創造性と技術の交差点
This is ReinaMoto's podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about what the future holds at the
intersection of creativity and technology. I'm ReinaMoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Today's guest is Angela Onoha, a Dutch-slash-Nigerian trichologist based in Amsterdam
who creates content about hair and scalp care for women around the world.
The term, the creator economy, is something that didn't exist 10 years ago,
but now it is a growing industry and increasingly its influence on culture and business is
significant to the point where many corporations and brands have to rely on influencers to make
their brands known and credible to their audience. I have to be honest and admit that I didn't know
what trichology was or what a trichologist did. Simply put, trichology is a study of
hair and scalp and in her case, she is a trichologist specializing in black women's
hair given her own background. In part one of my conversation with Angela, I asked her about
her journey to becoming a full-time creator-slash-influencer and how she found her
calling in such a specific field as trichology. So, let's get started.
アンジェラのバックグラウンド
Angela, it's great to see you again. Yeah, thanks for having me.
You and I met only about a month ago for the first time in Cannes. We were both asked to be
on stage. I was one of the three panelists on stage and you were the moderator at Cannes Lions.
I'd love to unpack who you are for the sake of our audience and I wanted to hear from you
before you became who you are today and what led you to the current place that you are.
I actually grew up in a city that I currently live in. I come from a household where my dad
is from Nigeria. He came here when he was 19. My mom is Dutch and I do feel like I really grew up
with both cultures. Obviously, I live in the Netherlands so my base will be Dutch but I did
get quite some Nigerian upbringing and I think that the most important thing that my dad always
said was he wanted me to have a very important job. It's typical for, I would say, African parents
in general to say, I want you to be a doctor or a lawyer or someone important. They always want
people like that within the family and that's always also how I approach what I wanted to
become. I picked being a lawyer because I love watching law and order and stuff
but it ended up not becoming that. I really noticed that I enjoyed school but I didn't really
know for sure what I wanted to become and I was so focused on what I wanted. I wanted my
parents to be proud so I ended up eventually studying law for a year but due to there's a
different school system here where I basically filled my exam for French before I studied law
and there was a way to still study law but I had to do the French over but then we call it like
adult schooling and I did that in the evening but I was still able to study law but the only
requirement to continue to study law was to eventually pass my French exams and I filled it
again. So after a year studying law and I had enough points to go to the second year
but just because I failed my French exams I wasn't able to go to the second year of law school so I
had to drop out and that was the point where I felt like I disappointed everyone. Now I have to
say I'm the most supportive mom and my mom was like as long as you're happy do what makes you happy
小売業での経験
so I ended up I worked in retail part-time next to my law school and I ended up doing a year
full-time I was like I need to figure out what I'm going to do because I actually didn't want to
go to that French class again but that also meant that I wasn't able to get my law degree basically
so I thought you know what I'm gonna work full-time in retail worked at a clothing shop here in the
Netherlands had a lot of fun ended up not leaving. I went higher up to management and eventually
became an assistant store manager at the time I was one of the youngest I think it was I was 18 19
at the time and what I discovered was I didn't even really like the clothing store but I love
people and I love to train people help people out and I think that made me eventually go into
that position training like sales assistants in the store and eventually made me a troubleshooter
assistant manager they just put me in every store to fix the teams which I really enjoyed but again
I didn't really know if that was my passion mainly because I felt like it was fun but it wasn't
creative and I am at heart a creative person so to give an example like now thinking about
back in the days because like the content that I make a lot of it is focused on hair
I used to do hair when I was like 14 15 in my room I did it like on the down low was illegal
but I put like hair extensions in for people and I really loved that I really loved like doing hair
in that way so it was a side hustle and that was a way to be creative and within any like
management position like you can imagine as well it's not that creative honestly you're always
restricted and especially if you work for a company like there are restrictions and I felt like there
were a lot of restrictions you know the retail job wasn't creative enough right yeah but even before
you went into retail yeah I'm curious when you started to be conscious of oh this is what it
means to be creative or this is fun to be creative like when did you start to realize the spark of
creativity in your life I think when it comes to creativity in general and I think that also
gives me like that spark of doing it more or implementing it as much as possible is when you
see results or when you're really happy with the end result even if it doesn't show results to
others and you really feel like I did that I feel like for example like within retail obviously we
were able to dress up mannequins or change the storefront but it was all within what the company
wanted like this collection they even made pictures like we want them to wear these outfits and every
now and then I was allowed to change it up myself and then to see that people would grab those items
