Interview

TALKING TO… Rachael Nurrish-Walker

The award-winning home-based business owner tells Ellen Cummings why walking away from a salon changed her definition of success and how building a business around exceptional client care has brought her back to what she loves most

For many beauty professionals, growing from a two-person salon into a 13-strong team across two buildings would represent the ultimate marker of success. For Rachael Nurrish-Walker, it eventually became the reason she knew something had to change. Today, she works alone from Nourish Skin + Wellbeing, her home-based studio in Louth, Lincolnshire. She limits the number of clients she sees, has a waiting list and deliberately leaves generous space around appointments. It is almost the opposite of the high-volume business she spent years building – and she has never been happier.

“For me, bigger isn’t better,” she says. “Today, I define success by impact rather than the size of the business.”

Finding beauty

Her route into the industry began with her own skin. As a teenager experiencing acne, Nurrish-Walker visited the same beauty therapist as her mother before completing work experience with her.

“I saw how good it was making people feel,” she remembers. “Even if somebody was coming in for a 10-minute eyebrow wax, there was a treat in there.”

At 16, she left home to attend the Park School of Beauty Therapy in Retford, completing intensive training before beginning her career in salons. After several years, she was headhunted to help establish the salon within a new spa, taking it from the building stage through to opening.

It was there that she met the therapist who would become her business partner. Together, they left to launch a salon of their own.

Six months into the fledgling business, however, Nurrish-Walker discovered she was pregnant. At 20 weeks, her partner left. Having already sold her house in preparation for their life together, she found herself living with her parents, running a new business and preparing to become a single mother.

“Life changed because it was all about making it work,” she says. “The most important thing was my daughter.”

She returned to work just weeks after giving birth and continued growing the salon. What began with two therapists eventually became a team of 13 operating across two adjoining buildings.

One of her proudest moments came years later, when she showed her then-15-year-old daughter around the second building. “She said, ‘Mum, I’m just so proud of you. You’re amazing.’ That’s what you always want your children to think of you.”

When growth stops feeling like success

Commercially, the business was thriving, but the bigger it became, the further Nurrish-Walker felt from the reason she had entered beauty in the first place.

“I found myself managing people, solving problems and spending more time in my office rather than the treatment room. I realised I wasn’t at my best when I was disconnected from my clients,” she explains.

That client connection is very personal to Nurrish-Walker. Having been shy and bullied growing up, she says her experiences have influenced the way she wants people to feel in her care.

“It’s about giving everybody that care and attention and feeling of, ‘You are the most important person’, even if they’re only with me for half an hour. It’s about giving people what I never really got.”

The Covid-19 pandemic forced a pause that Nurrish-Walker now describes, unexpectedly, as a “life saver”. Within days of the first lockdown, she remembers telling her husband that she did not want to return to the salon.

Initially, those around her assumed it was a reaction to the strain of the pandemic. She returned, but the workload and stress continued to escalate until Nurrish-Walker reached breaking point and experienced a mental health crisis.

It made the need for change impossible to ignore. The business was put up for sale, but prospective buyers either wanted Nurrish-Walker to remain as manager or sought a non-compete agreement – neither of which addressed the reason she wanted to leave. Ultimately, she and her business partner decided to close.

On July 4, 2022 – “Independence Day, which felt quite apt,” she laughs – the salon shut its doors. Two days later, Nurrish-Walker opened her new studio from the converted ground floor of her home. “Best thing I ever did,” she says.

Learning to say no

The change of premises did not immediately change Nurrish-Walker’s working habits. Fearful that clients might go elsewhere if she turned them away, she initially said yes to almost everything.

At one stage, she estimates she was spending around 50 hours each week physically performing treatments, with administration pushing her working week towards 65 or 70 hours.

“I’d come away from the large salon to give myself a better work-life balance, but constantly giving to everybody was leaving me with nothing,” she says.

Gradually, she cut back late nights, stopped working weekends, introduced firm cancellation policies and raised her prices – and, rather than damaging the business, those boundaries strengthened it.

“My diary remained full and my clients respected my boundaries,” she says. “Financially, it gave me a more sustainable business. I no longer needed to work 70 hours a week to generate a good income because I created a service that reflected its value rather than relying on volume.”

Pricing is something she believes many therapists need to reassess. She does not benchmark herself against neighbouring businesses, instead calculating the real cost of delivering her service – from products and laundry to insurance, training, tax, holidays and unseen administrative hours.

Skin, but never in isolation

The move also allowed Nurrish-Walker to return to the area that first drew her into beauty: skin.

Her approach today deliberately rejects a one-size-fits-all treatment protocol. Every appointment begins not with “How is your skin?” but “How are you?”

“The skin never exists in isolation; it’s part of a whole person,” she says. “I’m just as interested in how they’ve been sleeping, whether they’re stressed, going through menopause, coping with grief, caring for loved ones or simply feeling overwhelmed with life.”

Her treatments combine skin analysis, products, advanced modalities where appropriate and an increasingly hands-on approach informed by further study of massage and manual techniques.

Redefining luxury

The same attention to individuality runs through the client journey. Nurrish-Walker does not offer online booking, avoids client crossover and allocates considerably longer in her diary than the treatment itself requires. From the first enquiry, she considers whether therapist and client are the right fit. Inside the studio, lighting, temperature, scent and touch are considered, while aftercare and homecare recommendations continue the relationship beyond the appointment.

“Luxury isn’t about expensive décor or adding more steps to a treatment,” she says. “It’s about making somebody feel that, for that time period, they are the only priority. Giving somebody your complete attention is one of the most premium experiences you can offer.”

Recognition and what comes next

In 2026, that approach earned Nurrish-Walker the Professional Beauty Award for Mobile/Home-based Business of the Year.

For somebody who admits to significant imposter syndrome, the recognition prompted a moment of reflection.

“When you work alone, it’s easy to question yourself,” she says. “You don’t have a team celebrating the small wins or somebody reassuring you that you’re doing a good job. You keep your head down, focus on your clients and move on to the next day.”

The award, she says, validated the choices she had made: “Choosing quality over quantity, building a business around relationships rather than numbers, creating longer appointments, offering truly bespoke treatments and refusing to compromise.”

Now, Nurrish-Walker is beginning to use those lessons to support other beauty professionals. She is mentoring salon owners and developing a consultancy concept she jokingly describes as “the Hotel Inspector for the beauty industry”.

Her focus will be less on telling owners what to do and more on helping them see their businesses through a client’s eyes.

“People often think a struggling business has a marketing problem, but more often it’s a systems, standards or client-experience problem,” she says. “Take a step back. Lie on your treatment couch. Sit at your nail bar. What do you actually see? Because that’s what your client sees.”

After experiencing employment, spa management, high-street salon ownership and now solo home-based practice, she believes the next stage is about giving something back.

“If I can help salon owners create businesses that are more profitable, less stressful and built around exceptional client care, then I’ll feel I’ve made a real difference.

“Success isn’t just about helping businesses grow. It’s about helping the people behind them thrive too.”