AI transcript
0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:15 – All right, welcome to the Hustler’s Guide to Tech
0:00:19 where people who have the passion, the heart,
0:00:22 the desire and the talent to go do it
0:00:26 and make their dreams happen, but just need a connect,
0:00:27 this is a show for you.
0:00:32 And today we are joined by Deshawn,
0:00:37 founder and CEO of Maven, the king of the hair business.
0:00:40 – He ain’t got a hair business.
0:00:42 That’s heavy weight right there.
0:00:42 – Bundle God.
0:00:45 – Yeah, that’s the Bundle God, I like that.
0:00:47 And then we got Sherry here, what’s up Sherry?
0:00:52 – Our hustler who has hustled Deshawn’s platform, Maven.
0:00:53 – That’s definitely.
0:00:56 – And then I’m joined by my co-host, Shakasen Gore.
0:00:57 – What up, though?
0:01:01 – Who, as you frequent listeners know,
0:01:04 came out of the joint, hustled his way selling books
0:01:08 that he wrote himself and published himself out of his car,
0:01:10 and is now best selling author
0:01:15 and big time Hollywood screenwriter.
0:01:16 So let’s go.
0:01:19 – Bundle God, I like that, man, it’s hot, it’s hot.
0:01:19 How you come up with that?
0:01:22 – Somebody said that to me a few weeks ago.
0:01:23 – I like it though.
0:01:24 – It might, maybe it’ll stick.
0:01:25 – I just want to be clear with the audience,
0:01:27 like exactly what a bundle is.
0:01:28 ‘Cause like in the street culture, bundles mean
0:01:29 something totally different,
0:01:31 and I don’t want them to be confused.
0:01:32 – Yeah, I know that.
0:01:34 – I just want to be real clear about, you know,
0:01:35 what a bundle is.
0:01:36 – Bundle God.
0:01:38 – I guess bundle got a whole new meaning.
0:01:39 (laughing)
0:01:42 – So a bundle is a weft of hair,
0:01:45 and what that looks like is if you imagined
0:01:49 a long thick string with hair draping down from it,
0:01:51 that would be a bundle.
0:01:53 – So how many bundles does it take
0:01:55 to do like a full hairstyle?
0:01:57 Like the average.
0:01:58 – Like the big Beyonce hair.
0:02:01 – See, come on, that’s what I was looking for.
0:02:02 – The big joint, right.
0:02:05 – It depends on, you know, how glamorous you want to be.
0:02:07 For a regular install, it’s going to be
0:02:09 probably two to three bundles,
0:02:11 but for a Beyonce install,
0:02:14 it’s probably going to be closer to four or five.
0:02:16 – And then how much do bundles cost per bundle?
0:02:18 Like, yeah, what’s the bundle cost?
0:02:21 – The super, super cheap ones can be like 30 bucks
0:02:24 or 35 bucks for like super cheap,
0:02:28 and then they can go upwards to like $250 a bundle.
0:02:29 – So 30 to $200.
0:02:30 – Yeah, but a Maven bundle.
0:02:35 – I think they’re about 80 bucks a bundle right now.
0:02:36 There’s a lot of lengths.
0:02:37 – It just depends.
0:02:38 – And that changes the price,
0:02:41 but maybe on average 80 or so, you know,
0:02:43 but you’re probably going to, if you buy three bundles,
0:02:47 you’re probably going to walk out of there paying 250.
0:02:49 – So quick question about the bundle.
0:02:50 So I got like four sisters, right?
0:02:53 So I grew up with like a lot of hair conversations
0:02:57 and it’s always popping on social media, you know,
0:02:59 the new styles.
0:02:59 Interestingly enough,
0:03:02 they got this new challenge called the DMX challenge.
0:03:03 And then you see an all the sisters
0:03:05 with all the different hairstyles,
0:03:06 which kind of fly.
0:03:10 So like, what was your entry point into the bundle game, man?
0:03:12 – I mean, you know, okay,
0:03:14 so I never ever would have thought
0:03:18 that I was going to be selling bundles.
0:03:20 I had hairstylists in my family
0:03:23 and I saw them doing hair growing up.
0:03:24 So I understood,
0:03:28 I understood the relationship between stylist, customers,
0:03:30 you know, black women and their hair.
0:03:32 I understood culturally what that was.
0:03:34 I never thought I was going to be a part of it at all.
0:03:38 I ended up on the other side of the bundle game,
0:03:42 which was in China, where they were being manufactured.
0:03:44 And I lived in China for almost two years.
0:03:46 – Now you lived in China to learn the hair game?
0:03:48 – No, no, no, I moved to China.
0:03:51 So I moved to China after college.
0:03:53 I just wanted to travel.
0:03:57 And I had a mentor at the time in college
0:03:59 who she ran the international studies department.
0:04:01 But I was like, oh, three.
0:04:03 This is before everybody was really like,
0:04:05 like China was like in the news, in the news, in the news.
0:04:09 She was like, no, China is about to do something.
0:04:11 Go over there, it might be some opportunities.
0:04:12 – So what college were you coming out of?
0:04:15 – I went to Hampton University, HPCU.
0:04:18 And HPCU is a historically black college university.
0:04:20 And I was a sociology major.
0:04:21 I mean, I never actually thought of myself
0:04:23 as a business person.
0:04:27 I didn’t understand that I was a business person until later.
0:04:29 – Yeah, well, it’s entrepreneur and business person
0:04:30 are two different things.
0:04:34 A businessman could be anybody who like puts on a suit
0:04:36 and goes, works for a company.
0:04:37 And an entrepreneur is somebody
0:04:40 who tries to make something from nothing.
0:04:42 That’s why GZ’s new album is so relevant.
0:04:43 Entrepreneur.
0:04:46 I mean, I always thought of the word business.
0:04:49 Like as a young person, I thought of it as like
0:04:52 this stuffy thing with like a briefcase and a building.
0:04:54 And then I just realized, wait,
0:04:56 I like to create my own vision.
0:04:58 And I like to do things how I want to do them.
0:05:00 And that’s what an entrepreneur is going to do
0:05:01 is just find the resources around them
0:05:04 to do the things the way he or she wants to do them.
0:05:06 So I got to China.
0:05:11 I didn’t know anybody did speak a word of Mandarin
0:05:14 and they stuck me in the school teaching English.
0:05:17 I started playing hangman with them.
0:05:20 So I just found all kinds of ways to get them to talk.
0:05:23 But anyway, when you get to China,
0:05:26 the first thing that hits you is like, oh shit,
0:05:28 every single person here is hustling.
0:05:33 It’s the most hustling, enterprising place on planet earth.
0:05:37 Every single person around you is hustling something.
0:05:42 And China being like the manufacturing center of the world,
0:05:45 everybody was selling some sort of product.
0:05:48 Like everyone had some sort of relationship
0:05:50 to supply chain somewhere.
0:05:53 So interestingly enough, though, the first hustle
0:05:57 that I had when I got to China was not exporting stuff.
0:05:59 It was selling English.
0:06:02 So that’s a great way to really kind of set up
0:06:04 how you make the pivot.
0:06:05 I want to talk a little bit to Sherry,
0:06:07 go and get her perspective of her hustle
0:06:10 and just how you became an entrepreneur.
0:06:11 Like, what was that pathway in?
0:06:12 What did you grow up at?
0:06:14 I actually grew up between Berkeley and Oakland.
0:06:15 OK.
0:06:17 All right, yeah, yeah, that’s my hometown.
0:06:18 Hell, hey.
0:06:21 Yeah, yeah, like, where abouts Berkeley and Oakland?
0:06:23 South Berkeley, South Berkeley.
0:06:25 I was on Russell Street and off Fairview.
0:06:27 OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, I went to Berkeley High.
0:06:28 I went to Berkeley High.
0:06:29 Hey, hello, Jackie.
0:06:31 Hey.
0:06:33 OK.
0:06:35 And then I was in East Oakland.
0:06:36 So that’s where I came from.
0:06:38 I mean, Oakland is a hustling town.
0:06:38 I know they get 40 water up there.
0:06:40 Oh, Oakland most definitely is.
0:06:44 I was born to a mom who she was with my dad,
0:06:46 but then he got caught up in the crack era
0:06:51 and went to jail and dealing with having that addiction
0:06:52 for the rest of his life.
0:06:54 I think still currently even battling cancer right now.
0:06:55 Yeah, man.
0:06:56 It’s bad.
0:06:59 So she was raising four of us by herself.
0:07:05 And so my mom, a single mom with four children, is a hustler.
0:07:07 And I had three older brothers and then me.
0:07:11 And so three black boys in the Bay, she was a hustler.
0:07:13 She had to be.
0:07:15 You got to be up at the school making sure
0:07:17 that they’re not tracking your kid,
0:07:19 that they’re putting them in the right classes.
0:07:22 And she was doing all those things and would do all that,
0:07:25 have a job, and still come home and make dinner.
0:07:28 On top of that, my grandmother, same thing, was a hustler.
0:07:30 But that’s kind of what I was born into,
0:07:33 how I got into cosmetology.
0:07:35 When I was 10 years old, my mom decided
0:07:39 to go to school to become a manicurist.
0:07:42 And the reason why she did this was because it was a way
0:07:44 that she could have a business, but be
0:07:47 able to dictate her own hours and still be able to raise
0:07:48 all her kids.
0:07:49 Yep, yep, yeah.
0:07:51 And so I was going to the school with her
0:07:52 and watching the people do hair.
0:07:54 And I was like, that’s really cool.
0:07:58 And when she did she become a manicurist out of the house
0:07:59 or she had her own chopper?
0:08:03 So she went to school, I helped her study for her test.
0:08:06 She passed actually her licenses on my birthday every year.
0:08:08 She did start doing that over her house.
0:08:11 And then pivoted that, got a business.
0:08:14 Now she’s been doing it for over 20 years.
0:08:18 And now she’s like five stars on Yelp.
0:08:19 She has all these companies coming to her.
0:08:21 She’s like the number one person, I think,
0:08:23 in California for natural nail care.
0:08:25 She decided that she didn’t like acrylic
0:08:27 or the harsh chemicals.
0:08:30 But how I got into doing hair was
0:08:32 I was actually jumping around.
0:08:34 I was in college and I didn’t finish.
0:08:38 And then I got into hotel management on accident.
0:08:39 And I was like 20.
0:08:41 And there was this emergency that happened.
0:08:43 And maybe just being the youngest and having brothers,
0:08:45 I don’t know, I can think really quick on my feet.
0:08:48 And so they saw my skills and how I handled this situation.
0:08:52 So with so much just poise and just like an expert.
0:08:53 And they’re like, so you want to be
0:08:55 an assistant operations manager, you know?
0:08:56 You got this position.
0:08:57 You want to come in.
0:08:59 I was like, what, a salary?
0:09:00 Oh, yeah.
0:09:05 So I got into that, did sales with Comcast.
0:09:07 Then got back into management.
0:09:10 And then I was managing multiple properties.
0:09:14 And it seems like a good job.
0:09:16 But I wasn’t happy.
0:09:18 For the first time in my life, I
0:09:22 found myself starting to deal with some anxiety.
0:09:24 And I had my first little, I don’t know,
0:09:27 was a panic attack or anxiety attack.
0:09:29 And so I went to the doctor and they’re like, oh, yeah.
0:09:31 That was a little anxiety attack, little panic attack.
0:09:33 And I was like, what?
0:09:34 The person I was dating at the time,
0:09:36 keep people around you that love the crap out of you.
0:09:38 Because they sometimes pay more attention to you
0:09:41 than you pay attention to yourself.
0:09:43 And so this person was like, you know,
0:09:45 every time you get off work, you’re talking about,
0:09:48 you caught a YouTube video about some hair or some makeup.
