This month marks the anniversary of setting up my beauty salon in my home town of Norwich. It’s not been easy. Self-employment isn’t for everyone. It’s extremely hard work. I am the beautician, HR, book keeper, and the marketing lady. I’ve juggled it along side being the default parent to my incredible daughter. Even though it’s 2025 us Mums on a whole do seem to still hold most of the responsibilities, for me all the responsibilities. We are expected to work like we don’t have children and parent like we don’t have jobs! Some days the pressure feels exhausting. I’ve put some things in place with the salon in the last few years to make my life easier and simpler, like only taking bookings via email. I find I get in such a muddle with enquires from social media and text. By streamlining everything to email, nothing gets missed. Once I have booked you in my Google calendar you also get an invite to add it to your calendar. This made a massive difference to my ‘no shows’. Also, I am very lucky that I don’t get many no shows as my clients understand I don’t earn if I am not working.
My daughter is now 14 years olds and entering GCSE years at high school, which on some level means she needs me less. However I trialled a few evening appointments and it just didn’t work. ‘Mum taxi’ is often a full time job in the evenings haha! I am working later though in the day, so 5pm after work are now possible and I just finish up before dinner time.
When I first started up 14 years ago. I often did swaps in exchange for treatments as a way of building up a client list and my confidence. This was great as I’d get a massive bin liner of baby clothes that if I’d purchased new would have costed more than the treatment. I do still do the odd swap but now for size 6-8 clothes for my daughter! Marketing is always something I am interested in doing a swap for. Marketing changes so often in business I really struggle to keep up with it. The days of picking a business name beginning with A to get to the front of the yellow pages are over! I don’t even think most people in their 20’s would even know what the yellow pages is! Leaflet drops they say even if you do get the flyer thru the correct door it takes three flyers on average for the person to acknowledge it. So if marketing is your forte and you love having facials and lashes done do get in touch! I am trying to get myself swatted up on Answer Engine Optimisation… the new SEO. AI is very much becoming part of ourselves. Thankfully my lovely clients are very good at telling their friends about me and this really is the best marketing that there is!
I am sure you are all sick of me asking but if you have a spare moment a Google review makes my day and means a lot for new customers searching.
Not sure what else there is to say… apart from ‘cheers’ and thank you for all your support over the years. My daughter tells me people don’t celebrate 14 years and I have to wait until 15 years! I raise a glass to every anniversary!
Live locally to Norwich and want to book in? Have a look at my price list and contact me by email.
