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