because they liked the outfit so it was like oh but because I did that I think that's what created
the spark so less restrictions I feel like interesting yeah I feel like a lot of the times
so even within retail you think oh but it's a clothing store you need to be creative but if you
work there then you realize that there isn't that much creativity is really put into boxes
and you're very limited so I think that those moments created those sparks for me that I could
show it works and it's something that I thought about when you were growing up in say high school
or even before that yeah were there different outlets of creativity that you had say typically
when I think of creative or when people think of creativity let's say drawing painting um playing
創造的なバックグラウンド
music being in the theater those are creative traditionally defined creative endeavors
yeah and what struck me in terms of what you just said was the absence of restrictions or
restraint you find an opportunity to be creative but I'm curious even before the professional
retail corporate environment if you had any outlet of creativity in your say student life like could
be writing could be painting could be singing could be playing music could be acting were there any other
creative outlets yeah so I think for me because I did like I did grow up in we didn't have that
much money to spend to keep it simple but I think that I really got that from my mom my mom is super
creative she when there was she saw like a secondhand closet and she was like you know it's
not fully how we want it but if we buy this handle or painted this color it's good as new I did the
same thing at home but also when it comes to my clothing because I didn't have a monthly or monthly
allowance to spend so what we did was twice a year my mom had some money for us to buy our clothes
for the new season and we went secondhand shopping and seal shopping and I was the best at it and the
funny thing is I had a like a little reunion couple of years ago with a couple of people that
I went to school with and they all thought that I came from money just because I had so many outfits
and I was like no like my outfits weren't even worth like 20 bucks like I just switch it up a lot
they're like but you had so many like cool different outfits and I was like oh I didn't
realize that you looked at me that way because the money wasn't theirs wow interesting that was high
school so I think I was like from 13 to 17 I would say so like during that time yeah yeah and when you
were in the retail job and when you started teaching was that the teaching on the job was
your training essentially like you never had any formal training no yeah there was we had a couple
of workshops but no I didn't have a legit formal training the teaching part teaching people
interacting with people that's something that I liked I love to know more about people and not
just on service level so I think that helped me out a lot into eventually teaching because if
you discover what way of teaching someone likes or prefers or what like sparks their interest then
you can make it fun so I think that's the thing that I had since I was little yeah so what I ended
up doing I was on social media I always got complimented on my hair what do you do with
your hair even in store we're like what do you do with your hair it was YouTube back in the days
that I was really following American like vloggers with curly and coily hair giving product suggestions
I was like oh I can maybe do that so I started uploading a couple of videos it wasn't that
serious and it got picked up but what I noticed with YouTube I love YouTube but it's very long
form and that takes a lot of time when it comes to editing I didn't have the time so when Instagram
popped up that app which was a photo app at first obviously I was like oh this is fun so what I
literally did I literally just took selfies and my selfies with my hair like my big afro they got
reposted on like bigger pages and before I knew it like all of a sudden I woke up with a thousand
followers and the day after it became more that was a like it was a short period within the app
クリエイティブなキャリアの始まり
where you could I think it's the same with TikTok now that you can go viral and attract a lot of
followers and that happened then interesting when you started to upload videos of you doing your hair
it sounded like if I may extract what you were saying that you didn't have a grand plan of
becoming a YouTube creator is that right yeah it wasn't my plan to make it a living it was just a
kind of an outlet that I was like it's fun creative especially when the update came with
the 15 seconds if I make a video now and I speed it up and then I chop it and then like in 15 seconds
I could do a hairdo or something like that that's how it basically started yeah I see I think that
the reason why I even started uploading like now that I'm really thinking about it was that back
in the days straight hair was the norm so I used to like chemically straighten my hair yeah and
after a while it became a thing that I was like I don't want to do this anymore it's not healthy
so I started to grow out my natural hair and that was what I discovered on YouTube as well that
especially in the States there were like a lot of people that were doing the same and like suggesting
products because I had no idea to like work with my natural hair with my natural texture but what
I also noticed was in the Netherlands we weren't there yet so I think that the biggest reason why
I wanted to upload is also because I wanted to be seen in a sense of that because I think that was
the only thing that I couldn't really talk about with anyone over here because nobody was in that
scene yet I think that was the biggest reason why I uploaded in the first place like on YouTube
and eventually made the selfies on Instagram because I was so happy that my hair was growing
トリコロジーの理解
out and I wanted to be like all the girls in America so yeah so when you and I met about a
month ago yeah that was the first time that I heard the word trichologist yeah so tell us what
