Where My Entrepreneur Journey Began
In the quiet moments between struggle and triumph, seeds of ambition take root. My story begins not with silver spoons, but with the word "no" – a word that would eventually fuel an empire.
My mother's hands told a story – calloused from working full-time, gentle when they could be, but firm in their reality. A single parent raising twin daughters, her "no" wasn't rejection but protection, a shield against expectations the world wouldn't fulfill for Black girls with dreams bigger than their circumstances. I didn't understand then what I know with bone-deep certainty now: those "no's" were preparing me for a world that wouldn't hand me anything I didn't create for myself.
My father lived in another state – present yet absent, an entrepreneur whose shadow stretched across my childhood imagination. His hair salon business painted him as royalty in my young mind. I'd watch him move through the world with ownership in his stride, a walking testament to creating something from nothing. But with his entrepreneur spirit came the bitter taste of waiting – for gifts promised but forgotten, for attention diverted by hustle. That disappointment carved hollow spaces in me that only self-reliance could fill.
Between my mother's necessary "no" and my father's unintentional disappointments, I discovered a truth that would define me: if I wanted something in this world, I would need to manifest it myself.
At seven, South Carolina summers at my grandmother's house became my first classroom in economic independence. When a quarter wasn't enough and fifty cents barely satisfied childhood cravings for snowballs and chips, innovation sparked. My twin sister and I borrowed lemons from grandmother's refrigerator, commandeered a pitcher, and set up our first venture at the top of the road. Our sugarless lemonade didn't exactly draw crowds, but those first earned coins whispered possibilities that would echo through decades.
By middle school, while other girls waited for permission to reinvent themselves, I was studying Mary J. Blige's revolutionary aesthetics, teaching myself to recreate looks my hard-working mother couldn't prioritize. These self-taught skills transformed into currency by high school, where my reputation for pinups, roll sets, French rolls, and stacked ponytails had classmates seeking me out. Entrepreneurship found me before I had a name for it – a pager with code 300 signaling hair appointments, my after-school hours transformed into revenue streams.
When my mother tired of the constant foot traffic, she surrendered the basement to my vision. At fifteen, in 1995, I built my first real salon from the ground up – two dryers, a dedicated waiting area, professional-grade shampoo bowls, and high-quality products. Clients entered through the basement door, never disturbing the household above, while I cleared $300 weekly – a fortune in the hands of a teenage girl who was just beginning to understand the power of creating something from nothing.
That basement salon was more than a business; it was prophecy. It foretold twenty years of entrepreneurship that would follow – two decades of building, falling, rising, and ultimately creating signature looks and colors for women entrepreneurs who, like me, understand that ownership is the ultimate freedom.
Success didn't descend like blessing; I climbed to meet it, stumbling countless times, sometimes wanting to abandon the path entirely. But the basement calling always pulled me back, reminding me that my hands were meant to create beauty and my spirit was designed for independence.
This is where empires begin – not in boardrooms or inheritance, but in basement dreams and the stubborn belief that "no" is just the universe testing how badly you want to say "yes" to yourself.