0:09:51 Like, why don’t you look into doing that?
0:09:54 And so I went towards some cosmetology schools.
0:09:57 And I fell in love.
0:10:00 So I gave a notice of like two months out.
0:10:02 And I didn’t know that, like, when you give a notice,
0:10:04 they could be like, actually, in two weeks, you got to go.
0:10:06 And so that’s what happened.
0:10:07 I had planned for two months.
0:10:09 I was like, hey, I could save up some money.
0:10:11 I was a parent at this time, a single mom.
0:10:13 I had a three-year-old.
0:10:16 And I was just like, this is what I’m going to do.
0:10:18 No, two weeks.
0:10:19 And I was out.
0:10:20 And I was like, oh, shoot.
0:10:21 And then since I put in a notice,
0:10:23 you can’t get unemployment.
0:10:29 So it was just, that’s when I think all of my hustle,
0:10:33 entrepreneurship, everything that had me just came out.
0:10:37 Yeah, when you have to, when your back is against the wall,
0:10:39 the things that you didn’t know were in you,
0:10:40 they all come out.
0:10:41 And it did.
0:10:44 I got on welfare, because I had to find a way
0:10:46 to provide for my daughter.
0:10:49 And I moved back in with my mom, which was super uncomfortable.
0:10:51 Because since, like, ’18, I was out.
0:10:54 It was literally, like, being a fish out of water.
0:10:56 When I was in Cosmetology School, people said, oh, you know,
0:10:58 Sherri-Ann, she’s going to be in Hollywood.
0:11:00 Like, we just know we’re going to see her name.
0:11:02 And I think that’s really important.
0:11:03 I think words have so much power.
0:11:07 And a lot of people say it, but I don’t think enough people
0:11:08 really believe it.
0:11:10 And I’ve seen it.
0:11:11 That changed everything.
0:11:13 Literally, I was in Cosmetology School,
0:11:16 went for this award, went for this competition.
0:11:18 And in this competition, it was, they were only
0:11:19 going to pick the top 100 in the country
0:11:21 to go get this advanced training in Vegas.
0:11:25 I worked with these photographers, just
0:11:27 axing around, hey, do you know anybody who were also
0:11:30 in school at the Art Institute?
0:11:32 Didn’t know that these photographers were
0:11:35 on the shortlist, which is, like, the world’s 250
0:11:38 up-and-coming photographers that everyone’s looking at.
0:11:42 So literally, after that, I got published in a vote
0:11:45 while I was in Cosmetology School, five times.
0:11:46 That’s dope.
0:11:48 That’s really great, because I think these are the things
0:11:50 we talk about all the time, right?
0:11:51 Like the belief system.
0:11:54 And a lot of times when it comes to entrepreneurship,
0:11:56 like taking that risk betting on yourself
0:11:59 and really doing it when you’re going against the title,
0:12:00 what you’ve been taught for so long, right?
0:12:03 Just go to school, get the education, get the degree,
0:12:05 get the job, become a business person as opposed
0:12:06 to entrepreneur.
0:12:10 And even your trajectory is just like imagining things.
0:12:12 Because in my life, it was kind of the same thing.
0:12:14 Writing it down is what I want to happen.
0:12:16 And then when it began to manifest.
0:12:21 And so I love just hearing this different perspective, right?
0:12:23 One of the things I was really interested in
0:12:26 is how did you kind of figure the pathway out
0:12:28 in terms of technology?
0:12:30 Because that’s the thing that’s always been interesting to me
0:12:32 is the people who take that leap of faith
0:12:35 versus the people who come from the culture where it’s
0:12:36 the big fear that we talk about.
0:12:37 It’s like, oh, you can’t.
0:12:38 That’s too hard.
0:12:39 It’s too complicated.
0:12:40 It’s too nerdy.
0:12:43 But you didn’t make this look kind of flat, so talk about it.
0:12:45 And on that point, what a lot of people, I think,
0:12:47 don’t understand about that journey
0:12:50 is if you knew what was involved before you started,
0:12:52 you would never have done it.
0:12:55 And everybody who’s ever been through it knows that.
0:12:55 Bars.
0:13:00 And so it’s not that bad things don’t happen.
0:13:04 It’s just that once you jump into the water, you’ve got to swim.
0:13:07 I mean, just for me, that was–
0:13:10 I wasn’t a technical founder.
0:13:11 And before I ever linked that with Taylor,
0:13:14 I had to demonstrate that this thing could
0:13:16 work on the internet.
0:13:19 So I used one of those like–
0:13:22 in ’07, it was like the first versions of the Shopify.
0:13:25 This was like something that some Eastern European dudes
0:13:25 had made.
0:13:27 It was called eastwit.com.
0:13:29 You could make some little janky little–
0:13:30 Yeah, Macau Shopify.
0:13:31 Yeah, it wasn’t even–
0:13:33 I didn’t even know what Shopify was,
0:13:34 but I was like, I found this thing.
0:13:37 And it’s like, oh, you can have a store.
0:13:39 And I could just drag and drop and make it myself.
0:13:42 And I just made five of them from five stylists.
0:13:44 And it was completely janky.
0:13:47 But it was the internet version of what
0:13:49 I was doing out the trunk of my car.
0:13:53 And it demonstrated that we could do it on the internet.
0:13:56 And we just needed to do it better and with more stylists
0:13:57 and with more infrastructure.
0:14:01 But if I gave these stylists a tool, they would sell.
0:14:04 I mean, I think probably like spirit-wise,
0:14:07 I’ve always been like an adventurer.
0:14:08 And I came from like–
0:14:11 my family is–
0:14:12 they’re like hippies.
0:14:15 I don’t even have my mom or my dad’s last name.
0:14:17 My mom and my dad–
0:14:19 like my dad, he was like super black power.
0:14:21 And he was like, I don’t want to give you the slave name.
0:14:24 And so my mom took a word from Russian.
0:14:26 And he took a word from Swahili.
0:14:28 And they put them together and made my last name.
0:14:30 And so it’s like my own last name.
0:14:33 And it’s like, you’re going to be your own thing.
0:14:36 And then I was also like in a single parent household.
0:14:39 Like my father also got swept up in the crack era.
0:14:41 He was gone by the time I was five.
0:14:43 My mother was working constantly.
0:14:44 She’s a doctor.
0:14:46 And so she was like doing med school.
0:14:48 I didn’t have a lot of people telling me what to do
0:14:49 and when to do it.
0:14:54 I think when it came to this tech thing,
0:14:57 I had spent all this time in China.
0:15:01 You know, the first hustle I got into over there was like–
0:15:05 or like export hustle was I saw Jordans for sale in China.
0:15:08 And I was like, oh, shit.
0:15:10 They were $20.
0:15:12 Jordans, right?
0:15:15 I talked to some guys out there who were in that game.
0:15:17 I had met some people.
0:15:19 They showed me how to ship them.
0:15:21 They were like these little Chinese shippers
0:15:23 and all the where you go and get them and figure that out.
0:15:26 Next thing you know, I wanted to move bigger things.
0:15:30 And so like I saw containers.
0:15:32 You know, I was driving over this bridge in Hong Kong
0:15:34 and I seen these ships with these huge containers.
0:15:37 I was like, I want to move one of those across the whole world.
0:15:41 Like, and that was sort of my, no real big vision.
0:15:43 Just like, I want to figure out how to do that.
0:15:48 And got into like furniture and shipping stuff.
0:15:52 Eventually, that kind of led me to delivering couches myself
0:15:56 in Miami in old-ass buildings, like walking up steps with shit.
0:15:59 And I was like, this is not the most efficient way
0:16:00 to do all this stuff.
0:16:02 And there’s got to be a better way.
0:16:06 And that was like around ’07.
0:16:08 All this Facebook stuff was like popping up.
0:16:11 And that’s when Silicon Valley got on my radar.
0:16:13 Even though I’m from here, I’m from Oakland.
0:16:19 But I didn’t know that the valley was like right here.
0:16:22 And I started learning, you know, the internet.
0:16:24 And I want to know how to do that stuff.
0:16:26 I’m the sucker if I don’t get in, right?
0:16:28 If I don’t figure out the game.
0:16:31 But I did look at it like it was a whole different culture.
0:16:35 Living in China, like the way I thought about all problems
0:16:38 was as a cultural problem.
0:16:42 I thought about all problems as a matter of how do I communicate
0:16:46 with a group of people who have a different set of codes
0:16:50 and cultures and language in order to get my point across
0:16:54 and to understand what they need to be comfortable here
0:16:57 and for us to cooperate with each other.
0:17:00 And so I looked at Silicon Valley like it was China.
0:17:02 I looked at it like I just got to figure out
0:17:03 how people move out here.
0:17:07 And, you know, the same principles of business
0:17:10 that I was already doing of selling things.
0:17:12 There’s still the same principles of business,
0:17:14 but there’s just a different language around it.
0:17:18 Like you got to learn what the CAC and the LTV are.
0:17:19 You know what I mean?
0:17:20 Before it was just like this is what I buy for.
0:17:22 And this is how much I sell it for.
0:17:23 And then, you know, if they come back,
0:17:26 I’m going to make another $80 and make another $80.
0:17:29 Describing that same thing in the language of the culture
0:17:31 in which you’re now trying to be a part of.
0:17:33 So that’s what I love.
0:17:35 Just hear you say that in that language,
0:17:39 like that’s easily transferable to any culture.
0:17:40 Because when you were talking earlier
0:17:43 about looking at the big shipping containers, right?
0:17:45 And you’re like, I just want to move big things.
0:17:47 I want to move big weight, right?
0:17:48 Same language of the streets.
0:17:51 You know, how do you translate the culture
0:17:52 and translate the language in a way
0:17:54 where people who may feel like, OK,
0:17:57 this is my only route is hustling in the streets
0:17:59 can see another pathway, right?
0:18:01 And like you saw it intuitively, your experience
0:18:03 in China kind of awakens your mind to like,
0:18:06 yo, I just got to get in and figure it out.
0:18:08 I got a lot of game from Oakland,
0:18:12 but I got a lot of hustle from the Chinese.
0:18:17 Like I learned a lot about the ethic of working
0:18:20 from the Chinese.
0:18:22 They don’t have no excuses.
0:18:23 They don’t care.
0:18:24 There’s no excuses.
0:18:28 They like no one feels like they were like entitled to anything.
0:18:30 They’re just like, this is where I’m at
0:18:32 and I got to figure out how to make more.
0:18:35 And they just try to figure out any way they can do that.
0:18:37 That’s so important because that mentality
0:18:40 cuts through so much stuff that people get caught up in.
0:18:42 Culture, yeah.
0:18:44 All right, so Sherri Ann, like how’d you get
0:18:46 on the Maven platform?
0:18:49 Well, back when I was in cosmetology school,
0:18:53 I had a friend and my friend told me about this guy
0:18:55 who she would get hair from
0:18:57 because she was also a hairdresser.
0:18:59 And she was also in school.
0:19:03 So we rode to El Cerrito, California.
0:19:07 We pull up into a parking lot and I’m like, OK, where is he?
0:19:08 She’s like, oh, he’s going to meet me over here.
0:19:11 And I was like, what do you mean, meet you over here?
0:19:14 And this guy, this gentleman, rolls up in his car.
0:19:16 And I think it was like a little Honda or something.
0:19:17 I don’t know, it’s like a little commuter car.
0:19:18 It was a Toyota Corolla.
0:19:21 And he got out his car and he popped his trunk
0:19:23 and he got some hair out.
0:19:25 That’s how it meant to shine.
0:19:29 And so while I was in cosmetology school,
0:19:32 he had launched the Maven platform online.
0:19:35 And at the time he had to wear, if you referred your friend,
0:19:39 if you referred someone and they went ahead
0:19:44 and set up their Maven profile and they got a website,
0:19:48 they got money, they got $150 for you setting it up.
