The Career Story I Never Wanted to Tell Until Now

I became a salon owner at 19 years old. Within a few years, I was running two hair salons, drowning in debt, and making every mistake a young entrepreneur could make.

Everyone loves to talk about success.

But almost nobody talks about the chaos, debt, burnout, toxic workplaces, and mistakes that happen before success.

In this episode, I share the raw, unfiltered truth about my career journey and making every possible business mistake along the way.

Tune in to hear about:

✅ The reality of starting a business young
✅ Why success is never luck… hear what success REALLY takes
✅ The dark side of the beauty and hair industry that few talk about
✅ How toxic workplaces can impact mental health
✅ The leadership mistakes I made as a young salon owner
✅ Why systems and structure are critical in business
✅ The brutal financial reality of running a salon

This is the messy, painful, and brutally honest story of how entrepreneurship actually looks behind the scenes.

Key moments:

00:00:00 The Real Story Begins
00:02:00 Basin B*tch at Thirteen
00:04:40 The Hustle Gene
00:07:40 Walking Into the Fire
00:10:00 The Brutal Schedule
00:13:20 Three Years of Bullying
00:17:40 Salon Owner at Nineteen
00:20:00 Chaos and No Leadership
00:22:20 Buying a Second Disaster
00:28:20 The Motorbike Accident
00:32:00 Everything Crumbles
00:35:40 Loyalty Is a One-Way Street

If you run a salon, own a small business, or feel like you're holding everything together with sheer willpower… this episode will make you feel less alone.

Press play now because Part 2 drops next week, and you need the full picture.

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👉Find out more about how we can work together:

https://iconiccoaching.com.au/coaching/

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👉Here’s how to connect:

https://www.instagram.com/tellmeaboutit__podcast
https://iconiccoaching.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

