Recently I’ve had a lot of people on socials my coaching clients say things like, “I just wish I had a salon as big as yours and I just want to be making as much money now”. You really can’t compare yourself and you can’t fast forward through all the shit that you’ve got to go through to get to where I am now. So today I am going to explain a little bit about where I’ve come from, my experience and how some different roles that I’ve had in my past have shaped me being the business owner that I am today. 

I originally I thought that when I finished year 12 I would get into IT because I was good with computers. And this is back in 2002, so 20 years ago. It’s a little bit scary to announce here! I’ve got my 20 year high school reunion this year, which is quite confronting. 

I actually really wanted to be a Beauty Therapist but my parents talked me out of it. I just loved making people feel pretty. I had a natural knack for makeup. I was good at doing people’s hair. I was that friend that was always getting asked to do everyone’s makeup and hair every Saturday night before we go to the pub and I really wanted to do it as a career. But I was heavily convinced by my family to go into IT (Information Technology) because I was never going to make any money as a beautician. And my father had even said to me that I was too smart to be a “dumb beautician”. 

So, I took myself off to TAFE that first year out of High School and did Network Engineering, which is actually a redundant certification now since everything is wireless, but I learned to build networks using the good old Cat5 and Cat6 cable. I don’t know if anyone even knows what I’m talking about. But yeah, I have a little bit of techie knowledge in my background so that has really helped me. I’ve built all my own websites, I’m pretty good with technology which is very handy as a business owner. I still try and do a lot of things myself when I shouldn’t because it’s very time consuming. I’m a perfectionist. I enjoy doing these types of things. I know that I could pay somebody to do it for me and spend my time doing something more valuable, or that’s more valuable for my businesses. So I do still sometimes get stuck doing techy stuff, because it’s a little bit of a hobby of mine. I know that I can do it. So when I completed that course, I worked in IT for 5 years. Until I was about 23. I enjoyed it but it was really just a job.

I met my boyfriend (husband now). We moved in together. He is a Civil Engineer. And one day he sort of just said to me, “Look, if you want to go study Beauty, why don’t you just do it? Just quit your job. Quit your full time job and I’ll support you”. And I was like, “Hang on, what’s this? No one’s ever supported me. This feels weird”. At the time cost about $20k to study Beauty Therapy. My parents were not going to pay that, they didn’t want me to do it to begin with. I don’t come from a wealthy family. So up until then, it had been an impossibility for me. So to have someone say that they would support me and what I really wanted to do, was pretty awesome! So that’s what I did. I went to TAFE. And I absolutely fell deeper in love with it and I excelled at it. Like really early on. I remember getting perfect scores on all of my exams. I even scored the highest in my class for a project that we had to do at the end of the Diploma course which was all about starting your own salon, which is quite funny because at the time, I did not want to open my own salon at all. I just got married and I had babies on my mind. I wasn’t thinking long term career. I had aspirations at the time of being a TAFE teacher and teaching people Beauty Therapy. So I just went with it. I got a job halfway through the diploma at a very good local salon that took me on before I’d even finished my qualification and I learned a lot there. My boss at that salon was an amazing business person. She still owns salons locally. And I really learned a lot from her about the presentation of your salon and the presentation of your staff and changing the aesthetics up in the often to keep your clients interested and excited. Also about hosting events for your clients and really looking after them, going that extra mile. I also learned a lot about marketing from her too. I worked there for about 12 months and then I went to another local salon. That is where I actually learned how to do eyelash extensions. Back in 2009. I learned how to do lashes in a salon and I excelled at those really quickly. The girl that taught me hated doing them. She thought they were the most tedious, horrible service to do. So the newbie comes in and the newbie always gets the shit jobs. I was that newbie that had to do the shit job of eyelash extensions. And funnily enough, I loved it! I fell in love and the clients fell in love with me. And it just went from there. So I worked there for about a year and then I had my daughter and I worked from home after I had my daughter because it was just easier. I had quite a few clients from home. 

