Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

“I’ve learned that peo­ple will for­get what you said, peo­ple will for­get what you did, but peo­ple will nev­er for­get how you made

them feel.”

~ Maya An­gelou

A quote that stands as the ethos of the busi­ness and echoed by the nu­mer­ous glow­ing tes­ti­monies from clients of Fari­da’s Lifestyle Sa­lon; a place of warm wel­comes, ex­cel­lent ser­vice and pro­fes­sion­al­ism au courant with in­ter­na­tion­al sa­lon stan­dards.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view with WE mag­a­zine, com­fort­ably sur­round­ed by the cheer­ful am­biance of the sa­lon, re­flect­ing on her ex­pan­sive ca­reer in the beau­ty in­dus­try, her au­ra is one that em­bod­ies pos­i­tiv­i­ty and promise. Fari­da En­nals-Ho­sein shared, “I start­ed from age 16, the days of no blow-dry­er or a curl­ing iron and the orig­i­nal tech­niques of roller set­ting and styling with brush­es and fin­gers were prac­tised. Mo­ti­vat­ed to start her own sa­lon at age 23 in Diego Mar­tin and then sub­se­quent­ly to West­mall.”

In 1988, En­nals-Ho­sein opened the doors of her sa­lon at the pre­miere West Mall Shop­ping Cen­tre (now called the Falls at West­mall). Since then, this busi­ness­woman ex­tra­or­di­naire and her team have copped many awards in the beau­ty and ser­vice in­dus­try, the most re­cent be­ing the 2022 Sa­lon Es­sen­tials In­spir­ing Sa­lon Brand Achieve­ment award.

Her win­ning for­mu­la is sim­ple: “serve the cus­tomer with dis­tinc­tion, make them feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed and leave them more con­fi­dent than they en­tered your sa­lon, and they will re­main loy­al.”

Her re­lent­less de­ter­mi­na­tion to pro­vide a se­cure fu­ture for her fam­i­ly, en­abled her strength to en­dure through the myr­i­ad of chal­lenges from crime, fi­nan­cial un­cer­tain­ties, even hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. A ma­jor ac­ci­dent left her with a frac­tured leg, arm and dif­fi­cul­ty in mo­bil­i­sa­tion, re­quir­ing months of phys­io­ther­a­py. She made a promise to God, “If you let me heal, I will nev­er say I am tired.” Heal she did and re­turned with re-in­vig­o­rat­ed pas­sion to be the best. “You are the back­bone of your busi­ness, but don’t let any­thing change who you are, per­se­vere and nev­er give up!”

Cre­ate with Lega­cy in Mind

The glam­orous En­nals-Ho­sein just cel­e­brat­ed her 70th birth­day, grew the busi­ness along­side nur­tur­ing her fam­i­ly. “My an­chors are my three sons, Dar­ryl En­nals, Reiza Ho­sein and Im­ran Ho­sein. Fam­i­ly is al­ways my fo­cus. In their younger days, I would en­sure every Sun­day, we en­gage in road trips, vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent parts of Trinidad and To­ba­go, cre­at­ing mean­ing­ful mem­o­ries. Then, my chil­dren kept me mo­ti­vat­ed to con­tin­ue de­spite any chal­lenges, they kept me go­ing, and now my grand­chil­dren!”

Nur­tur­ing her staff, en­sur­ing their train­ing is op­ti­mised is con­sid­ered para­mount by this beau­ty trend­set­ter. Over the years, in­ter­na­tion­al train­ers were in­vit­ed to fa­cil­i­tate work­shops at her sa­lon. En­nals-Ho­sein shared her ex­per­tise and time in train­ing hair­dressers, nail tech­ni­cians and aes­theti­cians. Hun­dreds of per­son­nel in the beau­ty in­dus­try would have been touched by her wis­dom, be it at the sa­lon or the Cos­me­tol­ogy School she pre­vi­ous­ly es­tab­lished. Sub­se­quent­ly, En­nals-Ho­sein stream­lined her ser­vices to – Fari­da’s Lifestyle Sa­lon and suc­cess­ful­ly ex­pand­ed the sa­lon’s foot­print in 2022 at C3 Cen­tre.

Her ad­vice to women en­tre­pre­neurs in cre­at­ing busi­ness­es?

“Cre­ate strate­gies with lega­cy in mind. Life brings chal­lenges on a dai­ly ba­sis and with these chal­lenges, we build our strength. As a woman, I un­der­stand the chal­lenges of car­ry­ing your fam­i­ly in your heart, which can be deemed our strength or our weak­ness – but al­so as women we have a ca­pa­bil­i­ty to com­part­men­tal­ize and push through. Keep fo­cus. And my favourite: wake-up ear­ly in the morn­ing and Plan your Day!”

The Win­ning For­mu­la for Ex­cel­lence

“In a ser­vice in­dus­try as com­pet­i­tive as the hair and beau­ty sec­tor, cre­at­ing the right im­pres­sion of your sa­lon is vi­tal. The very first time that a client steps in­to a sa­lon can be daunt­ing, es­pe­cial­ly if they are a new cus­tomer or have de­cid­ed to take the plunge and try some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent with their im­age. Whilst your client may feel anx­ious not know­ing what to ex­pect from your sa­lon, it is im­por­tant to put mea­sures in place to en­sure they feel com­plete­ly at ease and wel­comed in your sa­lon as soon as they step through the door.”

“It starts with the pow­er of body lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion…

* When your clients en­ter the sa­lon, try and en­sure that your front desk re­cep­tion­ist is the on­ly per­son be­hind the desk at any giv­en time. A group of peo­ple can be in­tim­i­dat­ing, and clients may not know who to ask for.

* En­cour­age your re­cep­tion­ist to be friend­ly by im­me­di­ate­ly greet­ing your client by their name with a warm hel­lo and a smile.

* Once the styl­ist or ther­a­pist has been no­ti­fied of their client’s ar­rival, it is al­so ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to up­date your client pro­fes­sion­al­ly if the styl­ist is be­hind sched­ule or will be over short­ly.

* Once your client is seat­ed, of­fer hos­pi­tal­i­ty such as re­fresh­ments and mag­a­zines. These sim­ple acts are ex­treme­ly ef­fec­tive in en­sur­ing that your client feels they have been giv­en an at­ten­tive ser­vice from the off­set.

* Clients will al­so be in con­tact with many items such as tow­els, gowns and brush­es. All of these items must be main­tained to a high stan­dard of hy­giene, en­sur­ing your clients feel your at­ten­tion to de­tail.

* And when it is time to leave, make sure that your clients are giv­en a warm good­bye and that they know you are look­ing for­ward to see­ing them again.

“Client loy­al­ty is a huge fac­tor in main­tain­ing a suc­cess­ful sa­lon busi­ness, so don’t let clients leave with­out a sin­cere com­pli­ment, per­haps on the treat­ment they have re­ceived such as a blow dry or man­i­cure. En­sure that the at­mos­phere is right and that each and every staff mem­ber is at­ten­tive, and you will have the win­ning for­mu­la to mak­ing clients feel wel­come and re­turn to your sa­lon time and time again!”

Face­book: Fari­da’s Lifestyle Sa­lon

IG: @fari­daslifestyle­sa­lon

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What­sapp: 759-6674

West­mall: 637-6648 | C3 Mall 610-6648