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Barberhacks is here to help you become the best barber that you can be. This blog focuses on how to Barber Better. I spend all day standing behind a chair, and I hardly ever sit in one. I’m never a customer, so how am I supposed to relate to one? I’ve talked about this before, but since I’ve started researching for a book that I plan to write, I’m thinking about this idea a lot. What does a guest think, what does a guest want? We’re in customer service after all, we’re groomers, we make others look and feel good about themselves and their looks. I’m beginning to realize it's not all about getting the crispiest fade, or the most technical haircut, service is a large part of what makes people feel satisfied. I started my career as an assistant in a salon that charged a minimum of $100 for a haircut, and a good part of our reputation was built on customer service. I didn’t quite understand why I did what I did, but I made sure that every customer that came through the doo...

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...