Video Transcript

Hey everyone, Daniel Contreras (@dlucs_) here founder of The New Era Of Barbering. In this video I thought it would be most beneficial. Um, if I even talked a little bit more into my journey and what I've learned throughout my own career of going from charging $20 a haircut to then being able to charge $200 per haircut, and really what were those pivotal things that I've learned along the way that helped me understand and create this new paradigm of really approaching the industry and really change, um, my dynamics of not only my business, but the way I thought of approaching the barber industry that allowed me to continue to see growth. Um, and for me, I didn't always see growth at the beginning. I was a typical borrower who was cutting at a barbershop charging 16, 20 bucks per haircut, um, and have booked out clientele.And the most, the, the thing that for me is like, how does somebody like that go from that position to then only about two year time span, go from hating exactly what he's doing to then exactly executing on what he said he was going to do, or what I said I was going to do and be able to charge that high amount. Um, and there were some very key differences along the way, each part of my journey when I have, uh, decide to make the next jump or leap up, but all started from, you know, number one for me was to make a decision and actually what I actually wanted. Right. And when I talked to Barbara is now, um, especially when, um, Barber is who I work with. One-on-one my mentorship program. The first thing we always try to carve out for them is what do they actually want?And for me, I, for me back then, um, of course I had dropped out of a community college at the time to go and do barbering. My parents actually at the time I was like 20, I was 20 years old. Um, and I didn't want to do college anymore. So I decided to drop out. And my parents said, if you want to go ahead and still live here, uh, in our house, you have to be working towards something. You're not just going to go like live here and continue to work a job. I was a valet at the time. Um, in, in Sacramento, I w I was, you know, valet in front of the mall ballet in, in old Sacramento, uh, just basically taking different cars and parking them and bring them back. Um, and my parents were very, like, you have to be able to work towards something, whether that be school or something else, but you must go on progressive, progressive direction.Um, and that was very pivotal for me to actually make a decision to go into barbering. But I found myself very shortly. Once I got into barber school, um, the context of how barbering was presented to me at the time was, Oh, you just have to be able to cut hair and like build up a clientele. And then you kind of chill and just do that repeatedly. You make your money. And I almost lost a little bit of hope at that time. It almost became very boring and didn't become as lucrative as I thought I had, but I continued to go on with that vision. And even though throughout the years, as I progressed, after getting out of barber school, going into my first barbershop I was working at, which was a new barbershop, by the way. So I had to learn dynamics of not only cutting hair and building up a clientele for myself, but also learning how to, um, progress with my career, uh, and, and progress, uh, a brand new barbershop, right?And we tried a multitude of different things hanging on business cards, doing that really, uh, we'll talk about later on that doesn't produce, uh, that's not an ROI positive action, um, and basically stuff that basically that wastes our time, um, and as well as most barbers and, and people in the industry take as, this is like a staple of what we must do, because it's always been done this way. When in fact it's the exact thing that will keep you in that position of never seeing growth. And for me, I had to make a decision on myself of, I did not want to cut hair longterm. It became very evident to me. Once I built out my clientele cutting 20 for $20, a haircut working 16, 18 hours per day, um, that I did not want to do this forever. I, it actually scared the out of me to be, uh, imagining myself 20 years from now, still cutting hair full-time to make an income that actually scared me.So shitless to where I knew at that point in time, I had one of two directions to go into. Um, I decided that that, that, um, you know, I could either start over again and go in a different direction because I knew this is long-term, this is not what I want to do, which also was very scary for me. But the opposite of that, or the other side of that for me, was to go all in with this and not be afraid of, Hey, look, I'm charging $20 right now. I know there are barbers out there who are charging two, three, four, $500 per haircut. Um, how can I get on that level? Because at that time, my paradigm and my understanding of what business was and what the world was for myself, um, was completely at a different, it, it, it, it was just not where I'm at right now.And I knew I wouldn't be able to understand. I didn't even know who I was at 20, 21 years old, and most barbers don't want to talk to them. And that's not a bad thing. A lot of us, I didn't have the time or put in the time to focusing on myself, I was really focused on, was partying, drinking, trying to hook up and everything like that. And just having fun with friends. I didn't really