Rebecca B

00:00:01 My name’s Becky Bottomley. I work at Saks Beauty in Halifax. I’m a beauty therapist but I’m a full time franchisee as well. Obviously I run the business day to day and I employ people as well but I also run a full column so I’m doing clients like six days a week and I work like eight till eight so, if the salon’s open, I’m open, so I’m there constantly so. It’s obviously like my business but it’s under Saks’ name.

00:00:24 What keeps me going the most probably, seeing clients happy. I love making people feel nice about themselves. I love the motivation as well I get from my staff feature there. I have got a lot of energy. I’ve got a real lot of passion for my job, I do really enjoy it. I am definitely a workaholic, definitely.

00:00:41 I didn’t enjoy school at all. I wasn’t really academic. When I went to see my careers adviser in my last year, they told me that my perfect job would be a prison officer, which was so not me at all. So no, they didn’t give me a lot of paths at all at school to make me, you know, think what I should do. I think that’s where I struggled probably in my last two years because I didn’t have any passion or any feel of what I wanted to do really. I think it is a worry when you’re at school because you don’t really have many opportunities, you don’t really know where you want to go. So yeah, I think once you’ve found your path, that’s nice because you always do better when you’re good at something.

00:01:16 After I did my GCSEs, I worked at Saks as a hairdresser for two years and I qualified as a hairdresser, had my own column for eight months and then I went back to college at 18 and re-trained as a beauty therapist. And then when I qualified, I went and worked on the cruise ships for just over eight months. The highlight was probably seeing all the different places, definitely. I saw like New York, Miami, the Caribbean, Canada. It was a real good chance to make a lot of money as well so. Obviously like when you’re 20 and you’ve just left college, it seems like a really good thing to do and I wanted to see the world so that’s what I decided to do.

00:01:51 I did my contract for eight months. You have to legally leave after eight months. You can’t do any more for probably health reasons. You can go back on a month later. I was going to go back on but then an opportunity came up for me to get the Saks franchise, so I decided to give that a go and see what happens, and I’m still there now.

00:02:11 I’ve always wanted to have my own business. My mum and dad have got their own businesses so I think I’ve always known from a small age you’ve got to work for what you want. Anyway, I’ve worked with Saks before so I knew the company. I knew they were a good company, lots of help. I just thought, ‘well ,why not? You know, I’m young and I think I’d be really good at it’. I had a lot of confidence coming off the cruise ships. I knew I could work hard, so I decided to go for it.

00:02:35 The high point was seeing my business grow, I suppose, and employing two people. That’s nice to know that, you know, it’s getting bigger and people are coming back. At least I know I’m doing something right. But the high point’s like winning awards as well to show that, you know, I am doing a good job. I won the Skills Therapist Award and what I had to do for it was do a practical two hour treatment up here in head office and then you go through to a semi final and I actually had to do a client in my salon. It was the first time I’d entered it and I really wanted to win it and I was so pleased when I won. Yeah there was a big glitzy award at the Grosvenor House in London. There was thousands of people there so it was really good fun to get up on the stage and receive my award from Ski, you know, the manager, so it was brilliant, I really enjoyed it.

00:03:20 Even though I do enjoy my job and I love being there, I’m a bit of a workaholic, the hours are really long. Like and my partner, I don’t get to see my partner that much. It’s mainly like Saturdays, the Saturdays I do get off and Sundays I get to spend with my partner. So that’s the only downside.

00:03:36 There’s not been a really depressing low point but just probably when I first started out, the struggle of getting people through the door and working long hours when I first started, that was probably the lowest point. But it quickly grew over the first year so I just…I think probably the beginning, just the nervousness of it and thinking, ‘is it going to work out?’ But, you know, I kept trying and trying and working hard and eventually it paid off.

ENDS