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

Elisha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I came up with the idea for my company, Diamond n the Ruff, after I lost another job due to my health issues. I decided that I didn’t want to go through that anymore, I didn’t want to lose another job or keep losing jobs due to my health issues. I was already taking care of my own hair and I wanted to come up with a product line so I decided to go to beauty school so I can learn about hair and come up with my own products. Because at the time of me doing my own hair there weren’t as many natural hair products for locs at least none that I really liked or cared for lol. I just knew that going to work for myself and taking a chance and risk on myself was worth more than taking a risk in starting a new job and end up losing that job due to my health issues, so I decided to go to Beauty school and I started in June 2017. The more I got into beauty school the more I learned about hair was when I realize my natural talent in doing hair, my natural love and passion for hair started blossoming, and that’s when I knew that I found my calling which was doing hair and making people look beautiful lol. I came up with the name diamond in the rough because when you think of diamonds it takes pressure to get the final result and I feel like with my story I had to go through a lot of pressure and a lot of lessons to finally get to my final beautiful product and calling.

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?

I legit got into the hair industry because I wanted to learn about hair. I’m a natural nerd at heart, so I love love love learning new things learning about new things, and I wanted to learn about hair. The more I learned and the more I grew with my skills and in the industry the more I learned my love for doing hair. I’m a very humble person so getting into the hair industry being like a big platform artist/famous artist was never my goal as long as I was able to do hair and have a steady clientele I was happy with that. Like doing this interview is it’s like wow something that I never expected because I never expect it to grow this far but that’s all and do thanks to my hard work and the loyalty from my clients which I appreciate and very grateful for. I always let my clients know that whatever I do on their hair, whatever products I use on their hair I’ve used it on my own, I’ve tried it on my own. I have a cousin who always been my test dummy, and i let’s me try just about everything on her hair and I will forever be grateful for her to her for that. Now again I did say I am a natural nerd so getting into this industry I’ve learned that there is no limit on the things I can learn and the things that I can do it is a forever spinning door of learning things to do in this industry. With that being said not only am I a licensed cosmetologist and loctician I am also certified in Brazilian blowouts, body sculpting, teeth whitening, and tooth gems. And I would like all my clients to know new and returning clients that I I’m not in this for the money I’m actually in this for the passion and to make them look great. If there something that I can’t do I will let you know that I can’t do it, or I will find out how to do it, or I will find you another stylist that can do it lol. I just appreciate the opportunity to be able to do this interview, and the opportunity to continue to grow with it is industry learning many things and just getting my name out there!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I work at a shop called Stay Blessed barber and beauty, it’s a one stop shop that is fully owned and operated by women. I’ve been working there for a little over two years now, and when I started working there I was coming from working out of my house and it was right when the pandemic started. When the salons and everything shut down during the pandemic it just took me back to when I almost stopped doing hair and wanted to give up, but that changed when the salons were given the OK to open back up and I got a text msg from my boss asking if I was still interested in working at the shop. Getting that message just solidified OK this is what you’re supposed to do don’t give up yet keep pushing keep grinding. I went back to work at the shop and just grind it and hustled to build my clientele but then things came to a standstill with just doing hair. The other women that work in my shop they all are certified in other things and they do more than just one thing and I started to look at that as motivation especially knowing that I’m working somewhere where everybody motivates each other and nobody feels like you’re stepping on anyone’s toes if you do the same service. That’s something that’s very rare in our industry . Once I felt that motivation and support from my Stay Blessed team that was the pivotal point in my career where I realized I can do anything as long as I have the right support and the right motivation to do so. So I took it upon myself to do research and figure out what other services I wanted to offer and get certified in so I posted a poll on all of my social media pages asking what new services with friends and family and current clients would be interested in and based off of that poll is how I made the choice on what to get certified in. I’ve been blossoming ever since, once I started treating it like a business and taking things more serious as far as what other aspects and other channels and directions to go is when I started seeing the blossoming I started seeing the growth.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Just like everyone else in our industry and in today’s world social media is a huge marketing tool, and necessity. I’ve always tried to use social media as a marketing tragic strategy but I can admit I lack on that sometimes but I can say that using hashtags have been my most effective strategy. I always ask my clients how they found me or how they found the shop and the number one answer that I always seem to get is that they searched a specific hashtag and my profile came up under the hashtag that they were searching for, so I make sure to use those specific hashtags and every single one of my post on every single social media platform that I post on, Instagram Facebook and TikTok are my top main three.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/DiamondntheRuff
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/diamond.in.the.ruff2017?r=nametag
• Facebook: Diamond in the Ruff

Image Credits
Stay Blessed Barber and Beauty