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Speaker 1: This season, we're bringing you stories about people finding their
Speaker 1: professional stride by virtue of who they know, whether it's
Speaker 1: breathing new life into an age old profession, taking the
Speaker 1: reins and a family business, forging your own path with
Speaker 1: a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something
Speaker 1: you'd never before even considered. Today reporter Otis Gray travels
Speaker 1: to Detroit to meet a young woman undertaking the challenges
Speaker 1: of being a self made entrepreneur. It's just twenty four
Speaker 1: years old. Eliza Jean Charles is in the thick of
Speaker 1: getting her startup off the ground and fielding innumerable tasks
Speaker 1: that come with it starting her business, Healthy Roots, just
Speaker 1: out of college. Eliza's and goal is to change the
Speaker 1: world one doll at a time. Here's Otis. So I
Speaker 1: spent a day in the life with Eliza Jean Charles
Speaker 1: and her job. Well, she does a lot, so I
Speaker 1: think it's just best to start at the beginning. First,
Speaker 1: she wakes up at seven, she does yoga, and before
Speaker 1: she leaves the house she has her makeup and hair routine.
Speaker 1: I'm very much a fashion over person. She's got a
Speaker 1: big day and she wants to look good. So I
Speaker 1: have to go check out the performance service um and
Speaker 1: then I have mentor meetings all day and like a
Speaker 1: happy hour with mentors, so I like to look presentable
Speaker 1: for that to people can see that I'm a professional.
Speaker 1: So that's what I That's what I'm getting ready for now.
Speaker 1: Elitsa's company is called Healthy Roots. It's a toy company
Speaker 1: that teaches hair care to young girls of color with
Speaker 1: black dolls that Elsa has designed herself. I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: setting sprint and I'm gonna try to do isline it
Speaker 1: really quick. We do have to go in like five minutes.
Speaker 1: But also people in Detroit drive really crazy. Oh is
Speaker 1: that the cap? I've been looking for this? At around eight,
Speaker 1: we're out the door to start the day. Unlike a
Speaker 1: lot of young people who apply for work at big
Speaker 1: places where they might find stability, Eliza has gone out
Speaker 1: on a limb to start her own toy company completely
Speaker 1: from scratch. I still don't know my way around your Troy.
Speaker 1: Pitching a business like this and making it work is
Speaker 1: not easy, but twenty four years old, Eliza is exceptionally
Speaker 1: good at it. Hi. My name is Elitsa Jean Charles.
Speaker 1: I'm the CEO and founder of Healthy Roots. Healthy Roots
Speaker 1: is a toy company that creates dolls in storybooks that
Speaker 1: empower young girls of color through hairplay. I created Healthy
Speaker 1: Roots because I never had a doll that looked like
Speaker 1: me growing up. And I also didn't learn how to
Speaker 1: do my hair until I was twenty. And that's crazy
Speaker 1: because I have really great hair, and there's lots of
Speaker 1: little girls with beautiful girls that don't know it yet.
Speaker 1: So that's why we made Zoe the first of all
Speaker 1: that teaches natural hair care. She's our first healthy roots
Speaker 1: all and she's really cute. So it's a good elevator
Speaker 1: bit that seems practiced and perfect. I mean part of
Speaker 1: it is practiced, but people ask me what do you
Speaker 1: do all the time? So as to tell them something.
Speaker 1: In the last four years, Aulitsa has taken the doll
Speaker 1: from an idea to an actual product. She secured some
Speaker 1: funding and is now in the process of getting more
Speaker 1: dolls out into the public. After a successful first holiday season,
Speaker 1: of startups like this fail so Eulitsa has completely devoted
Speaker 1: her life to her company and is currently working out
Speaker 1: of a startup accelerator here in Detroitrophone. In a world
Speaker 1: with a lot of reliable, stable job paths, we follow
Speaker 1: Eliza as she forges her own. Did you have a
Speaker 1: lot of dolls when you were a kid? Didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of dolls when I was a kid. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: My mom would only buy me gifts if I did
Speaker 1: something good or if she did something bad. Only times
Speaker 1: I got dolls I had this giant bin. Um. I
Speaker 1: had like so many different versions of Barbie had swan
Speaker 1: like Barbie. I had the Barbie ware you could pull
Speaker 1: hair out of her head and cut it. Um. I
Speaker 1: had tons of my scene dolls. Um, they had the
Speaker 1: coolest fashion. Then there were the Brat's Betty Spaghetti. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of dolls, A lot of dolls.