think about who I actually was as an individual. What I actually wanted to do in the next 10, 20 years. I knew I wanted to make money. I knew I wanted to be successful, but I didn't really know who I was at my core. And I felt thought to myself, well, even if I go ahead and jump ship and go into a different direction career wise, and I kind of scrapped the past four or five years of what I've been doing barbering wise, um, how I do want things, how I do everything and no matter, even if I jumped ship right now, this same trait of me not becoming obsessed with what I was doing and understanding the growth, understanding what it took to get at a very successful high performing level, uh, would continue even to that.And it would just be a redundant trade of me going from one job to the next, the next, the next. So the decision I made from that point on once I understood that was well, if I, if I want to go ahead and really figure out where this, um, where this goes, I might as well see how deep the rabbit hole goes for me in the barber industry and are really committed to made a decision that no matter what I was going to do, whatever the hell I needed to do to get myself to that level, because I understood that the lessons that came from that, everything that would come to me throughout that journey of being able to charge the high prices that I was able to, when I stopped cutting hair, would bring to me a different paradigm and a different understanding of who not only I was, but also what I wanted the rest of my life to become.And it would put me in a very different, a very different, um, uh, destination of being able to then make a decision of what I want to do next. Um, you know, and, and, and for myself, I love the fact that even thinking, and I even sell a lot of my students, I, for myself, I did not like the idea of trying to figure out what I wanted to do while I was cutting hair for 18 hours a day, maybe making only two, 300 bucks. Whereas if I'm cutting hair for $200 a day, the only doing five haircuts walking out with a thousand and having the rest of the day to do whatever the hell I needed to do to figure out what I want to do. I'd much rather be in that situation and even comes down to, um, if you, if, if, if we really want to go even deeper into this back, the human mind is really a thing that wants to, um, be able to not be in a place of scarcity, or when it's in a panic or pressured situation, it goes to its automatic defaults.So it makes no sense to me to be able to when I'm in, maybe not so an abundant mindset or an abundance space or more of a scarcity space, um, to try and figure out exactly why I wanted to do there was a test done on, um, on mice and what the test showed was that mice, when they go ahead and put into a situation where they have to find cheese, um, when they're not hungry, they're able to make mistakes because worried about getting fed or eating the actual, or getting the actual cheese, the outcome of the goal, they're able to make, uh, and learn efficiently the quickest result on how to get to the cheese and mess up and up multiple times and to, to optimize for the quickest route. Whereas when they put those same mice in back into the same situation, when they were hungry and starving, they're able to quickly and efficiently get to the cheese, uh, and satisfy their needs.Whereas when a ma, when they drop a mouse into that same maze, but they don't have that time to learn without the pressure. And it's a pressure situation of, they need to eat there, they're starving, hungry, and they need to get the cheese to the cheese they actually took. Uh, they actually took, I don't know how much longer, but it was a substantial amount of time, longer than even the, the mice did when they weren't hungry, because they were just in such a, I have to get this. Now I have to get this. Now I had to get this now. Okay. They kept on making mistakes and weren't able to learn from them and almost was like suicidal. Right? And so what that actually allowed me to, to, to see for myself was, okay, cool. I need to put myself in a position where I'm not in a scarcity mindset or not in a pressure situation of allowing for outside pressures of, I have to figure this out, but I'm also working 18 hours a day.I have to be able to free up my time. I have to be able to relieve pressure in my daily to really get exactly what I want and be able to make the room to be able to up, make mistakes and know that I'm not going to die or, or, um, I'm not, I'm not in a survival situation and I can survive off of the bills and whatever money I'm making right now, and still be able to go through those iterations and making mistakes and progressing, which leads me to my second point. Right? So the second thing that I really understood after this was I had to be able to seek clarity, um, on my vision and, and who I wanted to become daily, um, to keep me on track. And, and for this, it's as simple as writing out the habits, um, that you will need to be able to, I needed to be able to really, um, become and adapt to in order to create success more easily flowing into my life, or create the, um, areas of my life that I wanted to go in my barbering career.So for me, I had to understand exactly seek clarity on the person I wanted to become what those habits and character traits were and how, where I was currently at. I have to understand who I am currently, who I want to