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Full Transcript:

Attorney-Turned-Hairstylist Describes Her Path to Finding Passion With Natalie Palomino 

Note: This is an original transcript–edited for sense, length, and clarity.  If you have any questions or concerns, please email our host, Doria Lavagnino, at doria@sheventurespodcast.com.

Introduction

Doria: If you’ve ever wondered if you can successfully do a 180 in your career and reinvent yourself, you will want to listen today. This guest’s pivots are some of the most inspiring yet from an international criminal attorney for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to a hairstylist and lash extension specialist honing her craft for several years to what she does today as an online business owner of North Authentic, an online eco-conscious hair and skincare marketplace.

 Natalie Palomino, welcome to SheVentures.

[00:00:44] Natalie: Thank you so much for having me. This is amazing.

And what an intro,

[00:00:51] Doria: It’s interesting to hear about yourself from someone else’s perspective, but I was fascinated when I learned about your pivot from being a criminal lawyer at the DOJ to becoming a hairstylist. It’s unique. I wanted to start a little further back and look at what made you decide to become a lawyer to begin with.

[00:01:13] Natalie: 

I was born in ’75, so I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I feel like the information, you know, my parents, I hate to say it, —  not that they would want me to say this — but neither of them graduated from high school. My extended family, no one went to college except for one uncle.

So, the idea of financial stability, being ambitious and excelling… at the time, I thought you had to be a doctor or a lawyer because there wasn’t the information that’s available today. Kids realize they can do a million different jobs.

And at the time, because I didn’t have that role model for what you would call financial success, I thought I had to be a doctor or a lawyer. As a kid, I already loved finance. My mom would give me her old checks and Sharpie out the account number, and I would make my siblings come and make deposits in my bank. So they made fun of me saying I was like the Alex P. Keaton from the TV show Family Ties. So, I always wanted to work in a bank or I wanted to be a lawyer. That’s where I was as a child.

[00:02:29] Doria: That’s so interesting. I’m laughing because it’s good that at least at that age that you knew you wanted the checks coming to you and not the other way around.

[00:02:39] Natalie: I wasn’t spending checks at the store when we were playing, they were coming to me and bringing me money. 

[00:02:45] Doria: That was a very smart decision. So, you worked at the DOJ for about three years, between your clerkships, right?

[00:02:57] Natalie: I had been at the DOJ throughout law school in D.C. When I graduated, I worked for the Department of Treasury. I was an attorney advisor for the National Security and Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime Divisions. It was a very sexy area of law.

[00:03:16] Doria: See when I read that about you, I was thinking about these Netflix shows — not to trivialize what goes on because it’s obviously very serious, but it makes good fodder for television. Is real life like that? What was it like handling terrorist finances?

[00:03:32] Natalie: Well, I started initially working for the United Nations in law school.

I worked every minute I could. That’s who I am. I have to stay busy. I don’t know how to be bored. So every summer I worked for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), first in Vienna and then in Korea. Every semester through law school, I was working at different offices within Justice, but we had to do deep dives into different types of financing, like money laundering techniques that terrorist organizations were using to fund their activity.

I even worked once for the asset forfeiture office. We were going after terrorists at the time and some foreign government leaders that landed on our soil. We had jurisdiction to prosecute them, and it was interesting. I mean, honestly though, day to day (I think this is what happens with attorneys and why I ended up leaving) is never as sexy as it sounds. You know, when you want to do law, it’s a lot of paperwork, reading, being detail oriented, sitting behind a desk. It’s interesting. The stories I’ve heard because I also worked within. I started with human trafficking.

I thought I was going to be this big corporate attorney, you know, cause I wanted financial stability and then my first year at UCLA Law, I went to a speaking engagement on human trafficking, back in 2003. 

People weren’t as aware of it as they are now. Now I feel like everybody is aware that this exists, but at the time it was a shock, like, “Wait, this is happening?” People are trafficking other people into the U.S. including children, and it was insane to me. I immediately looked for organizations that did that work, and there were only a few like maybe two or three at the time. 

A funny backstory, but I hitched a ride in Indonesia, in my early 20s with a UN attorney in Jakarta. And he told me all about his job. After speaking with him, I always had this soft spot in my heart about working for the UN. After going to that speaking engagement, years later, I went looking for human trafficking organization and that’s where I found that the UNODC office in Austria, that focused on human trafficking.

So then I kind of blew up their email and just elbowed my way in there with the UNODC. We were trying to educate other countries that trafficking exists and trying to put laws on the books that make it a crime, because there were no laws on the books in many countries. You couldn’t prosecute someone if they didn’t commit a crime. 

[00:06:19] Doria: You remind me —  I am also a child of the 70s —  and I worked at Glamour magazine in the early 2000s for 10 years. One of the women we worked with was named Somaly Mam. She was trafficked herself and started an organization — the name of which I can’t remember at this moment thanks to the brain fog that we were talking about before. But yes, it is a really tragic issue. And the fact that laws aren’t even on the books to protect these women and girls. I mean, I really emphasize girls because they often are, it’s really…

[00:07:01] Natalie: tragic. It is. I mean, hopefully in most countries now there are laws on the books.

