Joyce Adom
CEO & Founder
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I’m Joyce Adom, CEO of Simply Go Natural Cosmetics, I’m a healthy living advocate and a natural hair educator, a mother of two and a wife. I am currently discovering my skills on my healthy living journey.
Simply Go Natural Cosmetics was founded in March 2016, a year after moving to Canada with my family. When I moved to join my husband in 2015 from the United Kingdom and Sweden to Canada, my daughter was just 5 weeks old and my son was 2 years old. I was faced with postpartum weight gain, coupled with the challenges of being in a new environment with a toddler and a newborn, with no friends and family apart from my husband. I believe this contributed to me unknowingly suffering from postpartum depression.
In addition to my depression, my son was a very hyper child and was at the point of being diagnosed with autism. The most distressing part of this was the fact that he loved eating my hair and skin care products, especially creams. I used to relax my hair then and knew nothing about the content of the products but I knew they were toxic for him. In addition to that, he developed eczema and was put on steroid cream to help with the itch and to keep the break outs under control. He unfortunately would eat the steroid cream at any opportunity. To make matters worse, he was diagnosed with asthma and was in and out of hospitals making it difficult for me to secure a stable job. All these challenges made life in Canada pretty overwhelming but I was so far away from family and friends so I just had to find a way out of my seemingly endless challenges.
My husband, Kenneth Oguzie, then suggested I take an online course from Coursera to keep me occupied as a way to release stress. I didn't like the idea at first as I felt I was already overwhelmed but I later took a course in Nutrition from Stanford University, and Sustainable Food Production through Livestock Health Management from the University of Illinois.
These two courses paved the way for me to start making my own natural and healthier hair and skincare products, safe for my son to ingest and to use an all natural ingredients to control his eczema. So my products are from healthy living perspective and reflects my journey in Canada.
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What are you most proud of professionally? And who or why?
I’m most proud of being an entrepreneur, creating and starting my natural hair and skin care brand from scratch with no external support, with an infant, a toddler and as a new immigrant in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
I’m most proud of being an entrepreneur, creating and starting my natural hair and skin care brand from scratch with no external support, with an infant, a toddler and as a new immigrant in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Also I'm proud of my achievements with my business in 3years.
I was featured on CTV Live Morning news when I first launched my products in October 2016, as well as on CBC News in 2018. I travelled to London, United Kingdom for a Natural Hair trade expo in 2018 where my products sold out and I was invited to be a speaker on natural hair care at the Black Loyalist Heritage Center in Shelburne in October 2018.
Most recently, I was one of five Atlantic businesses to be selected by Craft Alliance Atlantic, through Craft East Expo to go to the Toronto Gift and Home Market in July 2019, a wholesale trade expo with over 2500 exhibitors and over 25,000 buyers across Canada and beyond.
We are also planning on selling Simply Go Natural Cosmetics products on Amazon Canada,, UK and USA as soon as we prepare for Christmas.
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What’s your vision for Atlantic Canada in 10 years? What’s our biggest opportunity now?
My vision is to open my own beauty shop in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
My vision for this province for my business is for the Simply Go Natural Cosmetic products to be a household name for healthy hair and skincare and to create job opportunities for others. I also wish to help nurture a culture of empowering and inspiring an entrepreneurship mindset, especially in the black communities and among black immigrants and the youth to realize they don't always have to see themselves as employees but also as employers by creating job opportunities for themselves and potentially for others through entrepreneurship using their own creativity and innovations. As a Human Resource professional, talent identification and development has always been a passion for me and I try to implement it at any opportunity.
In short, I seek to to see my products is shops across the province and to see more established and upcoming black owned businesses in this province serving the black communities such as natural hair salons, and educational centres for the black communities such as vocational schools, and cultural and language schools to help combat identity and self confidence issues in the black communities and the general community at large as I feel there is a big gap considering the black communities have been here for over 300 years.
What was your greatest stage of growth? What made it a shift for you?
When I got featured on CBC NEWS by Colleen Jones in September 2018. It made me realise the value of my creations and motivated me to not give up on my entrepreneurship journey.
What’s your favourite or most read book or podcast? Now or at each of your greatest stages of growth?
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki.
What’s your deepest learning from this past year? How did/will you apply it?
My visit to the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown, Shelburne. It made me learn about myself and brought a lot of issues I was facing into perspective and set me on a path to be a dedicated natural hair educator as my own little way of contributing to the black communities.
It was mainly the realisation of knowing the history and the struggles of African Nova Scotians and realising they could literally be a relative and understanding how they still are being heavily discriminated against regardless of how long they have been part of this society. This realisation came after my experiences as a black person in Europe and other parts of the world such as England and Sweden where I lived and got my university degrees from, and a country like Belgium where I had my first experience with racism by authorities. It just opened my understanding to realise how black people are always at the bottom of the social ladder regardless of where we are, that I needed to accept who I am unapologetically as no matter what, and note that as long as I’m born black, I will always be perceived by some people in a certain way so no point trying to change my identity to fit such people’s model as I never will.
So, it gave me the confidence to be who I was born to be and celebrate my culture and everything about being an African and being black which is mainly my hair, my skin tone and my culture. That’s when I started running free natural hair workshops to educate, support and employ the black communities to at least teach them on how to care for their own natural hair to boost self confidence, self acceptance and to embrace their identities as Africans and of African descents. I believe this will also unleash a lot of talents among the black communities as they become to feel comfortable with who they are.
Who’s inspired you, directly or indirectly? How have they inspired you?
My children and my NGO in Ghana. They inspired me to leave a legacy for them, work hard to be able to help the needy in my capacity. The name of my NGO is Christ Salvation Mission for the Needy (Facebook). It’s a school, founded and run by a widow with 9 children in the Volta Region of Ghana, West Africa. We currently have over 100 school children who would otherwise be on the streets as their parents or guardians can’t afford to put them in school due to merely money to buy uniforms and stationery for the children. We also provide a warm meal a day for them.
Our aim is to keep them in school and provide quality formal and vocational education for them and to run agricultural and other projects to equip them and their guardians to be able to create their own career path in self employment as they graduate.
What would you have done differently?
I wish I knew what I know now, 10 years ago.
What are the principles you live by?
Life is short, know yourself, love yourself, love others and help those in need as you can.
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Healthy living advocate, Entrepreneur, Naturlista