just
beauty
feature
When it comes to starting a business, few would list
the pitfalls of life as helpful. Carea Gunn is just a bit
different. She considers those pitfalls as stepping stones
and has tiptoed right into her life’s calling.
Gunn was raised in a small community in Central Florida
called South Apopka. Known for its fair share of poverty,
Gunn knew what it was like to struggle. She and her
three siblings grew up in a single parent household and
learned early the importance of hard work. Gunn says
“As a child I watched my mother go from being a woman
on public and housing assistance to an entrepreneur
and I wanted to be just like her.”
In 2010, Gunn lost her mother to heart disease, but her
battle didn’t stop there. Not long after, she and her
husband divorced and Carea realized her income simply
wasn’t sufficient. “I quickly realized that a 9-5 job wasn’t
going to provide for our needs. The stress of losing my
mother and suddenly becoming a single mother was
difficult, but I never saw it as impossible,” she says.
Gunn returned to Central Florida and continued her
career in social services/child welfare using her degree
in Psychology. While the career helped her to feel like
she was making a difference in the world, she always
felt that her true calling was different. Carea teamed
up with two other aspiring entrepreneurs and started
a Mental Health Company, but the partnership ended
abruptly and in legal trouble.
Despite the setback, Carea continued to position herself
and network. Within a year of returning to corporate
America, she was again out of work with no immediate
prospects for employment. “I found myself laid off
without a job and I remember feeling like ‘what will I do
now Lord’… I began to pray and God said everyone has
a God given Talent… it’s time to use yours,” she recalls.
Carea always had a k nack for doing hair so she began
researching the hair business and quickly realized there
was a lot of competition. She however, was undeterred.
During the course of developing her company, stress
again became an issue for her and she started losing
her own hair. “I was selling hair but I was also making
my own personal wigs to cover my hair loss. People
started to ask me for the name of my stylist and when
I explained that it was a wig, people offered to buy the
wigs off of my head,” she says still in disbelief. This was
the birth of what would set her apart from other hair
distributors.
continued to page 25
24 IBASuccessMagazine.com | Just Beauty