And so it begins - the new year with a new way of working, a new way of living and a little new way of thinking as well. Here we go :)
Premiere for the new salon!
It feels so strange to say nya the salon, for me it is the old salon because that was where I started working with Annika 4 years ago now :) Anyway, we opened the doors to our new old salon this Wednesday!
What a hell of a mess it was before we got everything in place! Furniture, drawers and sacks with gadgets. It felt almost hopeless there for a while :)
We took the last customers in the old premises on New Year's Eve so it was only on New Year's Day that we could move "for real" and then Miska and I drove from early morning to late evening to get the last thing in place. Pjuh!
So nice when we could finally put up this note and change all customers' booking text messages to "WE HAVE MOVED" :)
Very good not to move so far, if any customer goes to the wrong place, it is just further down the same street. Google says 2 minutes, but it takes about 30 seconds if you do not get caught in a red light.
Kl. 08.00 on the 2nd of January we finally opened and even though there was still a lot of work left, we had come far enough to be able to take customers :) Here I am, picking up eye shadows for sale.
I will take pictures of what the salon looks like and show you, but I want to get a little more stuff in place first. The walls are completely impossible to screw in (although we have a percussion drill) so we have to borrow a real worsting drill from a carpenter to get the last one up. So there are a lot now that are different types of emergency solutions :) More fun to show pictures when everything is ready!
One of the things that has not been finished yet is to put up a logo and stuff in our shop windows. All other companies also have holidays over Christmas so it takes some time. So we have put up some makeshift signs just for people to see what kind of business is in there.
But I fixed this screen in the shop window this week and it turned out great! Sitting right next to the door.
In the shop window next to it, you can see our screen in the waiting corner as well :) So you can see some pictures of our treatments.
Waking up from the police & luck in bad luck
On the night of January 2, we woke up around three o'clock when Annika's mother called and said "the police have been with you and knocked, but Annika does not open".
Annika slept with earplugs because it was a storm outside and we sleep in the guesthouse.
On January 1, we moved everything important from the old premises, the cash register, the computers and sales products. That same night, just hours later, the storm shattered one of our large shop windows, which broke completely!
We did not have to unlock when we arrived late in the morning, just to crawl straight into the waiting room haha.
We do not know exactly how it happened but the glass windows are very leaky and rattle as soon as a bus passes by so we think that the storm simply caused it to burst.
Had this happened a day earlier, it would have been extremely much harder, because then we would have had greater concern about the valuables in there and had to go in immediately. Now we could fall asleep again and grab it the next day instead. Had it happened two or more days earlier, we would have had a lot of problems because then we would have customers in there and it was as cold inside as outside!
We are grateful that the "right date" took place, how big are the odds that we will move the daybefore? But this is still something we really do not need right now when we have double rents, increased employees' working hours (higher wage costs) and renovation costs with the new premises. In addition, January is not the most booked month either if you say so…
We rent this room until March 14 (due to such a long notice period) so it is still us who have to fix a new window.
But there is not much to do about it! :) The insurance company has been accommodating and hopefully we only need to pay deductible, but we do not know that to 100% yet.
The sign on me that sat in the shop window went in several pieces and blew around the streets. What a brutal sight haha!
"New Year's resolutions" 2019
I have no definite New Year's promises, but the two things that I feel I should think extra hard about in the coming year are:
1. I have never been a person who has had a hard time trusting people, on the contrary, I usually am for gullible and blue-eyed. But being gullible is a quality that more often does good than harm and me wants be a person who trusts people. But in the last 2.5 years, several people have made me have to think the thought "well, so much was our relationship worth to you…" and now it feels like nothing will shock me anymore, people will continue to change personality on a flick of the hand and even though I just give and give and give, it's not worth anything in the end. Maybe I should feel better about becoming selfish myself too and never take shit again, stop biting to avoid trouble, just think about my own and never fully trust anyone. BUT I really do not want to think so! 2019 I will really fight to feel trust in people again :)
2. My health. It is partly about things that make me feel good inside, hang out with people who make me laugh, have an inner peace and feel free. But also physically to take care of my body, I have been sick so much in 2018. It sounds cliché to have a health theme as a New Year's resolution but it is the first year that it really feels relevant to me :)
Here I melt tin on New Year's Eve to predict what 2019 will be like!
LOTS of computer jobs, reports and numbers
This Thursday + all weekend, I work from home with all the work I am behind with now that I have spent all my time on the move.
We have lots to change on the website and booking system, many treatments and products to remove. We will set new key figures and budget for 2019 because there are so many changes now and all statistics for 2018 will be checked.