This was back in 2003 and 2004. I was working on it. I mean, I was actively working on putting those laws on the books in North Africa and the Middle East when I was in Cairo back in 2004. So, the UN was amazing, but after I left and was back at law school I learned that to be an attorney for the UN, you need to have worked as an attorney, a barred attorney for at least 10 years before you could get a position.

I knew that wasn’t something I was going to be able to actively go into straight from law school. So

[00:07:41] Doria: Do you think your decision might’ve been different had the UN said right away after you had finished law school, “Yep. We do hire people fresh out of law school. We will give you the experience.” Do you think you would have decided

[00:07:54] Natalie: differently? I think so, honestly. I think I would have. Well, there’s two things. A lot of the work that I was doing wasn’t even legal work. — I mean, law oriented. We were doing a lot of tolerance work because we were in North Africa and the Middle East.

There were issues where, if you spoke out against the government, the police would come in and there was no tolerance for other religions. So I don’t want to make a blanket statement about the Middle East, because it’s obviously not true, but it was a lot of PSAs. Trying to make people aware. The legal stuff I did that was amazing. Getting the penal code translated from Arabic into English so I could read it and then trying to write new legislation. And then of course presenting it to the Ministry of Justice in Egypt, and they presenting it to the higher-ups and being involved in these huge speaking engagements with all the leaders…

[00:09:00] Doria: incredibly important and

[00:09:02] Natalie: very.

I received an amazing opportunity with the U.S. government or something called the Presidential Management Fellowship that only 30 people get chosen a year. You apply for this fellowship program, and if accepted you get to work in your chosen department for a two-year stint.

And over those two years, you should do two other six months stints with two other departments. You have to be able to go into these departments and be like, well, you create a job. You have to be a go-getter, but after that two-year stint, you supposedly are executive level management material. So it’s kind of a fast track to the top of the U.S. government.

Luckily, one of my very good friends I met while working for the UN. They don’t hire many Americans. There are some stories about how much funding is given to the UN by the U.S., so that they don’t want to play favorites. So it’s really hard to get a job when you are American.

[00:10:01] Doria: I didn’t realize that.

[00:10:02] Natalie: Yeah, so there was only one other American when I was in Vienna, that was kind of like within all the interns, everybody was from all over the world. I mean, super amazing people, extremely smart. She’s still one of my best friends. She started working for terrorist financing and the financial crime office of the Treasury. She graduated the year before me, and she wasn’t a lawyer at the time.

She was in international foreign policy. She took my résumé, walked it over to the head of the attorney advisor’s office, and they said, “Yeah, we’re creating a job for her.” I was lucky because I was hired into a group of attorneys that were there for 30 years.

[00:10:47] Doria: The lesson that I’m taking is that networking is incredibly important, and mailing off your résumé to the government is probably not going to work out so well for most people.

[00:11:00] Natalie: Well I’ll tell you one reason why it’s so important. Most people, when they meet me, like most of my clients, don’t even know I used to be an attorney. I was raised in this generation where it’s very different from now, like the selfies and practicing a speech in the mirror, you felt ridiculous. I was taught don’t make a lot of noise, don’t get too full of yourself. Bragging, speaking highly of myself, and wearing my résumé on my sleeve was something that was difficult for me. I had to grow into being proud and thinking, “Wow, I did accomplish that.”

For most of my life, that was not something I did.

[00:11:39] Doria: I completely get that. And I hear that over and over again on this podcast in one form or another, whether it’s that we have imposter syndrome or we’re told not to take up a lot of space. It’s something we have to make peace with one way or another to get where we need to go.

[00:12:01] Natalie: Exactly. So in law school, many people never gave me... I’m not going to say “the credit,” but maybe they didn’t realize what I was capable of. Like just chatting with me. They didn’t know all I was accomplishing at the time.

In D.C., this can happen too. People associate with people that they think are going to get them farther along. A lot of people that never spoke to me in law school were suddenly blowing up my email when I was at Treasury asking to buy me coffee.

You have to be smart. You have to be resilient. You have to be tenacious. I’m reading this book right now called Antifragile. Is awesome because it’s not about just being tenacious or resilient, which is when bad things happen, you can get through them. Antifragile is like, you actually get better. I love that.

[00:13:05] Doria: I love that as well. That is a great message.

[00:13:06] Natalie: Isn’t it? It is smart. It is being tenacious, but it is in relationships. In networking sometimes people think, “Hi, here’s my card.”

That’s not networking. Networking is building foundational relationships. And then being like, “Oh my gosh, I want to help her because I care about her. And she wants to help me because she cares about me, and we’re going to all rise together and support each other.” You know, I get really excited.

When someone I know excels, or I can do something to support them. Like it just makes my heart sing. I hate to say that it should be that way all the time with networking. It shouldn’t be that emotional every time you’re networking, but it is more than quid pro quo all the time. It is about true relationships.

