The a16z Show - The Hustler's Guide to the Hair Business

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

with @bhorowitz @shakasenghor @diishanimira @therealritabee Hustlin’ Tech is a new show (part of the a16z Podcast) that introduces the technology platforms -- and mindsets -- for everybody and anybody who has the desire, the talent, and the hustle to do great things. Read more about it here.  Episode #3, "The Hustler's Guide to the Hair Business" features Diishan Imira, CEO and co-founder of Mayvenn, a technology company re-shaping salon retail distribution; Sherita (SherriAnn) Cole, who uses Mayvenn for her hair stylist business -- both interviewed by Ben Horowitz and Shaka Senghor. "Can you fit in this box? You always have to fit in a box, and for the first time in a life, it's like I didn't have to fit in anyone's box, and I could create my own box -- maybe it's not a box, maybe it’s a star shape." music: Chris Lyons Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, welcome to The Hustler's Guide to Tech, where people who have the passion, the heart, the desire, and the talent to go do it and make their dreams happen, but just need a connect. This is a show for you. And today we are joined by Dishan, founder and CEO of Maven, the king of the hair business. He ain't got a hair business, you know, that's a heavy way right there. Bundle God. Yeah, there's a bundle got I like that. And then we got Sherry here. What's up, Sherry?

Our hustler, who is hustled Deshaun's platform, Maven. Most definitely. And then I'm joined by my co-host, Shaka Sangor. What up, though. Who, as you frequent listeners know, came out of the joint, hustled his way selling books that he wrote himself and published himself out of his car. Wow. And is now best-selling author and big-time.

Hollywood screenwriter. So let's go. Bundle God, I like that, man. It's hot. It's hot. Somebody said that to me a few weeks ago. I like it, though. It might, maybe it'll stick.

I just want to be clear with the audience, like, exactly what a bundle is. Because, like, in the street culture, bundles means something totally different and I don't want them to be confused. I just want to be real clear about, you know, the bundles is. Bundle got.

I guess Bundle got a whole new meaning. So a bundle is a weft of hair. and what that looks like is if you imagined a long, thick string with hair draping down from it, that would be a bundle.

So how many bundles does it take to do like full hairstyle, like the average? Like the big Beyonce hair. See? Come on. That's what I was looking for.

It depends on, you know, how glamorous you want to be. For a regular install is going to be probably two to three bundles but for a Beyonce install,

it's probably going to be closer to four or five. And then how much, how much do bundles cost per bundle? Like, yeah, what's the bundle? The super, super cheap ones can be like 30 bucks or 35 bucks for like super cheap. And then they can go upwards to like $250 a bundle. So $30 to $200. Yeah.

But a Maven bundle. Yeah, they're about 80, 80 bucks a bundle right now. There's a lot of lengths. It just depends. And that changes the price. But maybe on average, 80 or so. You know, but you're probably going to, if you buy three bundles, you're probably going to walk out of their paying $250. So, so quick question about the bundles.

So I got like four sisters, right? So I grew up with like a lot of hair conversations and it's always popping on social media, you know, the new styles. Interestingly enough, they got this new challenge called the DMX challenge. Yes. And then you're seeing all the sisters with all the different hairstyles, just kind of fly. So like, what was your entry point into the bundle game, man? I mean, you know, okay, so I never ever would have thought that I was going to be selling bundles. I had hairstylists in my family, and I saw them doing hair growing up.

So I understood the relationship between stylists, customers, you know, black women and their hair. I understood culturally what that was. I never thought I was going to be a part of it at all. I ended up on the other side of the bundle game, which was in China, where they were being manufactured. And I lived in China for almost two years. Now, you lived in China to learn the hair game? No, no, no, no. I moved to China. So I moved to China after college. I just wanted to travel. And I had a mentor at the time in college who she ran the International Studies Department. That was like, oh, three. This is before everybody was really like,

like, China was like in the news, in the news, in the news. She was like, no, China is about to do something. Go over there. It might be some opportunities. So what college were you coming out of? I went to Hampton University. HBCU. HBCU is a historically black college or university. And I was a sociology major. I never actually thought of myself as a business person.

