After ten years as a stylist I've just opened my own salon. Its been open  6 months and already I've had a lousy landlord who wont fix things the right way, unmotivated stylists and just this weekend my window has been busted out!!! I was soo excited at first and now I'm already closed to calling it quits. It it just the beginning that is the hardest or what? I can't seem to get anyone interested in continued education although at the beginning they were or at least said  they were. I have so much passion and  want everyone at my salon to share the benefits of a great career. I have bought my ticket to Redken Symposium in hoped of boosting my morale back up to what it should be..Help..any advise for a new owner with a streak of bad luck?

Breathe and take it one day at a time!  Focus that it will get better it is just going to take a while.  And don't expect to keep the stylists you start with.  People are not always what they seem to be.  I have been going through this for over a year now with money issues, clientele issues, and employee issues from day one.  The one day at a time thing is the best cause looking too far in the future can be disappointing at times.  I wish you the best of luck!

By the way my salon will be at symposium this year too.  My stylist isn't excited but I am forcing her to be!

I feel your pain, I really do.....my first year as an owner was very trying, but with patience and persistance, I got through it and so can you.  It helped me to look at the big picture and not let all the small things stress me out.   Education for myself and the stylists was mandatory, no choice, and I stressed to them that the salon was paying for it and the transportation, accommodations etc and that amounted to a considerable investment per stylist per class.  This worked on most of my stylists when they realized how much money I was spending on them to better their careers.  As far as motivatiion is concerned, I used weekly goals and sat down with each stylist on saturday afternoons, just for a few minutes and praised them on meeting their goals or counseled them on why their goals were not achieved the prior week.  Those who met their goals recieved praise and a small token of appreciation like a free movie pass or free lunch the next week; those who didn't had to go through a sales demonstration on how to sell me the products that they couldn't sell the clients.  I am a tough sell, and offered feedback on what to do and not do to improve their sales success.  I saw improvement most of the time, the ones who didn't improve usually had underlying attitude issues and I let them go and contacted the newspaper immediatel and found better people. 

Overall, I offer you the advice to stand your ground, stick it out and I promise it will get better.  The first year is the worst, you learn all the hard lessons then, and by year two you are much better prepared to deal with whatever comes your way all the while savoring your success.