Many of us start this gig out part time, unless we’re working for an employer who can guarantee hours. But if you put the effort in, it shouldn’t be long before you’re so busy that you feel like just maybe you could go out on your own and quit your day job. For me, I worked full time in a totally different industry for the first 4 years of being a Nail Tech and didn’t really take growing my business too seriously. After travelling for 4 months, as you know, I decided to give full time nails a go, I still had rent to pay though so I went to my old workplace and got an entry level job on the phones for two ten-hour shifts a week, 10am until 8pm Sundays and Mondays. I didn’t want responsibility, I just wanted to go in, get some actual money and get out.

At the 2 month mark, I was making as much money from nails as I was from my low wage phone job and I also HATED the phone job. I had done a higher-level job in the same company for 5 years and while saving for travel had often done overtime on the phones for extra money and I actually really enjoyed it. But now every time a customer had a problem I resented them for getting in the way of time I could be spending on building my business. I asked my closest friends if they thought I should quit and they all said to wait another few months to make sure I was really onto something.

2 weeks later I quit.

I couldn’t help it! I hated every second on those damn phones and I had so many ideas for my business that this job was getting in the way of me doing.

Do I recommend you do exactly what I did? Not reeeeally but I will say this – the second you put full time energy into something, it explodes. Going full time is not an excuse to have long lunches with friends and wait for the clients to turn up. It’s a chance to really put a solid 40 hours a week into marketing yourself. When you do that, and you eat, breathe and sleep your business, that business will do magical things. I’ve seen it happen SO many times amongst my students. When I say ‘eat, breathe and sleep’ your business,

I want to be clear that I don’t mean ‘eat, breathe and sleep’ your profession. I know hundreds of people that eat breathe and sleep nails but you can spend 100 hours a week googling pictures, making swatches, watching YouTube videos and attending classes and have nothing but a good time to show for it afterwards. While it is important to push yourself to excel at your craft, your craft is no longer just nails or beauty. Your craft is beauty AND business. Spend your time learning, researching and implementing ideas for your BUSINESS first, craft second.

There is a smart way to go about getting those 40 hours and I probably didn’t follow it, I was confident I was going to be able to JUST pay my bills, and I hated my job enough for that to be good enough. But many personal budget advisors recommend saving an emergency fund equivalent to 6 months wages just for unexpected life events in general, let alone ones that come along side having no job.

So if I was going to give you advice, I would say – don’t worry about how many clients you have right now and whether they will sustain your lifestyle because once you have 40 hours a week to invest in finding clients, they will come. Instead, focus on saving 6 months equivalent to your full time income. When you have that money, quit your job, put EVERY available waking hour into building your business first, craft second. Price yourself so that you should be able to make your old wage easily when fully booked and supplement any short falls with money from your emergency fund.

Now for this bit I’m not sure about other areas of the beauty industry but I know for nails, Summer is the busy season. You can go full time any time during Summer or even in the lead up to good weather – heck, late winter is fine! The only time I wouldn’t recommend is late autumn because this is right when bookings are going to drop off for a few months, just wait a couple more months and then jump in the deep end.