I didn't understand that I was a business person until later. Yeah, well, you know, as an entrepreneur and business person are two different things. A businessman could be anybody who, like, puts on a suit and goes, works for a company. And an entrepreneur is somebody who tries to make something from nothing. Yeah. And that's why GZ's new album is so relevant, man, entrepreneur. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I always thought of the word business. Like, as a young person, I thought of it as like this stuffy thing with like a briefcase in a building. And then I just realized, wait, I like to create my own vision. And I like to do things, how I want to do them. And that's what an entrepreneur is going to do is just find the resources around them to do the things the way he or she wants to do them. So I got to China. I didn't know anybody. didn't speak a word of

Mandarin and they stuck me in the school teaching English I started playing hangman with them so I just found all kind of ways to get them to talk

but anyway when you get to China the first thing that hits you is like oh shit every single person here is hustling it's the most hustling

enterprising place on planet Earth every single person around you is hustling something And China being like the manufacturing, you know, center of the world, everybody was selling some sort of product. Like everyone was, everyone had some sort of relationship to supply chain somewhere. So interestingly enough, though, the first hustle that I had when I got to China was not exporting stuff.

It was selling English. So that's a great way to really kind of set up how you make the pivot. I want to talk a little bit to Sherry, though, and get her perspective of her hustle. just how you became entrepreneur. What was that pathway? And where did you grow up at you? I actually grew up between Berkeley and Oakland. Okay.

All right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's my hometown. Oh, hey. Yeah, yeah. Like, whereabouts, Berkeley and Oakland? South Berkeley.

South Berkeley, I was on Russell Street and off of Fairview. Okay, yeah, yeah. I went to Berkeley High. I went to Berkeley High. Oh, okay. Hey, hello, Jay. Okay. Yeah.

And then I was in East Oakland, so that's where I came from. I mean, Oakland is a high school. hustling town. I don't know. They get it 40 water up there. I was born to a mom who she was with my dad, but then he got caught up in the crack era and went to jail and dealing with, you know, that having that addiction for the rest of his life. I think still currently even battling cancer right now. Like, yeah, it's bad. So she was raising four of us by herself. And so my mom, a single mom with four children is a hustler. And I had three older brothers and then me. And And so three black boys in the bay, she was a hustler.

She had to be. You know, you got to be up at the school making sure that they're not, you know, tracking your kid that they're, you know, putting them in the right classes. And she was doing all those things. And would do all that, have a job and still come home and make dinner. On top of that, my grandmother, same thing, was a hustler. But that's kind of what I was born into, how I got into cosmetology. When I was 10 years old, my mom decided to go to school.

to become a manicurist. And the reason why she did this was because it was a way that she could have a business, but be able to dictate her own hours and still be able to raise all her kids. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And so I was going to the school with her and watching the people do hair. And I was like, that's really cool. And did she become a manicurist out of the house or she had her own shop? So she went to school. I helped her like study for a test. She passed her license. Actually, her licenses on my birthday every year. She did start. doing that of her house and then pivoted that, got a business. Now she's been doing it for over 20 years. And now she's like five stars on Yelp. She has all these companies coming. She's like the

number one person, I think, in California for natural nail care. She decided that she didn't like acrylic or the harsh chemicals. But how I got into doing hair was I was actually jumping around. I was in college and I didn't finish. And then I got into hotel management on accident. And I was like 20. And there was like this emergency that happened and maybe just being the youngest and having brothers. I don't know. I can think really quick on my feet. And so they saw my skills and how I handled this situation. So like with so much just poised and just like an expert and they were like, so you want to be a assistant operations manager? You know, we got this position. You want to come in? I was like, what? A salary? Oh, yeah. So I got into that. Did sales with Comcast.

then got back in the management and then I was managing multiple properties. And it seems like a good job, but I wasn't happy. For the first time in my life, I found myself starting to deal with like some anxiety. And I had like my first like a little, I don't know if it was a panic attack or anxiety attack.

