Brooke Pearce’s journey from student at local salon to owning successful scalp head spa in Burlington

An unconventional yet rewarding path to success is how Brooke Pearce, local businesswoman and B’s Beauty Head Spa owner describes her journey to success in the head spa industry. 

Pearce has been a licensed hair stylist for eight years and has been a business owner for two. Her head spa started in 2022, and this past month moved from Brantford to a more central location in Burlington.  

Pearce’s main service is called the scalp facial: An hour and a half long head massage. “You get a nice scalp scrub, you get a couple of shampoos, a deep hair mask, some oils, a really nice long massage and a using a bunch of different tools and finished off with a blowout or hair style of your choice,” Pearce said. The scalp facial cost $135. 

While she offers all services from a conventional hair salon, 90 per cent of her clients are scalp facial clients.  

What sets Pearce’s heads apart is the level of service she provides. In her research of other head spas in the area she noticed that many offered great services but were not trained hair stylists, so clients were walking away with roughly dried hair. 

“I wanted to make it a little bit different and make it more targeted for scalp health, using professional products to improve the health of your scalp, the health of your hair. Since I am a hair stylist, when the services are finished if clients want to get a haircut or a blowout, I can do that because I am hair stylist,” she said. 

In Pearce’s time as a hair stylist, she learned a lot about the profession. “You have to have a lot of patience and compassion to be with people. Especially providing a service, you have to think, ‘you are not just doing their hair’ people are paying to have a conversation, a relaxing atmosphere. Being able to have compassion for someone and giving them an experience is important, especially to get someone who wants to come back and see you again,” Pearce said. 

The head spa originally opened its doors in 2022 after Pearce took the leap to start a business. She had been toying around with the idea of a head spa for a long time and in a brainstorming session she wrote out in her notes app on her phone all the tools she would need for the services that she wanted to provide. From there, she went out and bought them. “I’m just going to do it and if it takes off, it takes off and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” Pearce said. 

Pearce posted a video on Instagram in 2022 of her salon and services it did not perform very well, but when she posted the same video on TikTok it blew up.  

On average, her head spa videos receive between 60 and 300 thousand views and 10 thousand likes. When she posted that first video, she realized she had something special, “it’s niche and I could really build something on this,” she said. 

When her TikTok went viral, she was close to giving up on the idea of owning a business full-time. 

 “I wasn’t making enough money to sustain myself, so I took another job and then the video started to blow up and I thought ‘uh-oh, I could do this full time’,” Pearce said. She left her job, found a space and started her journey in business ownership.  

When the opportunity to move into a new space came up, Pearce jumped at the chance. The salon she had been operating out of was a full-service salon, so it was too noisy for Pearce to create a quiet and relaxing environment. Pearce’s friend, who is an aesthetician, found a space in Burlington and her and Pearce renovated it. 

Pearce says her journey to becoming a hair stylist was not the most conventional route. In high school, she had a co-op placement at the Adolfo Robert Galuppi Salon on Brant ave. When her placement was done, a stylist in the salon was in need of an assistant and hired Pearce. As an apprentice, Pearce had the chance to go Studio 500, a hair school, at a reduced rate. Now, Pearce works at the same salon twice a month to be able to service her long-term Brantford clients even after her move to Burlington. She says the owners of the salon took her back with open arms. 

Pearce stills works a day job Monday to Friday, and when that is done she drives from Brantford to Burlington to take her first client around 6 p.m. After a month of renovations to the new space, Pearce took her first client on Saturday Jan. 18 and is excited to see her business grow in the new location, Pearce says her goal is to be fully booked and work in the spa full time, along with hire another stylist to give her some work life balance.  

Pearce had a long and winding road to business ownership, starting as a d as a co-op hairstyling student before becoming a hairstylist. When the pandemic shut down hair salons, Pearce went back to school for aesthetics. She learned medical aesthetics for a year and then went to school for business for a year. From there, Pearce returned to hair styling and started this business.  

“It was a bit full circle, but I think everything I learned has brought me to this point. Especially the aesthetics, which has really helped me with creating the scalp facial treatment and making it relaxing and really knowing how to do a nice massage. The business training has helped me with running my business smoothly, so I think the path that I’ve taken has led me here, and I’m happy with the way that things have turned out,” she said. 

Being a business owner is not always easy, as Pearce has come to learn. Some lessons are harder to learn than others. A key lesson she has learned along the way is to take deposits in her appointment booking process, “A lot of people like to book appointments and not show up, it is important to have some sort of policy in place, especially when you’re a business owner.”  

Pearce takes pride in the fact that, as a business owner, she can make the decision to take the extra mile for her clients because she is the boss. “If they’re going to a special event, I can wake up earlier and go accommodate that client. It feels good to help people and just being able to provide a little extra for people feels really good,” she said. 

For young entrepreneurs’ considering starting their own business, Pearce has some advice, “I say make the leap, and if it doesn’t work out, at least you tried it.” 

This story was originally published in Volume 24, Issue 7 on March 6 2025