Speaker 1: Elitsa is of Haitian descent. She's first generation, but like
Speaker 1: a lot of kids growing up in America, most of
Speaker 1: Eliza's dolls growing up were white. In a recent video
Speaker 1: that Elitza made for her website, it shows her walking
Speaker 1: through a toy aisle at a big store just to
Speaker 1: show how much lighter skinned dolls vastly outnumbered dolls with
Speaker 1: darker skin. Elita remembers one Christmas when she and her
Speaker 1: cousin were kids, a family member noticed that most of
Speaker 1: their dolls didn't look like them. He noticed we didn't
Speaker 1: have any black dolls, and he bought us some and
Speaker 1: I like unwrapped it and I started crying something. I
Speaker 1: didn't want this one. This is ugly, and like I
Speaker 1: said that, and they were like, you said it was
Speaker 1: ugly because it was a black doll, not because it
Speaker 1: was a black doll, but because it was a black doll,
Speaker 1: because it was like to me, the doll that like
Speaker 1: they always show in the commercials, was like the white one.
Speaker 1: So let's say that they had Rapunzel Barbie, they do
Speaker 1: white pun Barby, they do black. They got me the
Speaker 1: black one, and I didn't want that one because I
Speaker 1: want the one that is the popular one, which is
Speaker 1: always the white one. Yeah, unfortunately, you lead to this
Speaker 1: experience is not at all unique. There's been multiple studies
Speaker 1: done where young black kids sit down in front of
Speaker 1: two dolls. One is white, one is black. Then they
Speaker 1: asked some questions. It's called the doll test, and there's
Speaker 1: videos online that you can watch just like this one
Speaker 1: which the doll is the nice doll. The young boy
Speaker 1: in front of the camera points over to the white doll.
Speaker 1: Which doll is the bad dog? Now, one after another,
Speaker 1: the kid's point to the black doll. Which doll is
Speaker 1: the ugly doll? A young boy touches the black dog.
Speaker 1: Why is that all ugly? Black? Which doll looks most
Speaker 1: like you? Which one looks like Okay? She points to
Speaker 1: the black doll. The videos can be pretty hard to watch,
Speaker 1: but they're a big part of why you leads it
Speaker 1: does what she does it all because her mantra is
Speaker 1: that young black kids need to see themselves represented in
Speaker 1: a positive way because that hasn't been the case for
Speaker 1: a long long time. And he leads his experience. A
Speaker 1: lot of that had to do with her parents coming
Speaker 1: to the US to give her a better future and
Speaker 1: encouraging her to just be successful. They were just like,
Speaker 1: do whatever you gotta do to to learn to grow
Speaker 1: to be successful. And for a lot of people that
Speaker 1: looks like whiteness, like assimilating or like acting white, I
Speaker 1: actively participated in anti blackness as a kid. I like
Speaker 1: didn't always play with the black kids, or like, I
Speaker 1: didn't listen to certain music because I thought that's what
Speaker 1: black kids listened to. I didn't watch certain things and
Speaker 1: I thought that's what black kids listened to or watched.
Speaker 1: And I um did those things because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to get treated like them, because I saw how they
Speaker 1: got treated and it wasn't And then it wasn't till
Speaker 1: I got older that I learned how problematic that was.