They told me I was lucky. I said, I am blessed, but I am not lucky. Luck didn't pay off $285,000 in debt. Luck didn't rebuild a business from nothing, and luck definitely did not get me into a motorbike accident, a toxic apprenticeship, and two failing salons all before I turned 25. This is my story, and this is just the beginning. Back with another week of Tell Me About It Podcast. My name is Kate Muir, and today's episode is part one of two of my career story. So honestly, strap yourselves in because this is an absolute wild ride from start to finish. We're going to be diving really deep into my career story today, and I mean the real one. Not the highlight reel, not the created Instagram version where everything looks polished and perfect. We're talking about the nitty, gritty, messy. How the fuck did I survive that? Honestly, plainly fucked up versions of events. We're talking about starting work when I was a child, walking out of high school, and just owning a salon when I was a literal baby. Also, I want to talk to you guys about how I racked up debt right even before I hit my mid-20s. I don't think we talk about this sort of stuff enough. And um, we should, because I think we've all had this weird, crazy, and when I say we're meant business people, we've all had this like weird, crazy journey to where we've gotten to today. And it hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows. It is definitely we've weathered some storms, but that makes us better business people. So if you've ever felt like you're completely winging it, like everyone else around you has their stuff together except you, or like you're the one bad day away from it all falling apart. This app is for you. Also, if you just want to know the deep, dark, dirty secrets of my career, strap in, grab a Red Bull, a coffee, a tequila, whatever the fuck your poison is, because this is episode one of two, and they're long, and I'm raw dogging it telling you the story of my career and all the shit that happened in the lead up to. So let's rewind the clock. Twenty-two years ago, uh, I was 13 years old. That actually makes me feel sick saying that. Um, actually, it was 23 years ago because I'm now 36. I was barely a teenager and I landed my very first job in a hairdressing salon. Now, you might be thinking that sounds kind of cute and exciting. It wasn't. A young girl getting her start in the beauty industry. That's what I thought it was gonna be. My official job title was Bass and Bitch. Uh, they literally called me that. It's so very early 2000s. I think that, you know, at the moment everyone's going crazy over all this shit about America's next top model and how polarizing it was. Well, that's kind of how we spoke back then. Uh 22 years ago. Uh, it was so normal. Genuinely, no one batted an eyelid of calling a 13-year-old girl a basin bitch. It was just what you were called when you were the bottom of the salon food chain. My job was washing hair, sweeping up hair from the floor, making coffees, folding towels, basically just doing what anyone told me to do. I was the lowest rung on the salon ladder and everyone made sure that I knew it. And um, look, my first basin experience was actually quite a good job. Um, I had a good time there. I ended up, they let me go because they were hiring an apprentice and my parents wouldn't let me leave school, which was so shitty. But it lasted about six months. And then I found a better gig as a basin assistant elsewhere. Different salon. I was the same title, slightly better vibes. And for the next 18 months, I was absolutely juggling my little heart out. I was working as a basin bitch. I was also completing a hospitality traineeship at this stage, which was at a restaurant which I worked at two nights a week. Then I was working in the salon Thursday nights and Saturdays, and then during the week, on two days of the week, I was teaching guitar to school students, like primary school students and early high school students. So at 13, 14, 15 years old, I was already working multiple jobs and fucking loving it, to be honest. I've always loved working. I think some people are just built for the hustle. And teenage me was definitely one of those people. I was already proving that point. I loved having my own money. I love feeling independent, classic Aquarius. I love the sense of purpose that came with having somewhere to be and something to do. I just really enjoyed working. I'm a freak like that. I look back on little me and I like made jewelry and sold it at art markets, and I was always making and creating things and selling things and turning them over at trash and treasure markets, um, which is actually quite a beautiful memory I have to be honest. I used to do the trash and treasure markets with my Nana, and it's a really nice memory that I have of her. I never really knew growing up where the real entrepreneurial side of me came from, but it was from her. My Nana was incredible. Um, she passed in 2019, and she was widowed really young. I mean, really young. She had four kids between 10 and 15, I think. And despite all of that, she owned multiple small businesses. And so I think I got that part of me from her. But yeah, I guess I was always working because I knew I was going to make something really amazing out of my life. I also loved being at home, not being at home. Um, home was not a pleasant environment for me, nor was school. I didn't love the conformity that came with going to school and that was required to be successful at school. I didn't like that schools judge a fish on their ability to climb a tree, and that's like such a fucking limiting and unequal