Destinee Wright Entrepreneur Profile

Destinee Wright is the owner of two businesses, Destinee Marketing, LLC and Luxie Hair Services/Plaited Beauty. Destinee Marketing, LLC provides social media marketing and consulting services for small business owners. Destinee works with brands to help them build more appealing profiles, create content, provide copywriting, video content, and marketing strategies primarily for Facebook, Instagram, and MailChimp. Plaited Beauty (formerly Luxie Hair Services) provides mobile hair styling services with a focus on natural hair care, hair braiding, and extension services. Clients book online, and Destinee travels to offer these services in-home or at their place of business. The most popular styles are crochet braids, Havana twists, and sew-ins.

Destinee first started dabbling in social media marketing as a blogger in 2011 — her blog quickly grew to over 2K readers per week. She was using Twitter and video content to promote it. By the time she started Luxie Hair Services in 2012, she already had an understanding of what it had taken to promote herself online. Destinee posted an ad on Craigslist advertising her hair braiding work, and within a week, she had her first client. The client requested a style called Senegalese Twists, a style that Destinee had never done before. She advertised it with the intention of learning it…eventually. So when the client called, she told her she knew how to do the style and booked her for the end of the week. She immediately started Youtubing. By the time her appointment came, she had figured it out and only charged $100 for the style. Now, 5 years later, she’s charging $300+ for the same style. Destinee is excited about how her business is growing. In 5 years, she increased her client list to 600 people and is working on other avenues to continue to grow her business. She’s hosted hair braiding workshops and is working on building an online class to teach people how to braid.

In Destinee Marketing, she is applying all of the tools she’s learned through blogging and her hair styling business. Her hair clients would always comment about how her marketing was excellent and asked who was doing it. They were surprised to know that it was her. Now she is working with small businesses to help them build their online presence. Social media is such a powerful (mostly free) tool for small businesses. Destinee enjoys content creation and collaborating with clients to help them find new ways to connect with people who need their services. She understands how stressful it can be to wear all of the hats as an entrepreneur. She explains that “business owners are the accountant, the customer service rep, the salesperson, and the marketer. When you’re trying to figure out how to market yourself on social media, it can be overwhelming. Helping clients alleviate some of that stress feels good!”. When Destinee envisions the future of her businesses she claims that “first and foremost, I’d like to be on a beach somewhere working remotely. I hope that, by that point, I’ll have multiple self-sustaining businesses and full-time employees”.

Destinee explains that “CIC has helped me tremendously! I had my first social media marketing client before even finishing the program. Everyone has been so supportive, and CIC legit has changed my life. Not only is the network incredible, but I have a support system”. She explains that if she feels she’s hitting a roadblock or like she needs extra guidance, she knows that she can pop into the CIC office and someone will be willing to work with her. Destinee signed up for a CIC mentor and is working with Jennifer Bradt-McCune. She feels that “Jennifer has been extremely helpful. Her insights have changed how I go about my business and positively impacted both my business and personal life”.  

Destinee explains that “some of my favorite moments in the CIC Entrepreneur Workshop were at the beginning of each class when I could catch up with my workgroup and hear about their challenges and accomplishments”. She feels that her workgroup was unique in that all of the entrepreneurs were already making money from their businesses. Destinee’s workgroup leader was Philippe Sommer and she feels he was supportive and gave incredible feedback every week. She was excited and amazed to see how much progress each workgroup member made every week.

Destinee’s advice to CIC entrepreneurs is to use the CIC resources, really use them. The mentorship program, the Resource Fairs, the online resources, etc. Follow up with the people who come in to speak. Stay in touch with the folks in the program. You can’t do this alone–well, you could, but why do that if you don’t have to?