How to Become a Self Employed, Mobile Beauty Therapist

You may also find our page on Completing Your Self Assessment Tax Return for Beauticians and How to Become a Freelance Hairdresser helpful.

Becoming a self-employed, mobile beauty therapist is a popular way of gaining more freedom within your career. You have the opportunity to work where you want, to charge what you want, and to choose your own working hours.  Although you will require some specialist equipment, overheads are often substantially lower than working in a salon.

Carry out some market research before you set up. This will help you gauge your competition, and see what they are charging, treatments they offer, and how to make yourself stand out from other therapists.

Qualifications to Become a Beauty Therapist

To practice as a beauty therapist, you will need to have the appropriate qualifications, usually an NVQ level 3, or a CIDESCO or CIBTAC certificate.  If you are not already qualified it may be worth researching fulltime, part time or evening courses, designed especially for newcomers to the beauty industry.

The more specialist trained you are the easier it is to increase your daily/hourly rate. These courses can be expensive though they can pay for themselves on completion. There are also shorter and daily courses run such as human biology, health and safety, and how to run your own business.

When choosing a college, preferably you should choose a City and Guilds Centre (CGC), as student you would receive an internationally accredited qualification. This means you can work in the beauty industry without any further qualifications because as a graduate you will be fully prepared. On a city and Guilds course you should expect to cover areas such as:

• Safety and Hygiene
• Client preparation
• Client Consultation and record keeping
• Anatomy and physiology
• Ethics
• Treatment contraindications
• Equipment and products

Going Freelance as a Beauty Therapist

If you are planning to work on a mobile basis, you need to make sure you have the correct equipment. It may be worth investing in a trolley on wheels to transport your kit, and many therapists have portable couches or nail stations. A spacious and reliable car is also a must.  Make sure that all start up, and ongoing, costs have been accounted for, and work out how many treatments you will need to carry out per week to cover yourself. 

It is essential to consider insurance when you set up, and organisations such as BABTAC, are a good place to start.  Take time to shop around for the best deals, as some policies come with benefits such as free marketing.

Finding work as Freelance Beautician

A strong client base is one of the most important elements of being a freelancer.  A good way to start this would be offer treatments to family and friends at a discounted rate. Introductory offers, along with good customer service will soon spread by word of mouth.

Promoting yourself is also a great way to get new clients, and an invaluable way of getting your business name known.  Business cards, door to door flyers, and a website are all ways of gaining business. Facebook, twitter and other social networking platforms are also useful for letting any existing, or potential customers, aware of upcoming offers or new treatments you may be offering.

Here are some suggestions on how to market yourself:

1. Setup a website. It only needs to be simple you don’t need to be an HTML expert. Websites such as Webs will make it a walk in a park for you. The website needs to be information rich about the services you offer, a price list, the areas you cover and contact details.
2. Place an advert in your local newspapers this can be very affective as it targets your specific areas, in addition usually newspapers have a website you can advertise on too. Often when you buy space on one you they offer you space on both.
3. Place an advert in local shops, local newsagents etc, usually have a space for adverts in their windows – these can be cheap and run week by week, giving you the advantage of removing them whenever you feel like.
4. Advertise on Gumtree, This is free! Gumtree has a specialist section for beauticians, to make your advert stand out you could offer discount on your first treatment on do a bundle of different treatments for a set price.
5. Use Wahanda, you can set a profile up for free and advertise your services. Previous clients can also review your services, helping build trust in your brand.  In addition you will have your own unique Wahanda blog, which is useful in building up your profile.

Having made the decision to give it a go, whether full or part time and whether to set up as a sole trader or limited company, you’re going to need a wide range of tax and accountancy advice and support in the early days when setting up as a freelancer.

The most daunting thing about going freelancing for most people is the thought of having to engage with an accountant. At first glance it’s easy, you go down to your local high street accountant who quotes you anything from £250 - £600 plus VAT to do your end of year accounts for you.

This sounds great, however what happens if you want to speak to your accountant for advice throughout the year on things like:

• Expenses
• Tax allowances
• Take home pay
• How much you should put aside for your tax bill
• Should you register for the Flat Rate VAT scheme
• Would going limited be beneficial
• Can I do work other than project management through my business
• If you have a life plan and wish to go travelling what’s the most tax efficient way to run your business.

Each time you pick up the phone it is likely you will get charged, in fact every time your accountant sends you a letter you may charged and you may even get charged if you call to query your invoice! So by the end of the year you could easily be looking at a bill of over £1,000. 

You may also find our page on Completing Your Self Assessment Tax Return for Beauticians and How to Become a Freelance Hairdresser helpful.