[00:13:58] Doria: I could not agree more. A role model of mine, who is a really great networker, happens to be a man, but what he is so good at, I will say it’s authentic. He keeps doors open, relationships warm, even by sending an article that he read to someone. It could be three years later that that relationship may or may not result in something, but that’s not the point.

You’ve got to have that belief in wanting to interact with humankind to begin with. On a philosophical level, but then if you nurture it, it can make such a big difference in your career.

[00:14:43] Natalie: Oh my gosh. Yeah. People have always said, I’m the connector of people, because especially now as a hairstylist I know so many people from different walks of life.

And sometimes I think, “Oh my gosh, I should just have a girls’ brunch  and have all you powerful women meet each other.” You know, and someone will say, “Natalie, I want to do this, or I’m looking for a real estate attorney and I say, I know someone I’ll get it for you.”

I like knowing a lot of people, because then I can connect people that I also know and trust and think this is a good person, you know? I put a lot of thought behind my recommendations. I don’t recommend someone because I know them. I want to make sure I’m putting someone in good hands.

[00:15:30] Doria: Absolutely. I think that that’s a key point and I agree 100 percent on that. Let’s move away from your role —  you made a fascinating pivot to become a hairstylist and lash extension expert. Can you tell listeners how that pivot came to be?

[00:15:53] Natalie: …and make it brief?

It was a very interesting time in my life, I was working at Treasury, I was working my first stint at the SEC. It was different. Once I was in a government position, you know, I just, I started to get disenchanted. I was working specifically within terrorist finance. It didn’t tie to my emotional strings as much as human trafficking or anti-corruption did, but that was where the U.S. government wanted me because I had had a lot of experience in the Middle East.

So I understood that my experience with terrorist groups was what they wanted. A friend of mine came to me — who was also an attorney for Justice —  and she had met someone who had left and started his own business helping attorneys transition to new careers because the statistic is that 75 percent of attorneys are unhappy with their jobs. She brought me the paperwork that he gave her for me to read. At the end, it says, “If you identify with at least half of what you’ve read, you should not be an attorney.” I remember looking up at her and crying. What am I going to do? I’ve gone through law school. I did my master’s at the same time. I had this amazing job. I was the first to graduate from college.

It took me a good eight months. I did not make a big jump. I realized, “Okay, I don’t want to do this. What the heck do I want to do?” So I’m someone who is a risk taker, but it’s also necessary risks. I try to make educated decisions, and I try not to make decisions out of fear.

So those are some of my rules in life. I prepare as much as I can because I know I’m going to make mistakes and I try to limit them. But I make those decisions pretty quick. But anyways, I had taken about, I would say six to eight months researching. I got this great book called Smart Women Take Risks. I always recommend it to people.

It’s this little book, but it asks you questions like, “Name six things that you love to do.” It doesn’t have to be anything to do with work. Do you love to cook? Do you like to paint? Do you like to sing? The book has these worksheets where you are supposed to write down in the book and then it says, “Now name six careers that include at least three of the things that you love to do.” It makes you think because sometimes you hear young people and I thought this too when I was young. I’m going to travel the world, and take off and figure out what I want to do. The only thing you’re going to figure out is how to have fun. You’re not going to figure out what you want to do for a living.

You have to dig deep and do the work. I started creating a business plan and putting together my SBA loan paperwork while I was at Treasury. I was trying to see if this is even something I could do. There was a trade show in Vegas, four-day spotlight. I told Treasury I had a family emergency. This is horrible. I jumped on a plane. It’s a funny story. I’ll just tell it real quick. I’m on the plane, and as we’re taking off, I’m like, “What are you doing? You have this amazing job.” I had this moment, this epiphany. You’re going to Vegas for a trade show. You know that moment where you go over the clouds and it’s just so beautiful and quiet when the plane goes over them, and it’s like you’re almost in heaven.

Well at the time I was listening to my iPod, because that is how long ago it was. George Michael’s You Gotta Have “Faith” came on at that very moment. I’ve always had a soft spot now for Michael. It calmed me. I was like, “Oh my God, that’s a sign. I’m doing the right thing.”

Yeah, so I went to this trade show, networked, met a ton of people. We were having lunch together, having fun. I learned that day spas are number two behind restaurants for failure because your water bill was like $10 or $15 grand a month. 

Doria: Oh, wow. 

Natalie: Yeah, so somebody said, you should have a hair component.

Hair has the best profit margin of anything in the beauty industry. I’m like, “So should I go to cosmetology school?” And everybody’s like, “No, Natalie, you don’t have to do that.” And it made me think like, well, I kind of understand why day spas fail because it’s either someone like me, an attorney, that says, I’m gonna own a day spa but knows nothing about it. 

Or it could be somebody who is a service provider and doesn’t know the business side. I felt like I needed to go back to D.C. I’m still trying to, you know, I still think this is the direction I’m going and I even have a great idea for it. If anybody ever wants to open a day spa they should go to one. So I made an appointment at an Aveda cosmetology school in D.C.

