About this video:
Our decisions shape who we are.
Taking account of what the desired outcome of each action allowed me to be more efficient, get more done in less time, and see progress in my business as a barber.
-Create Point of Optimization
Most barbers guess their way through their entire career, which is why they never get farther than the average income level.
Having a point of optimization will allow you to correctly identify if what you are choosing to do day in and day out actually makes logical sense in the overall plan you have for the year and will keep you on the rails.
-Audit daily actions
Humans love to waste time.
Social media, texting, the internet in general has allowed gateways of distraction to occur that need to be audited and minimized if you really are going to achieve your goal.
If you choose to ignore, you are already making it 200 times harder on yourself.
Simply removing stuff from your reach will improve your output exponentially, and something that I still practice today.
-Double down on actions that are optimized for point of success
If it makes the boat go faster, do more of it.
Don't be stupid, this is pretty logical and straightforward.
Identify and do more.
-If lost, go back to point of optimization to get back on track
The great thing of having a point of optimization is that it will make things very clear as to when you get lost in the bs of what everyone else "says you need to be doing".
Keep track of where you are in relation to that, and you can never lose.
Ready to join the Elevated Mentorship program?
Click the button below to book a call with me and my team to see if we can help your business scale!
Hey everyone, Daniel Contreras (@dlucs_) here founder of The New Era Of Barbering. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. And on this video, I really want to go ahead and explain why the content I'm posting is not haircut tutorials anymore. Right? So I get a lot of, uh, I read the comments and, and the, on every video. And it seems like there are people who are still in borrowers, especially who are still wanting more haircuts tutorials and really questioning why I stopped posting maybe on Instagram, why stop even uploading on YouTube channels. Um, and for myself, I'm even going through this transition again. Um, but when I stopped posting on YouTube, when I stopped posting on Instagram, it wasn't for just the fact of why I just wanted to take a break or whatever it was really for the fact of, of this. I want to break down, which is basically I started optimizing for something different right before when I was posting on YouTube and Instagram daily or weekly.However, it may be on either platform. I was optimizing for getting clients for my hair, cutting business. I was cutting hair full-time, but when I made the decision to stop cutting hair, full-time about a year ago and fully go in with building out my educational business and educational company of the new era of barbering, I started focusing less on cutting hair because that's not what I wanted to focus on. That wasn't my point of optimization. I wanted to optimize for clients and client results. So sort of student results, I should say. And so, while I wanted to go ahead and make the, the kind of connection for this video for Barbara's watching, this is really how can you even take what the principles I implemented with doing that into your own business? Because when I was making the jump in my career, when I was making progress and growth, and even barbers, I work with, even through my over dementia program, I see that their optimization point or point of optimization of what their, all their actions are going for are not going towards the same thing.And we talked about this similarly in a previous video where I talked about where your energy goes, right? When you focus on one thing, one task, one goal, you can go a lot further and get reached that goal a lot quicker that dispersing your energy in different areas, whether it be trying to do things outside of the industry to create more money, uh, you could be even trying to start your own YouTube channel. Well, Instagram we'll do Tik TOK, and we're also trying to serve your own, uh, streaming of video games. I've heard, Barber's trying to do that as well, too, as well as starting your own product line, doing a bunch of different things. Now for me, when I noticed myself kind of going off in different directions and I didn't see the growth and didn't see the progress, I really had to do a self audit on every single action.And I think for this reason, uh, for myself, at least, and the barbers I work with, this is probably one of the more profound things that I've found that works at least for, for getting to where we want to go. If you really want to achieve a goal, you really have to understand what are your daily actions in getting to that. And then on top of that question is what you're doing actually optimize for that goal. Before I see a lot of barbers that I work with optimizing for different things, like I said before, some people are optimizing for and tell me flat out that they want to be an inspirational, uh, figure in the Barbara industry. They want to be looked up to, but that doesn't translate to growth in your business. It has zero correlation with that, and it doesn't make any sense to optimize for something like that when you want to grow your business, because they're on two opposite ends of the field.So for myself, like I said before, currently the concepts that I make like