As told to Natasha Mekhail
Natasha Mekhail: So you’re from Fahler – whoops, I mean, Fa-lair?
Eveline Charles: Yes, Fahler. It’s OK. Nobody ever pronounces it correctly. It’s Fa-lair.
NM: It’s the home of the giant bee statue, right?
EC: Ha, ha. Yes. The bee. When I was young, I used to tell people I come from Fahler: “It’s the honey capital of the world.” It was the only thing we could say, other than living 400 miles north of a big city.
NM: Why did you leave?
EC: From the time I was 12 years old, I wanted to own my own business. I had an aunt in the town that had the hardware store, the grocery store and the theatre and I used to watch her and think, “I like her lifestyle. I want to be an entrepreneur.”
Because I came from a family that didn’t have a lot of money, I always had three jobs. So I worked for my aunt at the theatre, I cleaned her house and I worked at a restaurant. Money was always easy for me to make because I knew if I worked, I made it. That was my entrepreneurial mind.
As soon as I finished high school, I opened a restaurant with a cousin. There were no pizza places in those times and I thought, “Why don’t we just start these pizza nights?” We made homemade pizzas and became very popular. But I worked 16-hour days and it was really not my passion. It was a business, but it wasn’t my passion.
There was a hairdresser that was in our town and her business was for sale. I thought, “You know, that would be a great profession for me.” I was already very much into fashion and I cut all my cousins’ and brothers’ hair. Everybody had the same haircut.
I thought, if I can do that, I could be a hairdresser and I’d love that industry because it would allow me to be self-employed. To make a long story short, I did that in my hometown for four or five years but it grew so much that even though I was in Fahler, I was pulling people from places like Peace River, High Prairie and Grande Prairie – people from 100 miles away.
NM: Where did you go to beauty school?
EC: I came to Edmonton and enrolled in Marvel then moved back to northern Alberta to open my business right away. I was there for about five years when I decided that I wanted to move closer to the bigger city and really do more.
NM: What was your first impression upon leaving your town and moving to the city?
EC: Sometimes when you’re in a small town you don’t dream as big. One of the things I’ll never forget was moving to St. Albert. I had $3,000 and I thought I could start a business. Luckily, a friend co-signed a $17,000 loan for me and I was able to start my business. But just to show you how small-town I was: driving into St. Albert, there were all these beautiful two-storey houses going up in 1980, during the big housing boom. I thought, “Wow, you must have to be married to own one of those big, two-storey homes.” In my town there was only one two-storey home and it was a car dealership that owned it.
Everybody thinks you’ve got to start at the top. You don’t. After a year, I was moving into one of those houses.
NM: How did you do it?
EC: I always talk about creative visualization and how, if you want something badly enough, you have to make it happen and visualize it in your mind. That was such a mark in my life to see those two-storey homes. I said, “I want to build one of those homes.” So I opened my business and within six months, I had saved $15,000 but I had six months to close on the house and I needed $60,000. By the time I had closed on that house, I had the money. I worked from seven in the morning to 10 at night. Whenever a customer wanted to come, I was there. I guess that made me realize that the sky’s the limit if you really want to do something.
NM: So, you’ve pretty much always worked for yourself?
EC: I went to beauty school in 1973 so I’ve been self-employed since then [35 years].
NM: How did you transition out of St. Albert to downtown Edmonton?
EC: I was in St. Albert for five years, but I guess my biggest dilemma was that it was still a suburb. We’d do all this great work, but then I’d have a lot of people say, “I got my hair cut in Edmonton.” It would give me this knot in my stomach and I would think, “Does that really mean it’s a better haircut?”
I thought I could go and open a salon downtown. So I took on a partner and he worked for me in St. Albert. We opened up Bianco Nero downtown in 1984. We were good partners. Then in 1988, we decided we were going to open a location in Calgary. So he moved to Calgary, and I stayed in Edmonton. Eventually, I wanted to get into the Calgary market because we had grown to West Edmonton Mall. He and I were still working under the same name but weren’t really together and it was causing a lot of confusion.