0:19:50 So my friend was like, don’t you want to get this?
0:19:52 I’ll get some money and, you know, they’ll hook you up too.
0:19:53 I was like, cool.
0:19:54 So I started telling people too.
0:19:55 So that’s how he got the word out.
0:20:00 ‘Cause cash incentive to people who don’t have a lot of cash
0:20:00 is amazing.
0:20:03 And I was a student, a struggling student, okay?
0:20:04 And I was like, yes.
0:20:07 And so I got on the platform, started ordering hair.
0:20:11 And from there, I was called in
0:20:15 because I was a local stylist from someone at his office.
0:20:19 And at this point now they have grown
0:20:22 and they actually had an office space now in Oakland,
0:20:24 in downtown Oakland.
0:20:25 They had me come in.
0:20:26 We were doing like some focus groups.
0:20:29 I think at the time we were bringing some stylists in.
0:20:32 My biggest concern at the time,
0:20:34 and even though I had the platform, I was still side eyeing.
0:20:37 I think as hair stylists, we’re very suspicious.
0:20:39 We’re always very suspicious, you know,
0:20:41 especially someone’s trying to give you something.
0:20:43 And that’s the other thing that sold me on it.
0:20:45 It was that we’re going to do all the work.
0:20:47 I am not the technical person, okay?
0:20:49 I’m with my hands, I can do some amazing things.
0:20:51 But you want me to get on a computer, I’m going to freak out.
0:20:54 And so they said, we’ll set you up an entire website.
0:20:56 It’s going to have your name, here’s your link.
0:20:58 You just put it on your Instagram.
0:21:01 And the people are going to buy hair.
0:21:03 So it’s like, you have your own hair,
0:21:06 but you don’t have to worry about the inventory.
0:21:08 You don’t have to worry about the startup costs.
0:21:10 We’re going to do everything.
0:21:12 All you got to do is just tell people to buy from there.
0:21:16 And then we’re going to kick you back 15% off every sale.
0:21:17 I told you how to background the sales.
0:21:18 I was like, that’s not a bad percentage.
0:21:21 And then on top of that,
0:21:25 for every single time you meet this certain sales go,
0:21:28 we’re going to give you $100 and free credit towards hair.
0:21:29 So I was like, so wait,
0:21:31 I could take that $100 and buy the hair,
0:21:33 but then sell it for like whatever I want.
0:21:36 Then the number one thing, cause I’d never heard of this.
0:21:40 They had a 30 day money back guarantee.
0:21:41 – On hair, wow. – On hair!
0:21:43 – Wow, that’s crazy. – What?
0:21:45 Who does that?
0:21:47 I don’t know, I still don’t know.
0:21:49 – Well, the way I looked at it was,
0:21:51 that’s crazy that there is no guarantees
0:21:55 on a product that costs $250. – So much money.
0:21:58 – Like in other communities, that’s not really the norm.
0:22:03 But the way our products have been sold for so long,
0:22:05 the people who have been selling them
0:22:09 have had no incentive to be customer friendly.
0:22:14 Korean owned beauty supply stores supplied 90 plus percent
0:22:17 of all of the black beauty– – So there’s no community
0:22:20 connection between the supplier and the customer.
0:22:23 – You buy it, even if you have a problem,
0:22:26 they go, final sale, says it on the receipt.
0:22:27 And that’s it, and that’s all.
0:22:29 So this was the first time
0:22:32 that I had heard of this type of interaction
0:22:34 and someone like actually being like,
0:22:36 no, we’ll be accountable.
0:22:37 We would just want to make sure you’re happy.
0:22:40 – And that was one of the fundamental things
0:22:44 that I saw also as an innovation here
0:22:47 was not just adding all this technology,
0:22:49 but also the technology can enable me
0:22:52 to provide a customer experience
0:22:57 and customer service level that my customer is not used to.
0:23:02 But to me, it’s just a right, this is just a right.
0:23:04 – So take us through the concept of the business.
0:23:08 – So honestly, it’s really why did I stick with Maven?
0:23:10 Because I started all kinds of things
0:23:12 to just make money and hustle.
0:23:15 Maven became different for me
0:23:18 because it actually had more purpose to it.
0:23:20 To me, I was just like, as an entrepreneur
0:23:22 and as a hustle and I looked at the stylists,
0:23:25 like they are also entrepreneurs
0:23:29 and they’re being blocked out of a category
0:23:32 because there’s no infrastructure for them to get into it.
0:23:35 And the distributors who supply those stores,
0:23:38 who own these brands, they wouldn’t even sell to you
0:23:40 if you went to them and said,
0:23:42 “I wanna carry your brands in my hair salon.”
0:23:47 So all of the black hair salons were devoid of any retail.
0:23:51 You didn’t buy products in the salon.
0:23:53 So all the dollars for all the retail
0:23:56 were flowing out of the community
0:23:59 and the stylists and the salons
0:24:01 weren’t able to capture any of that value.
0:24:05 Which typically in mainstream hair salons,
0:24:08 that can be like 40% of the revenue
0:24:09 that flows through that salon
0:24:11 could be from retail and selling products.
0:24:14 So I didn’t like that.
0:24:19 And then I saw that there could be a technological solution
0:24:23 that leveraged the power that the hairstylists had.
0:24:25 Because what I also saw was these stylists
0:24:27 who got all these customers in here.
0:24:28 – It’s amazing.
0:24:29 – They got a relationship with them.
0:24:32 If I just give them this tool,
0:24:35 maybe they can distribute these products.
0:24:36 And so that’s what I saw.
0:24:40 And then that’s what I kind of set out to build.
0:24:44 I called it Maven because the word Maven,
0:24:49 the word Maven, M-A-V-E-N, it means an expert.
0:24:52 Someone who’s skilled in their craft or an expert.
0:24:55 And that’s the way that I looked at the hairstylists.
0:24:59 That they’re actually at the center
0:25:01 of influencing this entire beauty world.
0:25:03 And the products that people buy
0:25:05 and what styles they get, everything.
0:25:06 They’re at the center of it.
0:25:10 I could build a tool that put them back in the center of it.
0:25:14 – So, you know, Chicago, Indiana, Detroit, you know,
0:25:16 where hair, they had like hair wars
0:25:18 and all those crazy things talking.
0:25:21 They’re really serious about it.
0:25:25 So somebody’s in the salon and they’re like hearing about it.
0:25:29 Like what does it take to transition them from
0:25:31 just the old model that doesn’t really honor them
0:25:32 and to get on a platform?
0:25:35 – It was actually really, really simple.
0:25:37 If you heard about Maven, you could, you know,
0:25:40 come to our website and just put your phone number in there.
0:25:44 Somebody would call you and over the phone,
0:25:46 collect your information and you’d be on the phone
0:25:48 for about 10 minutes.
0:25:50 And by the time you’re off the phone,
0:25:54 you would have a website, fully functional website
0:25:57 for your customers to come to and buy.
0:26:00 And when they bought, that product would ship out
0:26:03 that same day, customer would get it in about two
0:26:07 to three business days and you would get a commission.
0:26:10 So it was actually really, really simple.
0:26:12 And we signed up a lot, a lot of hairstylists.
0:26:13 – Easy sell.
0:26:15 – And is that how it still works now?
0:26:17 What’s been the iterations of it?
0:26:21 – Oh man, over the past three years,
0:26:25 there’s been a flood of cheap hair
0:26:26 that has come from China.
0:26:31 So the old brands that were the Korean brands sold
0:26:32 through the beauty supply stores
0:26:34 that they basically own the whole market,
0:26:37 they bought all their hair from these Chinese manufacturers.
0:26:44 Alibaba came along, which is like the Amazon of China.
0:26:48 And those factories now had a way to get online
0:26:51 and start selling products all over the world
0:26:53 and even direct to consumer.
0:26:55 And so you have both direct to consumer,
0:26:59 factories selling directly from China to customers here.
0:27:03 And you’ve got factories just selling supply of hair
0:27:06 to entrepreneurs here who want to start small hair companies.
0:27:11 And so there’s been an explosion of cheap hair here,
0:27:13 which started to threaten our business model
0:27:15 because now prices are like coming down.
0:27:19 And that started to make it harder for our stylist to sell.
0:27:24 So what we did was completely transform our business.
0:27:26 We basically said, okay, if this is the world,
0:27:29 if hair margins are gonna go down,
0:27:31 what do we need to do to survive?
0:27:33 What do we have that no one else has?
0:27:36 And how can we use that to compete and survive?
0:27:39 And so what we did was, again, going back to the power
0:27:41 that was in our community is our hairstylist.
0:27:42 That was the asset.
0:27:44 That’s the thing that Maven had built up
0:27:47 over the past four and a half years.
0:27:49 We partnered with the stylist in a different way
0:27:53 and we bundled the hair and the service together
0:27:55 for one price.
0:27:58 And then we went to stylists and said,
0:28:01 I’m gonna fill your book of business with new clients.
0:28:05 So we shifted the model to customer buys now directly
0:28:06 from Maven.
0:28:09 If they buy from us at the same cost,
0:28:12 they don’t have to pay for service.
0:28:13 They can go put in their zip code,
0:28:17 find any stylist, Maven stylist in their area,
0:28:19 book that stylist and Maven will pay for the service
0:28:24 directly to the stylist, but we work out a special rate
0:28:24 with our stylist.
0:28:26 And so we’re still able to make some money.
0:28:28 It’s a brand new model.
0:28:31 The industry doesn’t even, there is no model for it.
0:28:35 And we’ve delivered like three extra value now to customers.
0:28:37 The stylists now that are on this platform
0:28:40 are now making five times the amount of money
0:28:43 that we used to pay out to stylists.
0:28:46 And now we’re competitive with AliExpress.
0:28:47 They can’t do what we’re doing.
0:28:49 They don’t have the stylist network.
0:28:52 Amazon has a stylist network of black stylists,
0:28:54 you know, across America.
0:28:57 – Now you’re providing a different kind of service.
0:29:00 – Well, what it also does is what we basically said,
0:29:02 there’s this other market here right next to it
0:29:06 that’s three times bigger than even this product.
0:29:10 And we can sell these services, right?
0:29:12 And there’s so much value that needs to be created
0:29:15 on that side and things we can help to fix on that side.
0:29:18 We’re gonna use the product that we’ve been selling
0:29:20 to leverage our way into that side.
0:29:24 But now we can do bookings.
0:29:27 We can do, you know, we can do the credit card processing
0:29:30 for all the transactions that go through there.
0:29:32 We can fill these stylist’s book of business,
0:29:35 like fill their seats with customers.
0:29:37 We can add all the menu of services that they provide,
0:29:39 not just weave services.
0:29:41 That’s, you know, that’s coming next.
0:29:43 – Yeah, I’m just about to ask about that.
0:29:45 Considering I got lots and I’m like, I travel a lot
0:29:47 and so it’s not always easy to get,
0:29:49 like somebody to take care of my hair.
0:29:51 And there’s a phone app that you can use.
0:29:55 – So we actually don’t, we don’t even have a mobile app.
0:29:56 It’s always just been web, web based.
0:29:57 It’s a website.
0:30:02 Everything’s built very for like mobile, friendly, you know?
0:30:05 But also, you know, like with this technology thing,
0:30:09 everyone always thinks they gotta go make a app, right?
0:30:14 Like, like I gotta make it really super technological.
0:30:17 No, like you need just try to find the minimum amount
0:30:20 of technology you need to just solve a very specific problem.
0:30:22 And you don’t have to overdo it.
0:30:25 So there never was a specific reason you needed an app
0:30:28 for this, so we didn’t build one.
0:30:30 I think a lot of people get that, you know, get that wrong.
