I'm Iline Murray, 25 years old and I own Body & Sole, Stornoway.
Body & Soul consists of a number of different beauty related therapies and treatments you can have done under the one roof, ranging from chiropody to hair dressing to reflexology, a number of different treatments
Unfortunately I wasn't very good in school, I had a brain but I just didn't use it very well which resulted in me leaving in fifth year, leaving a year early, moving to Inverness when I was 17 years old so because I left school so early, I had to start from the bottom in college which resulted in starting off with an NC which is a year then going on to my diploma which was another two years, graduating from Inverness college with a diploma in beauty therapy.
Moving on to Glasgow to work in a successful salon where I studied a wee bit more, specialising in skin care and I did another college course to do make up artistry.
I moved back to Lewis because I developed a wee bit of homesickness in Glasgow, so I had to come back and the only way I could work was to set up my own business because there was only one other therapist working on the island and she was just working from a room in a local salon so really starting up my own business was the only way I could go.
Plenty of advice from my family, even though my father told me not to do it to start with, and I had plenty of advice from the local PSYBT here as well and some other local enterprises that told me what steps to take.
So really that's where I got started, what to do, with plenty of advice, but I think from working in a successful salon in Glasgow I got loads of ideas, knowing that that's the way I wanted to run a salon in Stornaway, and to be honest it was something new to be starting up a big salon in Stornaway
I wanted to bring a lot of things from what I'd learned in Glasgow and from the salon I'd worked in in Glasgow, I wanted to bring a lot of the treatments and products up to this island because they're all new and they were new treatments that people had never even heard about
I would say some of the first few obstacles that I faced when I was starting up Body & Sole was looking for suitable premises, at a good price as well, and one of the other obstacles would be trying to convince people that I was ready to set up my own business, firstly because of my age because I was still twenty, which is quite young for some people to realise that I was ready to do it.
The PSYBT told me the first things that I would have to do before I even started up the business was to do a business plan, which I'd never heard of before, I didn't even know what it was, so they took me through a step by step guide of how to do a business plan because this is what you use when in future you go to banks, things like that, for loans or any other kind of expensive expansions.
I had a wee bit of savings for myself I'd saved up about one and a half thousand pounds, and the local PSYBT helped me out as well with a two thousand pound loan and a thousand pound grant which went towards refurbishment of the new premises and buying some equipment which I needed to start me up and some products as well to start me off.
As soon as I opened the doors of Body & Sole we were busy from the start because there was another therapist on the island but just by herself. Because I'd taken some new treatments up to the island, some new products, people were inquisitive to find out what they were all about and it's just me myself having to market, do quite a lot of marketing, going around local businesses, local hairdressers, doing questionnaires with people as well, and when people would just come in for a browse into the shop I was always ready to tell them about new treatments, explain what they were and explain about products and things like that.
Because I had my father working with me, and he was already had his own business, a lot of his clients were coming in and then being inquisitive, asking him about things as well, so he played a big part in the starting up of the business and how it became so successful from the start.
I'm twenty five years old and I am in a good financial position, owning my own business, but er I have to Ð people have to realise that I do have a lot of high overheads compared to some of my friends who don't work for people, they get to take their income home with them where I have to sort out where it's all going to. But I don't regret it and I enjoy working for myself.
I'm excited for the future of Body & Sole because I can see it going down two very different paths. One of them being learning new treatments so I can provide these new treatments in the salon so our customers can experience what they can have done in mainland salons, I would like to see us going more into the teaching side of things as well related to beauty therapy.
There is a shortage of beauty therapists on the island of Lewis and at the moment we're trying to organise skill seekers, we would be the first salon on the island to be able to train beauty therapists.
I would advise young people who are wanting to start their own business to seek some advice from the local enterprises, there's - not to think that they have to leave their local small communities to start a business, there's plenty of communities who are interested in any kind of new business venture, whether it's small or large and you don't have to feel that you have to go to larger cities to become successful.
Obviously when you're running your own business the best thing is being your own boss because you can pick and choose your hours, things like that. But as well there's the satisfaction that you've worked hard to get where you are just now, and that works for me.
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