become, and then able to bridge the gap from there as well, too, and then work on those habits each and every single day on top of that, when you seek clarity every single day, it actually keeps top of mind awareness on the actual goal, right? And this is kind of like the flaw of the mind as well, where I've learned, um, over time is that the mind is, is very, very, we're not going to remember long-term goals. It's we we've all gotten motivation. Like we probably watch a motivational video. I've watched a motivational video for sure. Gotten hyped up. And then probably about two hours later, I'm just like nowhere hyped up at all.And the motivation, it starts out high at peak point. And it starts right at that moment is when it starts to decline. So to kind of give you a visual representation, I have my handy white board, of course. And so right here, of course we have time and we have result. So result for this would be high peaks of motivation or high peaks of like interest, um, from the time of, you know, whether it be that a motivational video you watch, or maybe it is even setting goals. A lot of us set goals at first, and that's the highest peak of our motivation, but what happens over time? And what I've seen over timeIs that over, over an extended period of time,The motivation goes from my highest peak at very first and gradually just kind of dies off. And we're always having to restart at this point again, because this is always evident right here. It is always going to die off over a specific amount of time. Thinking about any weight loss goals, think about any money goals, think about any even goals for, let's say, getting good grades in school, right? This is a character trait of like, if you're not always thinking about getting good grades, getting good grades, getting good grades, your mind is going to start optimizing for other things like it's hungry, right. It has to go ahead and clean itself up or whatever it may be, and it's not focused on the actual goal, what you want it to be focused on.So the only other thingThat is that's really great and dandy to know, and it's like, okay, cool. But where does the drop-off come as well? Well, when we go and create a goal, when we go ahead and have something that we want to create, long-term the part in there that separates that from us is time, right? We all understand that it takes a while to go ahead and build up or start seeing success. You're not going to do an action one time and start seeing a, uh, or create a business day and then start seeing a hundred thousand dollars being in your bank account. It's going to take time and iterations learning mistakes to perfect exactly what, what skills you need to create in your life. This is also true. Like when we go ahead and look at somebody like bill, uh, bill Gates, or, um, uh, Jeff Bezos or Amazon in general, the company, um, what it looks like as a company, as a whole, the net net value of that.And it looks a little similar, very similar to something like this, where you're going to see is not as much results at first, but over time, over an extended period of time, we see better and better and better and better and better results over extended period of time to where we start optimizing for high peak result. Now, if you remember exactly what we kind of put in that first graph, right, and I'll redraw it again, this is where the ultimate factor of time and your result and why we must see clarity each and every single day of exactly what we want and building that vision out continuously. Because if you take a look at this, they're actually complete opposites. So the blue again, represents our memory of what actually won. Let's say motivation, let's say the drive to go ahead and go after what we want, the what is on top of our mind, the brain will go ahead and lose interest in that.But on the, on the inverse of that, we have w how long it actually takes to achieve a goal, which has an extended period of time before we actually start seeing results. So then we started seeing, and I started understanding why clarity is such an important result, because in order to get to the red of a high peak result, I must stay at high optimized level of output and a very high optimized output of actions that ROI, positive actions that give me a return on my investment. Maybe, I mean, not today, but later on, that will actually get me and build me up to that spot. Because if I, I don't, I know that my brain mentally is going to end up back at zero. My motivation level is going to end back at zero. So seeking clarity on, okay, cool. If you want to be able to charge a hundred, $200 in your business, really seek out clarity of what that reason was for me, it was very simple.I didn't want to cut hair for a longterm, and that was all the clarity I needed to be able to say, cool, this is how I'm going to go hard at this every single day, because my motivation factor was to not be 40, 50 years old and still charging 20 bucks per haircut. And that's just for my own personal, personal preference. Um, on top of that, number three, what I've learned is, like I said before, focus solely on the ROI positive actions daily. Um, now th like we said before, and I've said this in a couple of videos before, as well as mentioned this in my podcast, um, too many individuals, especially in the barber industry are worried about first order consequences versus second, third order