And so I went to the doctor and they were like, oh, yeah, that was a little anxiety attack, a little panic attack, honey. I was like, what? The person I was dating at the time, keep people around you that love the crap out of you because they sometimes pay more attention to you than you pay attention to yourself.

Yeah. Okay? And so this person was like, you know, every time you get off work, you're talking about, you caught a YouTube video about some hair or some makeup. Like,

why don't you look into doing that? And so I went towards some cosatology schools and I fell in love. So I gave a notice of like two months out and I didn't know that like when you give a notice they could be like, actually in two weeks, you got to go.

And so that's what happened. I had planned for two months. I was like, hey, I could save up some money. I was a parent at this time, a single mom. I had a three-year-old. And I was just like, this is what I'm going to do. No, two weeks. And I was out.

And I was like, oh, shoot. And since I put a notice, you can't get unemployment. So it was just that's when I think all of my hustle, entrepreneurship, everything that had me just came out. Yeah. Yeah, when you have to, when your back is against the wall, the things that you didn't know were in you, they all come out. And it did. I got on welfare because I had to find a way to provide for my daughter.

And I moved back in with my mom, which was super uncomfortable because since like 18, I was out. It was literally like being a fish out of water. When I was in cosmetology school, people said, oh, you know, Sherry Ann, she's going to be in Hollywood. Like, we just know, we're going to see her name. And I think that's really important. I think words have so much power. And a lot of people say it, but I don't think enough people really believe it. And I've seen it.

That changed everything. Literally, I was in cosmetology school, went for this award, went for this competition. And in this competition, it was, they were only going to pick the top 100 in the country to go get this advanced training in Vegas. I worked with these photographers just acting around, hey, do you know anybody who were also in school at the Art Institute? didn't know that these photographers were on the short list, which is like the world's 250 up-and-coming, like, photographers that everyone's looking at. So literally after that, I got published in a vote while I was in cosmetology school. Five times.

That's great. That's really great because I think, you know, these are the things that we talk about all the time, right? Like the belief system. And a lot of times when it comes to entrepreneurship, like taking that risk betting on yourself and really doing it when you're going against the tide of what you've been talking. taught for so long, right? Just go to school, get to education, get the degree, get the job, become a business person as opposed to an entrepreneur. And, you know, even your trajectory is just like imagining things because in my life it was kind of the same thing, writing it down,

this is what I want to happen. And then when it began to manifest, and so I love, like, just hearing, like, this different perspective, right? One of the things I was really interested in is how did you, like, kind of figure the pathway out in terms of technology? Because that's the thing that that's always been interested to me is the people who take that leap of faith versus the people who come from the culture where it's the big fear that we talk about. It's like, oh, you can't, that's too hard, it's too complicated, it's too nerdy. But you didn't make this look kind of fly, so. Yeah. And on that point, what a lot of people I think don't understand about that journey is if you knew what was involved before you started, you would never have done it, right? And everybody's

ever been through it, knows that. And so, like, you know, it's not. You know, it's not. You know, it's not that bad things don't happen. It's just that once you jump into the water, you got to swim. I mean, just for me, that was, you know, I'm not, I wasn't a technical founder. And before I ever linked that with Taylor, I had to, I had to demonstrate that this thing could work on the internet. Yeah. So I used one of those like, you know, in 07, it was like the first versions of the Shopify. This was like something that some like Eastern European dudes had made. It was called like eastwit.com. You could make some little janky little... Yeah, it wasn't even a...

I didn't even know what Shopify was, but I was like, I found this thing, and it's like, oh, you can have a store. And I could just drag and drop and make it myself. And I just made five of them from five stylists. And it was completely janky, but it was the internet version of what I was doing out of the trunk of my car.

