Kristy Saad has called the Northern Rivers home for most of her life, apart from a brief stint in North Queensland. She is one of Lismore's young entrepreneurs who has a passion for beauty operating two salons in the Lismore LGA, one in South Lismore and one in Goonellabah. Lilly Harmon sat down to learn about Kristy's life and how Affordable Beauty began.

I lived in Woolgoolga for pretty much my whole life up till my teenage years around when I was 15. At that time my mum and dad separated which was a little bit difficult to deal with as a teenager, but I stayed with my mother for about 12 months. Then my mum and dad decided to get back together and they wanted a fresh start all the way up in Cairns so I spent the rest of my teenage years up there.

I stayed until I was 19 and I had a few different jobs out there. KFC, Go-Lo, which back in the day was Crazy Clarkes as you would now call it.

Then I met a boy and decided to move down to Airlie Beach, and within about 12 months of being at Airlie Beach, that particular partner and I split. Eventually, I found my husband. From there we had our first son up in Airlie Beach and that's where I started my beauty career at 19. 

I was actually trained as a nail tech. I had always loved nails, so when I moved to Airlie Beach there were a lot of hairdressing salons there but no nail techs. One of the salons realised I was a nail tech and they were like, would you like to come and work in our store and do nails? That was pretty much like my first break, and I started doing nails there. However, I was also working at a bar at the same time because obviously it wasn't enough to compensate for my wages. So nails by day and a barmaid by night. 

I loved what I did at the salon and they asked if I would like to move further into a beauty career because they could offer a Cert II in Beauty Services there. I was like, let's give it a go! I liked to do this kind of stuff but it wasn't something that I was really overly passionate about.

When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a hairdresser. I used to braid my My Little Pony’s hair and everything. That's what I wanted to be but never got the break to do it. I took on this Cert II in Beauty Services and really loved it.

I jumped out of that particular position when I completed it to move to another salon where they pretty much turned around and said you have full rein. The owner Robin, pretty much let me run the beauty side of things which was absolutely amazing. I was only 20 at the time.

She had two salons, so she had one in a hairdressing salon but she also had another one that was like a day spa, that one would only open for the local resort. We had the lease agreement on it so that when the hotel patrons wanted a beauty service, they would contact us and they would send me to go unlock it and do the beauty service. So she basically gave me full rein and it was pretty amazing.

She taught me so much because she had that much trust in me. I was selling retail and I was doing facials and some things that I didn't even know. I would pretty much just jump in and do it and the clients were always happy. It’s definitely one of the main things that inspired me to open my current shops. 

I fell pregnant with my son while I was still working for her. I had no care for my son, and I thought what can I do? So, what I did was I started a little mobile service and I called it 'I Care Mobile Beauty Services'.

I would go to people's houses to do their waxing for them, and basic services. I’d pack up my nail table and everything like that and go to their house and do the services at their house. It got very difficult because obviously carrying around all this equipment is a lot but I kept doing that right up until I was ready to go back to work and I contacted Robin and she took me back.

I pretty much finished up the rest of my time in Airlie Beach with her until my husband and I bought our first house down here in Lismore in 2005. My husband has a twin who lived in South Lismore so we wanted to be closer to him and his family, so that's how we ended up back down here.

When I first got here, I couldn't find a job to save my life. It was really, really difficult and so I walked into the Commonwealth Bank one day, and I looked at the uniforms and I thought, jeez, these are fashionable uniforms. I'm gonna get a job here. So I did!

I started working for the Commonwealth Bank and ended up being a customer service specialist. I'd help people deal with their personal loans and credit cards and all that stuff. It was a great job because you're interacting with real people and you're helping people so that was really awesome. I ended up at Casino for that particular role which was lovely because it was a small little country town and so nice compared to a larger area like Ballina and a different clientele base

While I was there, I fell pregnant with my daughter. I knew I couldn't keep this momentum working in the bank because it is a very high-pressure job. You're always thinking about your customers and what have you. I knew that having two children, it'd be too much. While I was at the Commonwealth Bank, and I was making reasonably good money, every week I would take a portion of my pay and buy a piece of beauty equipment. I did that all the way through my pregnancy, right until I finished up.

