Mahisha Dellinger, CEO of hair care line “Curls” dishes on entrepreneurship and her series ‘Mind your business wit Mahisha’ on OWN
Mahisha Dellinger is the founder of CURLS, one of the natural hair communities favorite hair care brands. Although the brand is now a multi-million dollar company and a staple product for natural haired women, Dellinger can relate to the struggles Black entrepreneurs face throughout their journey.
When Dellinger decided to launch her own business in 2002, she had just left her corporate job due to racism and was also a young single mother. Inspired by her passion to create hair products for women like herself and also build a legacy and provide for her family she created CURLS. Now, the CEO is helping Black business women on her new series, Mind Your Business with Mahisha, on OWN.
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The Million Dollar Club
“‘Mind your business with Mahisha’ is all about helping Black female business owners make it to the next level,” says the host. “There’s a statistic out there that shows Black female business owners are up 300%, but there’s only a small percentage that will make it to the million dollar market.”
“Four percent will make it to the million dollar mark,” continues Dellinger. “That is a big gap, so the show is helping to bridge the gap. I’ve actually been helping Black female businesses for a while, informally without a tv show. But I was interviewed to do a different show that was going to showcase brand owners like myself, and when that didn’t work out, they remembered me from my interview and asked me to join this show.”
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Pushing Through Fear
On the series, Dellinger meets with entrepreneurs from across the country and tests their passion and determination.
“Each one of them had a fear that was holding them back from succeeding,” she explains. “Different fears but they manifested every single time and so pushing past the fears to success was a big challenge for these ladies and they had to see past what they saw as their fear and really listen to someone else. They had to listen to me, take my advice, and move forward. That was the biggest challenge for all of them. Now, eight ladies total on the show, seven listened.”
The entrepreneur also shared that her biggest challenge with launching a brand was financial and having the capital to bring the business to scale.
“Despite having extremely good credit, I could not get a business loan,” Dellinger says. “I had to start much smaller than I hoped and that was actually good. It turned out to be a good way to navigate a new business in the business world as a new entrepreneur. I learned new things on a small scale and corrected any mistakes before going big.”
Dellinger, a Black woman from South Sacramento says one thing she wants people to take away from the show is that if she can do it, so can you. Dellinger came from an area where the odds were against her and turned a vision into a business. Anything is possible.
Mind Your Business with Mahisha airs every Saturday on OWN at 10/9c.