And it demonstrated that we could do it on the internet. And we just needed to do it better and with more stylists and with more infrastructure. but if I gave these stylists a tool, they would sell. I mean, I think probably, like, spirit-wise, I'm always been, like, an adventurer. And I came from, like, my family is, you know, they're, they're, like, hippies.

I don't even have my mom or my dad's last name. My mom and my dad, like, my dad, he was, like, super black power, and he was like, I don't want to give you the slave name. And so my mom took a word from Russian, and he took a word from Swahili, and they put them together and made it. my last name. And this was like my own last name. And it's like you're going to do you're going to be your own thing. And then I was also like in a single parent household. Like my father also got

swept up in the crack era. He was gone by the time I was five. My mother was working constantly. She's a doctor. And so she was like doing med school. I didn't have a lot of people telling me what to do and when to do it. I think when it came to this, this like tech thing. I had spent all this time in China. You know, the first hustle I got into over there was like, or like export hustle was I saw Jordans for sale in China. And I was like, oh shit. They were $20. Jordans. Right. Right. I talked to some guys out there who were in that game. I had met some people. They showed me how to ship them. They were like these little Chinese shippers and all, where are you going get them? Figured that out. Next thing you know, I wanted to move bigger things.

And so, like, I saw containers. You know, I was driving over this bridge in Hong Kong, and I seen these ships with these huge containers. I was like, I want to move one of those across the whole world. Like, and that was sort of my, no real big vision, just like I want to figure out how to do that. And got into, like, furniture and shipping stuff. Eventually that kind of led me to delivering couches myself in Miami

in old-ass buildings, like walking up, steps with shit. And I was like, this is not the most efficient way to do all this stuff. And there's got to be a better way. And that was like around 07. All this Facebook stuff was like popping up. And that's when Silicon Valley got on my radar. Even though I'm from here, I'm from Oakland. But I didn't know that the valley. That's a long ways from Oakland. Yeah. I didn't know that the valley was like right here. And I started learning on, you know, the internet. And I want to know how to do that stuff. I'm the sucker if I don't get in. Right, if I don't figure out the game.

But I did look at it like it was a whole different culture. Living in China, like the way I thought about all problems was as a cultural problem. I thought about all problems as a matter of how do I communicate with a group of people who have a different set of codes and cultures and language in order to get my point across and to understand what they need to be comfortable here and for us to cooperate. with each other. And so I looked at Silicon Valley like it was China. I looked at it like, I just got to figure out how people move out here. And, you know, the same principles of business that I was already doing of selling things, there's still the same principles of business,

but it's just a different language around it. Like, you got to learn what the cac and the LTV are. You know what I mean? Before it was just like, this is what I buy it for and this is how much I sell it for. And then, you know, if they come back, I'm going to make another $80 and make another $80. Describing that same thing in the language of the culture in which you're now trying to be a part of. So that's what I love. Just hearing you say that in that language, like, that's easily transferable to any culture. Because when you were talking earlier about looking at the big shipping containers running, you're like, I just want to move big things. I want to move big weight, right?

Same language of the streets. You know, how do you translate the culture and translate the language in the way where people who may feel like, okay, this is my only right? is hustling the streets can see another pathway, right? And like you saw it intuitively your experience in trying to kind of awaken your mind to like, yo, I just got to get in and figure it out. I got a lot of game from Oakland, but I got a lot of hustle from the Chinese. Like I learned a lot about the ethic of working from the Chinese. They don't have no excuses.

They don't care. There's no excuses. they like, no one feels like they were like entitled to anything. They're just like, this is where I'm at and I got to figure out how to make more. And they just try to figure out any way they can do that. That's so important because that mentality cuts through so much stuff that people get cut up in. Yeah. All right.

