Recently, nail industry expert Sholpan Nukuyeva won the international Golden Hands Award in the “Nail Industry Excellence” category. The award is presented annually to professionals who have made a significant contribution to the development of the beauty industry. To mark this victory, we conducted an exclusive interview with Nukuyeva. Today, she is not only a manicure and pedicure specialist but also a mentor who helps others launch and scale beauty businesses, advises salon owners on selecting professional products, and teaches technicians how to build a profitable career. In an interview with our publication, the expert explained why many talented professionals work 10–12 hours a day yet are unable to increase their income for years, and shared practical advice on how to break out of this vicious cycle.
About the expert: Sholpan Nukuyeva, an expert in nail services and aesthetic procedures. She specializes in combined and machine-assisted manicures, pedicures, nail modeling (gel and acrygel systems, nail forms, gel tips), signature and salon French manicures, commercial designs, watercolor techniques, artistic painting, and working with color and form. She served as a judge at the 2025 World Beauty Championship and is a winner of the following international professional awards: the 2025 Eurasian Beauty Awards and the 2026 Golden Hands Award.
Market Analytics, or What’s Happening in the Beauty Industry
According to forecasts by analysts at The Business Research Company, the global nail service market will grow from $13 billion in 2025 to more than $14 billion in 2026. However, market growth does not necessarily mean that nail technicians themselves are earning more.
According to Nukuyeva, more and more newcomers are entering the profession today, while there are still few specialists capable of building a sustainable business. Therefore, the highest earnings today go to those who know how to organize their work effectively.
Mistake #1: It’s All About the Number of Clients
The main mistake technicians make is thinking that their earnings depend solely on the number of clients. As a result, their workday stretches to 12 hours, and burnout is just around the corner. Sholpan Nukuyeva is convinced that growth should come from increasing the hourly rate and speed, not from working night shifts.
For Sholpan, striking this balance is second nature. She successfully developed two lines of business at once—nail services and aesthetic treatments (waxing)—but never worked around the clock. The expert established a comfortable schedule: she worked an average of 15 days a month and saw two clients a day. In the nail industry alone, this approach brought her more than 350 treatments annually, and over 15 years of practice, the number of treatments she’s performed has reached the thousands. In hair removal, her workload ranged from 1 to 5 clients per day depending on the season, but her client base grew steadily. This personal experience proved that a beauty specialist doesn’t have to live in her salon to earn a high income.
When salons turn to Nukuyeva for advice, she often sees the exact opposite situation. Sholpan recalls a case where a nail salon was trying to stay afloat by undercutting prices. The technicians were seeing 5–7 clients a day, but their revenue barely covered their expenses. Sholpan recommended replacing the selection of nail polish by bottle with a pre-selected palette (which saved 20 minutes per client), introducing express services, and raising prices by 35%. As a result, the technicians’ workload dropped to 3–4 clients per day, and the salon’s net profit increased within the first few months.
Mistake #2: Lost Sales
According to Nukuyeva, over the years of working with salon owners, she has repeatedly encountered the same problem: salons with fully booked schedules were earning significantly less than they could have. The issue was that salons were not taking advantage of partnership opportunities with brands and did not view the sale of at-home care products as part of their business.
Sholpan herself has been collaborating with manufacturers of professional products and distributing them for many years, so she is well versed in the economics of this sector. According to her, in the international beauty market, retail has long accounted for up to 25% of a salon’s total revenue.
Mistake #3: Ignoring New Customer Habits and Digital Trends
Today’s customers quickly grow tired of standard services and are constantly looking for something new—from unusual nail effects to the complete digitization of the process. They find it boring to just sit in a chair, and their expectations of technicians and the industry have grown.
Sholpan Nukuyeva notes that today’s beauty industry must adapt instantly to this demand for novelty. Customers want to manage their time with a single click. They feel much more at ease when a salon uses automation—for example, smart CRM systems that automatically send thoughtful appointment reminders and offer convenient booking slots. Aesthetic tastes are also changing: the audience is overwhelmingly demanding minimalist, eco-friendly trends. The “Soap Nails” aesthetic is currently at the peak of its popularity—the look of impeccably clean, healthy, and radiant hands with a translucent glossy finish.
Sholpan Nukuyeva not only supports this trend but also actively promotes it within the industry: the expert works exclusively with safe, premium-segment products. Using hypoallergenic and non-toxic materials allows her to meet the client’s need for exclusivity and justify a higher service price.
Mistake #4: Lack of Positioning
If a technician doesn’t have their own signature style or “trademark,” they quickly fall prey to competition, according to Nukuyeva. In the beauty industry, there’s still a widespread misconception that clients come in solely for the basic manicure service. In reality, they pay a high price for trust, safety, and reputation. To break out of a pricing deadlock, the expert advises choosing a single niche specialty, whether it’s a Japanese eco-manicure, an exclusive French manicure, or premium spa rituals.
Nukuyeva knows exactly how to help stylists develop their own professional style and advance in the industry: she has completed international training and earned the status of trainer-coach with the International Beauty Association of Trainers and Judges. Her key strength as a mentor is not just providing a solid foundation, but discovering each student’s creative spark and teaching them exclusive techniques. This strategy has helped many of her graduates carve out a premium niche and start earning money through their own brands.
Where to Start If You Feel Like You’ve Hit a Ceiling
To wrap up our conversation, we asked Sholpan to offer advice to stylists who have been working practically nonstop for years but realize they’ve stopped growing. Her answer was unexpected.
“Don’t start by looking for new clients. Start by analyzing your own business. Calculate how much each service actually brings in, which expenses can be cut, why people come back to you specifically, and which processes take too much time. Very often, the answers are already right there in your salon,” concludes Nukuyeva.
Perhaps this is the main takeaway from our conversation. Today, a successful stylist must not only master technical skills but also understand how the business works from A to Z, how to build a personal brand, and how to keep up with technology.