way of testing people. It was also really heartbreaking because I wasn't book smart as you would call it. Like the subjects I was best at was woodwork, fashion, commerce, business, maths, painting, ceramics. I was really hands-on and crafty, absolutely aced music. I was really good at playing guitar. Like I was fucking horrible at English. Can you tell by this mouth? I was also average at like science, robotics, computers. Like, we didn't even have a computer on the internet until I was like 14, I think. It just wasn't a thing. And I know that's really hard to think back on. But like, why am I being tested on English and computers, but not on the things that I'm good at? Like art and wood and stuff wasn't even something that they tested on. Anyway, that's a tangent for another day. But making friends in the workplace was also a vibe. I'm still in contact and still friends with so many people from my earlier working life and also from high school. And I loved working and I loved hustling because I desperately needed to get out of high school. One, and two, I was eager to start working towards my dreams and create the life for myself that I knew I was destined for. I just always knew that something great was going to happen in my life, and I think it has, but it's still good to reminisce on that anyway. So 21 years ago, at 15, I walked out of the hell that was high school and walked into my future. And I never looked back, not even for one single second. I remember on my last day, my mum was with me and I was exiting school. And my favorite teacher at the time, Medunik, if you're listening, you scarred me that day. I was in your 10 and he said to me, You really should finish school by correspondence. Like, you won't be able to do anything in your life if you don't finish high school. And then I like sat on that for age. I thought, shit, you know, I'm about to go into a full-time apprenticeship. I knew it was going to be like 40, 50 hours a week of work. Maybe I can try and finish by correspondence. Maybe that will make a difference. And I never did. And you know what? I never fucking needed it. When have I ever used Pythagoras' theorem ever in my fucking life? I'm not building stairs. I'm not doing anything that I need, any of that shit. No one even cares. One year post-high school, no one even cares if you finish school. They do not give a fuck. And also, moving into further education or even finishing school was not one of the pathways I needed to do what I wanted. And I really didn't, even though I was going into apprenticeship at this stage, I didn't even really know that I wanted to do hairdressing. So I walked into my hairdressing apprenticeship with a fire in my belly and a point to prove. And I was done with being stuck. I was done with feeling powerless. I was ready to start building a life that I actually wanted to live. I was ready to create independence for my family. I was ready to just do my own thing. And like I said, I didn't really necessarily want to pursue hairdressing for the rest of my life. Um, I actually wanted to be a mechanic like what my dad was. Anytime that I asked anything about cars or questioned anything about cars, my mum would say something like, You don't know everything that there is to know about cars, you know. And why would you want to go into that job? And so I just kind of put that in the back of my mind. I just thought, fuck, okay, obviously I'm not meant to do that. Just every time it was talked about, I was just bullied about it or belittled about it. And I just thought, I just can't be fucked with the argument. If I ever go into this job, it's going to be a lifetime of hearing that shit. So I went into hairdressing, which is funnily enough, what my mum did for many, many years. And I did that because for me, I got to yap all day, I got to work with other people, and I love people. I'm a people person, and I got to really let my creative juices flow. I was also really hands-on, really creative, and I thought this is a job where I get to use that. I also thought hairdressers were like the coolest people ever. And the cellon where I landed my apprenticeship was also leading the way in the town that I was from. And they were doing some really cool work, and they were the coolest salon. They were a big cell. And I think there was like 20 to 25 staff there at that stage. So let me tell you, I threw myself into that apprenticeship with everything that I had. I smashed through trade school in 18 months, faster than most people thought was possible. I qualified and I was officially signed off as a hairdresser in just two and a half years. And so, for context, in the state where I did it, it's meant to be three years, but a lot of people went overtime. I know that I had apprentices that took longer than that. So I was well ahead of schedule. And that's just the uh the overachiever in me. So apparently I didn't know how to slow down or take a breath. I also completed my specialist makeup diploma of night school during this time. And so I was working full-time as an apprentice during the day, studying at night, and still somehow finding the time to practice my skills on anyone who would let me do their hair. I'll paint a picture of what my schedule was actually like back then because it was pretty bloody crazy. So Monday was trade school day always. Tuesday was my only day off, and I say that in quotations because my boss has made me come in and do training from nine till one every Tuesday morning. Sometimes I'd be required to work through till five o'clock, um, but most of the time I had between one and five, I wasn't doing anything. Then 5 