My to-do list is so long that it no longer fits in my calendar (which is my regular system) but I can have a list on the side as well :)
I end the week with a warm feeling in my body. Two of the makeup artists have had a holiday this week as well, but the other two have run on Wednesday-Saturday and they are so happy with the new salon! It makes me so heavenly happy!
Zahra, who finished at 2 pm on her first day of work at the new place, hung on for another 20 minutes and said "I do not want to go home it is so cozy here !!”Haha :) That's exactly how you want a workplace to feel!
Next week I will get my long to-do list in order and get to the last thing at the salon, then there will be a little more peace of mind :)
Wish you a fantastic Sunday and hope you have a good start to the new year ♥
Yellow eye shadow at the bottom of the lower lash line, Paese Neo Eyeshadow (662)
Orange eye shadow in the globe line, Paese Neo Eyeshadow (663) Turquoise eye shadowfrom the outer lash line and outwards
Then yellow eye shadow over the orange and under the turquoise Black eyeliner along the waterline and the upper lash line, Pixi Endless Silky Eye Pen (Black Noir)
I myself spend New Year's Eve at our new salon which will be ready for opening on January 2 and at the moment it is chaos here haha. So we have to do today and tomorrow!
In 3 days we will open the doors for the new salon and right now it's CHAOS in there haha! Stuff everywhere and a thousand things to be fixed, but we have a plan and with a little teamwork on it, we will row this ashore!
Today I take a home day and start with coffee in bed and write an annual summary for 2018 that comes here! Then I will take on a lot of other computer work. I can rest in 2019;) now it's the final sprint that counts!
Statistics
Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and then we can finally print out the last reports and summarize the year! I'm a real statistics nerd and love to compare curves and analyze the fluctuations.
I took a look at the blog as well and I have written 260 new blog posts during the year, it's not that bad!
Here I sit last January and summarize the statistics, 2019 will probably start in the same way;)
But already now I have with the help of the booking system summarized all our bookings in 2018 :)
Not bad! If a person alone had taken all the bookings, the year would not have been enough, because then the person would have had to work 24 hours a day for 384.5 days;)
Improvements to the website & webshop
This year I have worked a lot with the "information bank" on our website to make it as lively, inspiring and informative as possible for all customers!
Among other things, we did a major restructuring of permanent makeup with price classes, names and clarifications. Here you see an edited image that illustrates 6 different ways to tattoo the lips. The lip model we took is my niece Meja, then 10 years old haha :)
I have also made lots of new ones beauty guides posts related to the webshop, how to use the products and lots of inspiration!
There are also some videos among my beauty guides! Here I sit and edit at home at the kitchen table.
All news in the webshop is photographed with swatch images and information. A lot of work to launch a new product, but it's worth it! :)
Here I blogged about my skincare routine :)
Continued collaboration with Disruptive Materials
I have not worked quite as much this year with the material Upsalite and the company Disruptive Materials as last year, but still a lot! I have been there and put on make-up several times, been there for information evenings for investors and partners and done a lot of consulting work as well.
Upsalite is not only good in beauty products for oily skin but also in other products that they describe here on the board :) Make sense right?
In their presentation about makeup, they use one of my pictures that I photographed for them :)
Product geekiness at lab level is the most fun !!
After a consultant meeting another day, I got this as a thank you for everything I have helped them with, so goa ♥
Whether there will be continued collaboration with Distruptive Materials next year or not, I do not know at present :)
Improvements & changes at the salon
Every year there are a lot of changes, Annika has a new apprentice, Olga, who has developed a lot and is now almost self-employed. Our barber Niclas was new at the beginning of the year and now he is quitting with our move. When our makeup artist and teeth whitening Ämma was on long-term sick leave, we hired Mia who took over the teeth whitening, but now she has also stopped with us and we put the teeth whitening on the shelf completely due to changes in the law. Our tenant Helene who does massages, carboxy etc. also does not come to the new premises. And just that we have a new room!
So it is the three of us who own the company + 4 more makeup artists who will start 2019 in the new premises. We have developed the salon a lot in recent years with various treatments and practitioners but will now focus only on our core business: makeup, lashes, eyebrows, products and permanent makeup tattoos! :) Keep it simple!
Biggest changes of all - Annika's baby in the womb !! So when she sent this text, Miska and I thought she had gone crazy first, new co-owner haha!
We have had 22 staff meetings in 2018! Each always lists at least 10 points with things we can improve / focus on before the next meeting, so I have not counted but at least 220 different improvements have been made and contributed to our positive development :) Good job!
The world's best team when we invited them to sushi :)
Olga became Annika's new apprentice at the beginning of 2018! Here I am the test person when she tests lip tattoo before she started on real clients. She's super talented!