is trichology and what does a trichologist do trichologist has studied the science diseases
and basically the structure of both hair and scalp so I just know everything about hair and scalp
and what we do is in between a dermatologist and a hairdresser basically because a lot of the times
your hairdresser obviously they know a lot about hair but they don't know too much about like scalp
conditions hair conditions and a dermatologist focuses a lot on the skin so we're in between
the bridge in between and what I help people with is very mixed I can help people with just a basic
hair regimen because they just don't know how to like style their hair or work with their hair
but I also help people that have a certain types of alopecia or certain types of hair loss to
basically also first of discover the source so what is triggering that and then create a treatment
plan on how to make it better how to maybe cure it or sometimes unfortunately accept it so that's
basically what I do I see it is a license that you got is that right yeah it's a certification that I
have yeah the study itself it took me two and a half years something like that oh wow quite a
while yeah no it was quite a while like you can do it within you have three years to do it I did
it in two and a half but that had to do with the epidemic like due to COVID honestly I had more time
oh I see from say day one or the first week or first month of you starting to upload things
髪に関する知識の取得
on Instagram from that how long did it take did you already identify yourself as hey I'm a
gynecologist no or was it a process to get to the point so tell us what that process like
I really started off with just fun hairstyles what I ended up doing was posting like weekly hair
tutorials obviously the app evolved as well so eventually I was able to upload one minute videos
which was perfect so I did weekly hair tutorials with pictures of that but also some product
reviews and I added a little bit of makeup because I also wanted to switch it up I'm not
just about my hair but what I noticed was I got a lot of messages from people that were like hey I
love what you do but I've been suffering from hair loss or have this bald spot can you give
me any suggestions and I was like I can't but I would love to and I think that's also sometimes
the beauty but also the dangerous part of social media is that I a lot of the times feel like
unqualified people give advice and I did not want to be that person I also was like but what
can I do to get that knowledge so I googled and I eventually discovered trichology I did not know
it myself either like at that point I did not know and I saw there was a study it was called
trichology and that was a study where you could learn everything about the hair and scalp it was
like perfect because I don't want to be a hairdresser personally I love to go to them I
didn't want to become that when I saw that study I was like you know what I failed a lot I failed
my law school I don't have the best credentials when it comes to passing exams but you know what
I'm older now I know what I want now I want to do it I don't like other people are not telling me to
do it maybe I should give it a try so I ended up studying it I really enjoyed every single minute
of it and it was really sciencey and I was like I'd never imagined myself enjoying something like
this but then the exams came I obviously was super scared but I passed all of them it was fine but
that's how I got into trichology and then I was like you know what but I also realized like there's
a gap I love doing the weekly hairstyles but it's it misses like I again love to teach so yes I teach
the hairstyles but I wanted something more I knew no one who did that so I was like you know what I'm
going to implement the knowledge that I have that I've gained into the content that I make and that's
how I shifted from doing those weekly hairstyles I slowly shifted into educational videos when it
インフルエンサーとしての変遷
comes to hair and scalp and then the reason why you wanted to be certified was having that
credibility yeah to your audience yeah I see I used to do the styling part so I know how a product
can perform but a lot of people also want to know the science behind a product so how for example
how can a product repair hair damage so I can simplify the science and the technologies of
those products and what they can do for to achieve that for example so I think it would be that makes
me unique it was scary however though because during that time I already was being paid by brands
but more so for the hair tutorials so I had an income and what I would say part-time income
during that time and was becoming full-time yeah but obviously I also was shifting my content so
that was scary I also was like I don't know if people like they say they wanted they're asking
for but I don't know if they're really gonna watch because they're so used to the fun part
and obviously I still wanted to make educational part fun but you never know because it's it is
totally different it's less entertaining I would say it's less before and after so it took about
a year to like slowly implement that and making that yeah basically my niche yeah and when did
you start earning money doing trichology or even maybe even before you started to call yourself a
trichologist or certified it sounds like you were starting to make some income yeah but what were
some of the early opportunities for you to receiving income so I think that the first big
like opportunity that I had was before I became a trichologist was a campaign that I was asked for
by L'Oréal it was actually a makeup campaign and that was the first time like I had a tv commercial
here in the Netherlands it was really cool but that was the first time that I had to negotiate
for like fees and I was actually getting paid quite a lot I was like oh wow I can really
make a like full-time living out of this if I like work harder on it so I think that was the biggest
thing and even like it still is I think it's really difficult to pinpoint if you can make a