0:30:32 – And you need to refer people into it
0:30:35 from all kinds of sources that actually technically work better
0:30:37 for you with a, with a web-based service, yeah.
0:30:39 – And apps can have a lot of friction.
0:30:41 – So Sherian, when you made that leap with Maven,
0:30:43 like how did that impact your business?
0:30:46 – Well, I think, I think the first thing for any hustles,
0:30:48 you gotta have the passion behind it, right?
0:30:49 That’s, that’s number one.
0:30:52 When I went in for them to give us a survey
0:30:54 and ask us questions, afterwards Deshaun came in
0:30:58 and just told us about it and told us more about the company
0:31:01 and why he created it and what his vision was.
0:31:04 And at the time, I kind of turned my nose up
0:31:06 and other sellers that were there did too,
0:31:09 because Maven is not a platform
0:31:12 that is only for professional stylists.
0:31:16 Maven is a platform that’s for all stylists.
0:31:20 And as a professional and as someone that took out school loans,
0:31:23 I was like, why do I wanna be on the platform
0:31:26 with other people who didn’t do all the things that I did?
0:31:29 I felt like I should be on a different platform.
0:31:32 And when Deshaun broke down that, you know,
0:31:34 it’s bigger than just being a professional.
0:31:36 This is about giving back to the community.
0:31:39 This is about people who are, you know,
0:31:42 in small cities somewhere in Indiana
0:31:45 and are doing hair in their kitchen.
0:31:47 But mind you, that’s what our grandmothers used to do
0:31:49 was they were doing hair in their kitchen.
0:31:52 And so who are we to put ourselves, you know,
0:31:54 on this platform saying, no, I’m not them
0:31:55 because that’s who I come from.
0:31:57 And so as soon as you put it like that, I was like,
0:32:00 I want to be a part of whatever you’re doing.
0:32:04 And so since then, I’ve worked as a Maven stylist.
0:32:07 I’ve helped with YouTube videos.
0:32:09 I’ve helped with how-tos.
0:32:11 This is something that’ll be rated.
0:32:14 And, you know, they wanna make sure
0:32:16 that the customer is gonna be getting
0:32:20 a quality and consistent service.
0:32:23 But not only just for hair weaving services,
0:32:24 it’ll also be for cut.
0:32:26 It’ll also be for color.
0:32:27 It’ll also be for natural hair.
0:32:30 It still, you know, it gets me a little excited
0:32:32 ’cause I’ll get a text message going,
0:32:34 you just got paid and I’ll be like, what?
0:32:36 Because people just go to your site
0:32:39 and they just can buy, you don’t have to do anything.
0:32:41 – That’s way easier than doing somebody’s hair.
0:32:44 – You just get a notification, ding, you got paid.
0:32:49 And so since then, my trajectory completely took off.
0:32:50 Now I work in Hollywood.
0:32:53 I’ve worked on the last two seasons of HBO and Secure.
0:32:57 I’m working on a new show called “Little Fires Everywhere”
0:32:59 that stars Carrie Washington and Reese Witherspoon.
0:33:03 And every time I get a chance and I need some hair,
0:33:06 I still go back to Maven because the hair is good.
0:33:08 They’re always on top of everything.
0:33:10 And that’s really hard to find,
0:33:11 especially like in a hair company.
0:33:14 And I think it’s, I honestly would have thought before now
0:33:16 that would have been too much to ask for.
0:33:18 It’s also something that’ll be beneficial to me.
0:33:21 ‘Cause again, I don’t want to deal with the technical side,
0:33:25 but it’s so important to have that technical component.
0:33:27 I don’t care if you don’t want to deal with it.
0:33:30 You get with another company that’ll do the work for you
0:33:32 and you’re still able to reap the benefits.
0:33:35 Sometimes some people get caught up in the,
0:33:37 well, how much am I gonna get?
0:33:38 What am I getting back for my service?
0:33:43 The truth is, is that if you are a stylist
0:33:47 and you are not fully booked, then you need to be on it.
0:33:51 I have friends who work in LA and travel
0:33:55 and they have clients that pay a lot of money for hair, right?
0:33:56 To get their hair done.
0:33:59 Yet they’re still taking part-time gigs, you know?
0:34:02 They’re like, oh, but it’s gonna be 30 bucks an hour.
0:34:04 I’m like, why are you going somewhere for 30 bucks an hour
0:34:05 when you can go in a salon?
0:34:07 Are you telling me they’re gonna give you, you know,
0:34:09 anywhere from 100 to 300 bucks for this one client,
0:34:11 it’s only gonna take you two to three hours?
0:34:12 The math’s not working out.
0:34:15 And so we have to change our mindset
0:34:18 because sometimes some of us hustlers,
0:34:20 especially as a cosmetologist,
0:34:23 we’re so used to having to do things
0:34:26 and constantly be having our hands in something
0:34:28 that sometimes we don’t see opportunities
0:34:29 that are right in front of our face.
0:34:31 – So one of the things I was thinking about
0:34:34 was just like, you know, going back to earlier conversation
0:34:37 about how hair, you know, the hair industry itself, you know,
0:34:39 from the mom-and-pops in the house.
0:34:43 So how do people sign up and make payments and get paid?
0:34:46 Like if they don’t have credit cards or debit cards.
0:34:48 – Yeah, that’s a really interesting question
0:34:53 because this was one of the unforeseen challenges
0:34:58 that we had after getting into this business
0:35:03 was the first version of how we paid people was by check.
0:35:08 And we found out very fast
0:35:11 that when we tried to go pay people by PayPal
0:35:14 or pay them, you know, ACH or something,
0:35:18 that like half of the stylists didn’t have bank accounts.
0:35:23 And then that opened up this whole other world of the unbanked.
0:35:25 Some enormous percentage of the population
0:35:27 doesn’t have bank accounts.
0:35:31 So we would send out checks and they’d get lost in the mail
0:35:35 or there’s all over the country,
0:35:36 we would get stylists calling us saying,
0:35:38 “I brought my check into a bank.”
0:35:41 And they wouldn’t let me cash it, right?
0:35:43 And we’re talking like checks like 15 bucks
0:35:44 or something like that,
0:35:47 but they wouldn’t even let them cash a $15 check.
0:35:48 They had to go to a check cashing place,
0:35:50 which they charge, you know,
0:35:53 they charge like 15% or something of the check
0:35:54 or whatever it is.
0:35:56 In the past couple of years,
0:36:01 we created a solution actually in partnership with Green Dot.
0:36:03 So there, the technical infrastructure
0:36:05 for how this payment system works,
0:36:10 but we can now pay to any routing number.
0:36:12 So you don’t have to have a bank account,
0:36:14 but if you have like a prepaid card
0:36:16 and it’s got those 16 digits on it,
0:36:17 we can drop money on that thing
0:36:20 and we can drop it instantaneously.
0:36:23 For the new thing that we have where we sell the hair
0:36:26 and you get free service with it,
0:36:29 Instapay is now triggered through a QR code.
0:36:32 So after you buy the hair and you book your stylus,
0:36:35 we text you a QR code.
0:36:36 When you go into the salon,
0:36:39 the stylus just scans your QR code with her phone
0:36:42 and she’s instantaneously paid to her,
0:36:45 either her bank account or her prepaid card.
0:36:46 – Three things that popped up to me when you were talking
0:36:48 when the importance of being able to serve a community
0:36:51 that is underserved and then quality.
0:36:52 ‘Cause from a husband perspective,
0:36:54 you know, a lot of times you just get what you can
0:36:57 when you’re in that mindset of being easily distracted
0:36:59 and in different directions.
0:37:01 And then the third thing was partnership.
0:37:04 And so like, do you intuitively think of it
0:37:05 from those three lenses
0:37:08 or did it just something that organically shows up
0:37:11 in the way that you do business?
0:37:14 – You know, I had a mentor before.
0:37:17 His name was Mike Bush and he was an executive out here
0:37:20 in Oakland and he gave me some advice one time.
0:37:23 He said, before I had started maybe, and he was like,
0:37:25 “Dishon, you’re not gonna make any money
0:37:29 “until you stop trying to make money
0:37:31 “and think about how you can make other people money.”
0:37:35 And it changed the way I thought about
0:37:37 my relationships with people.
0:37:42 And what you wanna try to do is be valuable to people,
0:37:45 not extract value from people.
0:37:49 If you are valuable to society,
0:37:52 the money flows to where the value is,
0:37:54 where the value creator is.
0:37:57 If the other person doesn’t win, this thing ain’t gonna last.
0:38:00 It ain’t gonna work if we both don’t win.
0:38:02 It won’t be sustainable.
0:38:06 So partnership is always like how I look at it, you know?
0:38:08 And like the new model that we’ve created,
0:38:12 what is the right number so that this works for stylists
0:38:13 and what’s the number that works
0:38:16 so that it works for customers?
0:38:21 And then honestly, the number that we get to keep at Maven
0:38:23 is the last number that I think about.
0:38:26 But it starts with, “Let me make my partner’s money.”
0:38:28 – Well, it’s definitely showing up
0:38:31 in a way that Sherianne expressed it.
0:38:33 – When I was in cosmetology school,
0:38:35 they were like, “Okay, you guys are cosmetologists.
0:38:37 “So you guys get to pick whatever name you want.
0:38:39 “You can have a cosmo name.”
0:38:41 And I was like, “I can be someone else?”
0:38:43 What?
0:38:45 I never thought about that ever in life.
0:38:46 I’ve always been Sherianne.
0:38:49 My name is Sherianne, but I go by Sherianne
0:38:52 and I didn’t know that was my grandmother’s middle name.
0:38:54 I just knew she was Sherianne.
0:38:56 I didn’t know she was Sherianne.
0:38:58 And so it just came out of me.
0:39:01 I don’t even know where it came from
0:39:02 or I thought I don’t.
0:39:04 Went on through cosmetology school,
0:39:06 like I said, back was against the wall,
0:39:07 had to make it happen,
0:39:10 did great by the grace of God.
0:39:13 And I graduated and it was all the tears
0:39:15 because for the first time in life,
0:39:19 I had done something where the most important thing
0:39:20 of all of it was me.
0:39:22 It wasn’t about, when I worked with a company,
0:39:23 it was about always about like,
0:39:25 what you can do for that company?
0:39:26 Can you fit in this box?
0:39:28 You always have to fit in a box.
0:39:29 And for the first time in life,
0:39:32 it was like, I didn’t have to fit in anyone’s box
0:39:33 and I could create my own box.
0:39:35 Maybe it’s not a box, maybe it’s a star shape.
0:39:38 And so what I learned at my graduation
0:39:40 was my mom told me that before my grandma
0:39:42 passed she passed of cancer.
0:39:46 While she had cancer, she didn’t tell any of us.
0:39:49 She went to cosmetology school
0:39:52 and she got her cosmetology license.
0:39:55 She went and took the state board test.
0:39:57 I went back and taught cosmetology school.
0:39:59 It is hard for people to pass that test.
0:40:01 And we got it.
0:40:04 Yes, so we got her cosmetology license
0:40:06 post humorously in the mail.
0:40:08 And that’s how we found out.
0:40:09 – That’s grandma Sherry Ann.
0:40:10 – Sherry Ann.
0:40:12 I think she wanted to be able to have a business
0:40:14 with my mom was her dream.
0:40:18 And so my beauty studio is with my mom.
0:40:19 And I’m Sherry Ann.
0:40:22 And just like my grandma did it through terminal cancer,
0:40:25 you can do whatever you want.
0:40:28 You pick your shape and you live in your truth
0:40:31 and you hustle.
0:40:32 And that’s how we gonna do it.
0:40:34 – Drop the mic, I’m Sherry Ann, salute.
