Friday, March 29, 2024

Hair not a hurdle for Tahira

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HAIRSTYLIST TAHIRA HURDLE believes that entrepreneurship should be taught in school.

The winner of the 2014 edition of the Worldskills Barbados competition has been a hairstylist for about three years, inclusive of the time she spent at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic where she did the hairdressing course.

“I always loved hairdressing. When I lived in St. John there was a hairdresser I used to go by sometimes on evenings after school. Then I realised that it was something that I liked and that I could do after [I finished] school, something that I could make a living from because I’ve always wanted to be self employed.

To be own boss

“Seeing my mother working for somebody – she was a nurse – and then my great aunt, who I was living with at the time, overseas working. We were always trained to go to school, do good, come out and get a job so you could work for somebody. I always wanted to know why I had to work for somebody. Why couldn’t I get someone to work for me?

“I always wanted to know why I had to go to school for a long time then to work for someone and get them rich. Why couldn’t I do that for myself? Why couldn’t I be my own boss?”

So she set about acquiring the necessary skills and qualifications to operate her own business.

“I went to the Polytechnic, a wonderful institution. It was hard but if you know you really want to do something and you want with all your heart, do it. Even though I really wanted it, there were times I felt like giving up and my teacher spoke to me and said ‘you’ve come this far and I expect to see you at graduation, graduating at the top of your class’, so I pushed through,” the hairstylist said.

Hurdle’s intention is to open Tresses Beauty Salon in the near future, but for now she enjoys working for herself at Indulge Yourself Nail and Body Salon with Talicia Lewis.

The opportunity came through one of her SJPP teachers as soon as she and her classmates finished school and were looking to set up on their own.

No shampoo girl

The reality of renting a station in a salon where she had to buy her own equipment and products, or working as a shampoo girl was not appealing and she dismissed that idea and jumped straight into being on her own because she “didn’t want to waste my two years and my skills as a shampoo girl. I wanted to get right into it”, Hurdle told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY.

A trip to a hair show in Atlanta, Georgia, which was her prize for winning the competition, cemented her career choice.

“I’m still learning every day. There is always something new to learn. I love everything about hairdressing but I mostly like colouring and cutting, but unfortunately I don’t get to do a lot of that,” she said. (Green Bananas Media)

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