Pusho Mashiloane goes extra hard working for her money. As a nails and beauty bar salon owner in Polokwane, the 32-year-old earns a lucrative amount of money in a year.

While she makes sure to save for the future, she also believes in enjoying the present. “I’ve really always functioned under the mentality of YOLO (You only live once),” she says. “That is how I challenged myself after school and started my own business. I went like let me press, pusha, phanda and live my own dream like bana baka next door.”

Mashiloane moved to Gauteng from a rural part of Doornspruit, Ga Mashashane in Limpopo after high school to study cosmetology (1 year) at Ekurhuleni West College and eventually started her career there in 2012.

Through the Work Readiness Programme she was placed at a major beauty and spa salon where she earned a living and gained experience in 2013. In 2014 she then moved back to Polokwane and worked at another big house name in cosmetology as a deputy manager. 

But Mashiloane was determined to grow her clientele and earnings potential. She started sharing her work on Instagram and used the social media platform to garner interest in her services. Mashiloane even offered house call services in exchange for word-of-mouth publicity.

The strategy worked. As she began to build a solid repertoire of loyal clients, her income grew, and she stopped the house-to-house services and started operating from her aunt’s garage by mid-2016. 

By 2017 her salary had doubled, she says and it has only continued to increase. The same year she decided to open her own beauty spa with the financial support of her family members and her own savings, and she named it BlaquePearl. 

She started working alone and as her business management skills developed, she was joined by two qualified cosmetologist to offer them the same opportunity she had to expand her career. 

“I grew so quickly that I wanted to be able to provide a platform for other graduates to grow really quickly,” she says.

“When I first started, the national average for what a cosmetology would take home was about R120,000 a year. We’ve strived so hard our whole careers to not make that the standard and to give cosmetologists a platform to make an amazing living for themselves,” she says.

“I’m there to help all of my employees with any thing they need for work when I’m available since I do other small hustles on the side,” she says. 

On an average day, Mashiloane sees between eight to 15 clients, with the help of two assistants.

“Being a beauty and nails bar salon owner kind of changed my life in a sense that I don’t really work 9-to-5 anymore,” she says.

Message to the youth out there: “Never let other people project their fear in you, saying that you can’t do something cause they may have tried and failed. Give it your own try.”