Hair Braiding Workshops Help Trans-Racial Adoptive Families

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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What's up, friends? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Let's talk today about braiding hair, culture, and of course, side hustling. Now, here on the program, we don't normally feature non-profits because Side Hustle School is all about helping individuals make money. That's our mission.

It's just a narrow mission. Nothing wrong at all with starting a non-profit. And often the people we feature end up doing good in the world, maybe they even have a motivation to go and do good in the world, but they also want to make a financial profit for themselves. Okay, so that's our mission. That's our focus.

Today's story is a bit unique because it covers a long history with a Chicago woman who is now operating a non-profit helping transracial adoptive families. But for many years, before she changed structure, created an organization, et cetera, she did this as a side hustle, earning up to $4,000 a month. So we'll look at several aspects of that in this unique story. It's all about hair braiding workshops. Stay tuned.

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Tamika Swinn's interest in hair braiding started at an early age. Her mom braided her hair every week. By the time she was old enough to hold a comb, Tamika was pestering her to pass on what she knew. And then by the time she reached her early teens, she'd mastered the styles of cornrows and Dutch braids. When it came time to go to college, Tamika decided she would turn her skills into a little extra income.

She had a part-time student job, but the work was sporadic and unpredictable. After enrolling in and completing a styling course in Chicago, she was ready to offer her own services. Starting the business was pretty simple. Tamika spent a few dollars to get flyers made up and then handed them out on the campus quad. She charged $35 for a minimum two-hour sitting with a cost of $15 for every subsequent hour.

These prices were based on what she was already earning at her student job, also about $15 an hour, so she could ensure she was at least breaking even on her new venture. Eventually, she was able to build up a solid client base through referrals and earned a few hundred dollars a week around her studies. After graduation, she took a job as a parole agent. She stopped braiding hair for a while to focus her time and attention on work, but after a few years, felt the urge to start back up again. There were loans to be paid off and it never hurt to have a second stream of income.

Starting the side hustle back home was even simpler than at college. She called a few friends, booked appointments, and then used their heads as walking billboards to attract more clients. This may sound overly simplified, but Tamika promises it's how she ran her business for a number of years. This unconventional lead generation plan had its drawbacks. Being good in the world of hair care can often lead to a sea of referrals you just can't handle.

This means you need to improve at one of two things, saying no or just working more, and saying no is an acceptable option. Tamika ran this hustle for a number of years, working 10 to 20 hours a week around her job. By now, she had raised her prices and was earning up to $4,000 a month. She didn't need a high volume of clients to meet these figures because braiding someone's hair can take between two and 10 hours. Every few years, she would pause her braiding hustle to pursue other ventures.

She went back to business school to get her master's degree, got married, and worked for her husband's business. When they got divorced later, she found herself a job at an insurance firm, and once again, she began braiding hair in her spare time. That turned out to be the last time she would give it up and eventually come back to it. Because Tamika got involved in a mission at her church and went with a group to teach English to kids in Poland for two weeks. There, she started showing students how to braid their own hair as a way to get them talking and learning.

She loved teaching, and the kids responded really well. Back home, she knew she wanted to work more with kids. She started by simply expanding her services to include kids' hair. She promoted the business using flyers and business cards the same way she had done in college and quickly found a number of families eager to sign up. One of the families she grew close to was a transracial adoptive family.

They were white parents who had adopted two African-American daughters. It was in their hair that Tamika felt she found her true passion. She saw that the two kids' hair needed some love. They had no idea how to take care of themselves, and neither did their adoptive mother. Tamika felt she had to jump in, so she styled the daughter's hair and then taught the mom how to do some basic care herself.

Over the course of a few weeks, Tamika was then contacted by a number of other transracial adoptive families to see if she could help them out too. She made the bookings, did some stylings, and showed the parents a few tricks. This led her to start a not-for-profit called Styles for Kids. It's an organization that styles African-American children's hair and provides courses on hair management for adoptive families. Much like her side hustle, Tamika has built this purely on referrals and only recently started marketing through social media.

In 2018, Tamika and her organization's volunteers were able to serve 500 children in and around Chicago, and are projected to serve 1,000 this coming year. Grading hair is a real need, and her transformation was an unexpected twist. [Music]

Awesome. Well, this story reminded me of another episode we worked on long ago and a special announcement I got from somebody who was featured on the podcast. Back on episode 64, long-haired men create tribal identity.

That was about this little business called the long hairs, which is all about hair accessories and other items for men who choose to have long hair, which is an interesting business of its own. It's actually grown and really taken off a lot since we featured it in that first year of the podcast. But I just heard from Chris, the guy in that story, that they have set a Guinness World Record. They did this big event in California for the most hair donated to charity in 24 hours. They set up on the Broadway Pier and something like 1,300 people from around the country, hair stylists and volunteers, traveled in for this historic event.

They also raised something like $200,000, which, you know, this all goes to a charity called Children with Hair Loss that provides hair replacements to kids with medically related hair loss, and it's completely free of charge for them. So I thought that was pretty cool and I wanted to bring that update to you. I was also reminded of episode 140, oncology nurse creates products to regrow hair after chemo. The person featured in that story is actually in the new "100 Side Hustles" book, which comes out very soon. We have a whole profile of her along with 99 other people, what their idea was, how they pursued it, and what they learned.

Kind of like the podcast, but in highly visual form. I'm really excited about having that out in the world and I hope that you enjoy it too. All right, it is now the end of the week. We got our weekly recap coming up tomorrow and then a whole new set of stories next week. I do hope you'll join me.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To get today's show notes and learn more about styles for kids, go to sidehustleschool.com/868. That is episode 868. Thanks so much, my friends. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

from the Onward Project.