I started with nothing.
Literally nothing.

And it took me a long time.

I grew up in a rough area of Middlesbrough and I was brought up amongst it. Left school with no qualifications. Had my daughter at 18. Worked on the market, ran a cleaning business, tried everything.

I fell into hair extensions by accident. My first fitting took me five hours and I cried in the bathroom afterwards. The training I'd paid for hadn't shown me what to do when something went wrong, and on a real client something always does.

So it was hard. I muddled through and I took the shit.

I tried it all. Every method, every product, every way of doing it, until I'd worked out what actually holds up on a real head of hair and what doesn't. Nobody handed me that. I figured it out.

That's what I teach now. My way. Because it works.

What actually changed

I'm not going to lie, I spent years with a victim mentality. Then I started learning about bettering myself, got into self development, and realised how much potential I actually had instead of dwelling on the past and the crappy things going on in my life at the time.

That's why I've got no patience with excuses now. I know exactly why you're stuck. I'm just not going to let you stay there.

Then I went into education

I started teaching because I wanted money coming in from something other than standing behind the chair. That's the truth of it, and I'm not going to dress it up.

But I'm not going to lie, I was already talking about hair extensions and business all day long anyway. It's my favourite subject. I'd spent years and a stupid amount of money learning, researching and figuring things out, and I had all of this stuck in my head with nowhere to put it.

I was lonely with it, if I'm honest. I wanted more people to talk to who cared about it as much as I did.

So I started popping up in groups, answering questions, helping women work through whatever they were stuck on. And it clicked. Everything I'd taken years to work out the hard way could be somebody else's starting point.

That's still why I do it. It's not a thing I make myself post about. It's the thing I'd be talking about anyway.

Where I am now

Twelve years on I run an award-winning nine-room salon in Newcastle with a team of ten. My daughter works in it. I judge industry awards. I've trained over a thousand stylists, I run retreats, and I've built four methods of my own: Pro Mesh Method, Hair Top Parting System, Invisible Edge and Finest Weave.

I also still mix my words up, stutter when I'm excited and can't spell to save my life. I still talk with my northern accent and swear now and again.

Both of those things are true at once. That's the entire point.

I built this to teach the way I wish I'd been taught. Not to be slick and corporate. Not to sell you a "transformation". Just properly, on real clients, with someone you can actually message when you're stuck.