When I got to about seven and a half months pregnant with my daughter and they had this big plague of whooping cough going around. Unfortunately, I got it and I was pregnant with her. That pretty much finished my career in the banking industry. I had my daughter and six months after she was born in 2009 I started the first Affordable Beauty, my current business from home. We had a two-story house in South Lismore, and my husband barricaded off a certain section underneath my house and made that into a little beauty room.

As my daughter would have her day sleep, I would schedule clients in for then. I was very routine with my kids, it was like you go down 12 and you don't get back up into 2! So, I knew I had a two-hour window where I could put kids down and I could take on clients. I remember pushing my daughter in the pram when I’d take my son to school and drop him off, I would have leaflets that I would deliver around the area. 

Then after some time and more clients, I decided to grow my services so it wasn't just waxing and basic facials. I grew into microdermabrasion and I was doing full sets of nails. The original services that you had were just basically waxing, tinting and nails. That was pretty much the extent of it back then.

When my husband saw the business kind of growing, he did an extension onto the house creating an extra bedroom and ensuite. Just below that he made me a proper beauty room. That was pretty amazing because it was an actual proper beauty room, not just a random one stuck under my house. That's definitely when things started to really kind of pick up.

I would have clients every single day and my babies would be on the mat on the floor in the big patio area. I'd leave the kids on the mat with the dog and clients were like, they're gonna be okay? They absolutely were, my dog is so protective, they were fine.

Then after about 2 years, there was the breaking point of having the business at home. My husband used to come around the side gate next to where the salon was after a long day of plumbing. You’d hear him take off his shoes, and walk under the house to the fridge and grab himself a beer. I remember I heard the cracking of the beer in the middle of doing a facial. I remember running out there one day and calling out, shush I’m doing a facial!!!. He looked at me and he just rolled his eyes saying you've got to get out of my house. He was so done. 

From there, we started looking for a place to call home for Affordable Beauty. I wanted to keep it in South Lismore because it was all about South Lismore. We decided there was a shopfront just next door to where the pharmacy was and I thought that was perfect and that's where my first salon ended up.

I remember that first week of being there I was so petrified. I didn't even think I could make my rent. I was so scared. Before we moved in there, the home salon had about 10 clients a week so I kind of really took the plunge.

I knew that there were no other salons in this area that could service the people of South Lismore. I thought with my people skills and my background from being a barmaid I can talk like a sailor but then in the next breath, I’m back to the Commonwealth Bank and could be super proper. I'm very broad, so I was able to really adapt to every person that came into the salon.

The clientele was built reasonably fast. But I'll never forget that moment of like, oh my god, I'm not even going be able to pay my rent! My girlfriend rang me halfway through the day and she would say, have you made your rent? I just said, yes!

Straight off the bat, that's where I really delved into microdermabrasion properly. We also began to offer teeth whitening and eyelash extensions. I really broadened it so that I would be a go-to variety salon where you get all your services. 

Now as for my other stores. I met my next-door neighbour where I lived in South Lismore. Her daughter-in-law Jamie was moving back from out of town. I'd never met her before but my neighbour said to me, you will absolutely love her and I'm like, okay, whatever. I did love her, she's like my best friend. Anyway, she started working with me at home because she was right next door. She learnt how to do treatments from me. 

When I opened the store down here, she would come in and she would help me out of the salon and try to do a day here and there. She soon realised she had a real passion for it, but I just didn't have enough work here for her. So I thought about it and asked myself where would another Affordable Beauty store be fantastic. Where would they need one? So I opened up the Ballina store in late 2011 to employ her so I could have her full-time.