So Sherry Ann, like, how did you get on the Maven platform? Well, back when I was in cosmetology school, I had a friend and my friend told me about this guy who, who she would get hair from because she was also a hairdresser and she was also in school. So we rode to El Cerito, California. We pull up into a parking lot and I'm like, okay, where is he? She's like, oh, he's going to meet me over here. And I was like, what do you mean meet you over here? And this guy, this gentleman, rolls up in his car.

And I think it was like a little Honda or something. I don't know. It was like a little commuter car. It was a Toyota Corona. And he got out his car and he popped his trunk and he got some hair out. that's how I meant to shine. And so while I was in Cosmosology School,

he had launched the Maven platform online. And at the time he had where if you referred your friend, if you referred someone, and they went ahead and set up their Maven profile and they got a website, they got money. They got $150 for you setting it up.

So my friend was like, don't you want to get this? Because I'll get some money and, you know, they'll hook you up too. I was like, cool. So I started telling people too. So that's how you got the word out because cash incentive to people who don't have a lot of cash is amazing. And I was a student, a struggling student, okay? And I was like, yes. And so I got on the platform, started ordering hair.

And from there, I was called in because I was a local stylist from someone at his office. And at this point now they have grown and they actually had an office space now in Oakland. in downtown Oakland. Okay, they had me come in. We were doing like some focus groups. Yeah, a focus group. We were bringing some stylus in. My biggest concern at the time,

and even though I had the platform, I was still side-eye and I think as hairstylists, we're very suspicious. We're always very suspicious, you know, especially someone's trying to give you something. And that's the other thing that sold me on it. It was that we're going to do all the work. I am not the technical person, okay?

I'm with my hands. I can do some amazing things. But you want me getting on a computer? I'm going to freak out. And so they said, we'll set you up an entire website. It's going to have your name. Here's your link.

You just put it on your Instagram. And the people are going to buy hair. So it's like you have your own hair, but you don't have to worry about the inventory. You don't have to worry about the startup costs. We're going to do everything. All you got to do is just tell people to buy from there. And then we're going to kick you back 15% off every sale. I told you how to background in sales.

I was like, that's not a bad percentage. And then on top of that for every single. time you meet this certain sales goal, we're going to give you $100 in free credit towards hair. So I was like, so wait, I could take that $100 and buy the hair, but then sell it for like whatever I want. Then the number one thing, because I'd never heard of this, they had a 30-day money-back guarantee. On hair. On hair. Wow. That's crazy, man. Who does that? I don't know. I still don't know. The way I looked at it was, that's crazy that there is no guarantees on a product that costs so much money.

$250. Yeah. Like that does, like in other communities, that's not really the norm. But the way, like, the way our products have been sold for so long,

the people who have been selling them have had no incentive to, to be customer friendly. Korean-owned beauty supply stores. Supplied 90 plus percent of all of the black beauty products. So there's no community connection between. Not at all. You go in. You buy it.

Even if you, you have a problem, they go, final sale, says it on the receipt. And that's it and that's all. So this was the first time that I had heard of this type of interaction and someone like actually being like, no, we'll be accountable. Like, like, we would just want to make sure you're happy. And that was one of the, that was one of the fundamental things that like I saw also as like an innovation here was like not just adding all this technology, but also the technology can enable me to provide a customer experience and like customer service level that this my customer is not used to. Like that is, but to me it's just like a right.

Like you should, this is just a right. So take us through the concept of the business. So honestly, it's really why did I stick with Mavon? Because I started all kind of things to just make money and hustle. Maven became different for me because it actually had more purpose to it. To me, I was just like as an entrepreneur and as a hustle and I looked at the stylists, like they are also entrepreneurs. And they're being blocked out of a category because there's no infrastructure for them to get into it. And the distributors who supply those stores who own these brands, they wouldn't even sell to you if you went to them and said, I want to carry your brands in my hair salon.

So all of the black hair salons were devoid of any research. retail. You couldn't, you didn't buy products in the salon. So all the dollars for all the retail were flowing out of the community and the stylists and the salons weren't able to capture any of that value, which typically in like mainstream hair salons, that can be like 40% of your, of the revenue that flows through that salon could be from retail and selling products. So I didn't like that. And then I saw that there could be a technological solution that leveraged the power that the hairstylist had. Because what I also saw was these stylists. We got all these customers sitting there.

