A chance encounter while paying for some products at a beauty supply store
made me want to talk about what are examples of starting from scratch? In business, we have so many instances where we have to start from the bottom. The media would have you believe that successful people made it overnight, but we know better!
As I said, I was in the store picking up some products. There was a person ahead of me. Surprisingly, I realized
she was looking at the amount of stuff I had with this curiosity. I remember thinking, “lady, I was where you were too. It gets better!” I was not buying loads of stuff but she had one thing to cash. I thought this was amusing, since I did this at the beginning of my career in hairstyling. I will list below what are examples of starting from scratch in the salon business:
- Buying a tube of colour to finish your client’s hair because that is all you could afford
- Buying retail sizes of shampoo and conditioner until you could afford gallons. I have to put a caveat here. My hands were sensitive and dried up with cheap shampoos so I still had to get the good quality stuff.
- Single use relaxers until you could get the tub, Hooray! If you could use it twice.
- Settling for the reasonably priced scissors but eying the $500+ designer ones nonetheless.
- Turning detective before purchasing expensive items like a clipper to get as much life out of it before having to replace it.
- Going to as many free or cheap professional classes to build knowledge
- Volunteering to work in places for the displaced to keep honing my skills
- Volunteering to work with more experienced stylists to gain experience
- Accepting the back-handed insults from people who let you know in no uncertain terms, that their stylist was the best (so don’t be expecting them to change to you).
- Going to hair shows with $20 left as your spending money; fretting every time someone suggested going out to eat, etc.
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I was happy to see that I was able to be in a position to look back and know what are examples of starting from scratch. It is a great position to be in because it means dreams do come true.
By Paula Barker, Silkie Locks Hair Design
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