75: Curly Girls: The Hair Episode

We are hiring here at Team Bonnie Christine and I'm so excited to share about it with you. We're looking for a Marketing Director, Someone to step into the shoes of this position that combines creativity, strategy and leadership to help amplify our mission and maximize our impact. As Marketing Director, you'll spearhead departmental initiatives, create compelling marketing strategies and lead a dynamic team our all while fostering an environment of growth and success. If you're someone who thrives in a data driven, results oriented setting, but also has a passion for creativity and marketing, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know someone who would be a great fit, please let them know. You can learn more about this position and everything that comes with being a member of Team Bonnie over@bonniechristine.com careers Again, that's bonniecristine.com careers we can't wait to get to know you. I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom

you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. We are taking a break from all things Business and all things Inspiration to talk about, well, hair. I have to say that one of the most frequently asked questions I get is around my curly hair. And so I thought I would do this episode because I do have some things that I've learned and I have some things to say. If for no other reason, I'll now have an episode to share with those people who are asking me. So I'm going to dive into all things curly hair and specifically a book that I read that changed my life. I'm going to share my top six takeaways from that book on what I learned on how to manage and take care of my curly hair. And then I'm going to talk about some of my favorite products. So if you have wavy hair, curly hair, kinky hair, any kind of curl to it or, you know, someone who does. This episode is for you. But before I dive into my top six takeaways, I've got to tell you a story. A couple of years ago, I had a bunch of photos taken at a. You know, at a photo shoot for an upcoming promotion. And one of them was my back turned to the camera, pinning on an inspiration board so you could see the back of my hair. And I was running specifically ads on Pinterest. And now I'm not a Pinterest ad expert. I really just know enough to get myself in trouble. So I was working through setting up some Pinterest ads to send people who saw it over to a free class that I was promoting. And so there are a bunch of, you know, questions and ways to set up a Pinterest ad on the back end. And a couple of weeks later, I was looking at my metrics, and I had this one ad. And I just could not figure out what was going on because the clicks were, like, more than any other ad, but no one was converting. Meaning a conversion is when someone goes to a page and then decides to do the thing. So take the class. And so I could not figure out what was going on because I had, like, tens of thousands of clicks over to this page and, like, five people who signed up for the class. And that's not typical. Typical. And I was just thinking and thinking about what could be going on with this ad. I was about to turn it off, and one of my good friends said, my girls, she had two teenage girls. My girls are on Pinterest looking at hair. And your. Your ad keeps coming up. And I finally figured out that in the ad setup process, I had clicked Expand Interests. Okay, so when you click Expand Interests, Pinterest kind of looks at your image and expands the targeting based on what it thinks your image is about. And so Pinterest thought that this image was about hair and had expanded my interest to people searching about curly hair or hairstyles or something. And so I was getting all these clicks on this image, and I can't imagine what they thought when they landed on a class for surface pattern design run. So that explained it, and I turned it off. And now I typically don't click that little button for expand interest. And so you might. That might come and help for you if you ever run Pinterest ads as well. That image I'll put on the show notes for today's episode if you want to see it. Okay, so I've had curly hair, obviously, all my life. I didn't know what to do with it for such a long time. I used to straighten it. I straightened it in high school quite a lot. I still straightened it some in college, and then I started to let it go natural. And I love my curly hair, but there is, like, a learning curve that I don't think many people talk about. So I read a book when I was in my young 30s, I was probably 30, 31, and it's called the Curly Girl Handbook. And so we'll link to that over in the show notes for today's episode. You can buy the book on Amazon, but it's also free. The. On the Kindle version. So the Kindle version is free. That's the one I did. And it was. It honestly taught me, like, everything I know about my hair, and it took me 30 years to figure it out. So the main thing is that it helps you understand all the different types of curl because not all curls are the same. And specifically, your own head of hair will have different curl patterns in it as you go around. So the number one takeaway that I had from this book was that curly hair should be cut dry. And so this was not anything that I had ever had done before. My hair had always been cut wet. But the thing is that your curl patterns are different. So for instance, I might have a very curly, like, very tightly curled part, you know, on the right side of my head, but on the same exact side, on the left side, it's a looser curl pattern. So if you think about it, if you cut your hair wet, they typically, you know, comb it down and cut it well, then it kind of kinks up at a different rate, and so your finished cut becomes uneven. So I had to find someone who was kind of specialized in cutting curly hair. Specifically, the girl I go to is Diva Curl Certified, which is a type of product. And so you may have to look around, ask some questions, and find someone who is specifically known and trained on cutting curly hair. Number two is about washing, frequency, shampoo, and conditioning. So if you think about it, typically the straighter your hair, the higher the oil content and the curlier your hair, the drier your hair is. And I fall right about in the middle there. So I typically can go about five days in between washes. And so I think that a lot of girls who have curly hair over wash. And so that really strips your hair of all of its natural oils, which then leads to it being frizzier.