0:40:36 (upbeat music)
0:40:39 (upbeat music)
0:40:42 (sighs)
0:40:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:15 – All right, welcome to the Hustler’s Guide to Tech
0:00:19 where people who have the passion, the heart,
0:00:22 the desire and the talent to go do it
0:00:26 and make their dreams happen, but just need a connect,
0:00:27 this is a show for you.
0:00:32 And today we are joined by Deshawn,
0:00:37 founder and CEO of Maven, the king of the hair business.
0:00:40 – He ain’t got a hair business.
0:00:42 That’s heavy weight right there.
0:00:42 – Bundle God.
0:00:45 – Yeah, that’s the Bundle God, I like that.
0:00:47 And then we got Sherry here, what’s up Sherry?
0:00:52 – Our hustler who has hustled Deshawn’s platform, Maven.
0:00:53 – That’s definitely.
0:00:56 – And then I’m joined by my co-host, Shakasen Gore.
0:00:57 – What up, though?
0:01:01 – Who, as you frequent listeners know,
0:01:04 came out of the joint, hustled his way selling books
0:01:08 that he wrote himself and published himself out of his car,
0:01:10 and is now best selling author
0:01:15 and big time Hollywood screenwriter.
0:01:16 So let’s go.
0:01:19 – Bundle God, I like that, man, it’s hot, it’s hot.
0:01:19 How you come up with that?
0:01:22 – Somebody said that to me a few weeks ago.
0:01:23 – I like it though.
0:01:24 – It might, maybe it’ll stick.
0:01:25 – I just want to be clear with the audience,
0:01:27 like exactly what a bundle is.
0:01:28 ‘Cause like in the street culture, bundles mean
0:01:29 something totally different,
0:01:31 and I don’t want them to be confused.
0:01:32 – Yeah, I know that.
0:01:34 – I just want to be real clear about, you know,
0:01:35 what a bundle is.
0:01:36 – Bundle God.
0:01:38 – I guess bundle got a whole new meaning.
0:01:39 (laughing)
0:01:42 – So a bundle is a weft of hair,
0:01:45 and what that looks like is if you imagined
0:01:49 a long thick string with hair draping down from it,
0:01:51 that would be a bundle.
0:01:53 – So how many bundles does it take
0:01:55 to do like a full hairstyle?
0:01:57 Like the average.
0:01:58 – Like the big Beyonce hair.
0:02:01 – See, come on, that’s what I was looking for.
0:02:02 – The big joint, right.
0:02:05 – It depends on, you know, how glamorous you want to be.
0:02:07 For a regular install, it’s going to be
0:02:09 probably two to three bundles,
0:02:11 but for a Beyonce install,
0:02:14 it’s probably going to be closer to four or five.
0:02:16 – And then how much do bundles cost per bundle?
0:02:18 Like, yeah, what’s the bundle cost?
0:02:21 – The super, super cheap ones can be like 30 bucks
0:02:24 or 35 bucks for like super cheap,
0:02:28 and then they can go upwards to like $250 a bundle.
0:02:29 – So 30 to $200.
0:02:30 – Yeah, but a Maven bundle.
0:02:35 – I think they’re about 80 bucks a bundle right now.
0:02:36 There’s a lot of lengths.
0:02:37 – It just depends.
0:02:38 – And that changes the price,
0:02:41 but maybe on average 80 or so, you know,
0:02:43 but you’re probably going to, if you buy three bundles,
0:02:47 you’re probably going to walk out of there paying 250.
0:02:49 – So quick question about the bundle.
0:02:50 So I got like four sisters, right?
0:02:53 So I grew up with like a lot of hair conversations
0:02:57 and it’s always popping on social media, you know,
0:02:59 the new styles.
0:02:59 Interestingly enough,
0:03:02 they got this new challenge called the DMX challenge.
0:03:03 And then you see an all the sisters
0:03:05 with all the different hairstyles,
0:03:06 which kind of fly.
0:03:10 So like, what was your entry point into the bundle game, man?
0:03:12 – I mean, you know, okay,
0:03:14 so I never ever would have thought
0:03:18 that I was going to be selling bundles.
0:03:20 I had hairstylists in my family
0:03:23 and I saw them doing hair growing up.
0:03:24 So I understood,
0:03:28 I understood the relationship between stylist, customers,
0:03:30 you know, black women and their hair.
0:03:32 I understood culturally what that was.
0:03:34 I never thought I was going to be a part of it at all.
0:03:38 I ended up on the other side of the bundle game,
0:03:42 which was in China, where they were being manufactured.
0:03:44 And I lived in China for almost two years.
0:03:46 – Now you lived in China to learn the hair game?
0:03:48 – No, no, no, I moved to China.
0:03:51 So I moved to China after college.
0:03:53 I just wanted to travel.
0:03:57 And I had a mentor at the time in college
0:03:59 who she ran the international studies department.
0:04:01 But I was like, oh, three.
0:04:03 This is before everybody was really like,
0:04:05 like China was like in the news, in the news, in the news.
0:04:09 She was like, no, China is about to do something.
0:04:11 Go over there, it might be some opportunities.
0:04:12 – So what college were you coming out of?
0:04:15 – I went to Hampton University, HPCU.
0:04:18 And HPCU is a historically black college university.
0:04:20 And I was a sociology major.
0:04:21 I mean, I never actually thought of myself
0:04:23 as a business person.
0:04:27 I didn’t understand that I was a business person until later.
0:04:29 – Yeah, well, it’s entrepreneur and business person
0:04:30 are two different things.
0:04:34 A businessman could be anybody who like puts on a suit
0:04:36 and goes, works for a company.
0:04:37 And an entrepreneur is somebody
0:04:40 who tries to make something from nothing.
0:04:42 That’s why GZ’s new album is so relevant.
0:04:43 Entrepreneur.
0:04:46 I mean, I always thought of the word business.
0:04:49 Like as a young person, I thought of it as like
0:04:52 this stuffy thing with like a briefcase and a building.
0:04:54 And then I just realized, wait,
0:04:56 I like to create my own vision.
0:04:58 And I like to do things how I want to do them.
0:05:00 And that’s what an entrepreneur is going to do
0:05:01 is just find the resources around them
0:05:04 to do the things the way he or she wants to do them.
0:05:06 So I got to China.
0:05:11 I didn’t know anybody did speak a word of Mandarin
0:05:14 and they stuck me in the school teaching English.
0:05:17 I started playing hangman with them.
0:05:20 So I just found all kinds of ways to get them to talk.
0:05:23 But anyway, when you get to China,
0:05:26 the first thing that hits you is like, oh shit,
0:05:28 every single person here is hustling.
0:05:33 It’s the most hustling, enterprising place on planet earth.
0:05:37 Every single person around you is hustling something.
0:05:42 And China being like the manufacturing center of the world,
0:05:45 everybody was selling some sort of product.
0:05:48 Like everyone had some sort of relationship
0:05:50 to supply chain somewhere.
0:05:53 So interestingly enough, though, the first hustle
0:05:57 that I had when I got to China was not exporting stuff.
0:05:59 It was selling English.
0:06:02 So that’s a great way to really kind of set up
0:06:04 how you make the pivot.
0:06:05 I want to talk a little bit to Sherry,
0:06:07 go and get her perspective of her hustle
0:06:10 and just how you became an entrepreneur.
0:06:11 Like, what was that pathway in?
0:06:12 What did you grow up at?
0:06:14 I actually grew up between Berkeley and Oakland.
0:06:15 OK.
0:06:17 All right, yeah, yeah, that’s my hometown.
0:06:18 Hell, hey.
0:06:21 Yeah, yeah, like, where abouts Berkeley and Oakland?
0:06:23 South Berkeley, South Berkeley.
0:06:25 I was on Russell Street and off Fairview.
0:06:27 OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, I went to Berkeley High.
0:06:28 I went to Berkeley High.
0:06:29 Hey, hello, Jackie.
0:06:31 Hey.
0:06:33 OK.
0:06:35 And then I was in East Oakland.
0:06:36 So that’s where I came from.
0:06:38 I mean, Oakland is a hustling town.
0:06:38 I know they get 40 water up there.
0:06:40 Oh, Oakland most definitely is.
0:06:44 I was born to a mom who she was with my dad,
0:06:46 but then he got caught up in the crack era
0:06:51 and went to jail and dealing with having that addiction
0:06:52 for the rest of his life.
0:06:54 I think still currently even battling cancer right now.
0:06:55 Yeah, man.
0:06:56 It’s bad.
0:06:59 So she was raising four of us by herself.
0:07:05 And so my mom, a single mom with four children, is a hustler.
0:07:07 And I had three older brothers and then me.
0:07:11 And so three black boys in the Bay, she was a hustler.
0:07:13 She had to be.
0:07:15 You got to be up at the school making sure
0:07:17 that they’re not tracking your kid,
0:07:19 that they’re putting them in the right classes.
0:07:22 And she was doing all those things and would do all that,
0:07:25 have a job, and still come home and make dinner.
0:07:28 On top of that, my grandmother, same thing, was a hustler.
0:07:30 But that’s kind of what I was born into,
0:07:33 how I got into cosmetology.
0:07:35 When I was 10 years old, my mom decided
0:07:39 to go to school to become a manicurist.
0:07:42 And the reason why she did this was because it was a way
0:07:44 that she could have a business, but be
0:07:47 able to dictate her own hours and still be able to raise
0:07:48 all her kids.
0:07:49 Yep, yep, yeah.
0:07:51 And so I was going to the school with her
0:07:52 and watching the people do hair.
0:07:54 And I was like, that’s really cool.
0:07:58 And when she did she become a manicurist out of the house
0:07:59 or she had her own chopper?
0:08:03 So she went to school, I helped her study for her test.
0:08:06 She passed actually her licenses on my birthday every year.
0:08:08 She did start doing that over her house.
0:08:11 And then pivoted that, got a business.
0:08:14 Now she’s been doing it for over 20 years.
0:08:18 And now she’s like five stars on Yelp.
0:08:19 She has all these companies coming to her.
0:08:21 She’s like the number one person, I think,
0:08:23 in California for natural nail care.
0:08:25 She decided that she didn’t like acrylic
0:08:27 or the harsh chemicals.
0:08:30 But how I got into doing hair was
0:08:32 I was actually jumping around.
0:08:34 I was in college and I didn’t finish.
0:08:38 And then I got into hotel management on accident.
0:08:39 And I was like 20.
0:08:41 And there was this emergency that happened.
0:08:43 And maybe just being the youngest and having brothers,
0:08:45 I don’t know, I can think really quick on my feet.
0:08:48 And so they saw my skills and how I handled this situation.
0:08:52 So with so much just poise and just like an expert.
0:08:53 And they’re like, so you want to be
0:08:55 an assistant operations manager, you know?
0:08:56 You got this position.
0:08:57 You want to come in.
0:08:59 I was like, what, a salary?
0:09:00 Oh, yeah.
0:09:05 So I got into that, did sales with Comcast.
0:09:07 Then got back into management.
0:09:10 And then I was managing multiple properties.
0:09:14 And it seems like a good job.
0:09:16 But I wasn’t happy.
0:09:18 For the first time in my life, I
0:09:22 found myself starting to deal with some anxiety.
0:09:24 And I had my first little, I don’t know,
0:09:27 was a panic attack or anxiety attack.
0:09:29 And so I went to the doctor and they’re like, oh, yeah.
0:09:31 That was a little anxiety attack, little panic attack.
0:09:33 And I was like, what?
0:09:34 The person I was dating at the time,
0:09:36 keep people around you that love the crap out of you.
0:09:38 Because they sometimes pay more attention to you
0:09:41 than you pay attention to yourself.
0:09:43 And so this person was like, you know,
0:09:45 every time you get off work, you’re talking about,
0:09:48 you caught a YouTube video about some hair or some makeup.
0:09:51 Like, why don’t you look into doing that?