p.m., I will go to night school to do my diploma. Wednesday I would work until 9 p.m. Thursday, I would work until 9 p.m. Friday I would work until about six, and then I would work at a nightclub overnight on Friday night and finish about three, four in the morning. Then I would work eight till four every Saturday, and then I would again work at the nightclub on Saturday night. Like it was insane. And I did all that because it allowed me to get ahead, it allowed me to save for a car, it allowed me to do all these things that I wanted to do, being young and I lied about my age to work at the nightclub too. That's a whole other story. But I worked there when I was 17, so naughty. Because I had all the hospitality background behind me and I'd done that apprenticeship. I think they just assumed that I was older, which was quite funny. But um, it was so good socially to be able to do all of that. And this is why I guess I have no tolerance of people that are just like, oh, I'm so fucking tired. I work like three days a week and now I need a day off and I need a mental health day. It's like, get on with it, sis. Get the fuck on with it. Nobody in my life who has ever made anything of themselves did that by working part-time. Get over it, get your shit together while you're young and fit and your body doesn't fight you every fucking day. Go to work. Go to work, put in a few years, and you will come out the other side way further than anybody around you. I think that's probably a polarizing thing that happened in my life too. I had a lot of friends who went to uni and stuff like that, and that's cool. That was their pathway, but just never understood that grind. And my life has panned out very differently to theirs. Um, most of the people in my life that are super successful people are people who have gone into like an alternative career path, a trade, something that didn't involve wasting 10 years of their life at uni. So something worth considering if you're not um in this industry. Anyways, I went way on a tangent there, as I do ADHD Tings. So apprenticeship during the day, studying at night, second job of evening, and somehow still kind of fitting in a social life. Don't even know how, was surviving on fumes, surviving on bencen and hedges and red bulls. Actually, V's back then I drank. I wasn't into Red Bulls and they were too expensive. Anyway, overachiever 150%. That comes from a life of always having to do really well to be praised or to be loved. Um, so you're always overachieving, you're always trying to impress, you're always doing so many things for other people. You're always like, you've got to be non-stop, you can't slow down because slowing down and having rest is like not appreciated. I was also desperate to build a life that I actually wanted. I was determined to prove that walking out of school was not a mistake. I was determined to show everybody, more so everybody than even myself, that I could make something of my life without following the traditional path. And this is because I was so reliant in my late teens, early 20s on getting approval from everybody else and making everybody else proud of me and everybody else happy. But I guess this is where maybe this story takes a bit of a darker tan. And I think it's really important for me to be honest about this part because I don't know how much I've actually spoken about this. That apprenticeship, that salon, those three years of training were also three years of relentless, soul-crushing bullying. The environment I was working in was toxic beyond belief. We were doing over 50 hours a week for 38 hours of pay. We didn't have two days off every week, as you heard me talk about before. I had to go in for training on my day off. I was belittled, mocked, undermined, especially in front of clients, made to feel completely worthless on a daily basis. And it wasn't necessarily from my bosses, but they never intervened when they saw it happening. They never did anything to stop it. They knew exactly what was happening because I told them about it. I would also have anxiety attacks before work. I would go to work crying, everything. I remember saying to my boss one day, hey, I've worked a whole heap of overtime. Um, is there any way that I could be paid for that? And he literally looked at me and he was like, You're really pushing my fucking buttons today. You can just go home. And I was like, fuck, like I can't even have a conversation with these people. I tried to resign multiple times and they declined my resignation. So back then you had to get employer approval to leave an apprenticeship. You couldn't just leave. It was a contract, so they wouldn't let me out of my contract. I was broken. I was completely and utterly broken. I was a blob. I came extremely close to unaliving myself. I had thought out multiple ways that I could make that happen. And I want to say that clearly because I think it's really important. Mental health struggles are really serious and they're real. And sometimes the environments we find ourselves in can push us to the absolute edge. And I was standing on that edge, looking over, wondering if there was any point in continuing. I was also told to stay in my apprenticeship and just see it out. I was in a family that didn't believe in mental health support, um, didn't believe me when I said that I was really unwell and really unhappy and whatever, you know, they saw it as a weakness. I also had friends that were kind of the same. Yeah. And then following from that, when I did finally resign when I was qualified and I was yelled at over something that I didn't do, um, I just handed it by raise