A beautician who launched her own training academy in Cambuslang could be excused for painting the town red after lifting another business award.
Leeanne Niven, 37, launched her school The Beauty Trainer at her Etre Belle salon in 2019 and the business continues to go from strength to strength.
She was delighted to be named Scottish Beauty Training Academy of the Year 2024 at the recent Oceanic Scottish Hair and Beauty Awards.
Leeanne said: “I don’t know who nominated me, as it is done anonymously but I’m guessing it’s maybe been some of my students.
“The awards organisers contacted me to let me know I’d been nominated by a few people and asked me to send in supporting evidence and reviews and I was shortlisted.
“I didn’t expect to win, and couldn’t believe it when they read out my name.
“I’m down to earth and work with people in the local community and surrounding areas. But people come from all over Scotland to train.
“I also do a bit of extra work with the Care Campus for students with learning difficulties, and others who haven’t had the best of starts in life or the opportunities that others get.
“There are kids there working towards youth awards and things like that, and they come down and do some training and it gives them something to focus on.”
Leeanne, a mum-of-two, is a City & Guilds certified trainer and her business is situated within Etre Belle, which translates as “Be Beautiful”, at 231 Hamilton Road.
It’s not the first accolade she’s scooped, after winning a Scottish Enterprise Award last year.
When mum-of-two Leeanne left school, after fifth year at Stonelaw Academy, she initially went to college to be a choreographer as she’d always wanted to be a dancer.
“I started off in beauty training when I was 21 and qualified when I gained my HND in 2013, I’d already been working for a few years before that in a spa in East Kilbride and worked there for around six years.
“Then I rented a room in a Cambuslang gym and built up my clientele from there. It was just before Covid when I got my own shop.
“It’s beauty therapy but I do a lot of advanced skincare training.
“I’m at the forefront of trying to get the industry regulated, because there’s so many people doings things that they’re not doing right, and that can be down to the wrong training.
“I’m quite outspoken but I like to meet different kinds of people, and I like helping people to further themselves. There are so many who don’t know what they’re going to do. I tell them to pick something that they like doing, it could be a hobby you have, and if you do that it will never feel like work.
“They all keep in touch and I’ve watched them all grow. I’ve got a girl who rents a room on Saturdays and she’s now opening up her own salon. It’s brilliant and dead rewarding.”
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