Our recent Salon Gold survey found that out of over 1000 respondents, the majority said that their biggest challenge is work/life balance – cited by 43.8% of respondents, well ahead of business issues like finding new clients (24.7%) and managing finances (13.3%). We chatted to Gem Jones, Founder of Taylor Rose Hair, about her own experience and what she wishes she’d known before starting her salon business.
Not so long ago, the phrase “girl boss” was everywhere.
Scroll through social media, and you’d see the same glossy promise repeated: leave the 9-to-5, start your own business, and finally enjoy freedom, flexibility and a life designed entirely on your own terms. No boss. No office politics. Just creativity, independence and success.
It sounded wonderful! What the posts rarely mentioned was the small detail that replacing your 9-to-5 often means signing up for a 24/7.
Unless you have deep pockets to hire a team from day one, running a business means doing absolutely everything yourself. Founder, receptionist, accountant, marketing department, therapist, cleaner and occasional emergency problem-solver all rolled into one slightly sleep-deprived human.
And the idea that you escape having a boss? Not quite. Instead of one boss, you suddenly acquire hundreds of them, otherwise known as clients.
I always knew I wanted to run my own business. Anyone who knows me will confirm that being told what to do has never been my strongest skill. I’ve always thrown myself completely into whatever I’m doing, so realising I could channel that energy into something I genuinely loved felt like a bit of a light-bulb moment.
When I first started my salon business, I was working for a fashion and trend company in West London. I didn’t immediately leap into entrepreneurship, partly out of caution, partly out of common sense.
Instead, I built my client list slowly alongside my job. The plan was simple: grow the business gradually, reduce my hours at work and eventually make the leap once the salon income could stand on its own two feet.
It turned out to be one of the best decisions I made.
There are plenty of stories about people quitting their jobs overnight to chase a dream, but that kind of leap can be terrifying when you don’t yet have the clients to support it. Easing into it meant the ground didn’t feel quite so shaky under my feet.
What I hadn’t fully anticipated was the psychological weight that comes with ownership. When it’s your business, every decision matters. Every problem lands on your desk. And there are far more problems than anyone warns you about at the start.
Running a business means wearing hats you never knew existed. One moment you’re the creative founder; the next you’re handling staff issues, solving a scheduling disaster, smoothing over misunderstandings, answering enquiries and trying to remember to post something vaguely interesting on social media.
With that many plates spinning, one is inevitably going to wobble. At one point, I assumed that hiring staff would make life easier. In reality, it simply introduced an entirely new layer of complexity. Managing personalities, expectations and workplace dynamics is a skill in itself, and one most of us learn the hard way.
Then there’s the small matter of switching off…
In a normal job, you eventually close the laptop and go home. When you run a business, it follows you everywhere. Even when my salon was operating from my flat, my mind was constantly on it.
Holidays didn’t really exist. On one memorable occasion, I even found myself answering work calls from a hospital bed after major surgery, because the idea of ignoring the business felt impossible.
There are financial realities, too. Starting a business makes it alarmingly easy to spend money on equipment, branding, rent, and products, but considerably harder to earn it back. Understanding the numbers suddenly becomes essential: margins, break-even points, tax thresholds and the mysterious moment when VAT appears and starts eating your profits.
Emotionally, it can also be confronting. When the business is yours, you care far more than you ever would working for someone else. I found myself undercharging or giving things away simply because I felt uncomfortable asking for the real value of the work.
Looking back, there are a few things I wish someone had told me earlier.
Start small. Make what you have work before expanding. Learn about leadership and management sooner rather than later. Pay attention to who you are and how people respond to that.
Set boundaries with staff and clients, because if you don’t, they’ll happily set them for you.
And perhaps most importantly: eat properly, sleep properly, and find some way, however imperfect, to switch off your brain occasionally.
Despite everything, though, entrepreneurship can still be incredibly rewarding. Building something of your own forces you to grow in ways no job ever could. You learn resilience, leadership, patience and a surprising amount about yourself.
The freedom promised by the “girl boss” dream does exist. It’s just that nobody tells you the full price tag! The dream wasn’t wrong. It was simply incomplete.
Gem Jones (Founder of Taylor Rose Hair)
https://www.taylorrosehairandbeauty.com/
Need to talk to someone? All Salon Gold Salon Insurance customers have access to free legal expense cover, which includes a free counselling helpline (0333 000 2082).
