Oct 4, 2020
This week on our Quick Fire series, we have CEO and founder of Curlshoppe, Natasha Sheppard.
Natasha joined us in Episode 118 where she shared her story and journey to becoming an entrepreneur, and talked about her goals, dreams, and challenges, and her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.
As a child growing up, Natasha’s hair was consistently relaxed by her mother to make styling easier. She was even convinced that her hair was naturally straight (or ‘wavy’ at most) and ironically always wanted curly hair. Through many chemical relaxers and weekly wash-blowdry-straighten routines, her hair got more and more damaged, until she finally decided to cut her hair short. Doing this started to reveal her true natural curls the moment she started growing out of the relaxers.
As years went by, eventually Natasha could not resist the urge anymore to do the “big chop” -- to cut all of her hair off -- so she could grow out her true curls from scratch.
Doing her own research on how to grow her curls and have proper hair care, she decided to start sharing her journey (via blogging, YouTube and Instagram), and continued learning until she became more confident in herself embracing her new found natural hair.
Natasha eventually learned enough to create her own formula and people started buying her products. This led to building her brand, Curlshoppe, which she now co-owns with her best friend, Rowan McAnoy.
After being able to create her own business and brand, a lot of people would ask her how she was able to do it. With her own experience and strategies in this field, she and her partner Sanjay created Hustl works, a platform to help aspiring entrepreneurs start their own businesses.