During my pregnancy, I gained a bit of weight. It’s very hard to maintain your body shape while you’re pregnant, but I got pretty big and then I got pretty obsessed with the gym afterwards. And I was offered a job at the gym as a Fitness Instructor. So I did that for about 12 months as well. I was teaching Body Step classes about five or six days a week, I had my 6 month old and I also had a few clients every day. Then we moved to Sydney with my husband’s work. Like I mentioned, he is a Civil Engineer. He works in Construction. The move was my first move away from my hometown, which was pretty scary/exciting. But the excitement was very short lived. I fell pregnant with my son, Patrick and I was stuck at home with my toddler. I had no friends and no family and nothing to do. So I’d gone from being quite busy with fitness instructing and clients and kids and family and friends and everything in my hometown to being really alone and not having anything to do except for cooking and eating. And surprise, surprise I got fat again! I was  organising cupboards every day, I don’t think I had one piece of dirty laundry in the house at any given time. I was that on top of everything. Everything was labeled in my cupboards, everything was clean. I’m not a person that does slow pace very well. I’m always looking for something to keep myself busy. I was very lonely and I was very bored. My husband was working very long hours; he’d be gone by 5am and getting home after 8pm some nights and it wasn’t a good time. I became quite resentful of him; that he got to go out every day and talk to people and do work and be social, while I was stuck at home with with one kid and another one on the way. 

I think my mind just started ticking over and I started thinking about the possibilities. How could I move back home? What could I do? I started thinking maybe I could buy the salon that I used to work in because it was for sale at the time and I started talking to my husband about it. The funny thing was, as soon as I started talking to him, he opened up and said he wasn’t really happy in his role in Sydney and how we we didn’t really have anything to do on the weekends. He felt bad for leaving me at home all day, and he said “Well you know if you had a good opportunity like that,  we could move back to Albury”. We didn’t sell our house; we rented it out, so we could always move back to our house. The more I thought about this, the more excited I got. I investigated purchasing the salon but it just wasn’t really going to work out for the price that I would have had to pay. I would have had to do a lot of work to it to get it to how I wanted it to be. When we moved, I couldn’t break up with my hairdresser, so I was coming back to Albury to get my hair done and I was telling her about my plans and she said, “How about you know come in and rent the space out the back of my hair salon, and that can be your salon?” So that was the plan for quite a few months. And so I had Patrick and we moved back to Albury when he was 11 days old.

We lived with my mum for a little bit while we were waiting for our tenant to finish up and move out of our house. So I came back with these grand plans of building a beauty room at the back of my hairdressers salon and we went back and forth for a few months. Patrick was very young, so obviously I couldn’t do anything straightaway. But I had these grand plans; I’m thinking business names and I’m planning all the treatments that I was going to do and back then I was going to do skin and I was going to do massage and I was going to be a full service beauty salon and the more I thought about and planned it, something popped into my head one day and I thought “No, this doesn’t feel right”. While I was in Sydney I was getting phone calls from people that I didn’t know, who had heard of me through word of mouth about lashes. I would get maybe one call a week wanting to book in. They were saying there was nothing else in Albury and I thought, “What if I could specialise in lashes?” I started thinking about just focussing on lashes and brows. I decided to scrap all the ideas for the facial stuff, having a whole skincare range. But I was still a little bit hesitant to just focus on lashes. So I made the decision to still do body waxing and makeup (just the treatments that I like to do basically). 

The next step was to get an Accountant. Because every business owner has a good accountant right? You can’t just go into this stuff blind. And I went to see this accountant and it was awful. He was this old man and I told him my plans and he spoke to my husband the whole time! And my husband was just kinda like, “why are you asking me? It’s her business! I don’t know the answer to this question”. And I knew that I didn’t want to go with that guy then and there. But I did get one really good piece of advice from him and he said, “Why are you going to spend money to fit out somebody else’s salon. She could close up shop, she can dictate to you, you want to have control. You’re better off. It might cost you a little bit more. And it’s a little bit more of a risk. But you should have full control and just rent your own space and be the only person on the lease and do it on your own because you’ve got more control.”. My business name was going to fall under her banner, so I wasn’t really going to be my own thing. And I’m so glad I took his advice on board. I told my hairdresser and she took it really well. 

And then the search for a commercial space began. I found one that was only 3031 square metres in an arcade off the main street in Albury. I negotiated the rent and the terms on the lease. I signed a two year lease on my little shop because I honestly thought that I would be working on my own for the foreseeable future. I had to borrow $25,000 for my fit out to get started. I was so scared. At the time I thought $25k was so much money. I borrowed this money against my house, my husband had to guarantee it because he’s on wages and banks love wages! So I signed the lease, I borrowed the money. I committed. I created the website. All my old clients from 12 months earlier found their way back to me. This just further emphasises the need to developing relationships with your clients.

