The hairdresser said it was a real privilege to spend her career in Townsville, where she’s enjoyed an extremely loyal client base.

“I couldn’t have done this in Brisbane,” Ms Voznaks said.

“Some people I’ve been cutting their hair for 30 years. I served them when I was a first-year apprentice and they’ve followed me all the way through. I started at 18, as an apprentice at Jon Le Court, which was a major chain of hair salons at the time.”

After completing her hairdressing apprenticeship at Jon Le Court, Ms Voznaks quickly picked up the responsibilities of being a manager at the franchise’ Castletown store.

“I worked at Jon Le Court for five years and then I bought my own salon,” she said.

“I was ready for it, because I’d been a manager for a year.”

Aged just 23, Ms Voznaks plunged into the daunting world of business ownership with a small space on Bamford Lane, which she built up over five years until she was able to purchase her own commercial property a few streets over and turn it into her dream salon, now located on Thuringowa Dr.

“Being out here in Kirwan has given me the most loyal customer base,” she said.

“People say I should move into the city but I’d never do that. I’ve made the best friends of my life here in the salon.”

As a teen, Ms Voznaks said she was drawn to hairdressing because she loved talking to people.

“I loved being around people and I loved working in a team, I loved chatting,” she said.

“I was always doing my friends’ hair for the blue light discos at Iggy Park.”

Ms Voznaks said the best hairdressers were those with a ‘motivated energy’, who love hair, fashion, and being around people.

Training the next generation of hairdressers has always been a big part of Ms Voznak’s job, and she’s taken nearly 40 apprentices under her wing since 2000.

“My goal is to make them the best they can possibly be,” she said.

“I get a lot of school-based apprentices who are 14, 15 years old and they will start quite timid and shy, but by the end they’ve become a very confident adult.”

The studio runs with a neat eight-person workforce, four seniors, four apprentices, and typically puts on two new apprentices each year.

The school-based staff undertake a five-year part-time apprenticeship, working at Techniques Hair Beauty on one school day and one weekend day, while teenagers who’ve graduated school at year 10 or 12 undertake a full-time three year apprenticeship.

Ms Voznaks said the hardest things to teach modern teenagers was answering the office phone, and cleaning - but they learn fast.

“I’ve never stopped learning new skills, I always train and go around Australia to learn, my staff is so young and they push me to be the best. I take a day off every week to train them,” she said.

“My favourite thing about this job has been the learning and networking I get to do. I’ve gone to hairdressing conferences in Thailand and Las Vegas and with that many hairdressers in a city, the parties are wild.”

Not only are the clients loyal, but the staff are loyal too, sometimes inviting Ms Voznaks to their weddings years after leaving the salon.

“I’ve got a girl who’s been working for me 15 years and she’s having a baby,” she said.

“I’ve got another who started as a 14-year-old and now she’s just gotten married and I was crying my eyes out because they feel like my children.

“I feel like the view of apprenticeships has shifted. In my day it was seen as something you did if you were too stupid for anything else, but now getting an apprenticeship and trade is respected, and the schools are so open to it now.”

When asked about how much hairdressing has changed in 30 years, Ms Voznaks said everything seems to happen in cycles.

“Women are still getting the same kind of thing as back then, the fashion changes but it comes back. Right now we’re back in the ‘90s with the flicking fringes and the young boys wanting to get a perm and an undercut,” she said.

“In regards to the clients I’ve known for a long time, they will actually get more creative as they try to refresh their look, and I love that.”

Ms Voznaks said the biggest change over her lifetime has been social media.

“Back in the day you got clients with an ad in The Sun, now it’s all social media and we can advertise for free which is great,” she said.

“But I’ve never needed to advertise much. I had an old worker return after 15 years away and she was shocked at how many clients she could recognised. She said it was every second person.”

These days Ms Voznacks is starting to joke about retirement, but it’ll likely be sometime before she can separate herself from her clients.