That's amazing. They got a relationship with them. If I just give them this tool, maybe they can distribute these products. And so that's what I saw. And then that's what I kind of set out to build. I called it Maven because the word Maven, The word Maven, M-A-V-E-N, it means an expert, someone who's skilled in their craft or an expert. And that's the way that I looked at the hairstylists, that they're actually at the center of influencing this entire beauty world and the products that people buy and what styles they get, everything.

They're at the center of it. I could build a tool that put them back in the center of it. So, you know, Chicago, Indiana, Detroit, you know, where they had like hair wars and all those crazy things popping. They're really serious about it. So somebody's in the salon and they're like hearing about it. Yeah. Like what does it take to transition them from just the old model that doesn't really honor them

into getting on the platform? It was actually really, really simple. If you heard about Maven, you could, you know, come to our website and just put your phone number in there. Somebody would call you and over the phone, collect your information and you'd be on the phone for about 10 minutes. And by the time you're off the phone, you would have a website, fully functional website for your customers to come to and buy. And when they bought, that product would ship out that same day, customer would get it in about two to three business days and you would get a commission. So it was actually really, really simple.

And we signed up a lot, a lot of hairstylists. Easy sale. And is that how it still works now? What's the been iterations of it? Oh, man. Over the past three years, there's been a flood of cheap hair that has come from China. So the old brands that were the Korean brands sold through the beauty supply stores, that they basically owned the whole market.

They bought all their hair from these Chinese manufacturers. Ali Baba came along, which is like the Amazon of China. And those factories now had a way to get online and start selling products all over the world and even direct to consumer. And so you have both direct to consumer factories selling directly from China to customers here. And you've got factories just selling supply of hair to entrepreneurs here who want to start small hair companies. And so there's been an explosion of cheap hair here, which started to threaten our business model because now prices are like coming down. And that started to make it harder for our stylist to sell. So what we did was completely transform our business. We basically said, okay, if this is the world,

if hair margins are going to go down to what do we need to do to survive? What do we have that no one else has and how can we use that to compete and survive. And so what we did was, again, going back to the power that was in our community is our hairstylist. That was the asset. That's the thing that Maven had built up over the past four and a half years. We partnered with the stylist in a different way and we bundled the hair and the service together for one price. And then we went to stylus and said, I'm going to fill your book of business with new clients. So we shifted the model to customer buys now directly from Maven. If they buy from us at the same cost, they don't have to pay for service. They can go put in their zip code, find any Stylist, Maven Stilist in their area, book that

stylist, and Maven will pay for the service directly to the stylist, but we work out a special rate with our stylist, and so we're still able to make some money. It's a brand new, model. The industry doesn't even, there is no model for it. And we've delivered like three extra value now to customers. The stylists now that are on this platform are now making five times the amount of money that we used to pay out to stylists. And now we're, now we're competitive with Ali Express. They can't do what we're doing. They don't have the stylus network. Amazon has a stylist network of black stylists, you know, across America. Now you're, you're providing a different kind of service. Well, what it also does is what we basically said, there's this other market here

right next to it that's three times bigger than even this product. And we can sell these services, right? And there's so much value that needs to be created on that side and things we can help to fix on that side. We're going to use the product that we've been selling to leverage our way into that side. But now we can do bookings. We can do, you know, we can, you know, we can do the credit card processing for all the transactions that go through there. We can fill these stylists book of business, like fill their seats with with customers. We can add all the menu of services that they provide, not just weave services. That's, you know, that's coming next.

Yeah, I was just about to ask about that. Considering I got locks and I'm like, I travel a lot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like somebody to take care of my hair. And there's a phone app that you can use. So we actually don't, we don't even have a mobile app.