garnation. I was like, I just can't do this anymore. And I wanted to complete to quit the industry completely. I wanted to walk away from hairdressing and never pick up a pair of scissors again. Everything that I'd worked so fucking hard for was completely tainted. And it was tainted by the trauma of that experience. Funnily, there was one person in particular that was the culprit of this, and they went through no word of a lie. I reckon there would have been 50 apprentices and seniors go through that place in the time that I was there, and that three years that I was there. And this woman was the culprit of most of it. But it was also the other people too. You know how people become like the people they spend the most time with. It was just a horrible toxic environment. And you know, I never got the closure from them, I never got an apology, I never got anything. But it was only about two years ago I ran into one of the staff that worked at the same time, and she was a relative of one of the bosses, and she literally looked at me and she's like, I don't know if I've ever said this to you, but I should have left the day that you got yelled at and the day that you quit. She was just like, I should have left. I just knew that it was wrong. I knew that it wasn't right. I felt so sick for you. And I was just too scared to not have a job. And then it was only about six months ago I reconnected with another girl who quit shortly before I did, who, to be honest, was not really my friend at the time, but also wasn't really mean. She just didn't really participate in anything. And she even said to me, she was like, I'm really sorry for who I was back then. And if I ever hurt you, and I was like, I don't remember you ever hurting me. I remember you being friends with some of the bitchy girls, but I also think that was for your own survival. You know, it's like if you can't beat them, join them type energy. And I think that really just gave me the closure that I needed, that I wasn't crazy and there was nothing wrong with me, and I was just this person who was maybe a bit weird and a bit different to everybody else. But I left that job. I walked into a job back at the back as the manager, or sorry, back at the place where I did my base and bitching the second time. And within six months, I was the manager of that salon, and shortly after that I became the owner. This all happened in a span of about eight months. So got the job, promoted, bought the salon. I was 19. I was 19. I've got a nephew that's almost 19, and I look at him and think he's a baby, and I think, fuck, I was a baby. Owning a business at 19, what could go wrong? Uh, so many things. A whole lot of things could go wrong. So when I bought Chelsea Lane Hair, Skin and Body, and just for the record, I did not name it that. That came with the business, it was turning over around $150,000 a year with three staff. That was the year prior to me owning it, and it had also made a $7,000 loss. So it was a small operation in a little arcade location, nothing fancy, but it was mine. And I severely overpaid for it. I was, yeah, it was crazy. I paid $60 grand for this salon that made no money. No banks would actually lend to me back then because the finances were so dire. I had also just built my first house, so I don't think I was a desirable candidate for a business loan. I was in the very blessed position that my auntie and uncle at the time took a split off their mortgage and lent me the money to buy this salon. And but yeah, it was horrible business. And I look back and I think, fuck, I went against my accountant's advice, I went against my lawyer's advice, totally overpaid, but it is what it is. I look back at 60 grand now. I'm like 60 grand, schmixy grand, but back then that was so much money. So fast forward almost 10 years, and when I eventually sold that same salon, now rebranded as Huntress Hair Religion, it was turning over $3.3 million a year with a team of 22. Um, and it was an insane amount of growth by any measure. And I fucking did that. I did that, and I don't appreciate that enough. But here's what you need to understand: the growth was not linear, it was not pretty, it was absolutely fucking not smooth sailing, it was like riding into a fucking hurricane. I wanted to say it has a few minor bumps along the way, but they were not minor, they were major, major bumps along the way. It was pure chaos, it was tears, it was failures stacked up on top of failures, and it was absolutely categorically 100% not luck. So let me paint you a picture of what those early years of business ownership actually looked like. And let me take you on the whole journey from there to now. So, all the way back in 2010, I was the first seller in my area to rent out chairs, and it sounds innovative. Now everyone's doing it, but it was super innovative back then. And at the time people thought I was crazy. I had four renters and two staff members walk out on me simultaneously, leaving me completely in the lurch. I was a fucking horrible leader. And I say that with complete accountability, zero excuses. