If you have recently decided to take better care of yourself, then self-care Sunday is a great place to start. It is typically more of a relaxing day where we have more time to tend to ourself.

Here are some simple ideas for your self-care Sunday

If you take part in self-care Sunday for a few weeks you will start to feel the benefit and hopefully that will give you the momentum to continue and may even to integrate more self-care into your everyday life.

Without regular and consistent self-care, your physical, emotional and mental health will start to deteriorate and you may experience:

• Physical ill health
• Lowered immunity which will make you more susceptible to catching infections
• Weight loss or gain
• Loss of physical fitness
• Stress symptoms e.g. physical tension, recurring headaches, emotional tension, irritability, anger, brain fog, lack of focus, digestive upsets
• Insomnia or disrupted sleep
• Mental and emotional imbalances such as low mood, anxiety, anger and irritability
• Lack of physical energy

If you can slowly start to integrate regular self-care activities into your everyday routine, you will definitely start to see improvements in your physical, mental and emotional health.  It is wise to choose activities that you know that enjoy, that you can keep up with and that will fit into your routine.

For example, this is my basic everyday self-care routine

• I eat healthy, nourishing food about 80% of the time and indulge in cakes, chocolate and crisps the other 20% of the time!
• I do some form of exercise at least 5 days a week: walking in the park, yoga, afro-beats aerobics, power walking videos.  As I am busy, I prefer to do 2 or 3 x 15 mins online videos in the morning, lunchtime or evening and a long walk at least once a week.
• I diffuse essential oils throughout the day either to relax, energise or to purify my work space
• I release what is going on internally, i.e. my thoughts and feelings by journalling and by talking to people that I trust
• I stop watching, listening to or reading the news if it starts to increase my anxiety too much
• I turn my mobile onto "do not disturb" at least 1 hr before bedtime, I sometimes do 15 mins bedtime yoga and diffuse relaxing essential oils
• I love taking care of my skin, so I do have a twice daily skincare routine and do a full facial once every 2 weeks.

This is what works for me, what I enjoy and it fits into my everyday life to the point that is almost now habitual.  So I encourage you to do the same.

If you are interested in learning more about Self-Care, I have a number of products and services available

Self Care E-books e.g. aromatherapy, ayurveda, skin care etc

Self-Care Online courses - my signature holistic self-care online course, introduction to aromatherapy, 28 day stress management challenge and more

If you would like to download my FREE introduction to self-care guide which also includes a self-care action plan template, you can do so here. 

Until next time

Zoe

x 

It is an exciting yet daunting time for newly qualified beauty or holistic therapists when they start up their own business.  Whilst many beauty and holistic training courses provide knowledge and skills to safely provide treatments, there is often a lack of information about the exact steps you need to take to start up your own beauty business.

With the right guidance and information from a business mentor, the start-up phase can be made a lot more enjoyable and easy.  Typically, your mentor will provide you with a clear road map, of what you will need to do to get from where you are now, to where you want to be and what decisions and steps you will need to make and take.

Typically your beauty business start up mentor will provide you with information and guide you to figure out your action plan and action steps.  There is an emphasis on personal reponsibility, your mentor will not do the work for you, but will be by your side every step of the way.  The types of areas of your new business that you will explore and work on will be:

• Business Vision and Business Plan for your 1st year of trading
• Start Up Costs
• Start Up Funding and budget
• Health and Safety Policy and Procedures
• Data protection Procedures
• Terms and Conditions for the provision of treatments 
• Legal structure e.g. sole trader, limited company
• Marketing plan 
• Financial systems
• Choosing premises 
• Employing Staff (where applicable)

Ideally your beauty business mentor should be someone who has had or still has direct experience of working withing the holistic or beauty industry, that way you have direct access to their years of knowledge, skills and experience.

Will a Business Mentor tell me what to do? 

No. Your mentor will provide you with the information that you need in terms of the steps that you need to take to get from A to Z, but will not make any decisions for you. So for example, your mentor will not tell you to use Facebook for your online marketing, they will advise you of your options available for online marketing but ultimately you will make the choice.

Who needs a Beauty Business Start-Up Mentor?

Typically a business start-up mentor is for anyone who is newly qualified in beauty or holistic therapies, may have lots of work experience, knowledge and skills from being an employee, but who has no experience of running their own business.

How long will I need a Mentor for?

This depends on each invdividual, what previous work experience they have, how quickly they can work through each action step  in their start-up plan and what support they have available to them. 

Ordinarily a business mentor will work with a newly qualified therapist for 12 weeks and in some cases for up to the end of their first year of trading.

1. They will provide you with information
2. Help you to create your action plan
3. You will then get on with your action steps & be able to reach out to them if you need to
4. Have check in calls with your mentor every 1 to 2 weeks.

If you are interested in learning more about Beauty Business Mentoring, I will be launching my program in Spring 2022 and as the program will be run online and via live video coaching calls, it will be open to all newly qualified therapists who are based within the UK.

If you would like to learn more about the program and receive a FREE Business plan template, please sign up here.  Alternatively you can drop me a line on Zoe [email protected] or call me on 07903 162041

Until next time

Zoe

x