It's always just been web-based. It's a website. Everything's built very for, like, mobile friendly. Yeah. You know, but also, you know, like, with this technology thing, everyone always thinks they got to go make an app. Right? Like, I got to make it really super technological.

No, like, you need, just try to find the minimum amount of technology you need to just solve a very specific problem. And you don't have to overdo it. So there never was a specific reason you need. needed an app for this so we didn't build one. I think a lot of people get that, you need to refer people into it from all kinds of sources. That actually technically worked better for you with a web-based service. Yeah, exactly. And that can have a lot of friction. So, Sherriane, when you made that leap with Maven, like, how did that impact your business?

Well, I think, I think the first thing for any hustle is you got to have the passion behind it, right? That's, that's number one. When I went in for them to give us a survey and asked us questions afterwards, Deshaun came in and just told us about it and told us more about the company and why he created it and what his vision was. And at the time, I kind of turned my nose up and other styles that were there did too because Maven is not a platform that is only for professional stylists. Maven is a platform that's for all stylists. And as a professional and as someone that took out school loans, I was like, why do I want to be on the platform? with other people who didn't do all the things that I did.

I felt like I should be on a different platform. And when Deshaun broke down that, you know, it's bigger than just being a professional. This is about giving back to the community. This is about people who are, you know, in small cities somewhere in Indiana and are doing hair in their kitchen. But mind you, that's what our grandmothers used to do was they were doing hair in their kitchen.

And so who are we to put ourselves, you know, on this platform saying, I know I'm not them because that's who I come from. And so as soon as you put it like that, I was like, I want to be a part of whatever you're doing. And so since then, I've worked as a Maven stylist. I've helped with YouTube videos. I've helped with how-toes. This is something that'll be rated. Yeah.

And, you know, they want to make sure that the customer is going to be getting a quality and consistent service. But not only just for hair weaving services. It'll also be for cut. It'll also be for color. It'll also be for natural hair. It still, you know, it gets me a little excited because I'll get a text message just going, you just got paid.

I'll be like, what? Because people just go to your site and they just can buy. You don't have to do anything. It's way easier than doing somebody's hair. You just get a notification. Ding, you got paid. And so since then, my trajectory completely took off. Now I work in Hollywood.

I've worked on the last two seasons of HBO and Instagram. I'm working on a new show called Little Fires Everywhere that stars Carrie Washington and Reese Witherspoon. And every time I get a chance and I need some hair, I still go back to Maven because the hair is good. They're always on top of everything. And that's really hard to find, especially like in a hair company. And I think it's, I honestly would have thought before and out that would have been too much

to ask for. It's also something that will be beneficial to me because, again, I don't want to deal with the technical side. but it's so important to have that technical component. I don't care if you don't want to deal with it. You get with another company that'll do the work for you and you're still able to reap the benefits. Sometimes some people get caught up in the,

well, how much am I going to get? What am I getting back for my service? The truth is that if you are a stylist and you are not fully booked, then you need to be on it. I have friends who work in L.A. and travel, and they have clients that pay a lot of money for hair, right, to get their hair done. Yet they're still taking part-time gigs.

You know, they're like, oh, but it's going to be $30 an hour. I'm like, why are you going somewhere for $30 an hour when you can go in the salon and you're telling me they're going to give you, you know, anywhere from $100 to $300 for this one client, it's only going to take you two to three hours. The math's not working out. And so we have to change our mindset because sometimes some of us hustlers, especially as a cosmetologists, we're so used to having to do things and, you know, constantly be having our hands in something that sometimes we don't see opportunities that are right in front of our

face. So one of the things I was thinking about is just like, you know, going back to earlier conversation about how hair, you know, the hair industry itself, you know, from the mom and pops in the house. So how do people sign up and make payments and get paid? Like if they don't have credit cards or debit cards, how does that look like? That's a really interesting question because This was one of the unforeseen challenges that we had after getting into this business was the first version of how we paid people was by check. And we found out very fast that when we try to go pay people by PayPal or pay them, you know, ACH or something, that like half of the stylists didn't have bank accounts. and then that opened up this whole other world of the unbanked. Some enormous percentage of the population doesn't have bank accounts.