Once we moved back, we started crazily doing this fit out for my shop. My husband did most of it. He is very, very handy. His father and his brother are both carpenters and he grew up building houses with his dad. So he can do anything really. He can build frames, he can plaster, he’s quite good at painting, he can tile, he can lay floorboards, he’s even been known to dabble in a little bit of electrical and plumbing although we didn’t get him to in that shop. I definitely prefer to hire professionals for those things. But he really helped a lot. We saved a lot of money. So I fitted out and bought furniture for my little shop for $25k. I budgeted my butt off and I got it done under budget. I think if you really put your head down and bum up and worked and saved, you could probably save enough to do your own fit out. I’ve actually had coaching clients that have done this. They have worked their asses off and saved. I’m a little bit of a spender. Always have been. And at the time, I might have only had $5,000-10,000 in savings and I didn’t want to take them to use with setting up my business. So I got that little business loan from the bank after which they made us jump through massive hoops for. It’s funny now to think about it. The bank wants to throw money at me now. It’s crazy. I remember when I changed banks a couple of years ago, the business banker came in and said “Just letting you know you’ve been pre-approved for $120,000 business loan, so if you want to buy a new Audi or something like that, just let me know.”

I asked what info they were using to give me pre-approval. It was because of the amount of money that’s going through the POS terminals. They said I could easily service a loan of that size.

Um, okay…this is nuts! Nuts, nuts, nuts.

Anyway, I opened the salon doors on 10th of July 2014. This year I ticked over 8 years in business. My son was 10 months old at the time, and my daughter had not long turned 3, so I had a couple of very little kids. I had to put them in daycare Thursdays and Fridays while I was at the salon. I was only open Thursday, Friday, Saturday when I first started and my husband looked after the kids on Saturdays. Within 6 weeks, I was booked out. Within SIX WEEKS! I was booked out six weeks in advance. So I had to add in the Wednesday and luckily back then I was able to get the kids an extra day at childcare. I did find myself wondering if it was all worth it. Childcare was expensive, will I even be able to get more clients? That self doubt that a majority of us have. But 6 weeks later I was booked out 6 weeks in advance again. So I was really busy. I didn’t even have a 15 minute gap and I shouldn’t have let it get to that point. I guess I didn’t even consider hiring. I really thought that I’d be working on my own on my lonesome for the foreseeable future for years. That’s why I got such a small salon space! I was literally only big enough for me and a client. But I realised that I was drowning in work, I was drowning in clients, I couldn’t keep doing it on my own. I needed help. I couldn’t have a break. I couldn’t see a holiday on the horizon. I was starting to burn out which is not ideal when you’ve just started a business. It was great. I was I was making money. I paid my business loan off in 6 months. I didn’t draw a wage. I was determined that I was going to pay that money back. It was really hard and I think a lot of people don’t understand that. I had to do that. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had done to do. I look back now and I don’t even know how I made it through. It’s blurry. I had these tiny little kids and I was cooking and cleaning and running a business I was doing all the social media, though no stories or anything back then, just posts, which was considerably easier to manage. There wasn’t even video content. Oh my god, if Lauren back then could see Lauren now, I probably would have given up! I was doing everything, it was a very difficult time, but all worth it. Trust me. It was definitely worth it. But it’s very easy to look at someone and where they’re at now and how their life is now and not know where they’ve come from and what they’ve had to do and what they’ve had to sacrifice. And thats the reason I’m sharing this story with you today. Even my staff sometimes doubt my skills and say I don’t know how to do something and I’m like “excuse me?! I teach people how to do that! I’m the original person that did that!”

There’s no fast forwarding the journey to get to where you want to be. You need to put in the hard yards. You can’t just start and hire a heap of staff and expect for it to just be generating profits from day one. You have to put in the work you have to build the clientele and rapport with them to keep them coming back and then once you are too busy, then you can hire. You market them, and then you start the cycle again, you teach them how to be good at their job and you teach them how to get clients until they’re booked out. And then the cycle repeats. And that is how I’ve done it. I have taken a few backwards steps along the way, with staff leaving and then being scared to hire again and scaling things down a little bit and then going “No! I just want to have heaps staff and be the best and make the most money.”

