Hairdresser ditches salon at 32 to become chippy: Now runs her own timber business
For 14 years, Hayley Miles built a stable life as a hairdresser, running her own salon and doing everything right. At 32, she walked away from all of it to start again as an apprentice. Nearly a decade later, she is running her own timber business on site.
She left her salon to start again… now she runs her own business on site. Image: ABC News
For years, her life was already sorted. Clients locked in, steady income, a business up and running. The kind of path most people stick with. Until she decided to walk away from it completely and back herself.
She quit a safe career and started from scratch
At 32, Hayley Miles walked away from the salon and jumped into a trade where she had zero experience.
It was not a smooth switch. She went from running her own business to being back at the bottom, lower pay, new environment, everything unfamiliar. While most people chase stability, she did the opposite.
She started from scratch, learning the basics like any apprentice, adapting to an industry that has not always been easy for women and dealing with what it means to start all over again.
“She went from running a business… to starting again from zero.”
The grind that turned into her own business
What started as learning the ropes turned into a proper trade. She became a chippy, built real experience on site and then took it a step further. Setting up her own timber business.
Now at 41, she is not learning anymore. She is running jobs, managing work and building something that is entirely hers. She did not go back. She built something entirely her own.
Why she never went back
This is where it really flips. From a business in a traditional industry to one inside a sector that keeps growing, where demand does not slow down and where your income can actually scale with what you do.
She sums it up straight. The trade she is in now is “extremely lucrative”.
It was not easy. It was not instant. But it ended in something most people want and few actually build. A business of her own, in an industry that keeps moving and the freedom to decide how she works. From a salon to a worksite, and now running her own business on her terms.
Trending News
Dozens of clients paid for jobs that never even started, handing over deposits in the thousands before being left waiting. Now a Brisbane tradie has been ordered to pay back close to $200,000 and fined after pleading guilty to multiple breaches of consumer law.