consequences. And what I mean by that is this, um, a first order consequence is simply doing a haircut and getting paid, right?So when we're only focused on first or consequence, everybody knows action reaction cause and effect, but what individuals and other people and myself had to learn is that the cause and the effect, isn't just subject to that first order of consequence of first order effect. There are subsequent effects after that, as well too, let's say for a haircut, right? So let's say I'm cutting hair for 30 minutes a haircut, right? And my first sort of consequence is to get this person in and out of my chair in 30 minutes, as fast as possible. So I can get the money and then move onto my next client. First sort of consequences. Of course, a client is satisfied with his haircut right now, and I get paid first order consequence out of the way, I get another person in my ship. Second order consequences that individual goes home and starts seeing mistakes that you have made third order consequences.It might happen again, or when it grows out, it actually looks worse than what it did before. Because over a period of time, these are the order of consequences by taking only 30 minute haircuts, only worrying about that first order consequence, fourth order consequences that Barber actually finds somebody else better. Uh, who's marked themselves more, uh, more attractively to that client, give me the, the, the result that they want. And then they go ahead and effectively not steal your client, but you're you lose out on a client because you were so focused, solely focused on first or consequences instead of long-term mentality of a fourth order consequences of, if I don't take my time, if I don't do these results, if I take this result, this is the subsequent actions on this. And we have these in every, every single time we create an action or take anything.It's whether we wake up early in the morning, right? Let's say if we wake up and our time is at 6:00 AM to wake up, to start our day, and we decide to go ahead and sleep in, right? Well, first order consequence is we sleep in, we get more rest, second, third, and fourth order consequences. We're pushing everything back in our day. We might not create momentum. And the domino effect of that is then we're then pushing our goal further and further back from what we actually wanted to achieve it in. So when I say first, second, third order consequences, I'm specifically talking about literally any action we take as barbers. And when I started to understand and notice this, I really started focusing on, okay, I really just want the ROI positive, the return on my investment and the return of my investment actions are not going to be what I create today and right here.And right now it's going to want goods. They're going to be, what's going to pay me off later on in the future. So for me, and not only do I focus on that in my haircuts, I also focus on that on my days off my Sundays and Mondays, I didn't go out, um, on my Sundays or Mondays just to hang out and chill all day. What I did is I simply went in my backyard. I took a book I would meditate and visualize, and I would read all day. And I focus like for extended period of time on just doing solely those things. Now, did I have relax? Of course, but I use my time wisely because I wanted to go ahead and input things into today. That would pay me off later on down the future. And those are some of the activities that I saw on meditation is very, very useful reading is very, very useful, but it's not only limited to those things. Um,AndAs well as understanding what it would take for me to build the habits, um, of the individual that I have, what I wanted to create in my life, right. Understanding what those habits were and how can I work on those habits today? So that in the next maybe six or so months down the road, I can actually start creating results. Remember there are with, with something, with stuff like this, you have to be thinking more long-term than what's going to pay me today. What's going to pay you today is going to keep you being a barber and was going to keep me being a barber for the rest of my life. And that was what I had to break mentally for myself. Um, the next thing is, is really when I started being able to just raise my prices, start cutting hair and having influx of, of, of clients that would pay me a higher price and started getting booked out. What I noticed was it didn't really matter, um, who can cut the best hair, but solving the biggest needs for the client of the best for the client. So solving the biggest needs at top mastery level for those clients, you know,For me, um, none of my clientsCurrently, or when I stopped our stop, cutting here were the people who I need to be listening to. Um, or, or at least when I was cooking, I shouldn't say that the kinds I was currently cutting when I was charging 20 bucks, we're not the clients I need to listen to for their problems because they would lead me down the road that will keep me in their circle. I needed to be able to figure out how to optimize best to handle their problems, needs and desires for a haircut, but also understand what is that next level up of clientele? What are they like? Because for me, none of my clients would follow me to the next price range. Very, very rarely if they would follow me up. So kept me understanding all my clients are here for the here and now, the