We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Keyveona Mitchell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Keyveona, appreciate you joining us today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

Having the parents that I have made a very big impact on things. Especially when it came to my dreams and aspirations. My mom always told me to do something with my talent when it came to the beauty industry. She seen how much I loved doing hair, how good I was and always motivated me into making it something bigger in my life. My dad always pushed me to want bigger and better things. He never made me feel like I had to settle for anything that I didn’t want to settle for when it came to my goals in life. He never made me feel like my goals were ever too big or too unrealistic. If anything he was the one who would tell me to put the work and actions behind what I want to do and always think big and better. Having parents there to tell me to go for what I want, helping me strive for my goals, and just teaching me the life lessons I needed made an incredible impact on me and my journey so far.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

It started out with me loving hair. As a kid I always loved anything that had to do with hair. I loved the creativeness behind the different styles of hair and textures of hair. I would always do different things with my hair also. When I got in high school, I decided to take the career path to be a cosmetologist, which I had taken my last two years of high school. After getting my cosmetology license, I decided to go to college and major in business management because I felt that the things I wanted to do in life coincided with what would be good to learn and have for the future, which consisted of being in the business industry and the beauty industry. After my first year of college, I decided to start my own Online Hair Line of Indian Hair Extensions called “K. Certified Essentials”. After completing my two years of college and graduating with an Associates degree, I tried out different positions of work while still trying to balance out running my small business. I soon decided to come back to it when I was able to actually focus on it so I took a break and decided that I would be back up and running when I was able to focus on my brand and growing it into the business I really want. Not doing anything that had to do with hair just didn’t feel right so I decided to take being a hairstylist more serious. I felt that was my true calling. Now I am working on growing my business as a hairstylist into something big. My business is called “Kevie’s Beauty Services”. I Provide braiding, locs, coloring, installs and kids services. A place were everything is done and a challenge is always fun. I am looking forward to what’s up ahead for both of my businesses. It’s been a long hard journey of trial and errors but that isn’t stopping me. I’m nowhere near done making my businesses into something known worldwide and amazing. I definitely appreciate those who have supported along the way!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

The initial capital for my business was self-funded. I had saved money for when I was doing hair on the side, but I wasn’t ready to start my business and put all my money into it yet until I had did a test run. I decided to take a risk with this idea to find a good hair vendor, and to use a bit of the money I saved to order hair in bulk. I ordered about 21 bundles of hair in different textures to see if I was able to sell the hair on hand. I fortunately, ended up selling all the bundles which doubled the funds I used. This happened to work out great so I decided to continue that hustle and started selling more hair on hand to gain more funds. After a while, That’s when I decided to start on my hair business, making it legit with a website, brand name, Ig page, etc.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

For my products I had to find a vendor that I felt fitted my needs for my business. This came with doing research on the type of hair That was out there and the type of hair I wanted to sell. I also did research on hair vendors that I found, being sure that they would be the great fit of my needs for my brand of hair. This came with a lot of money lost, understanding that all vendors may have the same hair but a different name or different scales of hair. I also had to research and understand exactly where they were getting their hair from to know the type of hair it properly was no matter what the vendors may have said. Buying samples from different vendors and testing the hair on my own was very expensive but its what was best to guarantee the quality and type of hair that I was looking for my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/kcertifiedessentials
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/k_beautystylist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/keyveona.mitchell.12