“I started braiding when I was eleven. My mama was a hair stylist, so I was a shop kid. She inspired me and I was brought up around all of this. Our whole family is full of hair stylists, so it was kind of inevitable. I’ve been in this shop for nine years. The money attracted me at first but it became more than that. Besides the money, it’s the feeling you get when you make other people feel good about themselves. That keeps me in it. Even when the money’s slow, you still have that feeling to fall back on.

When you first get in the shop from hair school, it slows down a lot. You’re so used to being busy because hair school feeds you clientele. When you get out of school and out on your own, you have to start from the ground up and rebuild. It’s rough. After the transition, or so many years of staying at the same spot, it builds up. Starting out, it’s rough. Coming out of school, you’ll be going back and forth asking yourself if you want to keep doing this but you gotta keep going.

You gotta put yourself out there. Social media plays a big part in me getting a lot of clientele. Put yourself out there and once you get out there, it’s all word of mouth. If you do right and you do good work, people will send people your way. 

My advice to people who are just starting out is to not give up. When it gets hard, just push a little harder. Everything will get better later on. Soon you won’t have to work as hard to get your clientele. Just don’t give up.

Focus on you, yours, and what you’ve got going on. Don’t worry about nobody but your situation. When you worry about other people’s stuff, you’ll start losing track of yourself and try to keep up with everybody. Do your own thing and be good at it.” - Tiffany, Devastating Doos in Russell