Giving up the day job

[siana]

I am ITEC qualified in manicures, pedicures and waxing. I set up a little business in my garden (converted half the garage) in January 07 and my aim is to to be earning enough to give up the day job by Sept 08. I need to be earning around £500 to £600 per month in order to do this.

Although things have gone okish I'm not nearly as busy as I hoped I would be but I'm about to do an advertising push and hope things get better. It's really disheartening when you've been so exited about a project like this and nothing much happens!!:cry:

I would like to know if it is possible to earn the above (or even more) with the qualifications I have or do I need to offer more. I would love to do facials and eye treatments etc but money is tight at the mo so I have to put it on hold for now.

What do you think? Is this easily poss? I would really appreciate your thoughts/advice/your own experiences.


Thanks, Siana.

 

[*Garfield*]

Have you thought about training in enhancements, I work from my garden based home salon and I would say that more than half my income is made up of enhancement clients, followed by waxing , lash & brow tints and lastly natural nail care. I stopped doing facials as I just dont get enough interest in them. It may be different in your area but I know where I live clients want nails, nails, nails.... The more services you can offer the more clients you will get through your door, and clients through door = more money in your pocket!:idea:

I have been going 3 years now, and I earn well over the figures you quoted so yes it is possible to be full time working from home, but it is hard work and I still get times when I wonder where everyone has dissapeared to!!

I advertise in the yellow pages, but that is fairly costly. I also have a website and I get a few clients from that...but most by far come from recommendation off existing clients. Maybe you could offer your clients an incentive if they 'introduce ' a friend, say a free treatment, or a gift voucher..:hug:

 

[Missy G]

Hi,
May be im hoping for too much or ive still far to go,but yesterday i started to advertise to go mobile,i dropped round 200 leaflets ,but have had no calls,i also put adds up in 3 shops,iust wanted some rough ideas from you guys ,as to what response you got from giving out flyers just so i can get some rough idea on how many more i need to give out?This is my first attempt to advertising obviously if it doesnt work i will be advertising other ways.If you tell me ive got a long way to go i ll understand.k

 

[loubylou]

The norm for leafet drops is 1% from every hundred so you need to post lots and lots of them babies,
it can take a good two year to get any business up and running where you are fully booked all of the time and this needs to be understood and prepared for before going into any business hth

 

[emily22]

Hi, if you can, try setting up a website. Its a good way of advertising. If you put it on your leaflets etc then you may find people remember the name of the site when they are browsing the internet. Ive done one and have had a booking this weekend from it. The client who has booked told me she read through my website, really liked it and decided to ring and book straight away. I did mine thorugh microsoft office live, its free and fairly easy to do...

 

[siana]

Garfield - thanks for your advice. I've decided to do an eye treatments course (found one not far from me) and offer incentives to existing clients for introducing friends. Hopefully this will push things along a bit more. I will do enhancements one day when I have more time to dedicate to it. Cheers.

Siana

 

[tinkywinky]

Im sure you could earn this amount, you really need to promote yourself tho.

I think spray tanning is profitable, I do well from it- why not get trained in that?

 

[Rose143]

Hi Siana,

I am speaking form experience here ... to try something part time and build it up to almost a full time salary of £600 per month is almost impossible with the treatments you are offering at the moment. Manicures, pedicures and waxing are 3-4 week treatments and don't cost very much to offer, yes, but you don't make as much "quick" profit due to the maintenance visits being so far apart.

Eye treatments are good BUT again, they are 4-6 week appointments as well. Have you thought of doing nail enhancements or as was suggested previously, tanning? Training in a service people can actually be committed to would be more beneficial to your business and give you more income in a shorter space of time.

Again, from experience, do you want this business to work? If so, give up the day job, take the plunge and a little bit of pressure like bills to be paid can be a brilliant thing!! Then you can spend as much time as you need marketing your business in a successful way.

Clients don't work around you remember, when you're starting out, you have to work around them, and believe me, you'll take what ever time you can get if you have bills to pay, and for that ... you have to be full time.

Just my opinion and personal experience, hope this helps

xxxx

 

[dee]

what about setting up a free yell.com account , also there is Freewebs.com - Free website, free hosting, free webpage - Make a web site with photo albums, blogs, videos, forums and more! for websites which i found got me more clients than spending a fortune on paid advertising , hth x

 

[siana]

Thanks for all your advice. I'm going to be completely honest now. I'm scared of enhancements!! I don't understand anything about them - when I read all the threads on here about gel, l and P, overlays, backfills, I haven't a clue what they are and everyone seems to have some problem or other with it all. It all sounds so difficult to master and doesn't it take a long time to get good at it? Have I got the wrong impression? Is enhancements the general term for false nails? There seem to be different ways of doing it. Do you learn one way or all?

How does spray tanning work? How long is the training and what roughly are the start up costs? Could this be done in my little garden studio?

Rose - I really appreciate all the advice and I know what you are saying. Take the plunge and you have to make it work. My customers are so few and far between that it would be financial suicide if I did that at the moment. I work 9 - 12 at a school so I can generally fit in clients in the afternoon and evenings. I think I need to wait until I have more definite regulars or at least offer more treatments.

I will start investigating spray tanning and enhancements but if someone could explain enhancements for me I might know what to start looking at. Sorry to sound so ignorant!!

Thanks - Siana

 

[Rose143]

I appreciate what your saying honey :hug: but when I started my businesss, I offered Nail treatments for free to build a clientbase and I did not have 1 regular client when I went full time!! My boyfrriend thought I was making a big mistake, especially since the only client I had that payed full price turned out to have a filing phobia. I was gutted.

We've all been there, you have nothing to be scared of, trying new things is exciting and having problems with getting things right only makes us better at them. It is hard to master but practising correctly what you've been taught is an amazing accomplishment.

Good luck in what you decide ... and remember you aren't the only one who's been there :hug:

xxxx

 

[siana]

Thanks everyone for your advice - Its really appreciated. Plenty to think about there for me.

Cheers!

Siana