I recently joined a black hair forum, because I love to talk about hair, get information and perhaps pickup something I haven’t learned. There was a topic in the forum that I would like to discuss. The comment was that this customer had an appointment at 2:00 to get her hair done; arrived at 1:45 and said the stylist had five people waiting ahead of her. This is a common problem in African American hair salons… I have worked in 4 privately owned salons and 1 “salon chain” before I made the decision to become mobile. I am a firm believer in not over booking. Many times it was just better to increase my price and offer a better service than to overbook. Some of the problems I faced in the salons were that it was not enough space or equipment to accommodate the customers, a lot of times my customers had to wait for a dryer or wait for the shampoo bowl. There was one salon that I worked in where a person would shampoo for you, but you had to pay her $5 for each shampoo. Not too bad, and it definitely helped save time. The problem I had was the she was not licensed. When it came to building clientele, my clientele was building, but when you are starting out with no customers and you only make $300-$400 for the week and have to give up $160 for booth rent you are not left with much. What if it is an extremely slow week? That does happen from time to time, and at all the salons I worked at it didn’t matter because your booth rent was still due! In a couple of the salons I struggled because there was NO walk-ins, walk ins were RARE… Another problem that I HATED in the salons was the GOSSIP and the MESS. I could not stand it! It was just too much to handle, and because I didn’t get involved in the DRAMA I was labeled “Anti-social” or “SNOOTY/BOOSCHIE”. In the chain salon I faced a different problem. There were PLENTY of walk-ins, and there I WORKED MY BUT OFF. I would make like $1000-$1500 in revenue for the salon per week but you know how much of that was on my pay check? About $500.00 which still was not enough. I felt like I was being ROBBED! I became fed up, I could not take working in the salons ANYMORE…. Like I said INSAINITY is doing the same action over and over again but expecting a different result. Let’s just say I am not “HAIR INSANE” any more.
I decided to first take a break from hair period… But because I have to pay bills, I decided to go back to corporate America for a while and then start my own company… I just want to say that starting MY OWN was the best thing I could have ever done, I LOVE working for myself! While it is taking time to build it up, once it builds…..well just look for me on the millionaire list……
