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

Alright, Matika thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

That we’re simply doing hobbies. I don’t feel that we are fully acknowledged as having full fledged careers and operating corporations.

Matika , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am Matika “MissTika” Goldsmith I am a beauty guru in the making. I first found my love for Beauty at a very young age and I would cut my barbie dolls hair and I would set the flat irons or a curling iron at a temperature where I would be able to curl their hair a little bit and not melt it Lol. My mother is a cosmetologist, and we had a salon in our home and I would help her with her clients and then I started to have my own clients. I learn a lot from her and my freshman year of high school is when I started really building my own clientele and straight out of high school I went right to cosmetology school and I graduated from Continental School of beauty culture and I then went right into working in a salon on my temporary license. I worked at New Revelations beauty salon under the direction of the awesome Monique Winfield. She was such a awesome mentor for me and I appreciate everything that she did to help me grow and you know become the artist that I am now. I opened my own salon 2011. 7 yrs later I was expecting my baby girl and I had complications so I had I was forced to close my salon down and after delivering my baby safely thank God, the love I have for the beauty industry shifted a bit. I no longer want to be behind the chair doing hair but I found my new passion for make up, lashes, and eyebrows. It excited me in such a different way that I knew I wasn’t really interested in doing hair anymore so that led to me developing Jokelé Beauty. When Jokelé Beauty started out I made my own lipgloss. I wanted it to be natural, but I wanted it to feel good to condition your lips also to give you pops of color without you feeling like you had lipstick on or afraid to drink something or kiss someone on the cheek. Lol! That evolved and we grew with custom lashes and body, care and Skincare and Pampering treatments. We have LED facial treatments, bath salts, candles just things that makes a person feel good from the inside out. I am now in the process of re-branding Jokelé. We have new ventures that we’re going to be headed into so you know we wanna put our best foot forward and we’re going to be adding on some new things, some new fun exciting things. So that’s my focus right now is family and business always putting God first because we always want to be the best that we can be and i can do all things through Christ that strengthens me!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons that I had to unlearn, was that your family and friends were not going to be your biggest supporters. Most of the time we go into business, thinking that we have a lot of family we have a lot of friends we’ve done a lot of things, for many different people, and that we’re going to receive that same support in that same push from them and that is not realistic expectations at all. That was a huge pill for me to swallow. So I had to unlearn that, and realize that familiar territory was not going to be where the majority of my support was coming from. It is literally strangers that will support your business. Also, I’ve learned that I do not owe anyone discounts! It’s our own people that say they are coming to support and at the same time looking for you to short yourself snd make it easier for them to support you. So you end up paying for their support. Guess what? THAT’S NOT SUPPORT! Lol

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

So I manufacture about 95% of my products. Out of all the products that I offer the only thing that I do not actually make myself are the eyelashes and bath salts. Other than that everything I make. I make the lipgloss I make the body butter, the oils. I make my hair care supplies. I make my facial care. Everything I make is all natural made with natural ingredients the best Nutrients that I can get my hands on that’s what I try to put in all of my products. They are handmade with love and it’s made with you in mind. I started my brand with lip glosses. I wanted a nice pretty lip gloss that had a little bit of color but wasn’t like liquid lipstick also, I wanted it to moisturize my lips because of the winter time here, you know you get kind of dry so I wanted it to be very moisturizing, but also really cute too. So that is how I started my brand with my lip glosses however, I kind of pivoted when my daughter had a horrible experience with her hair. She had eczema very very bad and it affected her scalp. She lost all of her hair all around the outer perimeter of her hair and she was only about 10 years old at the time so I had to get her lace front wigs and try to still make her look you know cute and keeping up with the styles and everything, but I was crying she was crying. It was just a very horrible experience that she went from having all of this hair. She was famous for her big puff ball to literally like nothing like all of the perimeter of her hair was gone and it was probably about 2 1/2 inches deep into her head and some of the middle. It started coming out. She had scabs. It was just like the worst time, the worst part of her eczema journey. However, I prayed, and I cried, and I looked for a lot of natural ingredients things to put together that would help not only her hair grow back, but that would heal her scalp and prevent another bad eczema break out like that so I ended up creating a hair oil and a hair butter for her hair and within three months she was able to get her hair braided again and it was awesome. I could not believe how her hair was growing and how healthy it was how healthy her scalp was because if you have a healthy scalp, you’ll have healthy hair, and I knew that I need to pay more attention to her scalp. It turned out so good. Then my sister told me one day like you really need to be selling this and she started using the oil on her clients because she braids hair and they were asking can they buy bottles and then from there I was like ok I think this is my next product to launch. I’m so glad that I did!

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.JokeleBeauty.com
• Instagram: @misstikatee & @jokelebeauty
• Facebook: Miss Tika & Jokele Beauty
• Linkedin: Matika Goldsmith
• Twitter: @Misstikatee
• Tik Tok: @mizztikatee & @Jokelebeauty

Image Credits
Models: Joniya G, Jess S, Mercedes T & Helen