of these beautiful ladies as well, but Towanna, Nicole, Kiki, JC, Bayyinah, Chrystal, thank you so much for being here and joining me in this conversation today. I know it was a huge ask on my part and I’m just so thankful from the bottom of my heart that you were open to connecting with me. So thank you.
Ooh, hits you in the feels, right? That is an interview that has left an imprint on my heart. I’ve listened to it several times and I know I’ll listen to it several more.
I want to personally thank again Towanna, JC, Bayyinah, Nicole, Chrystal, and Kiki for joining me. I also want to share their Instagram handles cause I know you’ll want to follow them. You can also find them. If you go to see who I follow, you’ll find them all there as well. But if you go to, I’m going to spell them out for you. You ready?
@Kikidoesmyhair
@chrystalhairandmakeup
@Nicolejam2
@bchicwithbayyinah
@freshlyrootedsalon. That’s where you can find JC.
@towannadunnhairstylist
So that’s where you can find all of these ladies on the gram. If you look at who I follow, I follow all of them as well. They will inspire you the way they’ve inspired me.
You guys so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