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was a 19-year-old kid pretending to be a business owner. I was too scared to set boundaries, I was too scared to enforce consequences, I was too desperate to be lacked by my team to actually lead them properly. The previous owners treated me like a literal piece of dirt and berated me every time I tried to make a change, like even used to crack it with me when I would change the radio station. And I was too immature to stand up to them and too timid. My staff and my renters absolutely owned me. They owned my business. They used and abused my apprentices, they did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. And I let them. I let them. The cellum was chaotic, products went missing constantly, clients were being undercharged severely, the phone would ring out because nobody could be bothered answering it. There was no systems, no processes, no structure, tension, chaos, and it was me in the middle, drowning of it, not wanting to go to work. It was just fucked. It was absolutely, completely royally messed up. But here's the thing a fish rotts on the head. That's my responsibility. And I was at the top, and I let it just spiral into chaos and oblivion. I enabled every single bit of it, and I own that. I created the environment by not stepping up as a leader, and I allowed that culture to flourish because I was too afraid to do anything about it. And you know, from there, what did I do? 22 year old me at this stage, but I was already in the midst of this absolute fucking. Circus when my business was holding on by a fucking bobby pin. When I was stressed out, out of my mind, clearly not coping. I went and rented a chair in another salon on the other side of town with a plan to buy it. And then a few months later, I owned that too. Because one fucked up salon wasn't enough. What was I thinking? I wasn't thinking. I did a lot of not thinking in my early 20s and late teens, but I think I look back on it now. I'm like, I'm kind of glad I did it when I was young and dumb and could recover, I guess. So you heard that right. I bought a second business one. My first one was a complete fucking disaster because that's the kind of questionable decision making that happens when you're young, ambitious, and convinced that you know everything. And it gets way worse. So the owners of the second salon, um, her husband was an accountant and all the numbers were false. I didn't realize at the time, but there was money being moved around to kind of like make it look like it was making more money than what it was. And it was horrible. They lied about the revenue, they lied about the profit, they lied about the client base, and then the previous owner solicited all of my goodwill by contacting all the clients directly after the sale. I didn't get good legal advice before signing the contracts again, because I didn't learn properly the first time. I didn't do proper due diligence, and I was completely naive and stupid about the whole fucking thing. Like I should have learned the first time, but I didn't. And I guess at this phase of my business, I wasn't seeing how bad the first one was. It was just like, oh, it's so busy. I've got so many people making no money, making no profit, driving me absolutely bonkers. But I'm one of those people that sees the good in everybody and the good in everything and the possibility. I'm still like that now. Maybe a little bit more realistic about it now, but I think there's something really powerful in that too, is like always believing that something better will come from this. But I should have learned the first time, and I fucking didn't. I was your typical I know everything, 20-something-year-old woman. And I knew absolutely nothing. So I thought I was so smart. I thought I was savvy, I thought I was business-minded, and to a degree I was. Like I was ambitious and I was hardworking, but I had no fucking idea what I was doing. I was a literal kid playing dress up. So please learn this too, because it happened the second time too. The first salon I bought had made a $7,000 loss the year before I bought it. And the second salon I bought had made under $2,000 profit from their falsely reported revenue. And the lesson here is if your accountant says don't do it, don't fucking do that. The second time around, two accountants told me not to do it. Moron. Again, I just wanted the glitz and glamour of having two salons. But also, if a bank won't lend to you, it's probably not a great business to invest in. And look, I do believe that sometimes there are exceptionally judgmental people who have never been in business working in banks and they don't see the potential, they just see the black and white and the numbers. But for the most part, don't invest in the shitty business because hopes and dreams will not help you to survive. If you've got all these people telling you don't do it, it's probably a good idea to take that on board. And if you choose not to do that, you have to own that you made that decision. You know what I mean? I was in the very blessed position, and I never take this for granted that my parents could lend me the 35 grand I needed to buy this second salon because let's be real, there was absolutely negative savings in my savings accounts. There wasn't even a savings account, I don't think. Um, so now 22, I had two salons. I was working in both of them. So I was in both of them three to four days a week each. Seven days a week, no joke. I was the financial glue holding both businesses together. I was generating more than 65% of the income in my first salon and more than 85% of the income in the second salon in my new one. I was the little only thing that was keeping these businesses afloat. And I look back on this now, I remember writing this down. I actually had it saved in my phone. Fuck, it must have had a bloody iPhone too back then. But I was making a total of $1,200 a week from my renters that took up nine chairs in my salon in both of them. So this is collective, $1,200 from all of them. And my three apprentices and one senior collectively made me less than $1,700 a week across both salons. So I was doing all of the other upholding