I set off on the early days armed with my dreams and ambitions. I was ready to take on the world! It’s new, it’s exciting but all too often, the realisation kicks in that it isn’t going to be a bed of roses.
In fact, it’s a very turbulent journey – one which I am expected to be able to handle at every hurdle. The loneliness kicked in when I realized that I am the only one responsible and can’t walk away or simply switch off when something goes wrong. I didn’t want to burden my friends and family who have limited time and resources to help me.
It’s sometimes difficult to get out of the loneliness even when you are doing really well because as a business owner, you are expected to always have some weird neutral balance too.
If your business is doing really well, then you are expected not to be too boastful and therefore play down your success. Partly because it may not last, and because you don’t want your clients and staff to think you are making too much money from them.
Why do business owners like me do this to ourselves? It seems totally crazy to be locked in this mad isolation.
After over 26 years of owning a salon and speaking to other salon, spa and clinic owners, I see the same problems re-occurring. Each beauty business owner thinks that they have unique ownership over their problems and business issues.
Every business is indeed unique but the problems most certainly aren’t. Most problems have magnified because the owner didn’t want to admit that he or she needed help or guidance. More so, the owner didn’t know where to get help from or have simply failed to address it earlier.
Often it gets harder because the longer you have been in business, everyone will expect that you always know what to do and that your experience should prevent problems from happening.
I firmly believe that working together and better business ‘know how’ is the way forward. There is no sense in trying to ‘put on a brave face with fear underneath’, instead we need to embrace and celebrate how great we are for taking that big step into business and tackle our issues together.