Speaker 1: So as a teenager, Elita straightened her natural curls to
Speaker 1: appeal to the kind of European standard of beauty, straight
Speaker 1: long hair. But there was a pivotal moment in college
Speaker 1: when she was an illustration major at Rhode Island School
Speaker 1: of Design. It was when a friend of hers, who
Speaker 1: was also black, made a pretty big decision. Um she
Speaker 1: had really big hair. She had cut off all her hair,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yo, what are you doing? And
Speaker 1: she was like, you know, I've just never seen my
Speaker 1: natural hair. And I was like, wow, I too have
Speaker 1: never seen my natural hair. So this experience started really
Speaker 1: feeding into Elita's artwork. And at one point she was
Speaker 1: taking an illustration class and a teacher assigned them all
Speaker 1: fairytale characters to read create. Elitza was assigned Rapunzel, and
Speaker 1: I redesigned her and turned her into a little black
Speaker 1: girl with kinky, curly hair, because I wanted to show
Speaker 1: black girls that where princesses were beautiful, we don't have
Speaker 1: to change the way that we looked to be these princesses.
Speaker 1: And everyone was like, this looks like a doll. This
Speaker 1: looks like a doll. Have you thought about making a doll?
Speaker 1: I took that conversations Facebook and like over a hundred comments. Later,
Speaker 1: I realized that there was a shared experience for a
Speaker 1: lot of black women where they didn't have products that
Speaker 1: look like them when they were growing up, specifically talking
Speaker 1: about dolls or like sharing pictures of the black dolls
Speaker 1: they did have, and realizing there was an opportunity there,
Speaker 1: she came up with the name Healthy Roots and started
Speaker 1: doing heavy research into the psychological effects of toys on kids.
Speaker 1: And I ultimately learned that toys have a huge influence
Speaker 1: on children. They influence how you think, act, and see yourself.
Speaker 1: So when little black girls can't find dolls that look
Speaker 1: like them and negatively impacts their self esteem. And so
Speaker 1: when I created Zoe, I made her more than just
Speaker 1: a brown doll. She has hair that girls can style
Speaker 1: just like their own and learn how to not only
Speaker 1: love their hair, but take care of it properly. Zoe,
Speaker 1: the doll that you lead to design, stands about eighteen
Speaker 1: inches tall. Um. Zoe has these big, beautiful chocolate brown
Speaker 1: eyes and these really cute little like pink lips, and um,
Speaker 1: a little bit of blush, and she has this very round,
Speaker 1: adorable face. And um, she's these big beautiful curls that
Speaker 1: frame her face. We've developed a personality for her which
Speaker 1: is like a little sassy um and very um strong wills.
Speaker 1: She's like very confident in herself and will not let
Speaker 1: people talk badly about her or the way that she looks,
Speaker 1: which happened sometimes, but she can handle herself. In addition
Speaker 1: to giving her a great personality, Elitz has also written
Speaker 1: a whole backstory that makes Zoe even cooler. Her story
Speaker 1: is actually that she went through the big chop, which
Speaker 1: is um what we call it when you cut off
Speaker 1: all your hair, because she went she went to the
Speaker 1: salon with her mom and she saw another woman there
Speaker 1: with like these big, beautiful curls, and she was like,
Speaker 1: why doesn't my hair look like that? And so her
Speaker 1: mom helped her learn how to take care of her
Speaker 1: and they did all these hairstyles um which are featured
Speaker 1: in the Big Book of Hair, which is our illustrated
Speaker 1: guide to teaching natural hair care. Her end goal with
Speaker 1: Zoe is to fight for positive racial representation, starting with
Speaker 1: when kids are formulating their ideas about the world, which
Speaker 1: is why it's called healthy. With we're getting to the
Speaker 1: root of the problem. Um, you can you can stop
Speaker 1: problems by stopping it with the youth, and as long
Speaker 1: as we teach them, we can fight against it. That's
Speaker 1: what I built healthy with. Yeah, this cute doll is
Speaker 1: a tool to destroy racism. So an amazing idea, But
Speaker 1: that was just the beginning. She ended up launching a
Speaker 1: Kickstarter campaign to fund the making of the first doll.
Speaker 1: Her goal was to raise thirty dollars, and she ended
Speaker 1: up raising I asked her what she remembers feeling now
Speaker 1: that this idea of hers was about to come to life.
