This story is a part of CNBC Make It is Ditching the Diploma collection, the place girls who’ve constructed six-figure careers with out a bachelor’s diploma reveal the secrets and techniques of their success. Acquired a narrative to inform? Tell us! E mail us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.
In the midst of getting a tattoo, Sess Lee Cannon had an epiphany: She was caught within the fallacious profession.
As a tattoo artist put the ending touches on her ink — her son’s identify, Elijah, scrawled throughout her left shoulder — he made small speak with Lee (who goes by her center identify professionally) and her pal.
The artist complimented her pal’s haircut, which Lee had given her with a pair of kitchen scissors simply hours earlier.
“He mentioned, ‘The place’s your salon?’ and I instructed him I did not work at one, that I simply did hair for enjoyable,” Lee, 37, recollects. “And I will always remember, he mentioned, ‘Properly, you would possibly wish to rethink what you are doing for a residing. It is clear you’ve a present.'”
The unsolicited recommendation gave Lee, then 20, pause. She cherished doing her mates’ hair and experimenting with new hairstyles on her curly locks however thought-about it extra of a interest than a vocation.
It was 2007, two years after Lee graduated from highschool and one 12 months after she dropped out of Monmouth School in Monmouth, Illinois, after discovering out she was pregnant.
Within the months main as much as Elijah’s beginning, Lee moved right into a small residence in her hometown of Peoria, Illinois, and located a customer support job she cherished at Maui Jim, a sun shades firm. She educated and received promoted to be an accounting clerk inside her first 12 months on the firm.
“Math all the time got here simple to me, and I believed, by working in finance, I would by no means be poor once more,” says Lee.
However one thing was lacking in her company profession. “I craved the artistic freedom I felt doing hair,” she provides. “I suppose I simply wanted encouragement from a stranger to go for it.”
She determined to change careers on the drive residence. “I had no clue if it could work out, however I knew I might remorse not attempting,” she says.
By all measures, the chance has paid off: Lee owns Flourish Curls Salon in Arlington, Texas, a enterprise that introduced in $1.1 million in income final 12 months, based on monetary paperwork reviewed by CNBC Make It.
After deducting enterprise bills and taxes, Lee’s take-home pay is between $100,000 and $150,000 a 12 months (she declined to share her actual wage).
This is how Lee spun her curiosity in hair right into a six-figure profession.
Turning into a hairstylist
The morning after getting her tattoo, Lee stopped at a constructing she had pushed previous numerous occasions: Regency Magnificence Institute, a cosmetology faculty in Peoria.
She registered for lessons and stop her job at Maui Jim as quickly as she paid her first deposit. The cosmetology program, which took Lee about 18 months to finish, value $22,000 and required her to be in lessons 5 days per week from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m.
When she wasn’t in class, Lee, who’s a single mother or father, waitressed at a neighborhood steakhouse to pay her tuition and different payments. Her grandparents watched Elijah.
The necessities to change into a hairstylist range by state, however typically, potential stylists should full a cosmetology program at an accredited faculty and acquire a state-issued license by passing a written and sensible examination.
Many states additionally require potential stylists to finish an apprenticeship or work as an assistant in a salon first.
As soon as Lee completed the necessities for her license in 2009, she began taking over purchasers at residence and dealing part-time at a salon that makes a speciality of pure hair in Peoria.
In her first 12 months as a stylist, Lee made near $30,000 a 12 months. She continued to work part-time as a waitress for the subsequent two years to cowl her payments.
On the time, Fb was gaining popularity, and Lee determined to take full benefit of the platform’s free promoting alternatives: She created a enterprise web page, despatched pal requests to potential purchasers, and began documenting her work with images and movies.
She rapidly garnered a status for working with totally different curl patterns and purchasers who had been biracial like herself.
“My mother is white, my dad is Black and I all the time had curly hair, however my mother had bone straight hair, so she simply had no concept easy methods to type it for me rising up,” she says.
That childhood expertise impressed Lee to start out dyeing, highlighting, trimming and straightening her hair when she was an adolescent till she discovered types she appreciated.
“I needed to learn to make my hair look good, really feel assured in my very own pores and skin, and I wish to encourage that very same confidence in others,” she says.
Lee (pictured right here, third from the left) with a few of her workers at Flourish Curls Salon.
Photograph: Sess Lee Cannon
Beginning a enterprise in a brand new state
For the subsequent 5 years, Lee continued to work on the salon and construct her following on social media. She says she cherished the folks she labored with and felt settled in her profession.
However in 2015, Lee — then pregnant together with her fourth baby — began feeling “the itch to maneuver.”
She had spent most of her life in Illinois and craved a change of surroundings and hotter climate.
A pal invited her to spend an extended weekend collectively in two of Texas’ largest cities, Austin and Dallas.
Lee says she was immediately smitten with the southern hospitality and wide-open areas. She toured flats for her and her 4 kids that very same weekend.
The household of 5 relocated to Arlington, a metropolis between Dallas and Fort Price, in January 2016.
Shifting to a special state emboldened Lee to chase one other dream that had been percolating behind her thoughts: Opening a salon.
Lee spent 10 months and $50,000 of her financial savings to open Flourish Curls Salon, which began taking prospects in 2017.
‘I have been in a position to construct a six-figure profession from working three days per week’
To Lee’s reduction, phrase unfold rapidly in regards to the salon — inside months of opening, she had a waitlist of shoppers.
Lee attributes Flourish Curls’ recognition to the viewers she cultivated throughout Fb, YouTube and Instagram.
She began posting hair tutorials, consumer testimonials, type how-to’s, product suggestions and extra on-line within the early 2000s. Her YouTube channel has almost 60,000 subscribers.
“Having a robust social media group helped loads,” Lee provides. “There’s additionally not a ton of salons focusing on curly and pure hair in our neighborhood — many cosmetology faculties and salons nonetheless do not practice their stylists to work with these textures.”
Flourish Curls’ providers embody hair cuts, twists, scalp exfoliation and styling that value anyplace from $150 to $375. Final 12 months, 2023, was the primary 12 months Flourish Curls broke $1 million in annual income.
The salon has 11 stylists together with Lee, who solely sees a couple of purchasers every month.
She says increase her employees and hiring two digital assistants has helped her stave off burnout and resist the urge to “all the time be on,” a standard problem for enterprise house owners.
Lee front-loads her workweek, taking over conferences and appointments Monday via Wednesday so she will be able to spend extra time together with her kids, now ranging in age from 8 to 18.
“In my 20s, I believed that to achieve success, I would should work 50-plus hours per week,” says Lee. “However I have been in a position to construct a six-figure profession from working three days per week most weeks.”
As an entrepreneur, Lee has loved the autonomy and adaptability of designing her work schedule.
Nevertheless, probably the most fulfilling facet of working her personal salon, she says, has been the constructive distinction she’s been in a position to make in folks’s lives by displaying them easy methods to be comfy and assured with their pure hair — a group she needs she had entry to as an “insecure, annoyed” teenager.
Provides Lee: “Nothing’s higher than serving to folks really feel stunning.”
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