I have been offered a self-employed position in a new salon opening next month by my beauty therapist. It's £90 per week and doesn't include any advertising.
She doesn't offer enhancements but has said that I can do all the mani/pedi clients too to avoid any confusion.
I have worked out my costings and at th m oment it takes me a good 2.5 hrs to do a fulls set/french rebalance and about 1.5 hrs to do a natural rebalance.
I'm worried that obviously with it taking me so long to start with (assume I will get quicker with experience) I'm going to struggle to make my rent every week.
She said I can have the first week free but I don't know if that's long enough to get my times down-I think I need to be doing a full set in 1.5 hrs tops.
I really want to make a go of it here, as I know the owner quite well and would rather go a nice new place with her as the owner than a dingy place with a bad owner. I'm even considering re-mortgaging my house to get some funds before I start, incase it takes a while to pick up, but don't want this to make me complacent about making sure I get enough clients each week.
Please can someone advise me how long it will take to get my times down, has anyone been in the same boat as me before?

It really is just a case of the more you do the quicker you get so if you are going to be doing x amount of sets a day you will see improvement quite quickly, I went from 2 hours to 1 15 for a full set over night just by doing a lot more sets than usual. Could you not ask her to do a percent rate for maybe the first three months, so say you supply everything you need but will give her 20-25% of what you take and then after 3 months go onto the set rate just to give you chance to get your clients and your times down, it will get you through Christmas iykwim. Hth. Claire x

Hi and thanks for your reply. When you say your times came down overnight did you mean that literally?
I am going to go and negotiate with her again tomorrow eve. I think can play the 'new salon' card as obviously she is charging me what an established salon would charge (hair dressers up the road is charging the same to rent a space) so I think I could bring it down a bit anyway, incase this new place doesn't take off.
Thanks again!

Yeah it just happened one day, I was sooooo shocked, lol. I thought it must of been a fluke but no most full new sets take me about 1.15 with the occational 1.30. infills and reballance is another story but they are deffinately improving but then all my clients are on glitters with the odd french so maybe glitter does take a bit longer to sort out after three weeks, lol. I hope the negotiating goes well, I'm sure it will. Claire x

I was having the same prob when i took over my salon table 4 weeks ago. I was taking 3 hrs to do a full set before i started but after the first week it only took me 2 hours.
French backfills can take me just has long and infills not far off that either has i end up taking the corners of thier french white so i have to replace. Alot of the clients are NNO and have a colour polish, this tends to take me 2 hrs too coz of the drying time of the polishes.
If i dont have any clients booked in one day the salon owner doesn't charge me rent for that day which is a big help when just starting out.