00:00hello okay there we go hey y'all how's everybody doing thank you guys for joining us we're excited
00:13to be here we have a great conversation to be had um some gems to drop and of course we're going to
00:19let you know some new things about Cantu um joining me today for today's conversation is
00:24going to be Shirley and Shirley if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll
00:29circle back I'll talk about myself a little bit too hi everyone my name is Shirley Tavares I am the
00:35founder of house of curls it's a brand I created about six years ago um to really help representation
00:42in the latin community with natural hair I'm Dominican and so I grew up hearing I have pelo
00:48malo which is bad hair and the very first t-shirt I came up with says pelo malo wear so bad hair wear
00:54and I really thought it was just going to be something I sold on Instagram just like 20 people
01:00or something we ended up getting 169 pre-orders for this one t-shirt and it really blew up and that's
01:06when I knew there was just a lot of people just like me starting to embrace their natural hair and
01:12wearing their hair curly even though it was not accepted in our communities and so I really wanted
01:17to make it more than just a t-shirt it was more of a movement and we started um making more t-shirts
01:23statement t-shirts and hair accessories and now we have a full line of products and we partner with
01:29Kintu and a lot of things that's awesome that's awesome um I know you mentioned that you know the
01:34curl journey has been a movement um it's been you know a long time coming it's been a journey for sure
01:40if any of you guys are familiar with me at all I've been an OG influencer um in the curly hair space for
01:45a long time I got my slick back going on today but um I was in this curly space for a long time and
01:51and served as a representative for a lot of women who wanted to go um natural or go curly or wear
01:57their curls um so can you talk about your journey um in the influencer space specifically and how
02:04curls are represented or diversity is in the influencer space yeah so my the first content I
02:11worked with was natural hair I started doing curly hair content kind of seeing what my hair likes and
02:16what kind of hair products uh I should use and that's when YouTube started coming out a lot of
02:20natural hair influencers came out as well so that's kind of when I learned what my hair likes Kintu is one
02:25of the very first products I used and um I was just posting things that really worked for me really
02:32authentic to what I loved and Kintu was definitely one of those brands and so I just DM'd them one day
02:40and they were doing an event kind of like this for creators um in Miami and I said hey I saw you
02:45guys were going to be a sponsor at this event and I would love to work with you guys if you are
02:50interested um not thinking they would actually write me back but they did they flew me out to Miami
02:56everything paid I was an ambassador for them there and it's been about six years and we've been working
03:01together since then that's awesome Kintu really takes care of you know their ambassadors as well as
03:06their customers um I've been working with Kintu for about eight years as an influencer and also on
03:12the corporate side as a marketing a senior marketing executive um and one of the things I love about Kintu
03:17is how long they have been on the journey with everyone um I was using Kintu as a little girl I was
03:23using Kintu in college and I'm gonna leave it at that because I don't want you guys to know my age
03:27um but they've been there the entire time and one of the best things about them is they listen to
03:34their customers their consumers and they have recently reformulated to include better ingredients
03:39be even more moisturizing and so it's really important I think to be able to listen to um your
03:46your audience and your customer um can you relate to uh Kintu on their journey and how they work that how
03:53they've embraced improvement over the years um listening to their customer and being open to um changes
03:59yeah a hundred percent for me in my business in house of curls we are really big on our community
04:06we call them the HOC fam the house of curls fam so a lot of them are way more than just customers to
04:12us they've become really good friends they join us at every event we do our retreats our pop-ups and
04:18they're always giving us suggestions and ideas and I'm always listening because they are the root of
04:24you know what we do and what we do is for them and I actually really started this brand because for
04:29my younger self because I feel like if I had a brand like this with this kind of representation
04:34my upbringing would have been so different and my mindset on what my hair you know represents and how
04:41I look if I don't have my hair straight would have been so different so we really want to make sure
04:47that the younger generation um knows that it's okay to wear their natural hair and we're just
