I still remember the day Mary Ann (my best friend and now business partner) suggested we set up a Personal Styling Training Academy. We were sitting at her kitchen table and talking about how much she was loving her new life as a Personal Stylist, she of course was thanking me for not only sharing all my knowledge with her but also for training her for free! I was so proud of her success and a little smug that I had something to do with it but when she suggested we not only train budding Personal Stylists but also train them at a fraction of the price I had paid for my training, I literally thought she had gone mad… Firstly I had no training experience and secondly why would I only charge £500 for a course whilst every other Academy was charging over £3000 a module? How could I justify the £9000 I myself had spent on my own (not so great might I add) training?
The thing is Mary Ann hadn’t gone mad, she was actually on to something big, you see she had come from a training background and she believed because I had so passionately trained her, together we could train anybody who shared the same enthausiasm as she had to learn all the skills to make a success in this growing lucrative industry. As they say the proof is in the pudding; because she was earning good money, as a result of my training her I slowly and excitedly was coming around to the idea of setting up a Training Academy.
You see what I loved about (and still do love) about being a Personal Stylist is the art of transformation, I love transforming the way people look and most importantly how they feel about themselves through the right choice of clothes, hairstyles, make up etc… so the prospect of empowering and inspiring women to now transform their careers was actually giving me butterflies… Myself and Mary Ann both knew how it felt to be trapped in the rat race and how grateful we now were to have taken the jump into what we believe is the most amazing and rewarding career choice in terms of time flexibility, your own self esteem and financial opportunity.
Mary Ann insisted on the lower pricing structure, she kept saying “I’m a mum and I’m sorry I simply don’t have £9000 to spend on training for a new career so how can we expect other mums and potential young students straight out of college to fork out that kind of money especially in this recession?”
The rest is history I guess… Mary Ann got what she wished for and 3 years on I’m now reflecting on the best 3 years of my own career…