Nail Technician Franchise Owner
Saks

Maxine D

0:00:02 My name’s Maxine D. I’m a nail technician. I’m franchisee of the Saks salon and that’s based in Newcastle Upon Tyne. What I enjoy most is, you know, you’ve got people coming in and they leave and their nails are all nicely manicured and, you know, they’re happy with them. You’re making people feel better about themselves which, you know, makes you feel good as well. It just gives you job satisfaction really.

00:00:26 I always wanted to do art and design or fashion. I’ve always been an artistic person. I would just come in from school and draw. Fashion design was one thing that I did want to get into, but I would always just sit and just do my nails mostly. When I’ve seen people from school and that they’ve always said, ‘well, we’re not surprised you’re doing nails’.

00:00:48 I think it’s hard sometimes when you leave school. You don’t always know…well, you have an idea of what you want to do, but it doesn’t always work out. I just found in Newcastle area, there wasn’t a great deal of arts, art kind of jobs, so I just went into office work which I did for about five years. I just kind of…I just wanted to earn money really and this job of tribunal came up which I really enjoyed doing, but it was only a temporary job. And I didn’t know whether that was going to continue, so I just started looking for another job, which was working for a telephone company, but then I just thought there’s no real future in what I was doing, so I started, you know, to train as something else as a hobby, and then it took me further, which was great.

00:01:35 I went and did a course on my day off from work which was nail, like the nail extensions. I did that just as a hobby really. I didn’t plan to take it any further. The girl that was doing the training, she had started…she just had a nail business that she’d started up on her own, so that made me realise that there is a job in this and there’s opportunities out there. I started out just renting my own desk within…it was in Saks and I would just pay rent to the franchisee. And then after that, the franchise came up for sale, so I thought, ‘right. Well, I’m here all the time anyway. I like and I’m really interested in extending what I’m doing, so I went ahead and bought the franchise. I suppose it was a big step to take because I did leave a full time job, but I just thought I would just go for it and just went for working myself which I’ve never looked back on.

00:02:32 Yeah, the biggest single event in my life, I would say, would just be recently when I’ve just got married, so I’ve been quite focused on that, which has been nice in a way because I’m always thinking about work. So it’s been nice to think about something else and something else to look forward to. I love my job but there is more to life than just your job. I would say my work-life balance is, well, I suppose when you start up, you have to be there a lot and once you’ve got some people working there that you can rely on and help you out, but I would say, you know, I probably do a lot more hours than what other people do. But it’s different when you’re working for yourself, you don’t mind, you know, you’re not doing it…it’s for you and it’s for your benefit.

00:03:13 Well, in five years time, I would like to be…to take maybe a bit of a step back. Have someone in there that can run it for me so that I don’t have to be there as much. Not because I don’t want to be, but it’s just other things I want to do like starting a family. If I could do anything at all, I would love to have, well it’s going to sound all mixed up, but I’ve always wanted to have a boutique as well because I’ve always liked fashion. So I would like to have a boutique with maybe a champagne bar and then a little, you know, a little room upstairs for luxury treatments, like a little spa.

00:03:49 Yeah, I would never have thought that at 16 that I would be running my own business. I did always think it would be something I’d like to do but I didn’t think I’d actually, you know, do it. I think sometimes you don’t realise what you’ve actually…you have achieved until, you know, someone says, ‘well, you know, you’re doing really well. You’re doing more than what most people, you know, have done in their life’. So yeah, you do need to sit back really and think, you know, I have done well.

ENDS