Everyone's starting a side business right now. A product, a brand, a little something on the side that might just take off. Acacia actually did it. She and her partner built PuraU, a natural skincare and gut brand, out of her own years of struggling with acne. And in this episode she tells the real story, not the highlight reel.

It started with her own skin. Years of the pill, antibiotics, Accutane, naturopaths she could barely afford, and nothing that lasted. So she set out to build the thing she wished she'd had. What she's honest about is everything that came after. They launched to crickets and didn't make a sale for two weeks. They cold called journalists themselves when the expensive PR agency did nothing. It took three years before the business turned a profit, and three years before they paid themselves a wage.

If you've ever sat on an idea waiting until you had enough money, or felt behind watching everyone else online look like an overnight success, this one will land. Acacia is proof that the unglamorous version is the real one, and that the people who make it are simply the ones who stick it out.

What we cover

• Building PuraU from Acacia's own years of acne and trying everything
• Launching the website and not making a single sale for two weeks
• Cold calling journalists herself instead of paying a PR agency
• Why a great product means nothing if nobody can find it
• Learning Facebook ads herself to stop relying on one off PR spikes
• The three years it took before breaking through, making a profit, or paying themselves
• Comparison, social media, and the false reality of replacing your income in four weeks
• Knowing your customer because you were your customer
• Pushing into chemists and skin clinics, and the setbacks that nearly broke them

She built it from nothing, on persistence not luck, and she's only just getting started.

You'll find the whole range at purau.com.au, plus there's a quick skin quiz to find your own starting point.

FAQs

How long does it really take to build a successful business?

For Acacia and PuraU it took three years before the business made a profit or paid them a wage. The overnight success stories you see online usually hide years of work that happened before the launch.

Do you need money and business experience to start a brand?

Acacia was a nurse with no business background and sold her car to help fund the brand. What carried them was resilience and a willingness to learn each part themselves rather than pay someone else to do it.

What is PuraU?

PuraU is an Australian made skincare and gut health brand, formulated with microbiologists to treat the root cause of acne rather than the surface. It was created by Acacia and her partner out of their own experience with skin and gut issues.

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.salonrising.com

💖 Celebrating Our Podcast Partner – Christophe Robin, proudly distributed by McM Imports

We’ve partnered with Christophe Robin and MCM Imports to bring you something beautiful:

➡ Experience the Christophe Robin Discovery Box — curated by pro ambassador Monique McMahon.

➡ Inside, you’ll find her handpicked favourites — the hero products she swears by in the salon.

It’s your invitation to explore the range and discover why Christophe Robin has become a quiet obsession among stylists who know their craft.

Click the link below to request your FREE Christophe Robin Discovery Box, exclusively through McM Imports. 👇

MCM

💛 A Limited Time Offer From Our Amazing Sponsor, Timely 💛

➡ Timely is the easy to use booking and payments system that puts salon owners in control of the whole client experience from the first booking to final payment.

➡ Salon Rising listeners get a 14 day free trial plus 50% off their first 3 months.

➡ And until August 1st, when you activate with Payments, you'll also get a free Touchscreen terminal, worth $349 + GST.

Use the code SALONRISING at checkout or click the link below to get started. Once you're set up, your Timely contact will take care of the rest. 👇

Timely

You already know AI can tidy up a caption. Most salon owners stop right there. Renee from Salon Society and Jen do not.

In this Mini Moment the two of them fall down a happy little rabbit hole on all the other ways AI quietly takes the load off a busy owner. Not the marketing stuff. The day to day stuff that clogs up your head and steals your day off.

Renee, who is in salon in Perth every week, shares the exact thing she did after a five hour client meeting. One voice note, dropped into Claude with a bit of context, came back as a full action list of who does what. If you want to go deeper on this kind of thing, Renee teaches the whole system in her online course, How to Market Your Beauty Business Online.

Jen then talks through how she runs her admin days now, from sorting her inbox to building apprentice training plans, so the mental load stops living rent free in her head. This one is for anyone who has ever sat staring at a to do list with no idea where to start. Especially the neurodivergent owners, who Jen speaks to straight here. AI does not replace you. It just clears the path so you can actually get going.

What we cover

• Why AI is for so much more than checking your captions
• Turning a long staff meeting into a clear action list in a minute
• The voice note habit that writes your client content for you
• Giving AI proper context so it sounds like you, not generic
• Using AI to sort and triage your inbox on admin days
• Building apprentice training plans that are easy to actually follow
• AI as a way past analysis paralysis and the never ending list
• Why it buys back time without ever doing the work for you

Dip your toe in. The water is warm, and your next day off will thank you.

FAQs

How can salon owners use AI for more than writing captions? AI can turn a long staff meeting into a clear action list, sort your inbox, and build training plans for your apprentices. The trick is giving it context about your salon so the output sounds like you, not generic.