next, the next level of clientele is going to have completely different issues and obstacles to face with their haircuts and needs and desires and understanding and making those, uh, connecting the dots on those, allow me to figure out, okay, what are the needs and how can I best, um, dissect needs dissect problems and come up with solutions to those problems.Because if I'm continually having to figure out new issues, new problems with clientele, and there's never going to be an end to it, I might as well, not just be the best at solving that problem, but the best at dissecting and really understanding what that problem is. And quickly figuring out a solution to that problem and serving it up on a silver platter for them to keep my business progressing and growth. Um, and, and a simple thing that I like to think about this is, think about like when, when any of us buy pieces of clothing, right? So think about jeans, jeans. You can get at a, anywhere. You can get them at Walmart, you can get into Matt and target. You can get them at the thrift store, or you can get them from something like a brand like fear of God, which is like 2000 bucks.You can get a brand from a MIRI, which has another, like three, 4,000 bucks. And you have to understand what are the differences that make somebody want to pay that price at that level versus somebody else. Now, I think everybody would first say, well, they have all the rappers. Yes, they do have everybody that's high profile wearing their stuff. And they have clout chases for that. But more down deep to the core principles, there's have a better product and everybody else, they take more time on the details of the product, understanding what that client who is going to be wearing that actually once out of a pair of jeans and how they will actually be used in a day-to-day basis. And when will they actually be implementing this into their wardrobe, instead of just the day-to-day needs of jeans, there's a client for a day, they need of jeans, but there's also a client for a day.They need of haircuts as well, too, just as simple as there's a day they need, or a simple need or a specific need for a pair of jeans that cost two to $3,000 and a simple, a haircut that costs two to $500 as well too. Everybody has a need. Everybody has a price point and everybody has a problem that needs to be solved. And are you the real big switch for me was how can I solve problems at a bigger level for these clients? Next thing was, um, for me at least was to be efficient, not busy now, cutting hair doesn't mean I have a big clientele being, being, making a lot of money does not mean having a big clientele. And this started to become like my true understanding when I was, when I went from cutting like 15, 16 heads for 15, 16 hours in the day of the shop and making only, maybe about two to 300 bucks to then I was only cutting four to five heads per day, but I was walking out of the shop was seven to $900 in my pocket.And I started understanding there is no, um, there was no sense of being busy. And I think for a lot of myself, at least I had been brought up around, um, and understand that you have to become more busy and, and, and whether it be in barber shops, it would be family members, whether it be friends, how are you going to get more busy? How are you going to get more clients that is not the point? The point is to be able to get the outcome that you want, right? And the outcome is always how to service clients better as well as create income for yourself at a higher price without sacrificing much more time. And it's how to be more efficient with this. So for me, this, this also comes from a marketing standpoint to not being busy, but efficient, not taking my time to pass out business cards, shake hands, go to the mall, spend multitude of my time, uh, and hours just to try and get one person for a haircut.And how can I go ahead and effectively market my services online to get a bigger and wider audience, as well as when I started to be more efficient with my content. Um, I started to really understand what it took for a piece of my content. Uh, it almost got scary because I knew exactly from one piece of content, how many clients I would get, what they would pay me with, how much they would tip me, what haircut and style that they would actually be getting as well to how often they would come into me. And I almost become, it almost become an easy game for me to just digest really mastered so I can really just press a button. And I knew exactly what that result was going to give me. So you have to understand becoming efficient and not busy, not just making content because you want to be busy and creating content and being a creative zone, but content with a purpose.And that's what a lot of borrowers are seeing at least on the, on the online platform. It's great because we have expanded our industry, but now what's the, what's the, what's really the purpose that we're doing this for. And when you understand understanding that and starting to connecting those dots. And when I started actually seeing where I could actually make this a game that I could mask, sure, I was like, this is going to become fun. Now, the last thing for myself was that I really learned on this journey was my ability to not move away from my goal, became my superpower, my ability to not waiver from wanting to charge $200 per haircut and staying on that goal became