We have received a lot of news as well, among other things, Pixi has launched more colors on H2O Skintint and Pat Away Concealing Base, which I am here displaying on store shelves.
We have also been good at publishing campaigns and making our own pictures, here we take Easter pictures with the help of Annika's new chickens :)
Here is cute Hercules who today is such a big rooster that I got a shock from this picture haha!
I took this promotional photo for our barber too!
We have also spent a lot of time developing within the hair care brand Hårologi. Several of the staff have attended the training and me and our barber were on a continuation course in Gävle. In addition, I did a great job of teaching all the new knowledge to the other staff and rehearsing what they have already learned, Hairology is not like any brand but it requires an incredible amount of knowledge about the hair to recommend the right products to each person.
However, we did all this a little unnecessarily because you have to have a hairdresser on site to sell Hairology, and now that Niclas is leaving us, we do not have it. So despite the fact that all makeup artists are very good and we often get praise from Hårologi for how much we sell and are seen on social media, we still have to stop selling the products. So boring!
Say an empty salon in Uppsala and I know about it haha, so it feels like the huge search for a new room! We have emailed and checked several pieces and one we were so sure that we even planned the entire division of the rooms to email in what adjustments we wanted to make before moving in.
Shit how big it feels now when we finally decided to move back to our old premises that Annika still owns, it is about 150 sqm smaller than this drawing.
When we looked at another room, we needed protective equipment because it was counted as a construction site during the renovation and then there are strict rules :)
But finally the day finally came when the decision was made and we set our teeth on renovating the new premises!
Oh what we will be happy with the relocation this summer, our current salon is always roasting in the summers so now that the heat wave came it was not gracious! Here I sit at home after work and cool off in the bathtub which is half full with cool water haha.
Four trips!
How amazing is it that I have been to 4 different countries this year? Around New Year's I always write what I think will happen in the coming year and then I believed in one travel, could never have dreamed of the whole four pieces :)
The first trip was Mexico, here I sit and go through my mail with tropical forest outside the window ♥ Mexico was our first long trip since we started the salon, 2 weeks we were away and I had sooo much to prepare before we could go. We had not come that far with the whole self-propelled salon piece by then.
The best thing about owning a salon - before you go abroad you can make yourself nice without even leaving work;) Here Annika had just filled in my bright highlighter around the lips (becomes less marked after healing) and here Olga sits and does lashlift and lash color on my eyelashes!
Trip no. 2 was a business trip to Milan! Annika and I went to a fair for permanent makeup with the brand Biotek.
The fair consisted of lectures, live demos and workshops and I learned a lot! More than Annika of course because she has been doing permanent makeup for 12 years now, but she also picked up different ideas :)
I never get tired of beautiful eyebrows!
Trip number 3 was a road trip in southern Spain where we rented a car and lived in a total of 9 different places. So magical, I get warm in my heart every time I think back. No stress, fantastic places and to be able to hang out with Miska 24/7 for 16 days without talking about jobs and musts. Oh what this was useful to me!
No. 4: Greece with mixed work and vacation when the three of us who own the company went away for a week! In the picture you see the cat I fell in love with, still missing ♥
It is important not only to have time for short small meetings with each other where you only have time to talk about the most important things, but also to have time to get on side tracks, inspiration and future plans :) I am so lucky to run a company with Miska and Annika !
Health
I have never been sick as much as this year, except that I stayed healthy in September (when we were in Spain most of the month and felt good, I think it matters) I have had a fever every month since March and fever + sore throat every month since June (or white dots in the throat and swollen tonsils in any case).
I'm at the health center waiting for a blood test.
It's so incredibly stressful to be sick! I have my own company and can not be home one week a month 9 months a year, it just does not work. Then it's lucky that you can put on healthy make-up;)
Events!
I do not go to as many events at all anymore as I did before, but there have been a few at least :)
Above all, we had our own summer event in May! I made this invitation in photoshop.
We summer decorated the whole salon with artificial grass, plastic plants and flowers!
Everyone who came got a wreath to wear so all the guests walked around as summer decorations in the salon too haha.
We also made a photo wall where the guests could take selfies, the balloons stayed nice for a very long time so this student make-up that I did a week later took the opportunity to take a picture there before their big day! :)
More pictures and info about our summer event I wrote about in this post!
Here I was at an event with NYX and hung out with Camilla Söderlund from Beauty and Bullshit!
When Therese Lindgren launched her skin care brand, I was invited to a press breakfast and was very attached to their values, which are reminiscent of our company, that beauty is wellness. They had also done a lot of research on this which I thought was very fascinating! How many actually feel better on the inside of taking care of their outside.
