We were lucky to catch up with Akqra Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.
Akqra, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
Event planning pop up shops it was meaningful to me because it gave me a opportunity to expand as a creative . I also was able to contribute & build a community and be around other like minded entrepreneurs and businesses owners. . Not only was a able to help people build there business I promoted & made flyers for all the events so it helped me to tap in to content creating and marketing things I never done before but I learned along the way . All the business owners motivated me as i motivated them
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I would say that I love to help people I think that’s where all of my creative juices have come from . I wanted to help people and wanting them to see their potential so when I was younger, I wanted to be a therapist but because I wasn’t always eager to go to school that didn’t happen . I love beauty so when I was in high school and I started doing my friends , my sister and her friends hair , & family members hair .While letting me do their hair we would talk about there lives & they would vent to me so creating that safe space for them . I realized that I can help people by being creative with beauty . Then that trickle down to me working at a hair salon, being a assistant . The owner of the shop was having Pop Up Shop’s. So I made me think like I know a lot of people are starting their own business and I would love to be around entrepreneurs and actually help people build their business and create community where other entrepreneurs give each other advice and people come and shop and eat and have drinks and listen to music . Thats where I created my baby called Business and Benjamins we talk business while making Benjamins I feel like when we don’t compete and we share information that will help our businesses . It would help sew seeds in to families and there children and our community so that we can build our community with wealth & resources .
How did you build your audience on social media?
I would say when starting out be authentic and give yourself a schedule when it comes to posting don’t worry about the likes or views in the beginning it will grow . Be consistent consistency is key . Im going to be honest I didn’t have a lot of structure when I first began to create content . I didn’t know what to do so I just posted things that I was interested in and I feel like with doing that people that have the same interest followed me so health and beauty is something that I like to focus on , Find your niche. so that goes to mental health and all things, beauty and self-love self-care so people that are interested in those things will follow you and don’t be scared to tell people what you do something I learned beauty school from another classmate was that you’re your own walking billboard. Be nice and introduce yourself to people you don’t know how far just introducing yourself to people can take you .Giving them a compliment and telling them like hey this is what I do and then give them the space to tell you what they do it open up the doors for you to connect with each other so I would say always be open to meet new people and don’t be scared to tell him who you are.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
A story for my journey that illustrated resilience is me happy to learn how to pivot, and the industry promotion marketing is always changing and it’s important for us to learn how to do that. So for me, I had to learn how to except change and always know that I’m going to be learning and growing energy. Stay focus and keep like-minded people around me because your community is important.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @blaxkunicornx3 @styledbykira_ @business_n_benjamins
Image Credits
@by.lavache