Of course there have been some risks that I’ve run; gambles that I’ve taken, that haven’t worked out along the way as well. I had to hire and I needed someone that was already experienced. Because I was so booked out and I didn’t want to take time out of my work schedule to train them because then I’d be earning less money and I didn’t want to take time out of my home life because, I didn’t have family that could just come and look after the kids during the day whenever I needed, I would have to pay someone to look after them. I didn’t want to do that. So I wanted to get someone that was already experienced and I did get someone. I put an ad out there and and I got someone who was experienced and she was a really lovely person but she wasn’t the right fit for the role. She was kind of towards the end of her beauty career. She was a little bit older than me, I suppose she was kind of winding things down. She didn’t have the same drive as myself to grow the business and really build out her clientele. So after about 6 months of working together and we worked really well together, she’s an absolutely gorgeous person; I still see her around town now and we’ve stopped to have a massive chat, but she decided to leave and go work with her partner in a completely different industry. So she didn’t really work out but at the end of that working relationship I had somebody else come along that I thought would be a good fit. I was a bit apprehensive about putting on a second staff member. I didn’t know if I could afford someone else. I didn’t have enough clients to book her out, but then it just worked out when my first staff member resigned to go and work with her partner in a different industry. So that had made room for this other person who was considerably younger. She was younger than me she was just starting out in the Beauty industry. She’d just done lash training. And she had a Diploma in Beauty Therapy and she was very keen to get started and learn to be the best. She really had the same goals that I did. She loved people, she could talk to anyone and she was already very good at what she did. She was a very fast learner and very good at taking responsibility. So I had no worries letting her come in and work on the days that I wasn’t working. So very quickly she was able to build up that clientele to full time hours. And then we became very, very busy very, very quickly. It only took a couple more months and she was booked out. And I knew that we had to go into a bigger shop. This was 18 months after I’d started my business. And I was just like, “oh my god, we can’t do this. We’re so busy. We’re so booked out. We can’t handle it. We need somebody else, I could be making so much more money”. The demand was far outweighing the supply at the time. So I started looking for a bigger space because I was in the last 6 months of my lease in the tiny little shop.

Then I got this idea in my head that maybe I could buy a shop. There were these new shops and a new car parking complex and what looked to be an arcade/laneway that had just been constructed in central Albury, It was only about 50 meters from my current salon. There was bigger spaces available and I wanted to buy it because I don’t want to spend money on a fit out again so soon, and then have to pull it all down when I leave – because that’s what you need to do when you hire a commercial property. You spend money on the fit out,  your landlord doesn’t do that for you, and then when you leave you have to pull it all down when you go. You have to “make good”. You have to paint the walls back the original colour and take all the signage down and take everything off the windows. I became sort of obsessed with buying and started investigating it and it turned out I could we could do it! We got a loan. It was a very, very stressful time and while I was working on that, I was also interviewing for a second staff member. I was deciding on colours and furniture and I was trying to negotiate brokers and finances and we were down to our last little bit of money in our bank account and it was it was awful. We had an accountant at the time that was rubbish and when dealing with the broker they weren’t communicating properly and it was a shemozzle! An absolute shit show. This time around, I had budgeted $50k for the fit out, which is actually quite a small amount. It’s not a lot for this big of a space. We were coming into this shop, it was brand new, newly constructed and it was a fishbowl; three sides of the shop are glass. So we had to build walls inside and I had to get sticker  signage for the outside of the glass. I had to get curtains, I had to do floors. I didn’t get floor coverings, I ended up doing polished concrete, which was very expensive at the time, but it looks amazing. I had to get all lighting because the space had no lights in it. The air conditioner had to be commissioned. The budget blew out a bit. I’m usually pretty good at estimating and sticking to a budget but it did blow out and a lot of bills from different trades all came in at once and my husband took a month off work to build all the walls, plaster and paint etc. And yes, saved money there. We even had his dad and brother come in to help for a little bit; it was a really massive undertaking, and it was so stressful. I was having tradies running up to me at the old salon (because they knew where to find me) and I was with clients and they’d be asking me to come and look at something and not understanding why I couldn’t just leave the client there on the bed!

The kicker was at the end. I booked a holiday six months prior, not realising all the delays with the fitout. I booked this holiday to Bali, I paid for the plane tickets and the accommodation; prepaid it. And as we’re doing the fit out, I was just like “Far out, we are going to literally finish this and then get on a plane a couple of days later. This is not ideal’, but anyway, I got a call from the broker, and they said, okay, so you’re going to have to come up with another $35k to pay the GST portion of the purchase price. Because on commercial properties, you have to pay GST. And in our case, it was $35k.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week!

Lauren x