We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Donna Cannon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Donna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think consistency and self discipline are the keys to success. I have yet to reach the level of success that I’m aiming for but I feel like I get closer each day by being consistent and not giving up on my dreams. Just because business may be slow this week or I only have one client for the day doesn’t mean things won’t get better and that’s where self discipline comes in because what actions are you going to take to ensure the growth of your business. If you have an off day are you going to sleep in or are you going to get up and go promote yourself, or practice some new designs, or create some content that relates to your business. Consistency has played a major role into where I am today. When I first started my career in nails, I was practicing on myself and posting every single day and still do til this day. I was practicing new designs every few days. I was challenging myself to be creative. And I started gaining a lot of attention from people on social media. I worked at nail shops as a beginner and there were times I cried in a bathroom, times where I’ve doubted myself and questioned if nails was what I really wanted to do, even though I had already went to school and spent money and got my license, I had questioned if this was what I really wanted to do because it’s not as easy as you would think. But no matter how rough of a day I may of had the next morning when I wake up, I would always hype myself up and tell myself we’re gonna go kill some nails today, we’re going to slay some clients. No matter how lumpy or bumpy or thick a set would come out. I would stay consistent, always looking for ways to better myself, learning from the other techs around me, and always practicing on myself. And when I finally got to the point where I noticed improvement in my work, there was no better feeling in the world. I felt like “finally”. But that’s where self-discipline also plays a major role because staying consistent can be hard. There may be days where you want to sleep in or lay in bed or just not do anything because you have a day off. But when you have self discipline, you will tell yourself let’s get up and go practice some nails let’s get up and go make a post for social media, let’s go take a class. When your self discipline is strong, you will do whatever it takes to make sure your business is successful. You have to become strict with yourself. For example, a lot of people think entrepreneurship and working for yourself means oh I can work whenever I want or I can conduct business however I want but it’s so much more than that. It’s your business, but you still have to put those hours in. You still have to conduct yourself a certain way with customers or clients. You still have to invest in yourself. You still gotta have a plan working for yourself. You have to have a lot of self-discipline because it’s up to you how successful your business will be. Everything falls on you and how much work you put in. Like whenever I have a slow day or no clients I still get up go to my nail studio. I have staff meetings with myself. Lol. Look at areas where I can improve, whether it’s marketing, designs, services, or products/tools. I’ll practice designs, look up inspiration for nail art, I’m always looking up different nail products to buy, I research content inspo for my social media pages. The self-discipline helps you make the important decisions that you need to make. Without self-discipline, I would be too lazy to do anything. You have to learn how to keep yourself motivated at all times.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Donna Cannon. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I was always heavily into fashion, but my career in nails kind of came out of nowhere. My mother first took me to a nail shop in LA off Stocker street and Crenshaw Blvd across the street from the Baldwin Hills mall or as a lot of us Angelinos call it The Crenshaw mall. I was in fifth grade and it was my birthday. I got the shortest set of nails with the airbrush design, and after that I was in love. I’ve been in nail shops all over LA for years, but it wasn’t until 2017 when I even entertained the idea of doing nails myself. Growing up in LA I’ve become accustomed to Asian only nail shops or as people will call it chop shops. Nail shops in LA were owned and operated by Asians, so it was uncommon for me to see someone like me doing nails. My big sister does hair and when I was in middle school, she worked at this hair salon on Crenshaw, up the street from our house. There was a girl from Jamaica that worked there doing nails. One day I went to see my sister at the hair salon she worked at and she had paid for me to get my nails done by the girl from Jamaica. And because I’m so used to seeing only Asians in the nail shop it was such a unique experience for me and the unfortunate part was, I was actually surprised that her nails came out good.

