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You know what I was so scared about opening my own salon but when I look back now it was the best decision I ever made. You see, I had all those thoughts going through my head that to open a hairdressing salon you had completely understand business … well the truth is I knew nothing about business when I first started….Zilc….not a sausage… but one thing I did have, was the complete belief that I could do it as scared as I was. So off I went to my bank manager armed with my business plan written on an A4 sheet of paper….and was laughed out of his office – you could actually see them back then! Yep in an office! How things have changed!!
What I hadn’t done, is the proper research, my facts and figures didn’t add up, it was all a bit of a mess really…as soon as he started to question me I realised that I did not have a clue or the right answers… I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt really silly, stupid and sick and angry with myself…
I am a hairdresser so I see things like a hairdresser would and back then every decision was based on that mentality. I didn’t understand about profits and Average Bills, marketing, customer retention, I just had a pair of scissors and knew that I could cut hair and color really well.
I had been teaching at L’Oreal for a time and working a very busy column in the salon, that’s where my focus was… the art of doing hair…. but that’s not enough when you are thinking of opening a hairdressing salon. You need a certain amount of understanding about finance and about stock control, wages, staff levels, correct booking procedures, productive timing and all the other insider secrets that goes with running a hairdressing salon.
You see the thing is this… I never ever give up and that experience just made me really, really determined to open my salon for sure.
So I sat down and planned out every move I would make to open my salon. Now I love to mind map, and I’m a Geek! SO I sat in front of my computer and started to plan all the things I could think of to start my very own salon. I took my mind map and made a oblong in the middle of it about the size of a Dollar coin. In that I wrote my goal to “Open My OWN Salon” and then put a date next to it so I could measure my momentum.
Then I drew lines from it and marked out every thing I would need to achieve to reach my goal. Absolutely everything I could think of right down to the type of tint brushes we would use. Then it became really believable…
You can do the same, just use a pice of large paper and draw it out… Anyway, this is what went through my head…
…Actually if I did all these things on my mind map then I “WOULD” be opening my own salon!
WOW I nearly fell off my chair “it is so easy when you break it down” I said to myself. Now the thing is this, I had a plan… a business plan… all I had to do is make it into something I could show the bank manager. So I called one of my clients who was a retired bank manager and asked them to give me some advice and guidance. He really liked it gave me a few pointers like how to present it in a more business like fashion but overall was really impressed, and said that if he was still working he would most defiantly lend me the money I needed. Cool!
Now before I went to the bank, I got some other business people to look over it for me and you know, its surprising how generous people are with their time and information, all you have to do is “ASK” – So with my well planned and well thought through business plan, I set off for the meeting with my bank manager…and guess what HE SAID YESSSSSSSSSS!
We did everything ourselves
We even designed the light boxes for all the salon lighting..
I had a friend that designed film sets so he help us with loads of ideas and drawings. It seemed to take for ever, but I was determined to make it look the best I could. We stripped all the walls and floors and took everything back to the brick. We installed the electrics, the shop front, the flooring, the styling units, the reception area.
We worked on several different lighting solutions for the salon and in the end created our own light boxes so that they went with the whole feel of the salon! I can remember taking down the suspended ceiling and it crashing down, scraping down my arm taking half the skin off it OUCH!!
Do you know I was still working freelance during the day and salon fitting during the night I just could not afford to have shop fitters in just me and my mate did all the work…Everything!
You see I just did not have the money to pay a shop fitter to do the work… It makes you realize what can be done if you really, really want it!! Gradually week by week the salon started to take shape. It started to look like a salon and not a building site! One of the hardest jobs was to take up the flooring because it was made from some horrible tar tiles… It took us forever to get them up off the floor.
We had our next door neighbours take turns in a shift pattern to remove them. Then when we came to the front of the salon there was a massive hole in the floor!! We had the new floor being laid in the morning! I just sat there nearly in tears thinking” what have I done, I must be mad to have taken this on”
My children were really young so they spent many hours in the salon with us while we worked till late in the evening. We could not afford babysitters so the kids just had to come and play……. I did feel bad about that, but I was thinking of our future and how the salon would benefit them in the end and to be honest when I ask them now they quite enjoyed those evenings…
We did everything ourselves, we even designed and built the light boxes for the salon lighting. ( sorry the photos are not that good, it was some time ago)
I had a friend that designed film sets so he help us with loads of ideas and drawings. It seemed to take for ever, but I was determined to make it look the best I could. We stripped all the walls and floors and took everything back to the brick. We installed the electrics, the shop front, the flooring, the styling units, the reception area.
We worked on several different lighting solutions for the salon and in the end created our own light boxes so that they went with the whole feel of the salon! I can remember taking down the suspended ceiling and it crashing down, scraping down my arm taking half the skin off it OUCH!!
Do you know I was still working freelance during the day and salon fitting during the night I just could not afford to have shop fitters in just me and my mate did all the work…Everything!
You see I just did not have the money to pay a shop fitter to do the work… It makes you realize what can be done if you really, really want it!! Gradually week by week the salon started to take shape. It started to look like a salon and not a building site! One of the hardest jobs was to take up the flooring because it was made from some horrible tar tiles… It took us forever to get them up off the floor.
We had our next door neighbours take turns in a shift pattern to remove them. Then when we came to the front of the salon there was a massive whole in the floor!! We had the new floor being laid in the morning! I just sat there nearly in tears thinking” what have I done, I must be mad to have taken this on”
My children were really young so they spent many hours in the salon with us while we worked till late in the evening. We could not afford baby sitters so the kids just had to come and play……. I did feel bad about that, but I was thinking of our future and how the salon would benefit them in the end and to be honest when I ask them now they quite enjoyed those evenings…
I could not believe it, how cool is that, my own salon. Wow! I was as so proud, my completed Hairdressing Salon it look so cool.
I was the envy of the Hairdressing community and they came from miles to have a peek.
We had designed Logo’s and everything. Even the loo (W/C) door had a ice skate as the handle because we ran out of money and could not afford a door furniture, but the clients loved it they thought it was really cool. Even the front door handle was made into our logo!
Before long I had to employ 2 more stylists and another trainee, follow not long after, with a receptionist. Takings were going through the roof….BUT and their was a big but… now I started to have problems come up, like staff not getting on with one another, training issues, running out of towels, stock levels, organising rotors, holiday leave, you know the kind of stuff…you see I was too busy doing hair…I needed to put money in the till to pay the wages and the overheads in fact 70% of what the salon was taking was put in the till by me.
I was completely exhausted…I had no time for anything….and my creativity started to disappear! I was REALLY WORRIED. The one thing that I had the most passion for was slowly disappearing. Can you imagine how scary that was! And if that was not enough my accountant kindly pointed out that I was in fact not making any profit and that I had been a “Busy Fool”……… thanks!
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Now, use this analogy: If I was to give you a pair of Joewell scissors, because we all know they’re great scissors, and if I was to give you those scissors would that automatically make you do great haircuts? Of course not. What it would do is give you a really good tool to use. However, you’re still gonna have to learn the skill and hone the skill of hairdressing to do the great haircuts. So if you put into practice this manual your going to see some amazing results!
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