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of the fundamental principles in this book are that sulfates are the enemy. You want to avoid shampoos with harsh sulfates in them because that does like an extra stripping of all of the beautiful oils that you need in your curly hair. And so you want to do a low sulfate or a no poo kind of shampoo. And then of course you want to condition, condition, condition. Because curly hair tends to be drier than straight hair. You want to do like a deep conditioning as much as you can to nourish your curls. I think really my biggest takeaway from this book was to really cherish and love and take care of all of the curls on your head. Okay. The third huge takeaway for me was something called gel casting. Now I thought I learned back in middle school that gel was the enemy. I thought gel always led to crunchy curls, and it wasn't the look that I. I was going for. And I had never learned how to use gel properly. So you're supposed to use gel by applying it to your wet hair, and then you don't touch it. You let it dry completely without running your fingers through it and adjusting it. You really want to set it, and then don't touch it until it's completely dry. And what happens is the gel creates a cast, and so your hair perfectly dries in those ringlets or the curls that you want.

And.

And then after it's dry, you go in and break the cast. And so then all that crunchy gel kind of gets broken away, and you're left with, like, really beautiful, perfectly casted, soft curls. So I had just really never, never understood how to use gel. I thought that it meant crunchy hair. And instead, now I understand how to use it. And once it's broken, they're soft and defined curls. And so that was a huge takeaway for me. The next one is kind of simple, but I had never thought about it. It's about breakage points. When you have longer hair and you're wearing a purse or a backpack all the time, typically those things kind of go over our hair, and we pull our hair out, and that can really lead to breakage and damage at the ends. And so now I'm so conscious of it, I'll put a bag over my shoulder, and then I'll lift the bag and gently pull my hair out from underneath it so that I'm not damaging the ends of it. Number five is microfiber towels instead of regular towels. So traditional terry cloth towels can cause frizz and really disrupt the natural curl pattern due to the textured nature of the actual terry cloth. So you want to use a smoother, more absorbent towel, something that's maybe microfiber or. I've even used, like, one of my husband's big cotton T shirts before, and that will, if you put. Put your hair up after a shower, can result in a lot less frizz. And then finally, number six is to not use a hairbrush. So I actually haven't used a hairbrush in, I don't know, six or seven years. I do what they call finger combing. So instead of using brushes, you can just use your fingers to detangle your hair. And so I typically do this in the shower with conditioner, and then every day as I fix it in between washes, I do have a wide tooth comb, which I think is about the same, you know, difference as finger combing, but that was huge as well. A brush will very much lead to more frizz and breakage of the hair. So those were my six biggest takeaways. But this book is super easy to read. It just really helps you understand how to take care of your curls. There's so much great information in it. I'm not an affiliate by any means. I just found this book and it changed really my hair life. So we'll link to it over in the show notes. Again, it's called the Curly Girl Handbook by Lorraine Massey. Now let's talk about products. There are three lines of products that I love. A lot of this I think really has to do with your hair type and just kind of exploring and trying a bunch of different hair products. But I'll share with you the top three that I'm currently loving. The first one is from a company called Kinky Curly. There are three products there that I absolutely love. I use the Come Clean, which is a sulfate from Free Shampoo, and the Knot Today that's K N O T, which is a conditioner that I love. They both smell amazing. And then my favorite gel is from Kinky Curly and it's called Curling Custard and it also smells amazing. I love these three products. I have also used some products from Diva. Diva Curl has is really well known for their curl products. I have typically used their cream and their gel before and so I don't use those alongside Kinky Curly. It's usually an either or situation and honestly it just depends on the day. But I do like the Devacurl gel and they have a different type of curl cream and curl gel based on your curl type, which is really nice. And then the last one is actually really new to me. I've just started using it and I really love it. It's a couple of products by Cult and King. One reason I love it is that their products come in these gorgeous glass bottles and you just love having them like on your counter. But specifically I love a spray that they have, which is a heat protectant and then also like a finishing cream, which is really, really nice. So they're beautiful. They're also really clean products. And so I will link to those as well over on the show notes for today's episode. You can find those@PropriationalCreative.com and if you have curly hair, I hope that you have enjoyed this episode. Thanks for having fun with me. And listening to all things hair related. My friends. Create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world even with your hair. And remember, there's room for you. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.