So we would send out checks and they get lost in the mail or there's all over the country. We would get Silas calling us saying, I brought my check into a bank and they wouldn't let me cash it. And we're talking like checks like 15 bucks or something like that, but they wouldn't even let them cash a $15 check. They had to go to a check cashing place, which they charged, you know, they charge like 15% or something of the check or whatever it is. In the past couple of years, we created a solution actually in partnership with Green Dot. So there the technical infrastructure for how this payment system works, but we can now pay to any routing number. So you don't have to have a bank account, but if you have like a prepay card and it's got those 16 digits on it, we can drop money on that thing

and we can drop it instantaneously. For the new thing that we have we sell the hair and you get free service with it, Instapay is now triggered through a QR code. So after you buy the hair and you book your stylist,

we text you a QR code. When you go into the salon, the stylist just scans your QR code with her phone and she's instantaneously paid to her, either her bank account or her prepaid card. Three things are.

popped out to me when you were talking, the importance of being able to serve a community that is underserved and then quality. Because from a hustling perspective, you know, a lot of times you just get what you can when you're in that mindset of being easily distracted and in different directions. And then the third thing was partnership. And so like, do you intuitively think of it from those three lenses or did it just something that organically shows up in the way that you do business? You know, I had a mentor before. His name was Mike Bush. and he was an executive out here in Oakland. He gave me some advice one time.

He said, before I had started, maybe. And he was like, Deshaun, you're not going to make any money until you stop trying to make money and think about how you can make other people money. And it changed the way I thought about my relationships with people. And what you want to try to do is be valuable to people, not extract value from people. If you are valuable to society, the money flows to where the value is, where the value

creator is. If the other person doesn't win, this thing ain't going to last. It ain't going to work if we both don't win. It won't be sustainable. So partnership is always like how I look at it. You know, and like the new model that we've created, what is the right number so that this works for stylists and what's the number that works so that it works for customers? And then honestly, the number that we get to keep at Maven is the last number that I think about.

But it starts with, let me make my partner's money. Well, this is definitely showing up in a way that Sherry Ann expressed it. When I was in cosmetology school, they were like, okay, you guys are cosmetologists. So you guys get to pick whatever name you want. You can have a Cosmo name. And I was like, I can be someone else. What? I never thought about that ever in life.

I've always been Sherida. My name is Sherida Ann, but I go by Sherry Ann, and I didn't know that was my grandmother's middle name. I just knew she was Sherry. I didn't know she was Sherry Ann. And so it just came out of me. I don't even know where it came from, where I thought I don't.

Went on through cosmetology school. Like I said, back was against the wall, had to make it happen. Did great, by the grace of God. And I graduated, and it was all the tears, because for the first time in life, I had done something where the most important thing of all of it was me. It wasn't about, when I worked with a company, it was about always about like what you can

do for that company. Can you fit in this box? You always have to fit in a box. And for the first time in life, it was like, I didn't have to fit in anyone's box. And I could create my own box. Maybe it's not a box. Maybe it's a star shape. And so what I learned at my graduation was my mom told me that before my grandma passed, she passed

of cancer. while she had cancer she didn't tell any of us she went to cosmetology school and she got her cosmetology license she went and took the state board test

I went back and taught cosmetology school it is hard for people to pass that test and we got it yes so we got her cosmetology license post humorously in the mail and that's how we found out what she wanted

Sherry Ann I think she wanted to be able to a business with my mom was her dream. And so my beauty studio is with my mom. And I'm Sherry Ann. And just like my grandma did it through terminal cancer, you can do whatever you want. You pick your shape and you live in your truth. And you hustle. And that's how we're going to do it.

Drop the mic from Sherry Ann. Salute.