Sess Lee Cannon is the owner and founder of Flourish Curls Salon in Arlington, Texas. She is one of the few successful blacks in the salon industry who are breaking boundaries and bringing in millions in revenue despite facing systemic challenges.
Her career in the salon business started in 2007 when she was getting a tattoo. According to CNBC Make It, Lee gave a friend a haircut that drew compliments from the tattoo artist and it urged her to consider a career in hair styling.
At the time, she had just left Monmouth College after becoming pregnant and was working at Maui Jim in a customer service role. She was promoted to an accounting clerk position but her passion for hairstyling made her think twice about the role.
She later enrolled in a cosmetology program at Regency Beauty Institute in Peoria, Illinois, and quit her job at Maui Jim. After 18 months, she completed her cosmetology training (in 2009), earning the license that would kickstart her career as a professional hairstylist.
She soon dived into her passion, despite all the risks, including her status as a single parent. She first started her career from home and part-time at a local salon that specialized in natural hair. In no time, her reputation grew, especially among biracial clients and those with curly hair. They loved her services because of her experience as someone with both black and white heritage.
What is more, she used social media platforms like Facebook to display her work while sending friend requests and posting photos and videos of her hairstyling transformations. In her first year of operating, Lee earned close to $30,000.
In 2016, she decided to leave Illinois for Arlington, Texas, where she invested some $50,000 of her savings to establish Flourish Curls, a salon dedicated to natural and curly hair.
Owing to her strong presence on social media and word-of-mouth recommendations, her salon soon became popular.
“Having a strong social media community helped a lot,” Lee said. “There’s also not a ton of salons that specialize in curly and natural hair in our neighborhood — many cosmetology schools and salons still don’t train their stylists to work with those textures.”
Today, her salon business has 11 stylists including Lee. She has created a six-figure career working just three days a week, she said. Last year, 2023, was the first year Flourish Curls broke $1 million in annual revenue, according to CNBC Make It.