Speaker 1: I don't remember being excited. I think I remember just
Speaker 1: being like, oh crap, this is real, This is really
Speaker 1: really real. This like weight came down on me and
Speaker 1: I realized just how much work I had signed up for.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to the story in a set. I
Speaker 1: can first a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong
Speaker 1: work ethic takes pride in a job well done. This
Speaker 1: is you. But to get an honest day's work, you
Speaker 1: need a call back. You need a job. Express Employment
Speaker 1: Professionals can help. We'll connect you to the right company.
Speaker 1: We're committed to your success and never charge a fee
Speaker 1: to find you a job. Express Nose Jobs. Get to
Speaker 1: know Express find your location at Express pros dot com
Speaker 1: or on the express jobs app. And now back to
Speaker 1: our story. Since the beginning, Elitsa has spearheaded every task
Speaker 1: that goes into starting a business from scratch. You start
Speaker 1: with your idea, check your idea valid data of developing
Speaker 1: your product, defining your customer, defining your go to market strategy.
Speaker 1: I get figuring out how to build your product, your
Speaker 1: cause during your like financial projection, then looking at funding,
Speaker 1: look and building your team, thinking about your sales funnel
Speaker 1: and your marketing strategy. And on days like today, she
Speaker 1: tries to split that up in the meetings with mentors,
Speaker 1: communicating with the people that are managing our accounts, communicating
Speaker 1: with my factory, and tying up any loose ends they're
Speaker 1: dealing with the insurance policies for those factories, organizing meetings
Speaker 1: with people for fulfillment. She spends a good portion of
Speaker 1: the day working on social media and marketing, and then
Speaker 1: the rest of my day is design work and illustration,
Speaker 1: which doesn't get done often because it gets pushed and
Speaker 1: pushed and pushed. Uh So that's my day to day.
Speaker 1: That is kind of the standard day to day for her,
Speaker 1: but now that she's part of a startup incubator here
Speaker 1: in Detroit that comes with all sorts of new tasks
Speaker 1: and opportunities. Like today, she's part of a startup speed
Speaker 1: dating kind of event where her and other startups in
Speaker 1: the office go around and meet with successful entrepreneurs and
Speaker 1: business owners who can give advice and maybe even help you, Liza,
Speaker 1: with their business. It's kind of like a rapid fire
Speaker 1: shark tank situation to give me like the cell. Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Elza Geane Charles, I'm the O and
Speaker 1: founder of My name is Steve. I've been doing engineering
Speaker 1: for ten or twelve years. Hi, I'm Elitsa. So. I
Speaker 1: have a toy company. It's called Healthier on the You
Speaker 1: have a company called Integral. We're a product consulting company.
Speaker 1: We work with our I think you'll be a great resource,
Speaker 1: um so Ulitsa. I have a company it's called Healthy Roots.
Speaker 1: We make dolls that teach natural hair. I personally don't
Speaker 1: know what it takes to start a business from scratch
Speaker 1: like Elsa, but being a freelance producer, I know the
Speaker 1: feeling of constantly pitching and feeling kind of like you're
Speaker 1: making up your own job as you go. Do you
Speaker 1: ever get jealous of people with normal jobs all the time,
Speaker 1: all the time. Happiness for me is stability. I value
Speaker 1: stability over all else, which is funny because the most
Speaker 1: unstable thing you can do is trying to start a business.
Speaker 1: But that's what happiness is for me. It's like knowing
Speaker 1: where knowing what I'm gonna eat, knowing where I'm going
Speaker 1: to sleep. Um, consistency and balance and like There'll be
Speaker 1: people who would reach out to me and they're like, girl,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about quitting my job, and I was like,
Speaker 1: don't you quit that job. That's steady income, you got benefits,
Speaker 1: You've got insurance. You know what it's like to have insurance.
Speaker 1: That's great, Go get your teeth clean. Um. Being a
Speaker 1: person who has quit a stable job before to do
Speaker 1: what I love, I know the liberation and empowerment of
Speaker 1: being independent and forging your own way, like Eliza, But
Speaker 1: I also know that the grass can always look greener
Speaker 1: on the other side. And while you make this big
Speaker 1: decision to go off on your own journey, you sometimes
Speaker 1: really miss the camaraderie of a normal kind of work environment.
Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like kind of like a like
Speaker 1: a lone wolf and what you're doing always I did
Speaker 1: a lot of this by myself. Um, not to say
Speaker 1: that I haven't had um mentors helped me or team
Speaker 1: members at the beginning. That's helped me, But a lot
Speaker 1: of it falls back on you when somebody can't do it.
Speaker 1: So it is very much, very lonely. Doing the work
Speaker 1: that I do is like a slow burn. But then
Speaker 1: there's also this this chart about entrepreneurship where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. Oh no, this really sucks. Oh look
Speaker 1: it's good. Wait, oh my, we're doing amazing. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: doing just okay. So it's like these crazy ups and downs.
Speaker 1: There's always highs and lows, And what gets me through
Speaker 1: my lows it's my end goal, which is like empowering
Speaker 1: young girls of color. That's my angle. As long as
Speaker 1: I'm doing work to get to that point, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Eulitza admits that because she's constantly in the trenches of
Speaker 1: starting this business, she can sometimes forget that childlike wonder
Speaker 1: that her company is all about. But after a long
Speaker 1: day at the incubator, Elitsa got an email. It was
Speaker 1: this video that was sent to her by a young
Speaker 1: social media influencer. This little insanely cute black girl named
Speaker 1: Jade Robinson who has tons and tons of followers. Jade
Speaker 1: just got her Zoe doll in the mail from Healthy Roots,
Speaker 1: So describe what we're watching. We are watching one of
Speaker 1: our little influencers, do you and on boxing? But she's
Speaker 1: so tiny, she's so cute. I'm boxing today this box
Speaker 1: key and having open I'll be an get all day,
Speaker 1: David saying no. From Healthy oh, govery because I'm a open.
Speaker 1: This a little bit for me, but I'm a big guy.
Speaker 1: Her name, so he should pretty much just look like this,
Speaker 1: so she pretty much looks like me. Yeah, it's really cute. Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to focus right now. Oh my god. Four
Speaker 1: years after you leads illustrated the first sketch that would
Speaker 1: become Healthy Roots. Here it is. It's real, it's alive,
Speaker 1: it's an actual business. It's a tangible thing that she
Speaker 1: created that's now in the hands of a young girl
Speaker 1: that she always hoped she can inspire. I asked her
Speaker 1: if when she sees this, does she finally think I've
Speaker 1: made it. No, I don't think anything. I'm just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like watching a puppy. It's like, what are you
Speaker 1: thinking about this. Just your brain is sparkles and rainbows,
Speaker 1: like it's just it feels good. It's just yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think about anything. I'm just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is so cute. This is so cute. This is
Speaker 1: so cute. That's it. That's all I'm thinking. I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking like, oh my god, another girl has
Speaker 1: gotten our doll and she's going to become a strong,
Speaker 1: independent woman. Like no, I'm just like, wow, she looks
Speaker 1: really cute. I don't see that and go I did it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm successful with this. I'm like, oh, she looks
Speaker 1: really happy. I want to make more happy kids. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's it, yesterday. Yes. You can find out more about
Speaker 1: Eliza at www dot Healthy Roots Dolls dot com, where
Speaker 1: you can also see pictures of Zoe and order a
Speaker 1: doll today. Healthy Roots of story is far from over
Speaker 1: and Eliza is just getting started. You can also see
Speaker 1: this amazing unboxing video over at Express pros dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash podcast for On the Job, I'm Modus Gray. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to On the Job, brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express pros dot com.
Speaker 1: This season of On the Job is produced by Audi
Speaker 1: Asian and Red Seat Ventures. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Otis Gray. The show is mixed by
Speaker 1: Matt Noble at The Loft in Bronxville, New York. Find
Speaker 1: us on I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you
Speaker 1: liked what you heard, please consider rating or reviewing the
Speaker 1: show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time. For more inspiring stories about discovering your
Speaker 1: life's work. Audiation