We were lucky to catch up with Audrina Henry recently and have shared our conversation below.

Audrina, appreciate you joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

Well, as some people already know, I am a true jack-of-all-trades. I actually balance a demanding 9-to-5 position while simultaneously running two businesses. When people ask if I’d be happier just doing one or the other, I have to be completely honest: it doesn’t matter if you have a regular job or own a company—both are incredibly hard when you are dealing with people. There is no magic “win-win” scenario; you just have to make the best out of the path you choose.
With a 9-to-5, you often have to navigate janky, sneaky higher-ups who make your day-to-day job unnecessarily difficult. On the flip side, when you own a business, the buck stops with you. If a team member is having a bad day, that energy ripples out, creates friction, and suddenly you have a massive problem on your hands that you alone have to fix.
The last time I found myself staring into space, seriously questioning why I do this to myself, was during a particularly brutal week recently. I was caught in the ultimate crossfire of both worlds. At my day job, I was dealing with corporate politics and frustrating management decisions that felt completely out of my control. At the exact same time, my business was hitting a critical moment, and I was managing internal team friction where a few off-days were threatening to derail our timeline.
I remember sitting at my desk, completely exhausted, looking at an overwhelming to-do list, and thinking, “What would it be like to just have a regular, predictable job where I clock in, clock out, and leave the stress at the door?” It sounded like paradise for a split second.
But as I sat there and really thought through it, I came to a major insight. The stress of working for someone else is empty—it’s building someone else’s dream while dealing with their lack of integrity. The stress of running my own businesses, however, is a growing pain. It’s the price of admission for building my own legacy, creating a diverse brand, and bringing my own vision to life.
My conclusion? Chaos is guaranteed no matter what you do. You just have to choose the kind of chaos that is worth fighting for. For me, the freedom to create, lead, and build my own future makes every difficult day entirely worth it.

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 background and context?

For anyone who is just getting to know me, I am the founder, designer, and creative director behind Kali Swim and Adra Hair Company. At a glance, people see that I sell swimwear and high-quality hair, but my journey into this industry goes much deeper than that. I’ve always been a jack-of-all-trades, balancing a demanding professional career while simultaneously building two independent brands from the ground up. I got into this space because I saw a need for true representation, versatility, and outside-the-box creativity.
Through Kali Swim and Adra Hair Company, I provide diverse, high-fashion swimwear designs and premium hair products. But what I really deliver to my clients is confidence, self-expression, and a sense of belonging. In the fashion and beauty world, it’s easy to blend in, but my mission is to solve that problem by creating pieces and products that allow people to stand out.
What completely sets my work apart is a refusal to play it safe. I intentionally design outside the box, pushing the boundaries of traditional creative direction. Many small, independent swimwear brands never get the opportunity to showcase their work on a massive scale. I am incredibly proud to say that through sheer hustle, vision, and dedication, Kali Swim has already been featured in three different magazine publications and has taken the stage at three live swim shows—including the prestigious Miami Swim Week. Seeing my designs on that runway was an incredibly beautiful, surreal, and amazing experience that validated every late night and early morning I’ve put into this journey.
If there is one thing I want potential clients, followers, and fans to know about me and my brands, it’s that we are just getting started. When you support Kali Swim or Adra Hair Company, you aren’t just buying a product; you are supporting a vision of diverse, limit-pushing creativity. My long-term goal is to see our designs in international resort hotels all over the world, and I invite everyone to follow along as we continue to break boundaries and take up space in the global fashion industry.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I actually touched on this a bit last year in my September feature, but back in late 2023, I hit a point where the pressure was almost unbearable. I had put myself under an immense amount of stress, caught in the crossfire of everything all at once—from family business and personal drama to navigating the heavy responsibilities of being a landowner. On top of all that, I found myself in a toxic competition with someone I had chosen to be completely vulnerable with, which was just a massive betrayal and too damn much to carry.
When you are running businesses, that kind of heavy personal and mental toll directly bleeds into your professional life, creating the ultimate close-call environment where you feel like everything you’re building is being tested.
To be completely honest, I don’t even like talking about the specific details of that time anymore. It’s behind me, it’s above me, and I’ve completely outgrown it. I don’t look at it as a sob story. Every single thing I went through back then was just a test of my foundation, and it taught me exactly how resilient I really am.
Today, I am officially in my comeback season. Those near-death moments for the business didn’t break me; they just forced me to level up, protect my peace, and go harder for my vision. The insight I took from that chapter is that you can’t let temporary noise ruin a permanent dream.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

As both a wholesale and regular supplier for Adra Hair Company, I quickly realized that relying on a single platform wasn’t enough if I wanted to maximize my brand’s potential. To truly scale, diversify my income streams, and reach a massive new pool of clientele, I had to expand. Because of this, I made the strategic decision to launch Adra on Amazon starting this year, operating under a different name specifically tailored for that marketplace. Choosing between hosting your own e-commerce site and utilizing a global powerhouse like Amazon comes with distinct pros and cons. Choosing between hosting your own e-commerce site and utilizing a global powerhouse like Amazon comes with distinct tradeoffs. Running your own independent site gives you complete control over your branding, allows you to build direct relationships with your clients, and lets you keep 100% of your profit margins—but the major downside is that you have to drive every single bit of traffic yourself. On the flip side, expanding to Amazon gives you instant access to a massive, built-in global audience with high buyer trust, which is incredible for scaling. However, the cons are a brutal, highly restricted approval process, intense competition, and platform fees that eat into your margins. Ultimately, you exchange total creative and financial control on your own site for the massive volume and visibility that only a platform like Amazon can provide. When I say expanding to Amazon was a hard journey, I mean it was an absolute test of patience. The process to get Amazon to approve and list my business on their website was incredibly rigorous—navigating category restrictions, strict supplier verifications, and compliance standards felt like an uphill battle. It requires an immense amount of upfront effort and meticulous backend organization to get over their hurdles.
However, now that the foundation is set, the payoff has spoken for itself. The consistent volume and incoming revenue from Amazon have been game-changing. It has provided the financial injection and visibility needed to aggressively fund my brand’s overall growth, proving that despite the brutal onboarding process, the hustle was completely worth it.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: itstherealdri
• Linkedin: Audrina Henry
• Youtube: itstherealdri

Image Credits

Brooklynn Van