Curls Disrupted

The same mindset that made you successful employee will not make you a successful independent hair artist. Your client is your boss but you get to set the terms and conditions of how your work partnership operates In this episode we address the how the employee mindset around the metrics of pricing, scheduling and marketing is holding you back.

Nearly 4 years ago we created a hair challenge disguised as education, The https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/30dayhairdetox/ (#30dayhairdetox). During that challenge we asked naturals to give up their beloved shea butter, coconut oil, castor oil and Eco Styler gel for 30 days. We also asked that they avoid using products that contained shea butter, coconut oil and castor oil within the first five of the ingredients.  Within 30 days of following our recommendations many participants not only saw a shift in their hair but they also had a whole shifting of their minds. Whatever natural hair issue our participants faced from dryness, to failed styles, to all day wash days, to trying to figure this natural hair thing out...we got it covered!

What does diversity mean in the curl world? In 2017 we'd wrote a book, created a course, and helmed a FB group for natural hair and we were sending community members to Curl stylists we knew about through other stylist networks. Those naturals were coming back to us with scathing reviews. In this episode we explore why.

Naturals are at the forefront of everything fashion and beauty. Do you know exactly who is sitting in your chair?

What happened when the pros arrived late to the conversation and refused to learn the culture? We explore how the lack of knowledgeable and licensed natural hair professionals created a vacuum in the market.

Who made the imaginary curl alphabet king? We explore how 4a, 2b, 3c does not exist in the cosmetology world and how our hair becomes what we think it is.

Millions of opinions, think pieces, and comments later, we explore the aftermath of the viral H&M image of a beautiful black girl and her kinky hair with our Dr. VaNatta Ford. Dr. Ford is an Assistant Professor Of Africana Studies at Williams University where she teaches a course entitled Complexion Complexities: Colorism in Literature, Lyrics & Everyday Life (http://catalog.williams.edu/AFR/detail/?strm=1203&cn=302&crsid=020054) .

Crowdsourcing your haircare and why we can't do a thorough enough consultation over the public internet to tell you what to use on your hair. If you're tired of getting sent off about your hair this episode is for you. We will not contribute to irresponsibility of the internet.

All these new haircare lines and everybody still has dry hair. We keep seeing bandaid products debut but where’s the rehabilitation of behaviors and thought processes surrounding natural hair? 

We had so many reasons to not want business partners, but somehow ended up building a dope business over the last 4 years. this episode throws the curtains back on what our past business experiences were and how we work together without driving each other (too) crazy.

When visiting a curl stylist do you as the consumer have realistic expectations? In this episode we chat understanding stylists menus, pricing, and deliverables to expect during your salon appointment.

We regularly get asked if we will travel to different locations to do hair. As a stylist it can be an ego boost for your services to be in high demand. In this episode we through a huge bucket of ice water on the sexy idea of being a traveling hairstylist. We also explain what we're doing to solve the problem many consumers have around finding a competent curl stylist

For so many years we've been told that salon ownership is the natural progression of a dope stylist's career. In this episode we examine what ownership is and what having responsibility for a physical commercial space really means.

Some of you have been wondering why we are not in a permanent salon space. This is what happens when things fall apart and what we are doing to recover.

We go behind the scenes with Cut It Kinky Alumni and Mentor stylists Roni from Pasadena, CA and Sonnie from Dallas, TX to chat about how their careers behind and beyond the chair have shifted since attending their first Cut It Kinky Live Workshop. *This session was recorded at Hazel O. Salon in Alexandria, VA www.hazelosalon.com. Hazel O. is a dope loft salon with facilities to host professional technical classes and workshops.

This journey has never been about our hair. We haven't shared much about our hair because we don't center our hair in the work we do. Everything has always been about leading our clients digital and IRL to their own curl goals. We keep hair care simple by simply cleansing, conditioning, and styling. In this episode we chat about what we're feeling about out hair right now and what 2020 holds for the fate of our curls.

As professionals how do we determine our worth and place a value on out attention, time, and money?

Curly Cutting is an art and a science. It’s a way of seeing hair that is completely different from how most cosmetologists are taught to see hair There are a ton of misconceptions that curly cuts aren't precision cuts, that you can’t see the ends of the hair, that damage is left after the cut. We chat the most popular methods that we're familiar with and explain why we felt the need to create Cut It Kinky specifically to address tighter, kinkier curls.

You can do whatever you want to as long as you can prove that you can do it. You can build your own table and eat at it on Al Gore's internet. We explore what is really keeping beauty industry on the fringes new technologies that can assist in our exponential growth.

Cut It Kinky started as a Beta Test in 2018.Two years later we've trained more than 100 curl artists. In this episode we break down what we think is important for aspiring independent beauty educators to know.

How did we get from the beginning of the free #30DayHairDetox challenge to where we are now?

The underside of social media can get to even the strongest person. We chat about how we set boundaries with the content we share.

We were hype for 2020, then Corona came along and the entire industry has had to rethink how we work and who we work with. This is a new normal because we get to decide for ourselves what normal is. Normal doesn't mean being exhausted, resentful, exploitative. We chat about designing business that revolve around how we want to live, not around how the industry has always operated.

This conversation is about the the tight curl experience in salon and what you can do to craft a more vinculsieve curl business. Why is this topic near and dear to us? For the last 4 years we have been engaging digitally with thousands of tight curl folks around the globe in our #30DHD and Black curl magic programs. As those participants worked through our content they wanted to find curl artists near them to have their serviced. We started recommending curl artists we knew and knew about through our professional networks. The result was less than stellar. Most of the stylists we've encountered that specialize in curly hair are not black, do not have tight curls, and don't have experience working with tight curls. Which often means there is no reference point for a service standard that includes tight curls in their business. This is what we are here to address today. 1. Timing 2. Pricing 3. Service methods 4. Product selection 5. Aesthetic

Texture is not this foreign thing that you didn't learn in cosmetology school Everything you learned in the first few months of cosmetology school prepared you for a solid career working on all hair in the cosmetology industry

Where the beauty industry attempts to segregate and category black stylists It’s insulting to our talent and a lazy attempt at diversity. Black stylists are cutting specialists, color geniuses, curl artists, natural hair gurus, chemical +thermal rearranging experts, pioneering educators, and far more than token representation. The beauty industry is currently being pushed into a place that is long overdue. The industry as a whole has a responsibility to recognize the full depth and breadth of the talent + contributions of black stylists. Pay black educators Pay texture educators Travel for texture education Prioritize texture education

Everybody is trying to hustle but what aboutyoukr business. Are you hustling or are you scaling? But what is scaling? Scaling a business means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your company. It means having the ability to grow without being hampered. It requires planning, some funding and the right systems, staff, processes, technology and partners. Hustling is over. We can't outwork Rona.

All ofa sudden everybody is a texture expert. Join us as we discuss what is really happening in the beauty industry in 2020

In this episode we sit down with Cut It Kinky Assistant Stylist Asia Walker to chart her short journey from from being Aeleise's new client in 2015 to being a premier curl artist in Southern California in 2020. The rules have changed.

From Black CurlMagic Digital Salon member to licensed cosmetologist and Cut It Kinky Mastermind member in less than a year. Shakera aka The Cuse Curlfriend chats exponentially leveling up her new beauty career.

Join us as we sit down with Black Girl Curls/Cut It Kinky's own coordinator Andra aka HairCousin as we chat her journey to and through cosmetology school.