04:52letting the world know we love our hair just how it is yeah that's the that's the beauty of influence
04:57is having that representation for little girls like you or even being who you needed to be when
05:02you were younger um as an OG curly girl can you talk about some of your favorite Cantu products
05:07since they have recently reformulated and released some new and improved products well I'm a try and
05:12true curl activator cream I my hair loves it because I think it's just the one thing my and I don't have
05:18to put anything else in my hair last like a week which is great personally not everybody but
05:23personally I love both a little bit of definition but more volume and I think that that's one product
05:29that does that really well um with the conditioner as well has with the reformulation I love it because
05:34sometimes when I don't want to put too much product in my hair I just leave that in and I'll either
05:38do an updo or half up half down with that and it's perfect yeah half up half down is always a win
05:43for sure um so thanks for sharing you know your favorite Cantu products uh of course if anybody
05:49has any questions they can speak to Shirley on the side she can give you some additional tips and
05:53tricks if you need those um Cantu really embraced improvement on their journey and I do want to
05:59highlight that they have better ingredients like organic coconut oil fair trade shea butter as well as
06:05vitamin b and all of these things help you know achieve more healthy and moisturized hair
06:10um what kind of improvements have you made or embraced over the years um on your own personal
06:16journey for me I think it's been um not being so hard on myself when I first started yeah when I
06:23first started I would be really hard when something didn't go right or perfectly and I think I focused
06:29a lot on perfection and what people want and what I think they'll say and now I'm like okay if I love
06:36it I know they're gonna love it and I have to just trust my gut instead of wanting it to go perfectly
06:40and I think that's one of the things when you start a business that you're really hard on yourself on
06:44is perfection and nothing's ever gonna go 100% the way you think it's gonna go so now I plan for the
06:50best prepare for the worst just in case that's awesome those are all really great points really
06:55great um spaces to operate in as an entrepreneur I mean so now we have our gym time and we want to
07:02ask you for if one piece of advice um to give to anybody that's an aspiring entrepreneur or an
07:08aspiring influencer what is the one thing that you would tell them to always follow or embrace
07:13um follow your gut it is always going to lead you to the right place and don't wait for the right time
07:20there's never going to be a right time to do something the time is right now I promise you I
07:24was not ready to launch when I launched but I said if I don't do it now it's never gonna happen
07:28yep that's how it goes that's how it goes well thank you for sharing that tip um as our stage
07:34host mentioned earlier we do have a giveaway so I hope you guys capture some of our content today if
07:40you haven't visited the booth please go over and see us we have a very cute booth set up and we have
07:45a lot going on at the activation you can get gems um added to your current hairstyle as well as get
07:51lashes put on and you know I got I got some on myself actually yeah me too so I'm gonna grab my
07:58phone for one second and see who our winner is gonna be did you guys post anything did you tag
08:02anybody somebody want to win we got we got a few yeses okay let's see who our winner is gonna be
08:08and Shirley if you can share your Instagram handles while I'll pull up Instagram to see who
08:12shared the stories that'd be great okay so my handle is Shirley Tavares s-h-e-r-l-y-t-a-v-a-r-e-z
08:21and house of curls is just as you hear it house of curls but instead of h-o-u-s-e it's h-a-u-s-e
08:28only because the Instagram handle was taken
08:30my handle is iam.tiffany.renee um again I'm also available for questions if you guys want to pull
08:39me to the side but that's my handle if you want to tag me in anything appreciate it um we have our
08:45winner and our winner is going to be Heather um her handle is Heather listed it is she here in
08:50the crowd because if not we can pick somebody else is she here not here okay let's keep going
09:00let's see what else we got somebody said sorry Heather okay let's see we'll go with one more
09:12one more winner and if not we'll just dm them
09:14there's a lot of stories on here y'all bear with me that's good um how about Rashida
09:26no Rashida's not in here you want to be Rashida for the day all right so we'll dm our winners we thank
09:35you guys for joining us um let us know if you have any questions and again we'll be over at the
09:40activation and you guys should come over and see us thank you thank you guys bye
09:45you
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