Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Samantha Ward. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Samantha, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I would definitely say that I am very happy as a business owner now. It comes with so much freedom that you sometimes can’t get working a job. The happiness experienced, is the off days, the hard days, the easy days and even the busy days. All days, makes me fall more in love with my business. I cherish each day that comes with being a business owner. I am able to give it my all, talk to clients and show them love and support just as they do me. I love being able to purely be myself around all of my clients. On slow weeks sometimes I say “ooh i want a job or working a job doesn’t seem too bad “, but honestly, i don’t think I could even go back into a job and work on someone else clock.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hi! I’m Samantha a 22 year old braider and oil supplier in the hair industry. I have come so far from where I started from and I just wanted to give a little backstory on where it all started from and the risks it took for me to get to where I am today. Starting a business was the biggest risk I ever took. I betted on myself and start doing hair. I’ve always known how to do hair, but something told me in my head ” that is not something you want to do, you’re supposed to go to school and have a career to make something out of yourself. You are supposed to take what you learned in high school and apply it to your life. However, it worked for a while, but college just wasn’t something that I was into anymore. I’ve always knew how to do hair growing up because I watched my mom braid for so many years that i took what she would do and put my little twist on it. I would do silk presses, braids, twist, etc just to name a few. Freshman year of college, I got tired of asking my mom for money and decided that I wanted to start being able to make money to do whatever it was that I wanted to do. I started offering wig braid downs because i was on a college campus and literally everyone was wearing weave of some sort. Being that we were in dorms, most of the stylist required you to come washed, blow dried and braided down already. So, that’s where y journey began. I got deeper into it once covid started, I wasn’t working at all. I’ve always been the child to hustle and be upset or something if I wasn’t bringing home any money. I said ” well let me do something I know how to do and perfect it.” That was a big risk for me because I quit my job, didn’t have steady clientele but I never gave up on myself. I knew that I was destined to do hair in some way, shape or form. I enjoy it so much and I am so glad that I took the risk to because a braider.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Slow progress is still progress because its all apart of the process, your journey is a process that you must fall in love with along the way. One thing that I feel I had to unlearn was feeling like because the results were coming slow that I wasn’t going anywhere or feeling like I was stuck or stagnant. Just because I didn’t see the progress didn’t mean that it wasn’t happening. This was a major lesson that i had to learn in order to keep going. Every business owner experience highs and lows. One day, you can have 2-3 clients, the next day you can have 0. Its not because they don’t see or recognize, but because maybe you just need that time to rest your body. That was something else I needed to unlearn, feeling as though I always had to work or always had to put in effort to do something pertaining to work. That’s not the case, your body needs rest. If your body has no rest everything will soon fall short. You won’t be putting your best foot forward if you don’t allow yourself to rest.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

September 2022, I was going through such an uncomfortable period in my life. I was so uncomfortable to the point I fell out of love with my business. I felt depressed without the depression. My mindset was just off. One day i was listening to a sermon of Mike Todd while doing hair and I was like boom that’s it maybe I need to take an entire month off to rebrand myself. The month off that I took was October 2022, that was a period where I literally lost all of my friends, didn’t have anyone to talk to, rebranding myself and my business. I knew I wanted more out of myself but I didn’t know how to get it or how to go about it. The month of October was big for me because I was able to literally find God in a way that I didn’t know him before. October was the month i took a leap of faith. i decided i wasn’t going to work the entire month. let’s just say, that was something i really didn’t think through because i had trips coming up, bills due and just wanted to have fun. so i texted my last suite owner and told her “ the last week i worked, was my last week working” , i texted this because i 1. didn’t want to have to pay booth rent if i knew i wasn’t going to be there. 2. i didn’t want to take up space, when it could be for someone else. with that being said i didn’t have nowhere to go or nothing but i KNEW that i couldn’t do hair out of my house so i had to find somewhere to go by November 1. I didn’t have clients or anything lined up so i really could’ve waited but i was trusting God because I knew it was a reason he said everything he did. Mid october i found a suite and literally fell in love with it ( where i am now ) the environment, literally everything was just so perfect. In the matter of the month i’ve been there man i’ve grown, im such a better person than i was when i started Nov 1. i would do it all over again because the experience was amazing and where i am now is even better.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hairbysammyakeyria.as.me
• Instagram: hairbysammyakeyria
• Youtube: Hairbysammyakeyria
• Other: Website for products : hairbysammyakeyria.com

Image Credits
Adonis, ( photographer )