How do you use a voice note to create salon content with AI? Record a quick voice note about a client's consultation on your phone, then drop the transcription into a tool like Claude or ChatGPT. Ask it to write the caption as a story about that client, and you get content in your own voice in seconds.

Does using AI mean it replaces the salon owner? No. AI does not do the work or send your emails for you. It speeds up the planning and thinking you already do, so you take action

Mentioned in this episode:

💖 Celebrating Our Podcast Partner – Christophe Robin, proudly distributed by McM Imports

We’ve partnered with Christophe Robin and MCM Imports to bring you something beautiful:

➡ Experience the Christophe Robin Discovery Box — curated by pro ambassador Monique McMahon.

➡ Inside, you’ll find her handpicked favourites — the hero products she swears by in the salon.

It’s your invitation to explore the range and discover why Christophe Robin has become a quiet obsession among stylists who know their craft.

Click the link below to request your FREE Christophe Robin Discovery Box, exclusively through McM Imports. 👇

MCM

https://www.salonrising.com

💛 A Limited Time Offer From Our Amazing Sponsor, Timely 💛

➡ Timely is the easy to use booking and payments system that puts salon owners in control of the whole client experience from the first booking to final payment.

➡ Salon Rising listeners get a 14 day free trial plus 50% off their first 3 months.

➡ And until August 1st, when you activate with Payments, you'll also get a free Touchscreen terminal, worth $349 + GST.

Use the code SALONRISING at checkout or click the link below to get started. Once you're set up, your Timely contact will take care of the rest. 👇

Timely

You know the feeling. You post the last minute cancellation, the one that used to fill within the hour, and now it just sits there. The Monday DMs that used to be mental are quiet. The new client requests that used to roll in are a trickle. You are not imagining it, and you are not doing anything wrong.

In this episode, Sam and Jen are joined by one of Sam's dearest friends and the final piece of her rat pack, Rach from Halo Hair and Beauty in Tweed. Fourteen years a salon owner, six years an educator, and refreshingly honest about what has actually shifted in this industry. Rach and the girls get into the thing most owners are quietly worried about and almost no one is saying out loud. The clients are not coming the way they used to, building a new column is harder than it has been in years, and the old playbook of post on Monday and fill by Friday does not work anymore.

This is a real conversation about the new landscape of the Australian salon industry. Why younger clients are skipping colour altogether. Why the hate around pricing online misses what a haircut actually costs to deliver. Why a smaller team has quietly become the smarter, calmer, more profitable choice. And the slow shift that comes with time in the chair, when you stop chasing the bigger salon and start enjoying the one you already built.

What we cover

• Why building a new client column is so much harder than ten years ago
• The new client landscape and why last minute spots no longer fill the way they did
• Younger clients going natural and skipping colour, and what that does to the books
• The online hate around salon pricing and the real cost behind a haircut
• Why a smaller team often means better culture, less tax and more profit
• Knowing your numbers and team targets so you are not paying people to do nothing
• Why going back to basics is the skill apprentices are missing
• Choosing to enjoy the salon you have built instead of always chasing more

Some weeks the most powerful thing you can do is jump in, do what you need, and jump back out.

FAQs

Why is it harder to build a new client column now than it used to be? Demand has shifted, so the steady stream of new clients many salons relied on has slowed right down. More people are going natural or stretching out appointments, which means fewer new bookings and a slower build for newer team members.

Is a smaller salon team better than a bigger one? For many owners, yes. A smaller team can mean stronger culture, less time spent managing people, and a lower wage, tax and superannuation load, which often leaves the business more profitable and far less stressful to run.

Why do salon prices feel so high right now? A haircut or colour covers far more than the time in the chair. Rent, stock, insurance, superannuation and tax all come out of that price, and rising client expectations mean each service takes more time and skill than it used to.

Mentioned in this episode:

💖 Celebrating Our Podcast Partner – Christophe Robin, proudly distributed by McM Imports

We’ve partnered with Christophe Robin and MCM Imports to bring you something beautiful:

➡ Experience the Christophe Robin Discovery Box — curated by pro ambassador Monique McMahon.

➡ Inside, you’ll find her handpicked favourites — the hero products she swears by in the salon.

It’s your invitation to explore the range and discover why Christophe Robin has become a quiet obsession among stylists who know their craft.

Click the link below to request your FREE Christophe Robin Discovery Box, exclusively through McM Imports. 👇

MCM

https://www.salonrising.com

💛 A Limited Time Offer From Our Amazing Sponsor, Timely 💛

➡ Timely is the easy to use booking and payments system that puts salon owners in control of the whole client experience from the first booking to final payment.

➡ Salon Rising listeners get a 14 day free trial plus 50% off their first 3 months.

➡ And until August 1st, when you activate with Payments, you'll also get a free Touchscreen terminal, worth $349 + GST.

Use the code SALONRISING at checkout or click the link below to get started. Once you're set up, your Timely contact will take care of the rest. 👇

Timely