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

Olushola, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?

When I first started my business, my largest supporters were my friends and family. I would ask them to be my models whom I could carry out different styles and visions on. Thankfully, they always gave an estatic yes! This helped me slowly build my portfolio, skills, and eventually reach more clients who saw my work. Social media has also been a great place that friends have supported me and caused my business and clientele to grow. Whenever I would post, there would be an outpouring of likes, shares, and comments which helped increase my visibility. Eventually this even made me much more confident about sharing my work.

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 am the owner of Shola Styles and I specialize in hair braiding and natural hair styling. I started doing hair when I was about 8 years old in my home country of Nigeria. I grew up in a household of 6 which included 5 women, 4 of which were my sisters, my mom and then there was my dad. My mom was so intentional about caring for our hair growing up that she always took us regularly to stylists and would not let us get relaxers no matter how trendy it got. I remember distinctly the first time my older sister and I got relaxers. We had just emigrated to the United States and then friends kept telling my mom that no one would ever be able to do our “virgin”(meaning unrelaxed) hair and that we would not be presentable. Unfortunately my mom gave in and reasoned that it would be much cheaper to maintain. My mom, who had known how to braid since her childhood years took on the task of doing me and my siblings hair in America because it was not an expense they could accomodate at the time. My sisters and I would also take turns doing each others hair so it was extremely rare we would need to go to an outsider to get a style done. Needless to say, we learnt a lot and till this day all possess this skill of braiding and styling hair.

Years later to my mom’s relief, my older sister and I ended up going natural which meant cutting off all relaxed hair and then went back on the journey of learning to care and embrace our natural hair. I really enjoyed it and since it was around a time where it was uncommon to wear your natural hair, I slowly began to encourage others to do so. I delved into the world of natural hair care and perfected many protective styles like twists, mini braids, and cornrows. I occasionally would lend my skills to my friends who were transitioning and struggling in their journey of going natural.

Fast forward to college, more people learned about my braiding skills and saw how neat my work was and they began to pay for my services. I tried to keep it as lowkey as possible as I was still focused on school but eventually I noticed how much I enjoyed the end results. The smiles on faces after they got their hair done began to push me to take on more clients. I quickly recognized that my abiliity to work on different hair textures was rare as well as my knowledge of briading techniques from the motherland. This coupled with my desire to be affordable quickly drew in a lot of clients, some who still support me till this day. In March of 2020, I took a leap of faith and officially launched Shola Styles, LLC

Shola Styles is near and dear to me because I truly care about the affordability and accessibility of proper hair care, protection, and quality for girls who look like me. I stand on wanting my clients to be happy, blessed, and secure in their identity when they leave my chair. I choose to believe this sets me apart. It has never really been about the profit but moreso to use my skills to reach people and give them one less thing to stress or worry about.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best source of new clients for me has been word of mouth coupled with social media. Almost daily, I would get a DM or text of someone saying they saw a style I did and were led to my page. My clients do such an amazing job of posting my work on their pages, tagging me and spreading my reach. A lot of clients often come to get their hair done for specific occasions, celebrations, and travels so that also allows my work to reach strangers that I have never met. They quickly can find me on Instagram and save me for when they need their hair done! I am so thankful for my clients and their referals.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had to pivot on several ocassions in 2022 starting with when I experienced job loss from my full-time position in April which was my main source of income. I was so distraught as I had just purchased a home but was so thankful that I had time to now focus on my business and even open my schedule up to many more people I could not accomodate prior when I was working full-time. So I did it blindly and quickly earned more than I had ever earned before in my business. I also began taking on more travel clients.

Soon after, I found a new job but that caused me to have to pivot again because not only was this job full-time, it also had an intense commute attached. This meant there was no way I could accomodate the same client load and provide quality work without soon burning out. I was faced with a tough decision which eventually led me to scaling back my business. I see this as temporary though and have used the time to strategize and contemplate future plans for Shola Styles. I love to move in Faith so I see every pivot as an opportunity for greater increase so know that there is more to come!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sholastyles.as.me
• Instagram: @sholastyles
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oomomo/

Image Credits
@atangwasthere