full-time living in the creator space it really depends on what you do but I had a couple of like
hair care brands as well that I have every couple of months a campaign for so those were the yeah it
was then that I realized okay if I do a little bit more I can make good living out of it yeah
I see so it sounds like the main source of income is through brands reaching out to you
and asking you to be part of a campaign or endorsing a product or doing that sort of thing
yeah yeah and I think that the moment where I really started to notice I need to like pick and
choose am I gonna go for the job that I have or am I gonna invest time in becoming a full-time
creator was when I there weren't enough hours in the day because I had quite some campaigns and I
was like I don't even have the time to film because I need to go to my work yeah and I the
biggest shift for me income wise did came where when I signed to an agency because they really
were able to negotiate way better than I could and I think that's also within the creator space
I see difficult like a gray area like what to ask what can you get out of a campaign
when I had a good amount of followers and I had an agency approaching me actually to manage me
that was where there was a shift and I started having a higher income basically because they
were able to negotiate way better I see I see how many followers did you have when the talent agency
approached you yeah I think it was about like 32 or 35,000 something like that it wasn't that high
at all but I think that yeah so my talent agency really focuses on creators within a niche so I
think that they saw like they acknowledged the niche that I was in and they saw potential in
that and that was also the time where I shifted to that like educational content so I think that's
why they had interest in me I saw the potential and it was just perfect timing when it comes to
the direction that I was going towards and like signing with them to approach those brands and
negotiate everything yeah so up until then you had a full-time job yeah where you were working 40
45 hours or so yeah fairly steady income and I assume this was before COVID correct yeah at the
キャリアの挑戦と独立
same time I would imagine it's nerve-wracking to go from having a full-time job to an unproven
quote-unquote job so to speak and on your own yeah what gave you that confidence was it a certain
guarantee from the agency or tell us a little bit about what gave you that confidence to go on your
okay so I quit my job I think six months before signing with the agency okay but what I did is I
saved a lot of money and I gave myself like a four-month buffer to at least try it I really
I don't like the what if I really hate that so I was like you know what let's just try it and see
what happens if I have all the time in the world to really put into it because it always felt like
I only was able to give 30 percent so I decided okay I saved up my money I'm gonna give myself
like four months to see how it goes if it doesn't work I'm gonna work again like it's nothing has
happened nothing big has happened or negative has happened but at least I tried so it was super scary
because I love certainty I love to know what I'm getting into but on the other hand I also really
realized that I actually got myself into a pattern again of doing things because people think that's
good or that's right so even like ending up at the job that like the last job that I was at
everyone was so impressed with what I was doing and obviously was I was impressed myself as well but
they thought like the whole creative aspect of me uploading videos that was from why are you doing
that like you have a good job right now you're successful at that right now look at you I it
really got me realized but who am I doing it for am I doing that for the norm that people expect
or am I doing it for me and I really realized like I'm not doing that job for me anymore what
I really enjoy is like creating content but obviously you also need to be realistic at that
moment I was living with my partner we bought a house together I have expenses I don't live at
home any I'm not a student I don't live at home anymore so I have an adult life which also means
adult responsibilities so that's why I decided to create that buffer and save up that money
to at least give it a shot and worst case scenario I'll find a new job and it will be fine but that
never happened that scenario so ended up being quite a good decision yeah so when you made that
decision you had saved enough money to be able to go for at least four months essentially with
no income even if you are making money okay I can make a living for the next four months or so
so you go independent yeah and but you said that it was six months before you signed with a talent
agency so in that full month you start putting basically full time of your working hours
in creating content and was it like fairly immediate that you started noticing tell me a
little bit more about what were the signs yeah because obviously like at that time I had two
brands that I had some retainer content that I did for them so I had a monthly income it wasn't a
full-time income but like little money coming in yeah when it comes to me having more time was I
was able to also attend brand events so also show my face to the brands or to the PR agencies over
here in the Netherlands and that helped me getting a couple of other campaigns in and more gifting
opportunities so I also received a little bit more products that I could create content with so I did
転機となった契約
see like it wasn't the first month but so I would say like month three something came in and I was
like okay yeah we can do this it's already we're already at 60 percent of my expenses that I'm
covering right now I only touched my butt for a little bit so we can really make this work so I
think it came with that and the number one thing that made it work was I think it was in month three
that L'Oreal gave me a year contract oh yeah yeah and that was like looking back it wasn't a huge