the greatest asset to me. Um, basically for me, I stayed inside my vehicle to get me to my destination and I did not get out or call for a pit stop until it destination was really.And then I went ahead and called for a new vehicle, right? So for me, keep the main goal, your main goal until you reach your destination, the lesson, like for me, the lesson I learned along that way allowed me to then take that once I reached my destination and my goal, all of that lessons, all those lessons, all of those, um, uh, failures and successes allowed me to really reassess to then come up with a better goal. Once I reached that destination to then go in direction of, um, for me, it just simple. I just did not want to waiver. I wanted to focus and understand that it was possible for me to get this and to not get into the, um, uh, you know, whether it be comments on YouTube. I see it all the time on comments want to talk about how much I was charging, how I think Barbara should be charging more.And you know, what, who do you think you are charging this much? W this is ridiculous. I would never pay this price. Great. You're not my client. You're not anybody's client at all. Either. You're somebody who's going to charge less for what they're worth is client. And for them, that's on them, but that is not for me. And while I understand this point, I understood that I had the power in my business. It became very, very fun for me to at least say, I don't give a what anybody says. I'm going to build my business up the way I needed to so I can get to the next level of my life. And I think for a lot of barbers, they, and for myself too, the biggest separation factor I had to have was do I love my clients? Hell yes, yes I do.But I also need to put myself first and I don't think Barber's put themselves first to play a big game. They almost don't, uh, they almost watered down. They play a little bit smaller. They play to not to win or they play to not to lose, I should say, right? They're on the defensive. They don't want to lose clients and you have to be on the offensive game if you want to see growth. Okay. And for me, this is what I try to implement with my one-on-one mentorship. Students is the biggest like light bulb moment that they typically have is when they start understanding this factor. Because when you start adopting these, these approaches and mindsets, and when you actually start doing these ROI positive, uh, actions that we teach barbering actually becomes one of the most simplest things that you could potentially do raising and elevating and growing could be the easiest thing you can do and teach you so much instrumental things that you can go ahead and take to your next activity.Again, I wanted to get out of the barber industry, stop cutting hair so I can move on and build the business which I'm currently doing right now with one-on-one mentorship. I would not be, have been able to be in that same position when I was cutting $20, um, to be able to do something as I'm doing right now, be on social media, be understanding from all the lessons I have learned to be able to feed back into it. And I think a lot of other barbers need to understand, you need to just create a, make a decision that you're going to get to a certain object, surround yourself with the right people and mentors and understanding the game and invest investing myself within the most substantial things I did, whether it be in the barber industry or outside, but just reading, understanding, investing in myself to get to that level so that then I can understand, okay, I've learned what works with, learn what doesn't now for me, I know a little bit clearer picture because if you don't have that clear picture of maybe what you don't want to do, it's almost like finding a needle in haystack.And that's why I see a lot of barbers and individual people trying to do. They're trying to find exactly what they want to do. Long-term when they don't even know who they are, they don't know what to take out. And instead of trying to find the needle in the haystack, I simply go ahead and say, cool, I'm just gonna pick each strand of hay out until all the hay has gone and I'm just left with the needle and then I'll be done. So with that, I hope this value did bring some insight and some value to, uh, some of the barbers out there who might be struggling. Like I said before, one-on-one mentorship is for those barbers who want to grow. I do work with barbers. And if you do have any interest in working with me, one-on-one, you can go and schedule a call with me, um, in the link down below, make sure to go ahead and like subscribe this video.I love to do it and drop videos like these at least once a week, as well as tapping with the podcast. I also drop a podcast, uh, audio file once a week. And that will also be down in the description below. You can go check that out. It's on Apple music and Spotify. I go and talk a lot more deep depth of, uh, topics like this. Um, as well as let me know what you thought of this video in the comments, let me know what you thought was helpful. Maybe what you thought was not helpful at all, or maybe what you want some more clarity on. And that gives me great feedback of what I can go ahead and continue to develop content for you guys on this platform. And with that y'all I love each and every single one of you. Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll see you next time.