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Well that seems such a long time ago now......
When I was at school you would never find me doing the usually like Home Economics or Textiles! I would be in the Tech room doing Woodwork or Graphic Design! I just loved it!
After my GCSE's I didnt really know what to do so I stayed on an decided I would do A Levels. After a year of study my heart wasn't really in it so I left school. I then saw a course for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering!! I was always very interested in how things worked and how things were put together, and I had done well at Sciences in school so I thought right thats it I will be an Engineer! Unfortunately my Maths skills were to let me down, quite sad really I was never offered the extra help that a student would receive in todays times. So that was that after another year of my life wasted I was 18 and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do for work for the rest of my life.
I then went to work as an administrative assistant in a local insurance office. It was ok I made friends and it paid the bill but I really wasn't happy there.
I then got married and had my two children.
In May 1999 at the ripe old age of 23 I was married with two young daughters (aged only 3yrs and a new born) working a boring part time job in an office.
My life was manic with looking after the girls, but I loved it. But as the months went by and my maternity was coming to an end I started dreading going back to work. And I couldn't help feeling there was something better I could do with my life. I needed to be more creative in the work place.
When my youngest daughter was only four months I decided rather than return to work this was my chance to actually train in something that would be a vocation for me rather than just a job.
I picked up a prospectus from the local college and started flicking through, and I found myself on the Hair and Beauty course page. I was instantly drawn to it, here was a course where I be creative and possibly meet other busy mums like myself.
The course was run two evenings a week for two years. And on the 2nd September 1999 I was enrolled! Beauty School here we come!
I was so lucky to be in a fabulous group of women on the course. We all hit it off straight away, which helped the next two years fly by.
Yes there was tears, drama and failure by some but most of us got through it and qualified in 2001. Just as I was finishing the course I found out a local salon were looking for a part time salon assistant. Not to really do treatments but to welcome customers in and show them to a sunbed or make them a drink when they arrive. It was a great opportunity for me to learn the ropes and really fine turn my customer service skills.
After a year and a half at this salon I moved salon to get more experience with advanced beauty treatments. People and new students on beauty courses always think your NVQ Beauty Therapy will give you all the skills and training you will need for the rest of your career but this is so far from the truth. College is really the basis on which to continue to build and learn new skills and treatments.
The new salon was fantastic and the salon owner was always keen for us to train in a new treatment and we were always off on a jolly somewhere around the country! Good times :)
Sadly the salon became more and more quite. A LOT of new salons started popping up nearby and the competition was just too much and the salon closed. Luckily for me I had already been offered a job in a salon in Cardiff, but after four years of working at this salon I was sad to leave.
The salon in Cardiff was a real eye opener. Working in Caerphilly and Blackwood had been great but it was so quite compared to the salon in Cardiff. It was crazy busy, open very early in the mornings and late into the evenings. I loved it and all the while I was gaining more and more experience.
After four years of working at this salon I felt it was time for a change, after I left the salon in Cardiff I never really settled anywhere for long. I think as my experience grew, I found people I was working under had less experience than me and I would find myself wanting more and more to be self employed.
Since training in college I had always done little bits of beauty treatments on friends and family at their home. So I knew if I did start working for myself I would have a basis to start from, and they could actually start paying me for my services!
In 2012 I told my manager of the the salon I was working in that I was leaving, and that was it, I was scarily self employed!!!
I changed my car for a bigger one, got myself insured and off I went, my new life as a self employed Beauty Therapist!
For the rest of my journey to the present day read next months blog
To be continued.......
