If you feel as though your hair looks a little thin this is a very quick way to add volume. You can do this with loose hair or hair that is in cornrows. 

If you have short hair but want to spice it up with the long hair look, this style is perfect. Get cornrows and top up with some kinky twist hair or marley hair.

The night of the 2014 Good Afro Salon Awards is almost upon us. 

On Sunday 2nd November The L'Oreal Academy will be filled with top stylists, journalists, successful bloggers and entertainers. There'll be cocktails, goody bags, entertainment and a great opportunity to network.

There are a small number of tickets so grab your ticket before they run out:  

​Alternatively, search "Good Afro Salon Awards" on Eventbrite.



Get your FREE ebook on How To Grow Long, Healthy Natural Kinky or Curly Hair.

A few weeks ago I got contacted for an interview by a new lifestyle blog called Woven Musings. They wanted to know a bit more about:

• My life story
  
• The Neno Natural Business
  
• How I balance work plus being a wife and soon to be mother
  
• My business plans for the future, etc.
  

I enjoyed chatting with these guys, this was the interview:


Woven Musings: Heather, you certainly break all the stereotypes – from being a graduate in Economics from Cambridge to an investment banker who is now an author and blogger dedicated to afro-textured hair and business solutions; how did that happen?

Heather Katsonga-Woodward: Lots of hard work! It is very true that the harder you work, the luckier you get. When I was 11 years old I went to what was the best boarding school in Malawi, Kamuzu Academy.

As I was a few weeks late everyone had already bonded and I struggled to make friends so I made fast friends with my books. I did eventually make good friends but by then I had already started to enjoy studying and I worked my way up from a B/low A student to an A* student. It took almost 3 years before I consistently only got As. It showed that hard work does pay and the people at the top don’t have to stay there.

For Cambridge I applied for the Barclay-Smith scholarship. It’s awarded to one Malawian every two to three years depending on academic results. The scholarship administrators required me to get at least 3 As at A-level to be admitted so that is what I did.

As for banking, in 2004 when I was applying for internships the Careers Office in Cambridge pretty much told me I had a low chance of getting a job in banking because I was an immigrant and they would rather employ someone who doesn’t require a visa. I never went back there for advice! I learnt as much as I could from my friends who already knew what banking was all about and I got myself a banking career coach. The result was an internship and later an offer at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank EVERYONE wanted to get into. I felt so extremely blessed. I learnt that ignoring discouragers – or perhaps “realists” as they might see themselves – is the best life policy.

This slightly more scientific explanation that I discovered a while ago actually opened my eyes to how conditioners work A LOT. Basically, healthy hair's outer surface has a thin layer of fat. Conditioners contain some ingredients that are supposed to coat hair to make it look healthier and more shiny and those ingredients get washed off the next time you shampoo.

Now, when hair gets damaged, this fatty layer gets eroded and the layer that is exposed is water-loving (hydrophilic). In order for shine-boosting ingredients and other hair "goodies" to get latched on to hair they need to be water loving too.

Hair conditioner for damaged hair has more water-loving ingredients and ordinary deep condioner for healthy hair has more fat-loving ingredients. 

This is an important distinction because if your hair is healthy a damaged hair conditioner isn't going to do much for you (there are fewer fat-loving ingredients) and if your hair is damaged you're pretty much wasting time with an ordinary conditioner because they don't contain the water-loving ingredients you need.

Water-soluble ingredients (great for damaged hair) include hydrolyzed proteins and panthenol.

To reduce the chances of getting hair damage you not only need to condition hair regularly but you need to condition with the right conditioner!

Harry and I have a pregnancy photo shoot in a couple of weeks and I'm struggling to decide whether braids or an afro is best. What will look better in 30 years' time - braids or afro? Write a comment if you think something else completely.

Get your FREE ebook on How To Grow Long, Healthy Natural Kinky or Curly Hair.

After spending the afternoon with one of my friends yesterday helping her to understand online marketing, I got the sweetest email today. This email got me thinking that I should write more blogs and maybe upload more videos to my YouTube channel "GettingToWealthy".

Would you like it if I did more "wealth" blogs / vlogs, Marie Forleo style? Soon I'll be hobnobbing with the likes of Richard Branson, lol. Leave a comment or take the poll or both.

Note that I don't mix these posts with the hair blogs. They are all under nenonatural.com/random-thoughts.

Take the poll below to let me know what you think.

The Email I Received: 

Morning Heather,

I woke up with a question on my mind, thinking how is it that you are able to be so super productive?

Do you have a mentor that has literally guided you through and around all the pitfalls? So you've not had to waste gallons of time analysing rubbish?

It takes time to 'physically' do the work, there's only so many hours in a day!

Do you do a lot of outsourcing?

I know you mentioned a mastermind group which is great for guidance and motivation...

But I feel like I'm missing something!

How do you organise your brain from distractions, your workload...

Sorry if it feels like I'm being over curious, it's just that I've wanted to be successful for so long, years have passed, read and implemented so much stuff, got lost in the wilderness and you make it look so 'easy'!

What's the secret?

Warm regards
x

This was my reply: Productivity - How To Do More In One Day Than Most People Do In A Week!