and my pay, I was taking home $100 a week. If that I probably really wasn't taking home anything because I was just pulling it from fucking nowhere, to be honest. Yeah. For being the amount of responsibility I had back then, everything I was taking on, the stress, the people, the clients, the money, the fucking everything. It's actually really hard to imagine how little I worked for. And this is why I'm so passionate about helping hair and beauty salon owners now. Is that it's not worth it being in business if you're not making a really lucrative wage. Because why the fuck would you be better off going and working for someone, getting your thousand bucks a week, and getting to turn your brain off when you leave and only working your 30 hours a week or whatever you want to work? Like, I remember back then and I had an eating disorder back then. I was so anorexic. I was dating a boy who was fucking horrible and everything. And it's just it's just hard to think that people are still like that now. And this is why I do what I do. Anyway, another tangent. So my costs were absolutely astronomical. My staff were undercharging clients left, right, and center when I wasn't there to supervise. And I mean, like one of mine, she was a bit of a dum-dumb. She was gorgeous, but she was a dum-dum. She was discounting and undercharging by like 50%. And every time I approached with her, she got her dad to come in and yell at me. Like it was fucked up because I was young and he saw me as a child. And my renters, like I said, literally used and abused my apprentices, didn't help with doing dishes, didn't help with laundering, towels and capes, use up all the sundries. It was just, it was so bad. It was just a fucking mess. I had tax debt accumulating up to my eyeballs. The ATO was sending me increasingly threatening letters that I was just too scared to open. Credit card debt was piling up through the wazoo, supplier invoices unpaid. The list of financial disasters just kept growing and growing. And I looked back at that time and I would literally lock the doors and not answer the phone when I was working alone. I was in total avoidance. I was a glueless business owner running two salons into the ground while working myself into an early grave, and I had no idea how to fix any of it. Five months into owning my second salon, so I'd rented a chair, then I bought it, and the old owner was working as a rent chair. And five months after that, my my life changed forever in the space of a few seconds. So I was riding my motorbike, my ninja, along the Great Ocean Road, which is one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in Australia. And I rode down there every single weekend. And this day it was a Sunday. It was the most perfect weather, perfect riding conditions, absolutely beautiful day. And I was hit by a car coming the other direction. And a head-on collision is scary enough when you're in a car. But on a bike, multiply that times a thousand. You literally feel naked. The impact was pretty devastating. I had broken bones, my confidence was shattered, my ego totally bruised. And I spent a month in hospital, followed by months and months and months of like rehabilitation. And look, to be fair, like a full leather suit saved my life. My pelvis did into the tank of my motorbike. Like that's how bad this impact was. One of my handles and my clutch snapped into my hand. It was a lot. And if you are one of those dickheads, dickhead riders or dickhead girlfriends on the back of bikes or anything that rides in a motherfucking shorts and a t-shirt, you're a freaking moron. I was a great rider. I did lots of Philip Island track days. I rode multiple times a week. I used to ride to work, I used to ride the Great Ocean Road every week. And like I said, and it happens to the best of us. You cannot control other vehicles, other drivers, and other riders on the road. You can't do that. And so if you're a fucking moron that gets out on your high-powered motor vehicle on your motorbike, basically nude to everything that's going on around you, and you don't wear leathers, you're a fuckwit. You're a fuckwit. And I hope you never have an accident because it is absolutely horrific, terrifying, scary. Gave me PTS, like awful. I think the reason that I didn't break more bones and didn't have more damage and definitely did not have a scratch on my skin was because I was wearing leathers. And just that morning, how's this for the universe giving me a message? So we always used to meet at a petrol station because we all used to come from all over the place and meet at this one petrol station that was on the way down to the Great Ocean Road. And we'd all fill up our bikes there. And I woke up really early that morning and I was like, oh, I bought this new spine guard and I thought, uh, I can't be bothered. I had to involve like pulling the lining out of my jacket and putting a new spine guard in. Anyways, I was like, nah, I've got 20 minutes. I'm actually gonna put my spine guard in. And I did. And that was the day that I had an accident when I had a foam on previously and this like really high-tech Alpine Stars one that I put in that morning. So if that wasn't someone looking out for me, I don't know what was. Anyway, literal months off work followed by literal months of reduced capacity as well, because you couldn't come back properly fully because it couldn't stand for long periods of time. And I like, if you guys have ever had plaster, your freaking legs and arms come out and they're like this skinny, white, fucking limb. Um, it takes a long time to be able to do that. I mean, I couldn't even lift my legs