I went in and they started giving me a tour and I got butterflies. I had no idea. I was like, “Oh my God, this is what I want to do.” I’m so excited at the thought of doing someone’s hair. It never occurred to me. Throughout my youth, I would have friends want me to cut their hair. I would look at someone and tell them, “You should be a redhead.”

I love these makeover shows, but I didn’t think you could make money doing hair in the 90s. There was a small pool of people who saw a lot of financial success, obviously like Vidal Sassoon and John Frieda. Yeah. I mean, today it is not difficult to make six figures doing hair. There are people driving $100,000 cars that are hairstylists.

So it was me learning that if you love what you’re doing and also have this tenacity and interest in growing and progressing but if you always want to get better, learn more, see how you could improve, be a better service provider, a better anyone to whoever you’re serving, then you’re going to make money.

I decided, wow, this is what I want to do. So I gave Treasury 30 days’ notice. I always wanted to live in New York. At this point I lived in Australia, Austria, Egypt and the U.K. So I was like, if I’m going to uproot my entire life, I always wanted to live in New York. So I’m going to do it in New York.

So I took the Chinatown bus. Actually, I didn’t fly. I took the Chinatown bus from D.C. to NYC. Went and met a bunch of scary people from Craigslist to find an apartment.Now, like you don’t use it as much, but at the time, you know, there was, there was scary, but it wasn’t, you weren’t as aware how scary it was. But anyway,then I went to Aveda and so on. The one on Spring Street.

[00:22:55] Doria: When you were saying that, I was thinking about the time I went, because someone told me that you could get services because they’re students, right? So you get great service. Great massage. I think that’s why I went, maybe I got a facial. I can’t remember, but it was a beautiful space at the time. Does it still even exist? I’m not sure it does. It’s a great brand, a calming environment. I really enjoyed it.

[00:23:25] Natalie: That’s where I studied. Yeah.

[00:23:27] Doria: Okay, and so you did that in New York and then your salon, the brick and mortar. Well, first you worked for as an independent contractor presumably, for others, right? For a

[00:23:39] Natalie: couple of years. So yeah, I worked for some salons, some upscale salons in New York, and I realized I love New York, but it just wasn’t, —  I’m a California girl, you know, so.

Yeah. I was like, where’s the sun and it’s so expensive here and the weather. So I decided if I’m going to build my clientele, I don’t want to build it and leave. So I moved back to California, to Southern California, where my family is. I started working as an assistant. I feel like a lot of listeners need to know I have been an attorney, I’ve been married and divorced.

I had owned a home. I was now an assistant, you know, I was kind of pond scum because you have seen success in other areas. Like when you go to something new, the humility of saying, “I know, I’m at the bottom of the totem pole and I’m going to have to eat it for a bit.” So I did whatever I was told.

I was a really good assistant because I had a great work ethic, but I also had no ego. That can make people slow down too. You’ve got to make your ego quiet down. If I have to scrub floors and clean toilets, who cares that I was an attorney for the UN at some point in my life.

I’m not now. So,

[00:24:53] Doria: This really speaks to me because you’re right. I have pivoted careers and you do have to start at the bottom and embrace it because if you don’t, the only person you’re hurting is yourself. It is ego. You have to learn.You have to have that humility. Absolutely. So you had North Salon for several years until COVID hit.

[00:25:28] Natalie: Yes. I grew quickly. Once I was on my own behind the chair. One percent of stylists in the country make money. The majority are at an average income of about $28 to $30 grand a year.

So I moved to a top 1 percent earner fairly quickly. By 2017, I decided I wanted to own my own salon. So I opened North Salon by 2018. Then I started feeling sick —  I had body pains that lasted 24 /7. I was fit, active and worked out a lot.

I couldn’t do anything. Even hot yoga was extremely painful. I went to see my doctor and she diagnosed me with an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s. As you age, you realize, “I’m not invincible,” you know? So, I started to research.

And I also tested myself for toxin levels and my heavy metals, and they were both through the roof. I started attacking this like I attack everything else, by learning. How can I turn this around? It’s not a Z-Pak. It’s six months, a year, two years of changing your life and trying to reverse what your body’s doing.

I decided I needed to detox my life. And the more I started to research, the more I started to see how many toxic chemicals were touching me every day and not just in the salon, of course. Doing hair, touching foils, and all that jazz is definitely not good, but even my skincare products, my haircare products, our dish detergent, and our laundry detergents.

I started to change my diet. No sugar, no gluten, no dairy. I was strict. I’m the type of person where if I have to eat nothing but carrots every day and jump up and down 100 times every morning to be healthy —  I’ll do it. Just tell me what to do. 

It’s hard, because you know what to do, and you’re hoping it works. So you try everything, right? Throw spaghetti at the wall. So I wasn’t getting better as quickly as I would like.

[00:27:42] Doria: Then COVID happened, and businesses such as restaurants and salons closed down, and you were among millions of people who found yourself with a lot of time on your hands while feeling unwell.