Here is another event that we held at the salon, but with more companies that were in place :) Incredibly successful!
New make-up brand on g!
Annika and I have an idea for a new make-up brand that we have finally started to get hold of this year. First I did a lot of work to fix a business plan to email to different factories / manufacturers and now I am in the middle of trying different tests and discussing different possibilities. It's moving forward!
Here I sat and fiddled with the business plan :)
Summary
At the beginning of the year, we were still thinking very big in terms of development. More staff, move to another large room and launch new treatments!
Then the changes started to germinate during the summer and after a lot of inner stress (both privately and professionally) we decided to keep it simple and at our kickoff in September we presented our new goal picture with changes in development.
So the last part of the year has consisted of relocation, renovation and focus on the core business, which is treatments and web shop and a simpler salon with less space and changed schedules. The whole autumn was preparation and the winter was like pulling off a patch! And so we moved privately at the same time as well, why not take the opportunity to stress a little more when you are doing it;)
Me on our 3rd kickoff with the company!
What happens in 2019 then?
Feeling of freedom - 2019 is the year when I will feel free! You never know what will happen but in recent years it has been easier to predict as we have been more stuck in the salon and I have renovated and done things in my house etc. Now, however, both of these things have changed as in a jiffy and so soon new the salon is up and running and the papers are finished with the house move, the feeling of freedom will kick in. I own nothing, I have no loans and my company runs on safely even if I work on other projects or take vacations.
Own make-up brand - In 2019, our make-up brand will either be kicked off for real, with the development of the first range and investors and retailers - or we will put this idea that we have had on the wallpaper for 3 years now. We want to drive big or not at all and since it is not a standard concept and many things have to work, you can not know for sure that everything will lock :) But right now we are working on as if it is obvious that it will work - you have to have that attitude!
What do I want? - For the first time in a long time, I do not have a clear plan in front of me about what will happen, but I really have to think about what I want to do. Right now, both Miska and I want to get away from everything for a while and do research on a road trip trip in Central America, like along the coast Mexico - Belize - Guatemala - Honduras! Meet adventurous people and as Miska said "solve real problems instead of all the inventions we have right now" haha. This will be next autumn maybe, we must first get the new salon on its feet and the summer in Sweden is really nice!
New salon - Just because we change premises and change schedules / structure to make the salon more self-sufficient does not mean that I will stop with that company completely, realized that it might sound like that;) Our makeup artist Lisa will be on maternity leave and we have found a potential replacement to get started, holiday schedules to be fixed (and maybe change the opening hours during the summer) and I will continue to take my regular customers and fix with products and the webshop! But more work with everything that can be fixed remotely as I no longer have an office at the salon.
Health - I will also take proper care of my health. Away with all the energy thieves and negative people and then I will start training again, which I have barely done at all for several years. I have not eaten meat and poultry in 1.5 years and I will continue to do so :)
A slightly fitting picture anyway;) The last 2 years have in many ways been a struggle for my psyche, but unexpected problems lead to unexpected solutions and lead life in a direction you otherwise would not have taken - and with the result in hand, it always happens. better!
Many thanks to all of you who followed me during the year, hope you continue with it next year as well :) ♥ It will be exciting to see what 2019 has to offer!
Purple-pink eyeshadow smoked under the eye and as a small spike in the corner of the eye, and then a little more yellow shadow under the "spike" in the corner of the eye
Gold glitter in the corner of the eye + above and below the eyeliner, Pixi Liquid Fairy Lights (SunRay)
Black eyeshadow a little on the eyeliner wing and at the end of the lower lash line for a little more depth in the make-up, Paese Kashmir eyeshadow (662)
Black mascara on all lashes, Magnetic lash mascara
Just wanted to peek in here and wish you all a really nice Christmas Eve! ♥
I myself should have it so cozy and nice! I go all in with a red dress, a fire in the living room and Christmas music in the whole house :) We have bought some vegetarian meatballs, egg halves, beetroot salad and sweets but keep everything very simple and just have to do things, cuddle in front of the fire and hang out with each other. I love Christmas and a Christmas feeling in my body and a wonderful atmosphere around me is the best there is ♥
Last year, I stood in the kitchen almost all Christmas Eve, preparing, cooking, washing dishes and running around and picking after everyone. I probably had a little too much "good girl-think". But that was the last time I felt then, you have to find a way to celebrate where it's less about work and fix and more about hanging out and playing with the kids :) You have enough stress in life anyway.
Think about it all, help each other and just enjoy and have fun! :)
Kisses & kraaaaam and have an incredibly nice Christmas! ♥
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