We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aqila Augusta. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aqila below.

Aqila , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

A lot of people start business intentionally, looking for something lucrative that could bring them success. Most people want to build generational wealth or provide a better life for their family. I started a business accidentally. I was a nurse. I worked 2 full time jobs, so obviously I wanted some financial stability, or maybe I had the stability but I just wanted more finances. When I started Edge Entity, I didn’t have an idea, a name, a business, or anything. I had an issue, which was hair loss, and I solved it for myself. I created a product in my bathroom by mixing up a few ingredients. I didn’t have proper measurements, I just knew which mixture of things would work. I tried this mixture on other people who had hair loss, and it worked for them. Soon I became known as the girl with the hair growth mix. This was something that I just liked to do. When I started making these mixtures, it started to cost money, so I began charging people, but I never thought of them as customers. These were people that I just wanted to help. When I started to sell my products, I realized it could become a business, and after 7 years of building my business I’ve acquired a lot of success. But…sometimes I miss when things were simpler. As a nurse, I could go to work, go home, and enjoy my evening. In entrepreneurship, it’s difficult to separate work from simply living a normal life. I have more responsibilities as a CEO with employees. The success of my business puts food on people’s tables. The pressure to remain successful is ALL on me. I have to make sure my team is able to see their next paycheck, even while we’re in a sinking economy. I love being an entrepreneur, I love the successful business I’ve built, the financial freedom, the ability to travel freely, there are so many benefits–but at what mental cost?

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Aqila, and I create texture inclusive hair solutions for women with textured hair. I started my business in 2016, but I stumbled upon this business by accident. I was simply a girl with anemia suffering from hair loss. I knew what mixture of ingredients would help me grow my hair, so I threw them in a bowl and mixed them–for myself. But if you knew me at the time, you knew I didn’t have edges, and the struggle was REAL. When my friends saw the rapid hair growth I had, they wanted whatever it was that I mixed up for myself. So I made it for them. But then more people wanted it, and more and more. And it got way too expensive to buy these ingredients for free. These people were my friends and family that grew into supporters and paying customers. I was a nurse for 5 years before I started Edge Entity. I loved caring for my patients, and caring for people in general. Now with Edge Entity, I still care for people with the same illnesses but in a different way. My customers have hair loss due to so many different conditions including alopecia, thyroid deficiency, anemia, hypertension–the list goes on. My knowledge and expertise as a nurse really helped me care for my customers, just as I’ve cared for my patients. I’m really proud of the fact that I never stopped being a nurse. Nursing has taught me so much.. From bedside manners, to being courteous, these assets aligned perfectly with the customer service that I needed to provide for my customers.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Wow! These questions are really good! I wish I could hit on them all. I don’t know why I feel compelled to choose this question, but I think people need to hear something that resonates with us all. I think that we’ve all felt the impact of the Covid-19 phenomenon. Every single business owner has felt like they were going to lose it all. This is the scariest feeling in operating a business. In 2020, e-commerce businesses were at the peak of their careers. If you were smart, you realized early that the sales that e-commerce businesses were getting were temporary and you needed to save and invest. If you weren’t you missed the opportunity. I chose the latter. The disadvantage of being a brand new business owner is the lack of knowledge and expertise. Most of us lack financial structure, guidance, strategy, and we’re not building effective systems. This is how I failed. I was making money but didn’t know how to manage it. I was unaware of my profit margins and operated without budgets. This is how I failed. I created a business that generated over $300,000 monthly that had no real infrastructure. By the middle of 2021 when the economy seemed to be the worst it had ever been, I was down to $0 in my bank account. I had to let got a lot of my staff, I cut hours, there were times where I could not meet payroll. I was considering renewing my nursing license and closing our doors. I fought so hard because so many people relied on me. I still had a team of people that needed me. My business was 5 years in, I didn’t want to give up yet. This was the best thing that ever happened to me. It hurt for a year, but I was forced to learn so much about my business to build it back up. I learned to budget, I cut costs where it was needed, learned to build systems, began selling on platforms like Walmart.com and Amazon, and learned new ways to generate revenue. We are now selling on multiple platforms, we’ve reduced our costs, and we’re generating a 6 figure monthly revenue just as we were before–except we are keeping much of the profit. I’ve learned how to operate my business better. We could have never scaled without realizing the things we needed to change.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

For 7 years we have manufactured all of our products in-house. I created the very BEST high quality formulas with the best ingredients and our customers love Edge Entity because of this. As much as we would love to keep manufacturing within our own warehouse, we realized that the most efficient and economical, and safest option was to manufacture our products with an experienced, trusted manufacturer in our city. We were extremely blessed to find a company located right here in our city, Memphis. Trust me, the search was not easy. We tried using the most expensive, well-known, and well-established manufacturers. We’ve sampled ingredients from manufacturers in China and India to save on costs. These options did not work for us. The ingredients were not organic or authentic and the formulas were not accurate. We almost gave up until we found a company that was small, black owned, and an 8 minute drive from our warehouse. The best thing we did was continue our search. We could have compromised on our ingredients, but we continued to make our own products until we found a company that was the best fit for us.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://edgeentity.com
• Instagram: @edge.entity
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Edge.entity/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aqila-augusta-a34a91203
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/edgeentity
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/c/EdgeEntity