ONE BLACK BEAUTY BRAND FOUNDER’S JOURNEY TO CEO

When an everyday need becomes a call to share knowledge.

The idea to start a science-backed, unbiased, and unsponsored website for all people with curly hair first formed in my mind during COVID. I typically travel to Washington, D.C. every other week for my full-time job as a law firm partner, but I was sequestered at home like everybody else. I joined some curly hair groups on Facebook for the first time. I was shocked that so many women had no clue how to properly style their natural curly hair, just like me!

I began extensively researching the topic, reading anything related to curly hair and hair products, including scientific articles, by relying on my Ph.D. in science. I had a true eureka moment when I began to understand the why-what-how of curly hair care and styling, including hair products, ingredients, techniques, and tools. In other words, I now understood why some hair products work well and others don’t, or how to read and understand hair product ingredients and product labels.

I developed a strong desire and passion to share this knowledge with the world and my websites Absolutely Everything Curly and CurlPlanet were born. Together with my sister and a fellow Ph.D. friend, we drafted over 65 articles on every relevant topic in the curly hair world. I chose the images that would post with each article and started designing the websites as I had envisioned them in my mind and in my dreams.

I also built a searchable, proprietary database with over 7,000 hair products complete with accompanying ingredient lists. My friend helped put together a database with over 1,200 curly hair stylists and salons in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India, and the Middle East. These projects took many months! Finding the right website developers was quite challenging and it took infinitely more time and effort to supervise the build the way I wanted it than I ever anticipated. But the websites had to be done just right.

Once up and running, all the extra charges that come a website (or two) were a big surprise. These include website maintenance and security (I had to retain a WordPress company),

SEO (hired a specialist for this), email flows to be developed up, graphic designers to design the Ultimate Product Guides other items, an automation platform for email marketing, images and photos, cloud computing services, trademarks, other expenses.

And that’s not all—there were additional essential hires not envisioned before I started building the websites. For needed a stellar public relations firm to help credential me, media team to post on the many social platforms to spread as well as a seasoned business consultant to guide me along as this world of entrepreneurship was new to me. Despite setbacks and surprises, it has been immensely satisfying traffic to the websites, and the articles in Martha Stewart, InStyle (to name a few).

There is still much to be done (and learn) but it has been exciting journey so far. One of my future goals is to apply secure funding for Black-owned startups such as myself defray some of the out-of-pocket spending. My plans include release of a custom-designed, one-of-a-kind Complete Curly Care & Wash Day Journal, just in time for the holiday season. journal will be the perfect gift for many men, women, children, and others.

I also have plans of developing and launching a first protein product to strengthen and repair hair in 2023. One of my to eventually offer an entire curly hair product line. I intend the market with this first product and eventually build up product line for curlies.