I read something that you wrote about this time and you said, “That you had an infinite amount of time to do two things.” And I just want to touch on the first one, — First research and apply for every grant and loan that you could find. I wondered if you could talk to listeners about what you did and what tips you have if you are looking to launch a business in terms of securing funding.

[00:28:27] Natalie: Initially when we closed down, I didn’t panic because the whole world was shut down. So I immediately called everyone — I was going to have to pay credit card companies, my lease, everything, and I said, “Hey, I’m shut down.”

I’m not going to be able to make my payment in 10 days when it’s due. And everybody said, no problem. You’ll get three months. Everybody was good. So I  didn’t know why people were panicking. Call everybody and take care of it.

[00:28:53] Doria: I think people are sometimes afraid to be proactive.

[00:28:56] Natalie: Like. Yeah, 100 percent. So then I started looking everywhere. Within the beauty industry, there’s something called the Pro Beauty Association. They started sending emails about grants. I talked to a lot of people, and I had another friend of mine who owns a salon and she said, “Hey, I heard, I heard the SBA is giving out emergency money. This loan. And I was like, okay, I’m on it.” She didn’t want to apply for it. She thought there’s no way we’re going to get it. We’re little salons. And I said, “I never say never.” So I jumped in and just started applying. I would start researching “California Orange County Grants,” or “emergency grants,” because I started to hear there’s a lot of grants happening. So I looked everywhere I could find them. There was a website, I think it was called USA grants. And you could look up by demographic: I’m Hispanic and female.

I looked everywhere I could to get money so I didn’t lose my staff, or lose my business. I applied for anything. And I have to say I was extremely blessed because I received a lot of grants, and a lot of loans. I mean, almost everything I applied for. 

Doria: Can you give us an idea?

Natalie: Well, initially I got my SBA loan and we’d been doing well at the salon. You know, I said, I was a top earner. So first I received a $4,000 emergency loan. I received grants from the city of Newport Beach for owning a business there. I think that was $5,000.

The SBA had a cap. I have to back up. I hate to say that COVID opened up doors for me, but this is what I mean. Something bad happened, but people were looking for what’s the best part of this? I’ve been in these meetings where you are asked what was the best part of this year because the pandemic was hard.

The situation forced me to look at things that weren’t working and to make them better. It gave me time. It gave me, like I said, time to go look at all these different places I could get funding. Since we had been doing financially well at the salon, I was able to get the first round of the SBA loan, which had a cap of $150,000.

[00:31:25] Doria: Good for you. That’s right. You are the perfect example of who the PPP loan was meant to help. So I’m happy to hear that the system worked.

[00:31:34] Natalie: Well, the first round, I didn’t get a dime, and clients or friends that are extremely wealthy were getting millions of dollars.

And then on social media, they were showing off: throwing like $10,000 birthday parties for their 4-year-old. And I was like, okay, I’m not getting a dime. So I already knew with the first round that the money was gone within minutes and it was given to big businesses. And for me and other small businesses, we were venting to each other.

Instead of funding a few huge companies, why don’t you fund us little guys. My loan was $24 grand, which to a lot of people is a lot of money, but compared to others, it’s a drop in the bucket. They could have funded all of the little salons and restaurants, opposed to just those guys.

But thank God they did a second round of PPP funding. I think it was May, and I got that money. I wasn’t allowed to reopen in the salon. I had six weeks to use this money. I’m like, okay I realize if I can’t physically touch people —  that’s my whole business.

What am I supposed to do? I had already made changes in the salon to only carry clean products at the time. Clean haircare products. We were using biodegradable paper instead of foils. We were trying to be zero waste and do positive things for the environment and use less toxins.

I got rid of the microwave. My team was like, “Oh my God.” Now I have a toaster oven. We have to be healthy. You know? But I wondered, what can I do right now? Where are the holes in the market? I’ve always thought about people who create inventions. They’re able to figure out what is missing. Where’s the problem and how can I solve it? Where’s the problem in my industry? I always wished growing up, like, God, I wish I knew about a problem. And I was in an industry to know enough to create a business. Here I was in this unique position of having time and knowing this industry inside and out. There’s so many toxic chemicals in products, I was telling my clients, and my clients were making different life decisions based on me just sharing how I live my life. I try not to lecture, but I say, I’m making these changes, and people start to hear you.

So they were starting to buy sustainable shoes and starting to try to make a difference. They’d ask for my opinion. “Natalie, do you think this is clean?” — things like detergent or, you know, we were using wool laundry balls instead of dryer sheets stuff like that.

I thought I could make myself into a website. And the other thing I do too, is I gave all my clients haircare prescriptions. So I didn’t just do their hair and send them on their way. I was like, okay, if you want to keep this color, or if you want to achieve this color, you need to use the right product.

This is what you have to do. Here’s your at-home regimen. It’s just like skincare. You know, people don’t want to spend money on haircare, but then they have to have their mask. They’re exfoliating with their toner, their skin cream, their night cream, their eye cream, and all this stuff for their skin.

