Salon Suites Rentals in Dallas area

I got my license in 2012, and I have a few friends who are going the 'booth rental' route 1-3 years into their esti career. I am afraid/unprepared to do so, mainly because I do not have a business or marketing degree, and I am currently working for a large company that does a quasi-decent job of keeping me complacent and hoping (I am always unsettled and worried someone will 'move my cheese').

Could some of the more tenured estis on this blog give me a reflection on your career- I would assume most all of you have moved to independence at this point...? I am very interested to see comparisons of self-employment/spa employment/working for a doc in either a medi office or medispa. Thank you all. :)

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Permalink Reply by Siostra Rodzona on April 6, 2015 at 8:33am

I received my license in 2010. I found my niche right away and opened a 3room boutique within 5 months. I've become complacent in my desire to work doing the same thing, at the same place. I've backed down on my days at my boutique as of recently. Last week, I leased a "room" at a salon suite by my home. I'm excited to have a new found energy and go back to doing what I really like... just me.

It's overwhelming... for sure.

So, I guess, I've done things kind of backwards.

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Permalink Reply by coldsalineplexus on April 7, 2015 at 8:23am

When I graduated, I went to work in a hotel spa and started simultaneously paving the way to open my own treatment room across town. The owners knew and I wasn't a threat because of the distance. After six months at the hotel spa, I had my treatment room configured and started seeing clients there when I wasn't scheduled at the hotel. This went on for another year until I left the hotel spa for full time private practice. A year later, I took on a MUCH larger space which I worked for 5 years until it was eventually a 5-room spa with mani/pedi and a variety of other services.

Recently, in the past 3 months, I have dismantled the big spa for a variety of reasons - mostly personal challenges that have kept me from being the business owner I used to be. I am lucky to have been able to secure a much smaller space in the same building, so now I am back in solo practice. I'm also in the process of grieving my bigger spa, even though I was no longer in good shape to manage it. I'm lucky to continue to have clients and the support of friends, family, and my esthetician community near and far. I do not know what the future will hold.

During the last year of owning the big spa, due to some of the personal challenges I was having and my uncertainty about my ability to continue to work behind the chair, I made the mistake of getting into too much debt, trying to "set things up" in case I wasn't able to get back to full time esthetics work (car accidents). I'm really regretting these expenditures now, as well as not paying myself more and saving more for the 5 years that I did run the business. There were some very profitable years, but I believe I got carried away with reinvesting those profits, to my current detriment.