0:09:54 And so I went towards some cosmetology schools.
0:09:57 And I fell in love.
0:10:00 So I gave a notice of like two months out.
0:10:02 And I didn’t know that, like, when you give a notice,
0:10:04 they could be like, actually, in two weeks, you got to go.
0:10:06 And so that’s what happened.
0:10:07 I had planned for two months.
0:10:09 I was like, hey, I could save up some money.
0:10:11 I was a parent at this time, a single mom.
0:10:13 I had a three-year-old.
0:10:16 And I was just like, this is what I’m going to do.
0:10:18 No, two weeks.
0:10:19 And I was out.
0:10:20 And I was like, oh, shoot.
0:10:21 And then since I put in a notice,
0:10:23 you can’t get unemployment.
0:10:29 So it was just, that’s when I think all of my hustle,
0:10:33 entrepreneurship, everything that had me just came out.
0:10:37 Yeah, when you have to, when your back is against the wall,
0:10:39 the things that you didn’t know were in you,
0:10:40 they all come out.
0:10:41 And it did.
0:10:44 I got on welfare, because I had to find a way
0:10:46 to provide for my daughter.
0:10:49 And I moved back in with my mom, which was super uncomfortable.
0:10:51 Because since, like, ’18, I was out.
0:10:54 It was literally, like, being a fish out of water.
0:10:56 When I was in Cosmetology School, people said, oh, you know,
0:10:58 Sherri-Ann, she’s going to be in Hollywood.
0:11:00 Like, we just know we’re going to see her name.
0:11:02 And I think that’s really important.
0:11:03 I think words have so much power.
0:11:07 And a lot of people say it, but I don’t think enough people
0:11:08 really believe it.
0:11:10 And I’ve seen it.
0:11:11 That changed everything.
0:11:13 Literally, I was in Cosmetology School,
0:11:16 went for this award, went for this competition.
0:11:18 And in this competition, it was, they were only
0:11:19 going to pick the top 100 in the country
0:11:21 to go get this advanced training in Vegas.
0:11:25 I worked with these photographers, just
0:11:27 axing around, hey, do you know anybody who were also
0:11:30 in school at the Art Institute?
0:11:32 Didn’t know that these photographers were
0:11:35 on the shortlist, which is, like, the world’s 250
0:11:38 up-and-coming photographers that everyone’s looking at.
0:11:42 So literally, after that, I got published in a vote
0:11:45 while I was in Cosmetology School, five times.
0:11:46 That’s dope.
0:11:48 That’s really great, because I think these are the things
0:11:50 we talk about all the time, right?
0:11:51 Like the belief system.
0:11:54 And a lot of times when it comes to entrepreneurship,
0:11:56 like taking that risk betting on yourself
0:11:59 and really doing it when you’re going against the title,
0:12:00 what you’ve been taught for so long, right?
0:12:03 Just go to school, get the education, get the degree,
0:12:05 get the job, become a business person as opposed
0:12:06 to entrepreneur.
0:12:10 And even your trajectory is just like imagining things.
0:12:12 Because in my life, it was kind of the same thing.
0:12:14 Writing it down is what I want to happen.
0:12:16 And then when it began to manifest.
0:12:21 And so I love just hearing this different perspective, right?
0:12:23 One of the things I was really interested in
0:12:26 is how did you kind of figure the pathway out
0:12:28 in terms of technology?
0:12:30 Because that’s the thing that’s always been interesting to me
0:12:32 is the people who take that leap of faith
0:12:35 versus the people who come from the culture where it’s
0:12:36 the big fear that we talk about.
0:12:37 It’s like, oh, you can’t.
0:12:38 That’s too hard.
0:12:39 It’s too complicated.
0:12:40 It’s too nerdy.
0:12:43 But you didn’t make this look kind of flat, so talk about it.
0:12:45 And on that point, what a lot of people, I think,
0:12:47 don’t understand about that journey
0:12:50 is if you knew what was involved before you started,
0:12:52 you would never have done it.
0:12:55 And everybody who’s ever been through it knows that.
0:12:55 Bars.
0:13:00 And so it’s not that bad things don’t happen.
0:13:04 It’s just that once you jump into the water, you’ve got to swim.
0:13:07 I mean, just for me, that was–
0:13:10 I wasn’t a technical founder.
0:13:11 And before I ever linked that with Taylor,
0:13:14 I had to demonstrate that this thing could
0:13:16 work on the internet.
0:13:19 So I used one of those like–
0:13:22 in ’07, it was like the first versions of the Shopify.
0:13:25 This was like something that some Eastern European dudes
0:13:25 had made.
0:13:27 It was called eastwit.com.
0:13:29 You could make some little janky little–
0:13:30 Yeah, Macau Shopify.
0:13:31 Yeah, it wasn’t even–
0:13:33 I didn’t even know what Shopify was,
0:13:34 but I was like, I found this thing.
0:13:37 And it’s like, oh, you can have a store.
0:13:39 And I could just drag and drop and make it myself.
0:13:42 And I just made five of them from five stylists.
0:13:44 And it was completely janky.
0:13:47 But it was the internet version of what
0:13:49 I was doing out the trunk of my car.
0:13:53 And it demonstrated that we could do it on the internet.
0:13:56 And we just needed to do it better and with more stylists
0:13:57 and with more infrastructure.
0:14:01 But if I gave these stylists a tool, they would sell.
0:14:04 I mean, I think probably like spirit-wise,
0:14:07 I’ve always been like an adventurer.
0:14:08 And I came from like–
0:14:11 my family is–
0:14:12 they’re like hippies.
0:14:15 I don’t even have my mom or my dad’s last name.
0:14:17 My mom and my dad–
0:14:19 like my dad, he was like super black power.
0:14:21 And he was like, I don’t want to give you the slave name.
0:14:24 And so my mom took a word from Russian.
0:14:26 And he took a word from Swahili.
0:14:28 And they put them together and made my last name.
0:14:30 And so it’s like my own last name.
0:14:33 And it’s like, you’re going to be your own thing.
0:14:36 And then I was also like in a single parent household.
0:14:39 Like my father also got swept up in the crack era.
0:14:41 He was gone by the time I was five.
0:14:43 My mother was working constantly.
0:14:44 She’s a doctor.
0:14:46 And so she was like doing med school.
0:14:48 I didn’t have a lot of people telling me what to do
0:14:49 and when to do it.
0:14:54 I think when it came to this tech thing,
0:14:57 I had spent all this time in China.
0:15:01 You know, the first hustle I got into over there was like–
0:15:05 or like export hustle was I saw Jordans for sale in China.
0:15:08 And I was like, oh, shit.
0:15:10 They were $20.
0:15:12 Jordans, right?
0:15:15 I talked to some guys out there who were in that game.
0:15:17 I had met some people.
0:15:19 They showed me how to ship them.
0:15:21 They were like these little Chinese shippers
0:15:23 and all the where you go and get them and figure that out.
0:15:26 Next thing you know, I wanted to move bigger things.
0:15:30 And so like I saw containers.
0:15:32 You know, I was driving over this bridge in Hong Kong
0:15:34 and I seen these ships with these huge containers.
0:15:37 I was like, I want to move one of those across the whole world.
0:15:41 Like, and that was sort of my, no real big vision.
0:15:43 Just like, I want to figure out how to do that.
0:15:48 And got into like furniture and shipping stuff.
0:15:52 Eventually, that kind of led me to delivering couches myself
0:15:56 in Miami in old-ass buildings, like walking up steps with shit.
0:15:59 And I was like, this is not the most efficient way
0:16:00 to do all this stuff.
0:16:02 And there’s got to be a better way.
0:16:06 And that was like around ’07.
0:16:08 All this Facebook stuff was like popping up.
0:16:11 And that’s when Silicon Valley got on my radar.
0:16:13 Even though I’m from here, I’m from Oakland.
0:16:19 But I didn’t know that the valley was like right here.
0:16:22 And I started learning, you know, the internet.
0:16:24 And I want to know how to do that stuff.
0:16:26 I’m the sucker if I don’t get in, right?
0:16:28 If I don’t figure out the game.
0:16:31 But I did look at it like it was a whole different culture.
0:16:35 Living in China, like the way I thought about all problems
0:16:38 was as a cultural problem.
0:16:42 I thought about all problems as a matter of how do I communicate
0:16:46 with a group of people who have a different set of codes
0:16:50 and cultures and language in order to get my point across
0:16:54 and to understand what they need to be comfortable here
0:16:57 and for us to cooperate with each other.
0:17:00 And so I looked at Silicon Valley like it was China.
0:17:02 I looked at it like I just got to figure out
0:17:03 how people move out here.
0:17:07 And, you know, the same principles of business
0:17:10 that I was already doing of selling things.
0:17:12 There’s still the same principles of business,
0:17:14 but there’s just a different language around it.
0:17:18 Like you got to learn what the CAC and the LTV are.
0:17:19 You know what I mean?
0:17:20 Before it was just like this is what I buy for.
0:17:22 And this is how much I sell it for.
0:17:23 And then, you know, if they come back,
0:17:26 I’m going to make another $80 and make another $80.
0:17:29 Describing that same thing in the language of the culture
0:17:31 in which you’re now trying to be a part of.
0:17:33 So that’s what I love.
0:17:35 Just hear you say that in that language,
0:17:39 like that’s easily transferable to any culture.
0:17:40 Because when you were talking earlier
0:17:43 about looking at the big shipping containers, right?
0:17:45 And you’re like, I just want to move big things.
0:17:47 I want to move big weight, right?
0:17:48 Same language of the streets.
0:17:51 You know, how do you translate the culture
0:17:52 and translate the language in a way
0:17:54 where people who may feel like, OK,
0:17:57 this is my only route is hustling in the streets
0:17:59 can see another pathway, right?
0:18:01 And like you saw it intuitively, your experience
0:18:03 in China kind of awakens your mind to like,
0:18:06 yo, I just got to get in and figure it out.
0:18:08 I got a lot of game from Oakland,
0:18:12 but I got a lot of hustle from the Chinese.
0:18:17 Like I learned a lot about the ethic of working
0:18:20 from the Chinese.
0:18:22 They don’t have no excuses.
0:18:23 They don’t care.
0:18:24 There’s no excuses.
0:18:28 They like no one feels like they were like entitled to anything.
0:18:30 They’re just like, this is where I’m at
0:18:32 and I got to figure out how to make more.
0:18:35 And they just try to figure out any way they can do that.
0:18:37 That’s so important because that mentality
0:18:40 cuts through so much stuff that people get caught up in.
0:18:42 Culture, yeah.
0:18:44 All right, so Sherri Ann, like how’d you get
0:18:46 on the Maven platform?
0:18:49 Well, back when I was in cosmetology school,
0:18:53 I had a friend and my friend told me about this guy
0:18:55 who she would get hair from
0:18:57 because she was also a hairdresser.
0:18:59 And she was also in school.
0:19:03 So we rode to El Cerrito, California.
0:19:07 We pull up into a parking lot and I’m like, OK, where is he?
0:19:08 She’s like, oh, he’s going to meet me over here.
0:19:11 And I was like, what do you mean, meet you over here?
0:19:14 And this guy, this gentleman, rolls up in his car.
0:19:16 And I think it was like a little Honda or something.
0:19:17 I don’t know, it’s like a little commuter car.
0:19:18 It was a Toyota Corolla.
0:19:21 And he got out his car and he popped his trunk
0:19:23 and he got some hair out.
0:19:25 That’s how it meant to shine.
0:19:29 And so while I was in cosmetology school,
0:19:32 he had launched the Maven platform online.
0:19:35 And at the time he had to wear, if you referred your friend,
0:19:39 if you referred someone and they went ahead
0:19:44 and set up their Maven profile and they got a website,
0:19:48 they got money, they got $150 for you setting it up.