And your hair is a lot like your skin — it ages. You have to make changes. So I would put clients on these prescriptions and my clients —  like new ones —  said I’ve never had any stylist talk to me about my hair products. Unfortunately, the statistic is 3 percent of stylists talk to their clients about their haircare.

[00:35:03] Doria: And when they do from my experience —  If my colorist is listening, I don’t think he does this. Anyone who knows me won’t do this to me because I hate being sold crap. It really grates on me, but I see it in the beauty industry where recommendations are made because they get a percentage of the sale, but it may not necessarily be the best thing. What you’re saying is it was your integrity and your belief system that propelled you to look for good products

[00:35:33] Natalie: Absolutely. And I train my people, too. I tell them never, ever recommend something that you don’t truly believe in. If you don’t think it is going to improve this person’s hair, you lose trust.

Then why would they listen to you about anything else in the future? Sometimes a client would come in and they’d be on the books for, you know, hundreds of dollars of services. I’d tell them, all you need is a toner. We don’t need to do the highlights. Let’s put it off until next time. My ability to say no to money built trust with my clients. Cause they know that you’re never going to just do something because you’re looking for a paycheck, you know?

And so to me, money will come. But your value system, your moral code, — if you have that in place, then you’re going to do well, because even if you don’t make that money today, I believe it’s going to come back

[00:36:35] Doria: to you 100 percent. I’m really aligned with you there.

So I know a lot of listeners will be curious, you built this well, what you had written is you had built a website. Or not you yourself, but someone had done it for you right. A year earlier, but it wasn’t…

[00:36:51] Natalie: I’ve been learning how to code, me and two other people. We have built this site. I have learned things from doing highlights a year and a half ago to today I can build the emails.

I write the copy. I take the photos. You gotta do it.

[00:37:10] Doria: I was going to ask how. For people who might be at home today or might be thinking of switching careers and doing something online, because there is so much activity online, but there’s also a lot of noise, right?

There are a lot of people who are supposedly marketing experts to tell you to do this, that, and the other thing. But you actually have done it. So tell listeners, what were the most important steps that you took to get yourself out there?

[00:37:38] Natalie: I got to say I’ve watched every webinar and read every article.

Like I dug deep. I did at first hire some people who talked a big game and I threw money at them cause I had this loan and that loan disappeared quickly because I was hiring people that were telling me you need to do this, and I could do it all for you. They would throw terms out like KPIs and ROI. And you’re thinking “oh my gosh, you sound smart.” 

[00:38:08] Doria: We’ve all been there, man.

[00:38:10] Natalie: Yeah. I was burned a few times and I realize you have to have a basic knowledge of everything that you’re doing. I’ve had employees tell me you’re the only person I’ve ever worked for that could literally do every job within this company.

If we all called in sick, you could do every single one of our jobs. I know that that it’s hard to do to have that kind of time, but I’m also a crazy workhorse. I barely sleep, but you have to have a basic understanding. By the time I was hiring, say my second or third Facebook ad person, I was asking them like, what is your average return on ad spend?

What type of content? And when I was asking them these questions, they were like, I’ve never had anybody ask me these questions before. I am going to be aware of what’s happening in my accounts. Like I need to be able to go into the backend of Facebook Business Manager and see what’s happening, not have blanket trust, because even when you hire an agency when they first come on, they talk a big game.

And the first three months, it’s like the honeymoon phase. Right. And then, then all their time is put toward hiring, —  getting more gigs. So you kind of get forgotten about. It is kind of a drag, but with employees and with independent contractors or agencies, you have to always be checking in and kind of lighting a fire under their butt and saying, “Hey, what’s going on here?”

I saw this happening. People will say, “I’m in it, I’m in it.” And I’m like, “You’re not in it. I’m looking at it.” You have to own everything that you’re doing, and everybody you’re paying. I cannot run the Facebook Ad Business Manager to the extent that the person that is running it for me now can, but I have a really good understanding.

Yeah. I can create ads, and I know how to create an audience. I don’t do all that stuff, but I learned. I watched every webinar, and read every article. I go into the help or support section and I start reading. I learned how to code the backend of emails. There’s stuff you have to be able to do.

Learn as much as you can when it comes to your company, don’t leave anything to someone else.

[00:40:28] Doria: It sounds like what you’re saying is check-in routinely. And how about, how about this? This is something I made a mistake on early on in my entrepreneurship journey is not having KPIs or performance metrics in which you can evaluate someone’s performance, particularly when it comes to social media, because a person should have them, they should be able to tell you within a certain degree, what they should be able to do for you.

[00:40:56] Natalie: Oh, 100 percent. And I think even when I started, I was like, what’s a KPI? I had to research. Then what’s a typical KPI for a social media person?

I literally looked up everything with a Google search. What should I pay this person? Unfortunately with all the people I know, I don’t know one person who owns an e-commerce business. So I really had to learn all this from scratch.