She's just one of those people where there's nothing not to love about her. I basically opened that for her and we had that salon for six years. She basically built it, ran it, and did everything.

Then, I was randomly contacted by a Property Group in 2015, and said, we know your business and we’d really love you to move you into one of our shopping centres in Goonellabah.

I always thought I wouldn't do that because there are a lot of restrictions when you move into shopping centres. You've got to follow certain criteria and that kind of thing. But then when I spoke to this particular lady, she said it's a village, we don't follow the same kind of protocols as shopping centres. That's when Goonellabah opened. At this stage, my husband said, when are you gonna stop? 

At this point, it was all becoming very big and I was taking a lot of risks. I had all three going and in that time, we had the 2017 flood. We lost a lot of my salon over here in South Lismore but we managed to salvage quite a lot of the equipment and everything because it only kind of came to thigh-high.

With that particular flood as well, we pretty much were able to hose out the salon because all the walls were still intact, everything was still intact. We were up and running in around 5 days. We were so lucky in that sense that, as I said, it only got to sort of thigh-high and it wasn’t something that was able to stop us in our tracks too much.

During COVID, it was really hard because unlike hairdressers, we were completely shut down. The way that we tried to deal with it was me and Jamie sat down one day and started making up these kits because a lot of clients still had acrylic nails on and needed other services. They wouldn't know how to get them off away from the salon.

We offered pedicure and tinting kits, and things that would make people feel good that they could technically do themselves. I got a hold of my wholesale companies and made up a basic pedicure kit with clippers files, just basic stuff. They were keen to help and to keep us busy before we opened back up. We also sat there and we typed out all of the instructions to make sure that it was as clear as we possibly can for these points. Not only did it keep our minds busy, but it also felt good that we were still kind of a little bit out there. 

Later on, as with all businesses in Lismore, we had the 2022 flood. Like everybody's story, everything was gone. Now what I had to do with that particular scenario is I had full-time staff members based here in my salon in South Lismore that we had to send off to our other two salons.

We had just purchased our current building in Union Street, and we bought it outright. On Casino Street where the old salon was, we were just renting. When the flood hit we were in the process of moving stores. However, when it did hit we just handed the keys over to the landlord at Casino Street and fully focused on Union Street.

Nothing was saved. The front of the building on Union Street had entirely fallen out and shattered with the framework. In that time we kept all nine (9) staff members employed the whole time. 

I gave my husband a deadline of July 1 to reopen and bless his cotton socks he actually did have us ready by July 1. We were up and running within 5 months. We prioritised getting everything ready in here as quickly as possible, and it greatly paid off.

When the South Lismore store reopened on July 1, funnily enough, we had made the decision to expand in Goonellabah, as it is a very small store. What I wanted to do is introduce different treatments that nobody has and I wanted to bring Jamie over from Ballina to Goonellabah because she was driving from South Lismore to Ballina every day for nearly five years.

To make it worthwhile, I decided to go into infrared saunas and floatation therapy meditation pods to offer something completely different to what anybody else offers in Lismore. That July, I sold my Ballina salon on the same day that I opened South Lismore. So I managed to get Jamie back over here. A new owner took over Ballina and she turned it into her own beautiful little salon.

After the flood, we have expanded to 11 employees, which is great for the business. In South Lismore, we added an infrared sauna and added a few more different treatments like hydrogen abrasion and digital photographic skin analysis.

We are just about to take our annual trip for all our staff. I take all the staff to Angourie for two nights and we get massages and facials and those sorts of things. It's very nice having other people do it for you for a change. It's been a pretty full-on few years after COVID and the floods, now everything is starting to settle.

I think this is where I'm stopping, as in I can live happily feeling like I am done. I’m managing such a, I mean to me, it's a big group. I've never managed that many girls before. It can be challenging but I feel really great about where we are and how we’re operating right now being able to service Lismore and play a part in the community.