up unassisted. It was crazy. So, literal months of not doing anything to save my struggling businesses, months of laying in a hospital bed and then hoveling through rehab and watching everything that I'd built crumble from a distance. And my team spectacularly let me down during this period. Nobody stepped up to cover extra hours, nobody took initiative to keep things running smoothly. My renters did their dandust to poach all of my clients. Other clients started leaving and droves because they couldn't get appointments or they didn't want to see the other people that I worked with. That was also a problem that I created. My apprentices and senior didn't show to work a lot of the time, or they wouldn't work at the salon that I asked them to work at. So sometimes the other salon would be closed. The salons were just like in total disarray. And I wasn't there to hold it together with my own two hands like I'd always done before. So here's what the whole thing really highlighted for me in the worst way possible. I had no systems in place, no policies, no procedures, no documented processes that anyone could follow. And also they wouldn't have anyway because I had no consequences for poor performance or doing the wrong thing, nothing. My businesses were completely dependent on me physically being present. And the moment I was removed from that equation, everything crippled, everything fell apart. And my already growing, horrible, squishing debt increased rapidly during this time. The bills don't stop, the revenue's plummeting, staff still needed to be paid, even though they weren't generating anywhere near enough to cover the wages, let alone the business costs. Rent was due every month, regardless of whether salon was busy or empty. The financial hole that I was in got deeper and deeper with every passing week. And look, there's a lesson in this one, too, because I would say this is choose your landlords wisely, especially commercial. Mine refused to fix broken, leaky roof, damaged ceiling, damaged floors. And then my rent was four days late because I was in hospital and they changed the locks while my staff were working and while there was clients in there and they kicked them out. Complete cunts. It's also very illegal. They're not allowed to do that. Back then I couldn't afford legal advice. So I just complied and my dad literally wheeled me into their office in a wheelchair and paid them cash for overdue rent because he was just like, you just need to get the doors back open. And I was like, I agree. I have no money. I can't do anything. I'm literally stuck on the couch all day, every day. Anyway, four months after my accident, I was still recovering and I made the really heartbreaking decision to sell my second salon. I sold it for 50 grand, and that sounds like a decent chunk, but it really didn't even scratch the surface of the bills that had accumulated in my absence. So the bank of mum and dad debt was 35 grand that I originally paid for the salon. I think they gave me about another five grand in there just to help with bills and stuff like that. Um, but I also had about 20 grand of overdue stock. I had a couple of basses, I was a bit behind on utilities. It was just a drop in the ocean of the debt I was drowning in. I'll also highlight this because I think anyone in business should really learn from this. The supplier that I was with that I spent over $70,000 a year on, that I had been exclusively stocking for three years. So I carried multiple of their brands, they did not help me at all. I called them from hospital and said, this is what's happened. I asked to pay for all my future orders up front and then pay off my overdue stock or like my due stock on a plan. So I was like, whatever I owe already, can I put that on a payment plan? I'll make payments every week, whatever. And then anything that I need to order, I'll just pay as I go. They said no, put me on stop supply. And all this happened while I was in hospital questioning my life and how I was going to get through this. Absolute fucking cunts. I don't care how much I say cunts in this because there's more cunts coming. Don't care. A lot of product companies do not care about you. And I think that there will come a time when most people will realize this. They care about them, they care about your money, and they care about a sale. Loyalty only works if it goes both ways, and a lot of companies will not look after you. Later, I found people who did and companies that did, but just to kind of let you know about that, loyalty only works if it goes both ways. So you both have to be winning out of this relationship. Anyway, talk about being humbled in the most hardest and difficult and most brutal way possible. Talk about having your ego completely destroyed, talk about realizing that everything you thought you knew about business was completely wrong. Overall, when I look back on this time, I think the universe gave me the most hideous, harshest, strongest message that I ever could have received. And you fucking bet I listened. I had to listen. I wasn't given a choice. And I was about to hit my absolute rock bottom, but I wasn't quite there yet. Spoiler, it got a lot worse before it got better. A lot, a lot worse. And this is where I'm gonna end this episode. I'm sorry to totally edge you here. Um, sorry, not sorry. Next week you're gonna hear about how I clawed the fuck out of it and the other curveballs that life threw at me.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Sorry to leave you there. Thanks for tuning in to tell me about it today. And I'll see you next week for part two of my career story.