I didn’t have someone I could call and ask them to tell me all your lessons learned. Tell me where you made mistakes, where I can improve while I’m getting started. I really had to learn: What is a KPI? What are the typical KPIs you should be looking for?

Then what do you want them to say? If they describe a performance metric, but you don’t know what that performance metric means. They’re giving you information and you’re like, Yeah, sure, that sounds good. Keep going. Right. So KPI for say a social media person might be how have our followers improved?

How many saves and shares, not just followers, but are people engaging with the posts? Are you doing Reels? How many Reels are you doing a week? How many stories are you doing a week? KPI sounds scary, but when you start you need to come up with a list of real life things.

I always say to people — ”okay, you’re giving me these numbers, but what does that look like? Talk to me, like I’m 4. Tell me about a day in your life. What does that look like? Give me the actual, physical, tangible activity and describe what happens. So I understand better.”

[00:42:32] Doria: I love that you can put yourself out there because I think people often are afraid to say, “talk to me like I’m 4,” because they don’t want to sound like they’re stupid. But you’re not stupid, you just want to have it explained to you.

[00:42:45] Natalie: Oh, yeah, humility. I’ve had so many people work for me through the years when I was, you know, a stylist, the assistants — , it was hard. When people start, they say, “I already know this. I already know this.” I’m like, if you know everything, then where do you have to go?

How are you going to get any better if you already know everything? Get that ego and shut her down. Humility is key and having no problem underrepresenting yourself and being like, I have no idea what you’re saying, please. Talk to me like I’m 4, and I have no problem because I want them to talk to me like I’m 4, because I want to wrap my brain around it. And I don’t care if I look smart, and I don’t care about being in a superior position. All I care about in the end is how am I going to get this done?

[00:43:39] Doria: Absolutely. We’re getting close to the end of our time, so I want to hit a few key questions. What was the easiest and what was the hardest transition switching to an e-commerce model from brick and mortar?

[00:43:53] Natalie: Let’s see the easiest transition, like the easiest, actual thing that we had to do.

You mean anything that comes

[00:43:59] Doria: to

[00:43:59] Natalie: mind? I’m trying to think of an easy part. So I guess we had to physically close down our brick and mortar, and that was a struggle. I ended up moving. I didn’t want to open up another salon, obviously in the middle of COVID and I didn’t want to take on office space. So I moved into a large home and operated out of a home workspace.

The hardest thing, honestly — always with the business —  I think is staffing. It’s the rose and the thorn of being a business owner. If you find someone that’s amazing, you’re like, “Praise the Lord. I’m so happy.” It’s so hard to find good people, but the thorn is you will go through people and that emotional turmoil. 

I’m a Cancer. So I always say I’m maternal. I am a marshmallow inside. I get attached to people. So when I have to fire someone, oh my gosh, it’s such a huge weekend…horrible, but I’ve become much more comfortable with it. So that’s something that over time improves, but I would say the hardest thing always is really finding good people.

Do your due diligence. Look at their backgrounds, their Facebook, social media, LinkedIn, like make sure what they’re telling you is real. I also have, for an additional HR fee —  I pay ADP every month — and they offer the ability to call an HR advisor. Instead of having an HR department, you call them and ask, “What can I do in this situation, this person saying this…” You know, so it’s awesome.

[00:45:33] Doria: Oh my gosh. So to your point, we don’t know how to do everything. Certainly. And HR it’s really true.

[00:45:42] Natalie: Oh, my gosh, HR is hard. You could get yourself in a lot of trouble, especially in California. It’s a hard state to have employees. This great thing about ADP — they made it easy.

So you pay a fee and you have an HR advisor, and if you paid a higher fee, you also have access to a group of attorneys. You are able to call and say, “I want to speak to an attorney about an employment issue,” or “I want to speak to an attorney about hiring a remote employee in New York.” Like, what do I do? I don’t even know where to start.

Then they schedule a call and they can advise you. You don’t have to figure all this stuff out from scratch. 

Another thing: If I’m going to have remote employees, how do I do that? I had to research how to have project management tools. I figured out Slack and Trello.

How to have them clock in and out. Because I had trusted people in the past that told me, “I worked 20 hours this week, or I worked 100 hours this week.” and you’re looking at the work product. “Does it look like you worked a hundred hours? You know?” 

[00:46:47] Doria: So I love that you’re saying this because I learned this from someone who works with me.

She has people check in online and when they’re going to quote unquote, go home for the day, they check out and she’s a quarter of my age and — wait I don’t know if I’m that old, but she’s very young, and came up with this idea. I thought that is really smart because you do need to know when people are actually working for you because they say they are, but you can’t

[00:47:17] Natalie: prove.

Oh, yeah, 100 percent. The one I actually use is called Time Doctor. If they are not actively moving their mouse or their keyboard — for like three minutes or something — it’ll say, are you still working? And if they don’t say anything, it turns off. They can’t clock in at nine and clock out at five and walk away and go to lunch or go work out. The computer’s going to check.

