The moment you passed your boards, you didn’t just become a licensed hairstylist. You became a business owner. Nobody stood up and said that in school, but it’s the truth.

Even if you’re starting on commission at someone else’s salon, you are typically responsible for finding your clients, keeping your clients, and marketing yourself. The salon gives you a chair. You build everything else.

The stylists who figure this out early and start treating their career like a business from day one are the ones with fully booked schedules two years in while others are still wondering why their chair is empty.