0:19:50 So my friend was like, don’t you want to get this?
0:19:52 I’ll get some money and, you know, they’ll hook you up too.
0:19:53 I was like, cool.
0:19:54 So I started telling people too.
0:19:55 So that’s how he got the word out.
0:20:00 ‘Cause cash incentive to people who don’t have a lot of cash
0:20:00 is amazing.
0:20:03 And I was a student, a struggling student, okay?
0:20:04 And I was like, yes.
0:20:07 And so I got on the platform, started ordering hair.
0:20:11 And from there, I was called in
0:20:15 because I was a local stylist from someone at his office.
0:20:19 And at this point now they have grown
0:20:22 and they actually had an office space now in Oakland,
0:20:24 in downtown Oakland.
0:20:25 They had me come in.
0:20:26 We were doing like some focus groups.
0:20:29 I think at the time we were bringing some stylists in.
0:20:32 My biggest concern at the time,
0:20:34 and even though I had the platform, I was still side eyeing.
0:20:37 I think as hair stylists, we’re very suspicious.
0:20:39 We’re always very suspicious, you know,
0:20:41 especially someone’s trying to give you something.
0:20:43 And that’s the other thing that sold me on it.
0:20:45 It was that we’re going to do all the work.
0:20:47 I am not the technical person, okay?
0:20:49 I’m with my hands, I can do some amazing things.
0:20:51 But you want me to get on a computer, I’m going to freak out.
0:20:54 And so they said, we’ll set you up an entire website.
0:20:56 It’s going to have your name, here’s your link.
0:20:58 You just put it on your Instagram.
0:21:01 And the people are going to buy hair.
0:21:03 So it’s like, you have your own hair,
0:21:06 but you don’t have to worry about the inventory.
0:21:08 You don’t have to worry about the startup costs.
0:21:10 We’re going to do everything.
0:21:12 All you got to do is just tell people to buy from there.
0:21:16 And then we’re going to kick you back 15% off every sale.
0:21:17 I told you how to background the sales.
0:21:18 I was like, that’s not a bad percentage.
0:21:21 And then on top of that,
0:21:25 for every single time you meet this certain sales go,
0:21:28 we’re going to give you $100 and free credit towards hair.
0:21:29 So I was like, so wait,
0:21:31 I could take that $100 and buy the hair,
0:21:33 but then sell it for like whatever I want.
0:21:36 Then the number one thing, cause I’d never heard of this.
0:21:40 They had a 30 day money back guarantee.
0:21:41 – On hair, wow. – On hair!
0:21:43 – Wow, that’s crazy. – What?
0:21:45 Who does that?
0:21:47 I don’t know, I still don’t know.
0:21:49 – Well, the way I looked at it was,
0:21:51 that’s crazy that there is no guarantees
0:21:55 on a product that costs $250. – So much money.
0:21:58 – Like in other communities, that’s not really the norm.
0:22:03 But the way our products have been sold for so long,
0:22:05 the people who have been selling them
0:22:09 have had no incentive to be customer friendly.
0:22:14 Korean owned beauty supply stores supplied 90 plus percent
0:22:17 of all of the black beauty– – So there’s no community
0:22:20 connection between the supplier and the customer.
0:22:23 – You buy it, even if you have a problem,
0:22:26 they go, final sale, says it on the receipt.
0:22:27 And that’s it, and that’s all.
0:22:29 So this was the first time
0:22:32 that I had heard of this type of interaction
0:22:34 and someone like actually being like,
0:22:36 no, we’ll be accountable.
0:22:37 We would just want to make sure you’re happy.
0:22:40 – And that was one of the fundamental things
0:22:44 that I saw also as an innovation here
0:22:47 was not just adding all this technology,
0:22:49 but also the technology can enable me
0:22:52 to provide a customer experience
0:22:57 and customer service level that my customer is not used to.
0:23:02 But to me, it’s just a right, this is just a right.
0:23:04 – So take us through the concept of the business.
0:23:08 – So honestly, it’s really why did I stick with Maven?
0:23:10 Because I started all kinds of things
0:23:12 to just make money and hustle.
0:23:15 Maven became different for me
0:23:18 because it actually had more purpose to it.
0:23:20 To me, I was just like, as an entrepreneur
0:23:22 and as a hustle and I looked at the stylists,
0:23:25 like they are also entrepreneurs
0:23:29 and they’re being blocked out of a category
0:23:32 because there’s no infrastructure for them to get into it.
0:23:35 And the distributors who supply those stores,
0:23:38 who own these brands, they wouldn’t even sell to you
0:23:40 if you went to them and said,
0:23:42 “I wanna carry your brands in my hair salon.”
0:23:47 So all of the black hair salons were devoid of any retail.
0:23:51 You didn’t buy products in the salon.
0:23:53 So all the dollars for all the retail
0:23:56 were flowing out of the community
0:23:59 and the stylists and the salons
0:24:01 weren’t able to capture any of that value.
0:24:05 Which typically in mainstream hair salons,
0:24:08 that can be like 40% of the revenue
0:24:09 that flows through that salon
0:24:11 could be from retail and selling products.
0:24:14 So I didn’t like that.
0:24:19 And then I saw that there could be a technological solution
0:24:23 that leveraged the power that the hairstylists had.
0:24:25 Because what I also saw was these stylists
0:24:27 who got all these customers in here.
0:24:28 – It’s amazing.
0:24:29 – They got a relationship with them.
0:24:32 If I just give them this tool,
0:24:35 maybe they can distribute these products.
0:24:36 And so that’s what I saw.
0:24:40 And then that’s what I kind of set out to build.
0:24:44 I called it Maven because the word Maven,
0:24:49 the word Maven, M-A-V-E-N, it means an expert.
0:24:52 Someone who’s skilled in their craft or an expert.
0:24:55 And that’s the way that I looked at the hairstylists.
0:24:59 That they’re actually at the center
0:25:01 of influencing this entire beauty world.
0:25:03 And the products that people buy
0:25:05 and what styles they get, everything.
0:25:06 They’re at the center of it.
0:25:10 I could build a tool that put them back in the center of it.
0:25:14 – So, you know, Chicago, Indiana, Detroit, you know,
0:25:16 where hair, they had like hair wars
0:25:18 and all those crazy things talking.
0:25:21 They’re really serious about it.
0:25:25 So somebody’s in the salon and they’re like hearing about it.
0:25:29 Like what does it take to transition them from
0:25:31 just the old model that doesn’t really honor them
0:25:32 and to get on a platform?
0:25:35 – It was actually really, really simple.
0:25:37 If you heard about Maven, you could, you know,
0:25:40 come to our website and just put your phone number in there.
0:25:44 Somebody would call you and over the phone,
0:25:46 collect your information and you’d be on the phone
0:25:48 for about 10 minutes.
0:25:50 And by the time you’re off the phone,
0:25:54 you would have a website, fully functional website
0:25:57 for your customers to come to and buy.
0:26:00 And when they bought, that product would ship out
0:26:03 that same day, customer would get it in about two
0:26:07 to three business days and you would get a commission.
0:26:10 So it was actually really, really simple.
0:26:12 And we signed up a lot, a lot of hairstylists.
0:26:13 – Easy sell.
0:26:15 – And is that how it still works now?
0:26:17 What’s been the iterations of it?
0:26:21 – Oh man, over the past three years,
0:26:25 there’s been a flood of cheap hair
0:26:26 that has come from China.
0:26:31 So the old brands that were the Korean brands sold
0:26:32 through the beauty supply stores
0:26:34 that they basically own the whole market,
0:26:37 they bought all their hair from these Chinese manufacturers.
0:26:44 Alibaba came along, which is like the Amazon of China.
0:26:48 And those factories now had a way to get online
0:26:51 and start selling products all over the world
0:26:53 and even direct to consumer.
0:26:55 And so you have both direct to consumer,
0:26:59 factories selling directly from China to customers here.
0:27:03 And you’ve got factories just selling supply of hair
0:27:06 to entrepreneurs here who want to start small hair companies.
0:27:11 And so there’s been an explosion of cheap hair here,
0:27:13 which started to threaten our business model
0:27:15 because now prices are like coming down.
0:27:19 And that started to make it harder for our stylist to sell.
0:27:24 So what we did was completely transform our business.
0:27:26 We basically said, okay, if this is the world,
0:27:29 if hair margins are gonna go down,
0:27:31 what do we need to do to survive?
0:27:33 What do we have that no one else has?
0:27:36 And how can we use that to compete and survive?
0:27:39 And so what we did was, again, going back to the power
0:27:41 that was in our community is our hairstylist.
0:27:42 That was the asset.
0:27:44 That’s the thing that Maven had built up
0:27:47 over the past four and a half years.
0:27:49 We partnered with the stylist in a different way
0:27:53 and we bundled the hair and the service together
0:27:55 for one price.
0:27:58 And then we went to stylists and said,
0:28:01 I’m gonna fill your book of business with new clients.
0:28:05 So we shifted the model to customer buys now directly
0:28:06 from Maven.
0:28:09 If they buy from us at the same cost,
0:28:12 they don’t have to pay for service.
0:28:13 They can go put in their zip code,
0:28:17 find any stylist, Maven stylist in their area,
0:28:19 book that stylist and Maven will pay for the service
0:28:24 directly to the stylist, but we work out a special rate
0:28:24 with our stylist.
0:28:26 And so we’re still able to make some money.
0:28:28 It’s a brand new model.
0:28:31 The industry doesn’t even, there is no model for it.
0:28:35 And we’ve delivered like three extra value now to customers.
0:28:37 The stylists now that are on this platform
0:28:40 are now making five times the amount of money
0:28:43 that we used to pay out to stylists.
0:28:46 And now we’re competitive with AliExpress.
0:28:47 They can’t do what we’re doing.
0:28:49 They don’t have the stylist network.
0:28:52 Amazon has a stylist network of black stylists,
0:28:54 you know, across America.
0:28:57 – Now you’re providing a different kind of service.
0:29:00 – Well, what it also does is what we basically said,
0:29:02 there’s this other market here right next to it
0:29:06 that’s three times bigger than even this product.
0:29:10 And we can sell these services, right?
0:29:12 And there’s so much value that needs to be created
0:29:15 on that side and things we can help to fix on that side.
0:29:18 We’re gonna use the product that we’ve been selling
0:29:20 to leverage our way into that side.
0:29:24 But now we can do bookings.
0:29:27 We can do, you know, we can do the credit card processing
0:29:30 for all the transactions that go through there.
0:29:32 We can fill these stylist’s book of business,
0:29:35 like fill their seats with customers.
0:29:37 We can add all the menu of services that they provide,
0:29:39 not just weave services.
0:29:41 That’s, you know, that’s coming next.
0:29:43 – Yeah, I’m just about to ask about that.
0:29:45 Considering I got lots and I’m like, I travel a lot
0:29:47 and so it’s not always easy to get,
0:29:49 like somebody to take care of my hair.
0:29:51 And there’s a phone app that you can use.
0:29:55 – So we actually don’t, we don’t even have a mobile app.
0:29:56 It’s always just been web, web based.
0:29:57 It’s a website.
0:30:02 Everything’s built very for like mobile, friendly, you know?
0:30:05 But also, you know, like with this technology thing,
0:30:09 everyone always thinks they gotta go make a app, right?
0:30:14 Like, like I gotta make it really super technological.
0:30:17 No, like you need just try to find the minimum amount
0:30:20 of technology you need to just solve a very specific problem.
0:30:22 And you don’t have to overdo it.
0:30:25 So there never was a specific reason you needed an app
0:30:28 for this, so we didn’t build one.
0:30:30 I think a lot of people get that, you know, get that wrong.
