Build it on your values, not someone else's playbook.
Every season I tried to shrink my business to fit someone else's template, it cost me. The work grew when I let it look like me.
Entrepreneurship
Ciara Lox Beauty.
I opened Ciara Lox Beauty in January 2019. My oldest brother had just passed away and his death gave me the courage I couldn't find on my own. I'd dreamed about running my own business for years. I finally stopped waiting.
Then COVID hit and the state shut salons down for months.
I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot doing Instacart orders just to survive. The SBA called and told me I didn't qualify for PPP protection because I wasn't structured properly. I was a booth renter. Not an LLC. I cried so hard I had to switch to my glasses.
That phone call is the reason I went back to college. I never wanted to be that exposed again. I wanted to understand business from the foundation up so I could build something that could actually survive a storm.
Six years later Ciara Lox Beauty is still standing. I built it without a roadmap, without seed money, and without a safety net. I kept it running while caregiving, while studying for two degrees, while leading on campus, while rebuilding everything else around it.
Running a business taught me leadership the way no classroom could. How to serve people well. How to protect your time and energy. How to charge what your work is worth. How to keep going when nobody's clapping yet.
What Six Years Taught Me
Lessons from the chair
Consistency outlasts hype.
Six years in, the wins still come from showing up the same way on the slow days as on the busy ones.
Integrity is the brand.
How you treat the client at the chair is the marketing. Everything else is decoration.