You also have the ability to do a screen share at any time of day, which I delete, but you can see what they are working on right now. You can actually see their screen.

[00:47:49] Doria: Interesting. That’s a

[00:47:50] Natalie: great one. Yeah. So there’s some things I put in place, because I’ve never done this before.

I’ve never had a remote employee. I have to figure out how to do this. You know, because I have friends that worked remotely last year with a company who had never had remote employees before. And they say, “He calls me 20 times a day. He’s micromanaging me.” I wonder why they don’t use Time Doctor.

My friend said they’re so old school. These are multi-million dollar companies that have been operating for decades. I figured this out. You have to believe if you don’t know how to do this, you will figure it out. That’s what makes an entrepreneur successful.

I think it is key for entrepreneurs to know you’re going to have to do a lot of stuff that is not sexy. It’s the stuff you don’t like. I don’t like sitting down with employees, having talks with them, and doing reviews —  and I don’t like accounting.

But I have to do it if I’m going to be successful. If 60 percent, 50 percent of your business, you get to do the stuff you love every day and all day, then you are winning. But 50 percent of the time, you’re going to have to do stuff that is tedious and kind of sucks, but you do it.

[00:49:10] Doria: That’s why it’s called work. You get paid to do it. But you bring me to an article I wrote this week. A Groupon survey came out and said that women, small business owners, 94 to 96 percent, —  somewhere around there —  would not change being an entrepreneur. While I appreciate that, I think those surveys often make entrepreneurship sound sexy. It’s all about, “You can do it on your own and you’re your own boss.”

And it’s never about actually it’s really, really fucking hard.

[00:49:52] Natalie: Yeah.

I have a really hard time creating balance, but I do. I am now —  even this week, I’m like, “okay, Natalie, get back on track. Every morning, I’m going to meditate, and in the afternoon I will go for a walk or workout.”

I have to remind myself: In three weeks, I haven’t meditated, gone on a walk, left the house, or seen the sun because I’m working in front of my computer all day. I haven’t seen anybody — it’s also because of COVID, and because I do have some health issues, so I’m trying to stay indoors.

It’s hard, and it’s so much work. I know somebody recently that said she wanted to start her own business. She bought all this stuff, and I thought, that’s the fun part. Then she says, I don’t like selling. I don’t like selling. And I’m like, wait, what?

If I’m uncomfortable going up to someone and saying this… When you become a business owner, there is no I would never. I will go up to somebody on the street and be like, “Hey, look at this. I think this will look great on you.” 

There’s nothing off limits. I’ve got to do anything in order to succeed because I need to survive, and I need to pay my people. I have suffered financially — and I’ll be late on other things —  but I gotta pay my people first.

You know I see these shows about people who go in and help these failing businesses. I’m always in shock that people haven’t been paid in months. How long do these people stay? You know? So to me, it’s, it’s always been like, I got to take care of my people.

If you cannot get out of your comfort zone — first of all, you don’t have a comfort zone when you’re an entrepreneur, there’s no comfort zone, whatsoever; whatever your comfort zone looks like, it goes out the window — you have to be able to do anything it takes in order to succeed.

And a lot of these things make entrepreneurship look like it’s so easy and fun. You’re gonna make a ton of money. And all you have to do is this and this and that. No, you are literally going to try to get 27 hours out of every 24 hours. That’s how it is. You are exhausted and

[00:52:16] Doria: there’s no overnight success.

That’s what they show, but they don’t show the 20 years of work that happened before that. Right. So many great tips. I love it. I think this has been great service for our listeners. Where can they find out more about North Authentic? Could you give us the URL and more about you?

[00:52:38] Natalie: The website is shopnorthauthentic.com. Our Instagram handle is @shopnorthauthentic. So you can find us everywhere. Our quiz is a big draw. It’s like, you’re sitting in my chair and I’m telling you exactly what to use on your hair based on your hair type, your concerns, your goals, all that kind of jazz.

I spent months building this quiz, so it would give the recommendations that I would give. Take the quiz and get some recommendations. We also have something called the Hair Crimes List, and this is all of the toxic ingredients that are in hair products that we will never allow in North Authentic products.

So we vet every single product that we carry to make sure it doesn’t have toxic ingredients. Then we order it and I actually test it in the salon on my clients, and on our team. We all try it to see if it actually delivers what it says it’s going to deliver. So I have to stand behind everything we sell.

Anyways, the quiz gives you recommendations and then the Hair Crimes List is a great resource. So even if you’re not ready to buy anything new at Shop North Authentic, you can check the labels of your products against our Hair Crimes List and see if what you’re using is clean or not. There’s a lot of greenwashing out there, which is these products that say, “This is natural, and this is organic and this is green.” Those words have started to become meaningless because it’s marketing. When you actually read the label, it’s full of junk.

[00:54:10] Doria: Absolutely. Listeners should definitely check that out. And I want to thank you so much for coming on SheVentures.

[00:54:20] Natalie: Thank you for having me. This was so fun.