Cheryl Welsh, Beauty Therapist extraordinaire

When I was about 13 I had acne and mum took me to our local beauty therapist to get treatments. She was this tall, beautiful woman with gorgeous skin and made me feel amazing and so that is where it started. I left school at the end of 6th form to study and I’ve been a therapist ever since.

Now I’m running Exhibit Beauty with a wonderful team of women. We’ve been going for over 20 years.

There have been twists and turns along the way, like that first place I ever went at age 13 was the first clinic I ended up buying, 15years later!

I’d come back from London and knew I wanted to buy a business rather than work for someone else. I had a vision for the type of clinic I wanted to run and the type of experience I wanted to create for my clients. But that first business didn’t work out. 

I was told “never go into a partnership”.  But I ignored the advice, did it anyway and I learned the hard way! We were young and we butted heads. My partner’s idea of our future wasn’t what I wanted.  She wanted us to be big and have lots of clinics and I wanted us to be small and boutique.

The thing is, I lost my father when I was young. He had multiple businesses and in lots of peoples’ eyes was really successful. But he didn’t get to spend a lot of time with us. And then he was gone.  It totally shaped what I wanted for myself.

And I’m still glad today that I’ve kept true to staying small.  Everyone has always said you should open another and open another but I think you give too much of yourself, and money is not that important to me.  

What I love so much about my job is doing the treatments. I always have.  So now I’ve created a business where we all work like it's our own. I’m in there working as a therapist as much as the girl next door and she will order products and deal with reps as much as I do. It’s just evolved that way. I took my hand off the driving wheel and now my team feel like my partners but in a totally different way.

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