Barber Hacks - Free Barber Tutorials For Everyone

MAKING CHANGES I’ve been making changes in my life. I had some health issues that led to crippling anxiety, fatigue and massive, hospitalizing panic attacks. I’ve had to take a good look at my life and how I had been living it and make some changes. CHOICES I’ll explain some of how I was living my life. I was smoking two packs a day, drinking often, dabbling with recreational drugs, I was working out seven days a week, and working 50-60 plus hours a week. I didn’t care much about anything, and I was living life fast and loose. My family didn’t care to talk to me much, I kept getting dumped by the people that I was dating. My life wasn’t going anywhere fast and I didn’t realize what was going on. SUCCESS I had just been dumped and I remember reading something that said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If you can’t take care of your partner and your future kids, you’ll never have a basis for a relationship or a successful life.” That had a major effect on me, I promis...

Barberhacks is an online resource for barbers to help them improve in every aspect of the business. Disorganized Chaos I don’t know how I used to do it when I was younger, I’ve gotten to the point in my career where that is pretty far removed from the present. Like a lot of barbers I’m mostly self-taught, meaning there was little structure in the way that I approached cutting hair. I have always had a disorganized chaos going on on my station while I am cutting, I’ll casually toss guards onto the countertop as I progress into my cuts. I’ll grab scissors and place them haphazardly about. I’m getting the job done, so it doesn’t matter what happens while I’m doing it, does it? This is not to say that I have been a complete mess in my past, just unorganized as I cut. Because who notices the little points like that? In Barbershops, the customer is looking the other way, aren’t they? I’ve started to break down my routine recently, especially when it comes to my service, my clea...

Barberhacks is here to help you sort out how to barber better, and more intelligently, through the gaze of a guy working 16 years in the hair industry. EMERGENCIES It has been a couple weeks since I’ve written a blog and it has been a very busy couple of weeks for me. My father had a massive heart attack, a 7 out of 10, or so the doctors have told me, one that could have killed him. Through luck and an amazing health care system in Canada, he has survived, although he is recovering from open heart surgery, a quadruple bypass. I took a week off of work to be with him during this time, and it was a stressful and trying time for me, I am still recovering from the amount of stress that I put my body through. What does this have to do with barbering? To me, it points out something important that every barber should be aware of, the fact that you are only making money as long as you are behind the chair, or at least if barbering is your only gig, and you aren’t a barbershop ow...

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” ~ Lao Tzu READING A LOT I’ve been reading a lot lately, or listening to audio books, and there have been a lot of themes that I keep running into, but one has been grabbing my attention lately and I would like to pass it on to you guys, my amazing readers. Here is an exercise. Go into your barbershop, or another one, and take a look at the barbers cutting hair. Take a minute and really look at them. Check out the equipment they are using, take a look at their haircuts, take a look at the clothes they wear, their faces and the expressions on them, take a look at how they hold themselves and how they interact with their co-workers and clients. I bet you could pick out the barber that takes in the most money just by sittting in a shop for five minutes and watching everyone ...

MY CLIPPER COLLECTION I have a collection of clippers, so many in fact that I’ve probably spent a couple thousand dollars on clippers that I don’t use. They sit in a suitcase in a spare room awaiting a time where one of my lead instruments sings its final swan song and dies. I don’t need other clippers, I still use the first set of Andis Masters that I originally bought, and could use them for every cut if I wanted. I like my Masters, especially with a fade blade on them, I fade some beautiful cuts with those Masters. Things are changing in the barbering scene though. Clipper companies have caught on to the fact that they can cut the cord and sell us barbers 3 sets of the same clipper (battery life, and you need at least one with a fade blade) and are unrolling new clippers at an alarming rate. We can have 90 percent of the efficiency of our corded clippers with a cordless? I need to buy at least 3 right? INSTAGRAM KING I’ve always been this way though, constantly searc...