So I said, I’m only in Edmonton right now. It would be really easy for me to do a name change. We were in the office and it was six o’clock at night. I had a couple corporate people in there. We threw ideas around and people said, “Eveline Charles sounds like Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder… Why don’t you just use your name?”
In hindsight, it was the best thing we did. Once we decided to change our name we had to really work on who were we, what was our demographic, what was our brand, what it would look like… Once we did that, we started developing all these lines. We started developing a brand that looked continuous in all of our stores. After that it became a lot easier. We knew who we were and we could just work on that.
NM: Doing a big campaign was clever foresight but also financially risky. How did you know you were making the right decision?
EC: I didn’t, really. I remember going home the night I bought that ad package and thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve really got to make this happen.” It’s amazing when you push yourself beyond that envelope.
I think the biggest success in my life has been strong goal planning. I’ll use one example of the Boston Marathon. I told my friends when I started to train for marathons that I want to run Boston. They all laughed. My friend said, “Eveline, don’t tell anyone that because you probably won’t qualify and it will shatter you because you’ve told the whole world.” In my mind, I thought, “I am running Boston. I will show all these people.” And, you know what? I qualified and ran Boston.
NM: How did you know when it was time to stop cutting hair?
EC: I struggled with that. Anyone can run one business. Running two is a test for an entrepreneur. You can control the business. You’re in there; you can tell people what to do. All of a sudden, when you have two, you’re not there for both of them.
You have to start creating systems, structure, training manuals. The biggest thing that I faced when I opened West Edmonton Mall – here we opened this big Taj Mahal – I’ve only got 30 employees; now I need 60 for this new location. I didn’t have a manager, I didn’t have training manuals. I didn’t have enough staff. We were three months late in opening. We had rent to pay. At West Edmonton Mall, that just about killed us.
My husband was an instructor in the military. He really had systems down. So he took a leave of absence and said, I’m going to help you systemize your business. He basically interviewed all of my staff and wrote training manuals. From there, we hired some directors for each of the departments. With the manuals, systems and structure in place, we were able to multiply and start to quantify our businesses.
Had I not put all that into place, there’s no way we could have moved forward. As an entrepreneur, if you’re the technician or the trade in your business, who’s leading it? So many entrepreneurs get stuck at that level of being the doer. You can’t be the doer. You’ve got to be the visionary.
NM: Back to 1995 again, you were a pioneer of the day spa industry. How did you know it was the right timing to broaden your business?
EC: We knew the timing was right because we had people coming to us for hair services and they often asked for manicures and pedicures. I just felt it was a natural fit for us to be able to offer that. Today we just opened our very first Beauty MD in South Edmonton Common. Beauty MD is where we work with a dermatologist to deliver advanced services like laser and botox.
NM: And what was your impetus to start the academy?
Shortage of staff. About four or five years ago, we realized we had way more customers than we could ever fill and kept refusing customers. The other thing was educating our industry. So many people come into our industry and end up not staying because they can’t make a good enough living and they can’t grow. We have a lot of people that make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.
And we wanted to get away from the myth of “If you aren’t smart enough and you didn’t do well in school, go become a hairdresser.” Well, in order to be a successful hairdresser today, you need to be intelligent. You need to be able to carry conversations with doctors, lawyers, all kinds of people and you need to work on building that clientele. It’s a real sales position.
NM: What advice would you give if you could meet yourself as the girl in Fahler?
EC: I hear lots of people that are talkers and dreamers out there. You know my biggest problem? I think I had way more to give when I was younger. I would say to that girl, “Dream bigger and make sure you walk your talk.” The other thing that kept me on track was that I verbalize my goals. So if I’m going to do something, I’m going to tell you. And, trust me, because I am a person of my word, I will make it.
Category: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Profiles, Work
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