0:30:32 – And you need to refer people into it
0:30:35 from all kinds of sources that actually technically work better
0:30:37 for you with a, with a web-based service, yeah.
0:30:39 – And apps can have a lot of friction.
0:30:41 – So Sherian, when you made that leap with Maven,
0:30:43 like how did that impact your business?
0:30:46 – Well, I think, I think the first thing for any hustles,
0:30:48 you gotta have the passion behind it, right?
0:30:49 That’s, that’s number one.
0:30:52 When I went in for them to give us a survey
0:30:54 and ask us questions, afterwards Deshaun came in
0:30:58 and just told us about it and told us more about the company
0:31:01 and why he created it and what his vision was.
0:31:04 And at the time, I kind of turned my nose up
0:31:06 and other sellers that were there did too,
0:31:09 because Maven is not a platform
0:31:12 that is only for professional stylists.
0:31:16 Maven is a platform that’s for all stylists.
0:31:20 And as a professional and as someone that took out school loans,
0:31:23 I was like, why do I wanna be on the platform
0:31:26 with other people who didn’t do all the things that I did?
0:31:29 I felt like I should be on a different platform.
0:31:32 And when Deshaun broke down that, you know,
0:31:34 it’s bigger than just being a professional.
0:31:36 This is about giving back to the community.
0:31:39 This is about people who are, you know,
0:31:42 in small cities somewhere in Indiana
0:31:45 and are doing hair in their kitchen.
0:31:47 But mind you, that’s what our grandmothers used to do
0:31:49 was they were doing hair in their kitchen.
0:31:52 And so who are we to put ourselves, you know,
0:31:54 on this platform saying, no, I’m not them
0:31:55 because that’s who I come from.
0:31:57 And so as soon as you put it like that, I was like,
0:32:00 I want to be a part of whatever you’re doing.
0:32:04 And so since then, I’ve worked as a Maven stylist.
0:32:07 I’ve helped with YouTube videos.
0:32:09 I’ve helped with how-tos.
0:32:11 This is something that’ll be rated.
0:32:14 And, you know, they wanna make sure
0:32:16 that the customer is gonna be getting
0:32:20 a quality and consistent service.
0:32:23 But not only just for hair weaving services,
0:32:24 it’ll also be for cut.
0:32:26 It’ll also be for color.
0:32:27 It’ll also be for natural hair.
0:32:30 It still, you know, it gets me a little excited
0:32:32 ’cause I’ll get a text message going,
0:32:34 you just got paid and I’ll be like, what?
0:32:36 Because people just go to your site
0:32:39 and they just can buy, you don’t have to do anything.
0:32:41 – That’s way easier than doing somebody’s hair.
0:32:44 – You just get a notification, ding, you got paid.
0:32:49 And so since then, my trajectory completely took off.
0:32:50 Now I work in Hollywood.
0:32:53 I’ve worked on the last two seasons of HBO and Secure.
0:32:57 I’m working on a new show called “Little Fires Everywhere”
0:32:59 that stars Carrie Washington and Reese Witherspoon.
0:33:03 And every time I get a chance and I need some hair,
0:33:06 I still go back to Maven because the hair is good.
0:33:08 They’re always on top of everything.
0:33:10 And that’s really hard to find,
0:33:11 especially like in a hair company.
0:33:14 And I think it’s, I honestly would have thought before now
0:33:16 that would have been too much to ask for.
0:33:18 It’s also something that’ll be beneficial to me.
0:33:21 ‘Cause again, I don’t want to deal with the technical side,
0:33:25 but it’s so important to have that technical component.
0:33:27 I don’t care if you don’t want to deal with it.
0:33:30 You get with another company that’ll do the work for you
0:33:32 and you’re still able to reap the benefits.
0:33:35 Sometimes some people get caught up in the,
0:33:37 well, how much am I gonna get?
0:33:38 What am I getting back for my service?
0:33:43 The truth is, is that if you are a stylist
0:33:47 and you are not fully booked, then you need to be on it.
0:33:51 I have friends who work in LA and travel
0:33:55 and they have clients that pay a lot of money for hair, right?
0:33:56 To get their hair done.
0:33:59 Yet they’re still taking part-time gigs, you know?
0:34:02 They’re like, oh, but it’s gonna be 30 bucks an hour.
0:34:04 I’m like, why are you going somewhere for 30 bucks an hour
0:34:05 when you can go in a salon?
0:34:07 Are you telling me they’re gonna give you, you know,
0:34:09 anywhere from 100 to 300 bucks for this one client,
0:34:11 it’s only gonna take you two to three hours?
0:34:12 The math’s not working out.
0:34:15 And so we have to change our mindset
0:34:18 because sometimes some of us hustlers,
0:34:20 especially as a cosmetologist,
0:34:23 we’re so used to having to do things
0:34:26 and constantly be having our hands in something
0:34:28 that sometimes we don’t see opportunities
0:34:29 that are right in front of our face.
0:34:31 – So one of the things I was thinking about
0:34:34 was just like, you know, going back to earlier conversation
0:34:37 about how hair, you know, the hair industry itself, you know,
0:34:39 from the mom-and-pops in the house.
0:34:43 So how do people sign up and make payments and get paid?
0:34:46 Like if they don’t have credit cards or debit cards.
0:34:48 – Yeah, that’s a really interesting question
0:34:53 because this was one of the unforeseen challenges
0:34:58 that we had after getting into this business
0:35:03 was the first version of how we paid people was by check.
0:35:08 And we found out very fast
0:35:11 that when we tried to go pay people by PayPal
0:35:14 or pay them, you know, ACH or something,
0:35:18 that like half of the stylists didn’t have bank accounts.
0:35:23 And then that opened up this whole other world of the unbanked.
0:35:25 Some enormous percentage of the population
0:35:27 doesn’t have bank accounts.
0:35:31 So we would send out checks and they’d get lost in the mail
0:35:35 or there’s all over the country,
0:35:36 we would get stylists calling us saying,
0:35:38 “I brought my check into a bank.”
0:35:41 And they wouldn’t let me cash it, right?
0:35:43 And we’re talking like checks like 15 bucks
0:35:44 or something like that,
0:35:47 but they wouldn’t even let them cash a $15 check.
0:35:48 They had to go to a check cashing place,
0:35:50 which they charge, you know,
0:35:53 they charge like 15% or something of the check
0:35:54 or whatever it is.
0:35:56 In the past couple of years,
0:36:01 we created a solution actually in partnership with Green Dot.
0:36:03 So there, the technical infrastructure
0:36:05 for how this payment system works,
0:36:10 but we can now pay to any routing number.
0:36:12 So you don’t have to have a bank account,
0:36:14 but if you have like a prepaid card
0:36:16 and it’s got those 16 digits on it,
0:36:17 we can drop money on that thing
0:36:20 and we can drop it instantaneously.
0:36:23 For the new thing that we have where we sell the hair
0:36:26 and you get free service with it,
0:36:29 Instapay is now triggered through a QR code.
0:36:32 So after you buy the hair and you book your stylus,
0:36:35 we text you a QR code.
0:36:36 When you go into the salon,
0:36:39 the stylus just scans your QR code with her phone
0:36:42 and she’s instantaneously paid to her,
0:36:45 either her bank account or her prepaid card.
0:36:46 – Three things that popped up to me when you were talking
0:36:48 when the importance of being able to serve a community
0:36:51 that is underserved and then quality.
0:36:52 ‘Cause from a husband perspective,
0:36:54 you know, a lot of times you just get what you can
0:36:57 when you’re in that mindset of being easily distracted
0:36:59 and in different directions.
0:37:01 And then the third thing was partnership.
0:37:04 And so like, do you intuitively think of it
0:37:05 from those three lenses
0:37:08 or did it just something that organically shows up
0:37:11 in the way that you do business?
0:37:14 – You know, I had a mentor before.
0:37:17 His name was Mike Bush and he was an executive out here
0:37:20 in Oakland and he gave me some advice one time.
0:37:23 He said, before I had started maybe, and he was like,
0:37:25 “Dishon, you’re not gonna make any money
0:37:29 “until you stop trying to make money
0:37:31 “and think about how you can make other people money.”
0:37:35 And it changed the way I thought about
0:37:37 my relationships with people.
0:37:42 And what you wanna try to do is be valuable to people,
0:37:45 not extract value from people.
0:37:49 If you are valuable to society,
0:37:52 the money flows to where the value is,
0:37:54 where the value creator is.
0:37:57 If the other person doesn’t win, this thing ain’t gonna last.
0:38:00 It ain’t gonna work if we both don’t win.
0:38:02 It won’t be sustainable.
0:38:06 So partnership is always like how I look at it, you know?
0:38:08 And like the new model that we’ve created,
0:38:12 what is the right number so that this works for stylists
0:38:13 and what’s the number that works
0:38:16 so that it works for customers?
0:38:21 And then honestly, the number that we get to keep at Maven
0:38:23 is the last number that I think about.
0:38:26 But it starts with, “Let me make my partner’s money.”
0:38:28 – Well, it’s definitely showing up
0:38:31 in a way that Sherianne expressed it.
0:38:33 – When I was in cosmetology school,
0:38:35 they were like, “Okay, you guys are cosmetologists.
0:38:37 “So you guys get to pick whatever name you want.
0:38:39 “You can have a cosmo name.”
0:38:41 And I was like, “I can be someone else?”
0:38:43 What?
0:38:45 I never thought about that ever in life.
0:38:46 I’ve always been Sherianne.
0:38:49 My name is Sherianne, but I go by Sherianne
0:38:52 and I didn’t know that was my grandmother’s middle name.
0:38:54 I just knew she was Sherianne.
0:38:56 I didn’t know she was Sherianne.
0:38:58 And so it just came out of me.
0:39:01 I don’t even know where it came from
0:39:02 or I thought I don’t.
0:39:04 Went on through cosmetology school,
0:39:06 like I said, back was against the wall,
0:39:07 had to make it happen,
0:39:10 did great by the grace of God.
0:39:13 And I graduated and it was all the tears
0:39:15 because for the first time in life,
0:39:19 I had done something where the most important thing
0:39:20 of all of it was me.
0:39:22 It wasn’t about, when I worked with a company,
0:39:23 it was about always about like,
0:39:25 what you can do for that company?
0:39:26 Can you fit in this box?
0:39:28 You always have to fit in a box.
0:39:29 And for the first time in life,
0:39:32 it was like, I didn’t have to fit in anyone’s box
0:39:33 and I could create my own box.
0:39:35 Maybe it’s not a box, maybe it’s a star shape.
0:39:38 And so what I learned at my graduation
0:39:40 was my mom told me that before my grandma
0:39:42 passed she passed of cancer.
0:39:46 While she had cancer, she didn’t tell any of us.
0:39:49 She went to cosmetology school
0:39:52 and she got her cosmetology license.
0:39:55 She went and took the state board test.
0:39:57 I went back and taught cosmetology school.
0:39:59 It is hard for people to pass that test.
0:40:01 And we got it.
0:40:04 Yes, so we got her cosmetology license
0:40:06 post humorously in the mail.
0:40:08 And that’s how we found out.
0:40:09 – That’s grandma Sherry Ann.
0:40:10 – Sherry Ann.
0:40:12 I think she wanted to be able to have a business
0:40:14 with my mom was her dream.
0:40:18 And so my beauty studio is with my mom.
0:40:19 And I’m Sherry Ann.
0:40:22 And just like my grandma did it through terminal cancer,
0:40:25 you can do whatever you want.
0:40:28 You pick your shape and you live in your truth
0:40:31 and you hustle.
0:40:32 And that’s how we gonna do it.
0:40:34 – Drop the mic, I’m Sherry Ann, salute.
0:40:36 (upbeat music)
0:40:39 (upbeat music)
0:40:42 (sighs)
0:40:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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