For beauticians wanting to have a business of their own, or for entrepreneurs who simply love the atmosphere of a chic hair salon, choosing to start a hair salon seems like a natural choice. However, deciding to start a hair salon simply because it seems fun, or like a great way to own a business, isn’t a good decision. Choosing to start a hair salon, or any business, is huge decision for any entrepreneur that needs to be carefully considered due to the large money and time investments involved. When deciding whether or not to open a hair salon, ask yourself these three questions:

Do You Have the Passion Needed to be a Hair Salon Owner?

Simply enjoying hair styling or hair styling products doesn’t mean you are passionate about owning a hair salon. To become a successful hair salon owner, you will need to be genuinely passionate about business and about hair dressing as an industry. Passion is the driving force behind every great hair salon as passion sparks innovation, creates commitment, and fosters excellent customer service. Hair salon owners without passion are more prone to giving up easily as the time and energy required to start a hair salon becomes too much.

Are You Willing to Work a Full Day, Every Day?

Although hair salons generally have normal business hours, many are open late on the weekdays and for the most part during the day on the weekends. When you first open your hair salon, you can expect to be there from the time it opens to the time it closes every day that you run business hours.

To make sure you are okay with the time you will sacrifice for your hair salon, you should ask yourself:

Will I be okay with neglecting my social life and/or outside activities?
Will I be okay with limited quality time spent with my family?
Is my family okay with limited time spent with me?
Will I be able to provide great customer service even after a 50 hour work week?

Are you ready and willing to take one of the largest financial risks of your life?

If it took you months to work up the courage to buy your first car and then your cringed every time you received the monthly payment bill, owning a hair salon might not be for you. Nearly 90% of all start-up businesses fail which means 90% of business owners lose their initial investment. So if you suffered from anxiety when you put $2,000 down on a car, putting down $30,000 to open a hair salon may be a risk that you can’t handle. Hair salons owners need to be prepared to max out credit cards and deplete savings for unexpected costs. It’s part of starting a business, and simply a financial risk you have to take. Simply make sure you are financially capable of doing so, and emotionally prepared to do so, before you choose to open a hair salon.

Have you decided that you are passionate about owning a hair salon, that you can handle the constant work schedule while still maintaining a high level of customer service, and that you are ready to make one of the biggest investments of your life? Congratulations! You have chosen to start a hair salon. Now that you have made the initial decision to start a hair salon, it is time to start researching about how to open a hairdressing salon, what are the requirements, what will be the cost of opening your potential hair salon, what licences do you need and there are a lot of other factors that could further ensure your future success.