Last month salon owner Caroline Sanderson of Ego Hair Design in Inverness faced what most salon owners fear as their biggest nightmare!
While Caroline was taking time out for end-of-life care for her mum her salon life took an unexpected turn.
Caroline shares her story…
Ego Hair Design was a thriving salon business winning many of the top accolades in the industry.
For 14 years it ran without me and has done so successfully and profitably.
Back in July after issues with my mum’s health she was diagnosed with cancer. I was still coming to terms with this, and as her health started to decrease, I had a 24hrs I’ll never forget!
Two resignations from key team members immediately followed by a letter from my landlord giving me notice to quit my salon premises in the next few weeks or sign a ten-year lease at 23% increase.
The landlord had agreed to sell me the premises so this sudden U-turn and short notice just after the blow of two team members leaving, when we were already short staffed, was off course a shock to say the least.
But things were just getting started!
I’m not going to go into all the gory details of what happened next, but in a nutshell, I made the choice that I didn’t want to carry on paying into a landlord’s pension pot who thought it was ok to give an established business a few weeks’ notice to quit. So, I made the choice to return to where my salon began back in 2002, as I own the building.
I knew it was a risk moving an established business and I was right, but if I was certain of one thing, it was that I was going to stick to my values.
It didn’t feel right staying and I was more than ready to leave.
I accepted that I might lose other team members, as they could go follow the other team members who were leaving to open a salon not far from us, but I made the choice to accept the outcome and accept that whoever left wasn’t meant to be a part of my next chapter.
As best I could I tried to focus on my mum. As her health deteriorated fast, ending up in hospital, I received three more resignations (five in total) and I had to make a redundancy.
I lost six staff, my mum, and my salon premises all in the same week.
What was even tougher was I had to do two refurbishments simultaneously. As you may know commercial leases often come with a full repairing and insuring lease where you must upgrade the premises before you leave.
It cost many thousands on each premises while my salon, as I knew it, ceased trading in its premises on 26th October just six days after my mum passed.
My mum was laid to rest on 30th October, the day of the budget, and this is where my new story begins.
Things don’t happen by chance, there is always a reason.
I’m a firm believer that life happens for us not to us, and so I decided to flow with these huge changes, and I believe it’s part of a changing frequency world.
There was no huge drama in the team leaving. Some just decided they didn’t want to come on our new journey to the smaller salon and instead they made plans to follow those opening a new salon.
This is the harsh reality of being a salon owner. Sometimes things happen that shake our world.
The hardest part was dealing with the dilapidation’s refurbishment.
It was so stressful trying to go through a huge list of things I had to get done and worrying their inspection would flag something else.
At that stage it was my rock bottom for sure.
The day they came to do the final inspection it felt like the agent was there with the sole purpose of finding things wrong!
I could barely keep it together with stress and exhaustion and off course grief.
It was such a whirlwind I barely had time to grieve my mum and zero time to say goodbye to what had been our home of salon dreams for 12 years.
But oddly, deep down, I know it’s all part of a bigger plan, I just don’t know what it is yet.
I had to decide.
Was I going to throw in the towel, close and liquidate, take on new projects I had been offered, rebuild or just close altogether?
In my next blog I’ll share the reality of being left with one part-time stylist after your manager leaves to open their own salon and takes all your team (except one part-time stylist) and loads of clients with them.
I’ll share the path I chose to take and why, plus the lessons I learned along the way that might help you on your own journeys.
Until next time!