contract but it would cover all of my expenses for at least like a part of that yeah yeah so I was
like okay I can pay my mortgage and stuff we're still good yeah wow yeah and then it was being
signed up with a talent agency but it sounds like even the talent agency makes it easier for you
is like the logistics and the negotiation and the contractual aspect of it but they're not like
they're paying you on a regular basis used to have to hustle so to speak at least have presence yeah
100 percent yeah they're just in the background basically yeah they're my back office basically
but I still need to do the work right but what does really help at least with my agency is like the
whole meetings negotiation part it actually takes a lot of time the going back and forth the
contracts the payments that took a lot of my time as well so it really allows me to actually have
more time to be creative or think about concepts or even talk to them about you know what I really
want to work with this brand can we pitch this like even really having the time create a good
pitch to a brand so that's basically what they help me out with got it got it I have so many
ideas and I actually have so many pre-filmed stuff that I just don't have the time so I just hired a
content assistant literally yesterday it's really scary but it's also really exciting yeah is this
the first person that you're hiring yeah it's really scary uh under the empire of Angela yeah
I know and I never expected that I actually always said I never want to never want to hire people
法学からクリエイターへの道
so that was part one of my conversation with Angela Onoha a trichologist and a creator based
in Amsterdam in my conversation the first thing that I was surprised by was the fact that she
studied law in college before pursuing her career as a creator she went through the hassle of applying
to a law school and get in but then only to realize that wasn't what she wanted to do
and that she had the courage to quit and then to do something else initially after she stopped
studying law she said she went into retail she worked at an apparel shop and worked as a store
manager eventually to manage the store and teach other people it was during the pandemic in 2021
that she decided to almost as a hobby to create content based on her own experience as a black
woman treating her own hair but realizing that using say chemicals and other types of treatment
to straighten her hair wasn't good for herself and decided to share her own troubles and problems
and the solutions that she found herself and then she realized that even though that sounded
and seemed like such a specific category to create content for there was enough women around the world
interested in the content that she was creating eventually she got to a point where she felt
that she could be independent and pursue that as a full-time job and turn that into the day-to-day
Angelaのキャリアの旅
work that she does what made me realize in my conversation with her and what actually did
surprise also was the fact that trichology wasn't really her main interest to begin with it just
turned out to be it was something that she was wanting to get to know more about just because
as a black woman that treatment of her hair was something that she struggled with and it turned
out that there was enough people around that would be interested in her content the other thing that
impressed from my conversation with Angela was the fact that she decided to study trichology as a
special field and use that as a piece of credibility for her own content she could have chosen to just
keep producing content hoping that would gain enough following for her instagram and other
social media outlets that she had but in fact two and a half years to study this very specific field
to gain credibility i thought was a key point in her career in becoming uh not just a creator full
time but in becoming a credible voice in that specific field oftentimes we hear pieces of advice
such as follow your passion and while i do see a point in such advice at the same time i do realize
that looking for a perfect job that suits your passion is a very difficult thing now that i've
spent more than 20 years in my career i realized in your 30s in your 40s or even in your 50s
looking for things that you want to do as your day job is a never-ending problem by the time you hit
40 or 45 you might think that you would have figured out what your life should be and your
what your perfect job should be but in reality regardless of how experienced you might be
perfect job is not something that you look for and it's not something that that's out there
in fact it's something that you have to actively and purposefully create to suit your interest
your passion your capability and your talent and angela i thought was a really really great example
of somebody who created the perfect job that suits her personality that suits her background
and that suits her talent so my key takeaway from angela was your perfect job is something you create
not something that you look for if you're listening to this on spotify there's a q a field
so please do send us your questions and comments and if you like our podcast please leave us a five
star rating we'll be so grateful in the next episode we get into what angela's day-to-day is
like a day in the life of a creator so stay tuned one announcement that i like to make is that i
recently started a new podcast called hit makers it is a podcast about how brands influence culture
and i talk with a good friend of mine anna angelic a brand executive a sociologist and a published
author i had anna as a guest on the creative mindset podcast and since then we've decided
to start this podcast together it is a bi-weekly show that gets released every thursday on apple
podcast spotify or wherever you get your podcast you can also watch us on youtube please do follow
the show as well if you're interested in topics at the intersection of brands business and culture
i'm reina moto and this is the creative mindset see you next time