So fast forward to 2017, I was having a hard time, finding a good nail shop and after a bad experience, I jokingly said to my fiancé at the time I might as well do my own nails. I looked up some things on Amazon just entertaining the thought but I never actually purchased anything. My ex fiancé, seen the items in my cart and them for me, which included a nail drill and a book of nail designs. He then surprised me with it. So the very next day I went out and purchased an acrylic kit at a beauty supply store and watched some YouTube videos and started practicing on myself. About a month after that I decided I wanted to go to nail school and get my license. Within 3 1/2 months I was finished with school and a month after that I was licensed and working in my first nail salon.
I was excited because the more I learned and did nails, the more passionate I became.
My first salon experience was nerve-racking, but the women I worked with were so amazing and helpful and taught me so much. It was a black owned salon in Lakewood. The staff are all women of color, black and brown. We all got along very well, and often taught each other things and shared ideas. The owner…that’s a different story, but I learned a lot of working in the salon, and it really helped lay the foundation for my nail career.
Several months after that, I was at my second salon in LA off Pico and La Brea. This was different because it was Asian owned and had Asian nail tech but there were also different nail techs of different backgrounds. They were a few black techs, a couple Hispanic techs, and even some men. It wasn’t my best experience, but it definitely wasn’t my worst, but it also taught me a lot.
After that, I was at my third salon which was a beautiful salon in Lakewood, owned by a black and brown couple. And that was a great experience. Shortly after working there I had the opportunity to rent a space and work completely on my own, and I went for it. I was scared, but I took a leap of faith. My whole nail career has been nothing but taking risk, and so far everything has worked out for me.
I was very excited and scared at the same time to be working on my own. I think my main concern was, do I have enough clientele to keep up with my rent here. But I was excited, because I finally had a chance to do what I wanted to do as far as nails and nail services. Working in the salon you have to do a little bit of everything but I wanted to specialize in acrylic nail extensions and nail art. I love long nails and different designs on every finger and that’s all I wanted to do. I dreamed of my clientele being female rappers, like Cardi B or rappers baby mamas, (lol), video girls, strippers, reality stars, instagram models, just whatever type of girls that get the type of nails that I love doing.
I started off sharing a suite with a lash tech in Inglewood and shorty after that, I moved into a suite with my sister, who does hair, and several months after that, I ended up in my very own suite by early 2020. Unfortunately, surely after that Covid had hit and was at all-time high. Once they declared state of emergency and business started closing down, I was no longer able to work out of my suite so I then moved to Vegas. Moving to Las Vegas during the height of the pandemic was scary but business came pouring in once I started announcing I was in Vegas. I stayed in Vegas for a little less than two years and was back living in LA by January 2022. That’s when things got a hard for me. I had went through a bad break up which lead to me moving back. I was back in LA and had to completely start my life and business over and it was not easy at all. I had to completely rebuild clientele as of I was a brand new nail tech. I moved around from different suites and salons, until I finally was able to settle in Long Beach where I am now.
But the nail tech I am today I’m so proud of because of the experiences that I been through has helped shape me to the person I am today. No matter the things I went through or how up-and-down business has been. I can never give up on nails, it’s my dream, and I know that I have what it takes to be successful, and to be one of the best nail techs. You have to be consistent and you have to really love what you do.
I thank my peers and my clients for always reminding me that my work is amazing and unique and that I’m really good at what I do. My clients love that I’m passionate about what I do. I take my time and that I’m knowledgeable. I often fuss at my clients about nail care and nail health, regardless of if they’re getting extensions or not. One thing school has taught me is that natural health is a number one and I am very passionate about that and I try to spread that to all my clients. I also dream of being an educator one day to help teach up-and-coming nail techs the things I have learned in my career.

How did you build your audience on social media?

So when I first started doing nails in 2017, 2018, Instagram was a little different. I was posting every day at the same times, I was using all these hashtags and I was even paying for promotions here and there. And after a while it was working like a dream. The more I would post and promote I started getting more and more likes. A lot of my post were starting to get hundreds and thousands of likes. I think my most popular post had like 14,000 likes and I was like oh my God I’m about to go viral. But then TikTok started becoming more popular and Instagram came out with reels and the whole algorithm changed I went from getting hundreds and thousands of likes to 50 or 60, maybe 100 rarely 200 likes. It was devastating because social media played a key role in my marketing and promotion and I felt like it helped me get so many clients so seeing that decline in likes and engagement had me really scared. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get my likes and engagement back up. And I like completely fell off of my social media game because I became so discouraged. But I just had to relearn the algorithm and how it worked. I had to learn that making reels was the new thing and not just making reels, but actually making content. I had to learn that being a business owner also being a part-time content creator. I could no longer just post a video of nails and some music in the background. I had to make small little skits and funny videos and those are the videos that are getting the most likes and engagement. But the main thing that I learned is social media is such an essential part of having a business these days and you have to consistently post to see real progress. But you can just post anything you have to make interesting content that’s going to capture a potential customers attention. But another thing social media has taught me is that followers do not equal dollars.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I had to unlearn was, I thought you had to be this superfast speedy nail tech. Even in the first salon I worked at the owner will often tell us we need to work on our speed. Of course, when you first start doing now, it could take a while I think my longest said took me like 6/7 hours honestly. And in my experience going to nail salons they’re usually working at a certain speed to hurry up with one client to move into the next. So when I started doing nails, I thought the quicker the better. Well, unfortunately for me working fast or rushing doesn’t have a good outcome for my work. So no matter what I’ve always had to take my time to ensure the quality of my work comes out good. Working in my first salon it wasn’t until I had a client and at the end of the service she had thanked me for taking my time. And they have meant a lot to me because I had it in my head that I’m supposed to be done with a set of nails and like an hour and a half and most of my sets take 2 1/2 to 3 hours. And as I progressed in my career, I will get more and more clients that thank me for taking my time and not rushing. And I would hear nail techs that started their career after me, mention their speed as well. And I started expressing to other nail techs that it’s OK to take your time. It’s OK if you’re sets takes two or three hours. I just wanted to make sure I spread that comfort to other nail techs because most of us do have it in our head that we’re supposed to work at this incredible speed. And school has taught me that getting your nails done is a luxury service and it should be relaxing and enjoyable. I remember working on my second salon there is this guy that was hired who did really nice nails. I would watch him work, and he would get done with a set so fast, and I would be so jealous because I wanted to work at that type of speed. After a couple weeks I started to notice some of his clients will come back in and they would have to get nails replaced or repaired. One day one of the clients came for a repair, he wasn’t there and I was available, so I did her nail repair for her. I noticed that her nails were thin and the quality of the work wasn’t that great. And I don’t like to criticize other peoples work, but for me, it was comforting to know that the time I take on nails ensured that the quality is good because I rarely had clients that came back for repairs, so that showed me that I was on the right path. One of my biggest lessons was to never doubt myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: Brokennails.as.me
• Instagram: @BrokenNailsLA