Case studies
Lisa Shepherd Salons
For a Midlands girl who once dreamed of working with horses, Lisa Shepherd has come a long way. Established as part of UK hairdressing royalty, she’s an award-winning stylist and colour specialist, founder of Lisa Shepherd Salons and a familiar face to millions of viewers as part of Channel 4’s Ten Years Younger expert team.
With three salons already, in Birmingham, Kidderminster and Sutton Coldfield, Lisa has her sights set on the future. With salons in London and Nottingham, a hair care product line and accessories are all due to come on stream in 2009, it comes as no surprise that Lisa says: "I feel very lucky to have found what I was good at."
Lisa brings years of experience to her business – for 18 years, she was right-hand woman to the late Umberto Giannini as he built his own hairdressing empire – but she’s also great believer in surrounding herself with the right advisers. That’s why she values the role ags has played in developing Lisa Shepherd Salons since she launched the company in 2002.
Umberto’s tragically early death in 2001 led Lisa to decide the time had come “to stand on my own two feet” by going into business on her own. She’s careful about the people she works with, but after ags was recommended by several people she trusted, and meeting ags director Steve Aston, she very quickly felt he understood her vision for what she wanted to achieve.
Lisa admits finance is not her strong point – "I get it, but I have to work at it and I won’t move forward until I do," she says – so she appreciated the ags approach of putting complex issues into plain language as the firm held her hand through the early years of the business, supporting her with services including management accounts and payroll, alongside business advice.
A couple of years ago, when she felt it was time to move the business further forward, she started working with Laura Williams whom Lisa says has effectively become her business mentor.
Lisa says: "The hardest part was opening up the franchise side. The financial set-up and core of the business have to be absolutely rock solid, so that they can effectively be boxed up and dropped into another business very easily – if the set-up isn’t right, how can you franchise it?"
With Laura’s expert help, the business has been successfully "boxed", with Sutton Coldfield the first franchise and London and Nottingham soon to follow. With the future looking bright, Lisa says: "I have surrounded myself with the right people – a brilliant solicitor, brilliant PR firm and a brilliant accountant – and I genuinely believe the business wouldn’t be where it is today without ags."