this, this is literally shot on my iPhone. I don't put up my camera. I don't have any, uh, I don't do any edits with these videos any longer, simply because I'm not trying to optimize for people who want that quick instant gratification type of quick Twitch type of things. I'm optimizing really more for value and how to go ahead and give content out to the individual who actually wants to see, right? Because those people who want to see continued, uh, haircut tutorials, they're not people well that one would want to work with, or the individuals that will understand what I'm speaking about. And I think the same way of, of in terms of Barber's who wants to create content on social media, are you optimizing for, to become famous, to become popular, to be an influential figure, which you really don't have too much control over you.You don't, you don't post anything to be influential. Like you do something great. You do something so profound in an industry and do something, uh, very, very different and go farther with your growth than anybody ever has. And then people will probably look up to you and be like, wow, that person is inspiration to me. You can't really affect inspiration just by pushing a button. It's a by-product of the action. And for what I see, and even for myself, what I've seen in myself is previously when I was going through, you know, working on social media to begin with in my barbering career, I didn't really know what to optimize for, uh, because there were so many different lanes and it's such a wide open thing. But when I started understanding my optimization point was for growth and strictly growth, only the actions, it was like, I put like on these pair of like pair of glasses, right.And it blocked out everything else of, uh, of like, let's say things that wouldn't apply to growth that I might do beforehand. And it made me literally just hone in and zero in on, okay. If this doesn't apply to myself for growing wise, I literally don't even see it. I, it doesn't come to my consciousness. I don't even focus on it. It's like, if you ever seen like blue blocker sunglasses or whatever it may be, right? So those block, or, or let's say like the sun rays or, you know, glasses that just block certain rays from, uh, affecting your retinas, those blackout certain things to allow your eyes to just take in the vision that you need to see. But when you don't have those, I literally everything is hitting your eyes. And the same way as when you don't have a point of optimization or a direct point of optimization for single action.Uh, and what I see with a lot of barbers today is they don't one have the point of optimization or two, if they do have one, they don't continually audit themselves. So even for myself, this past week, I've been going through a lot of, um, actions and tracking down what I do on a day to day basis. And really after each and every single action, I asked the question, what is my purpose of doing this thing for them? And when I go ahead and get down to that core reason, I can start actually taking out and subtract things that will actually add to my progress, add to my goals. Like I said before, my point of optimization currently is student results. How can I best get student results? And that affects when I go ahead and maybe go on social media. When I go on YouTube, Instagram, any posts that I do, something like this, what is the point of optimization for this video, right?I'm not trying to go ahead and seem like most popular, the most cool individual I'm trying to give the most value as possible. So even like, if somebody is just watching this video, they can literally take what they have of, uh, content in this, in this, uh, video or videos from prior implement into their lives and see progress from it. I'm not trying to go ahead and make myself seem like this big over the top figure, because I understand that's not is what's in the best interest of potential students or barbers in general. Now, um, even when I did this back, when I was cutting hair, it went into my social media posts as well, too. Right? So when you post videos or when you post content to market yourself, what is your objective? What is your objective and your overall goal of this, of posting this thing isn't really to get clients, or is it to just get popular views and be liked and feel like your work is being recognized.Some people would just rather go for work recognition than actually building their business. And these are two totally different things. And when you optimize for, let's say being popular, being well liked, being recognized for your work, you actually take very different actions that steer you away from the goal of being able to charge a higher price, a higher ticket price, to actually build your business up, build your clientele up and be able to raise prices effectively. And that's what I see with a lot of people on social media right now in the barber industry. I go on social media and I try to stay off it as much as possible, but sometimes that thing be too addicting. So I start scrolling around and it's not the best example, but start scrolling around. And I see barbers and I simply ask, what is the point of them posting this video?And when, when you start even attacking your content like that, like what is this point of myself posting this thing? And when you can be completely and truthfully honest with yourself on that fact, it might be a little bit of a reality shock and a slap in the face to realize, Holy, I've not been optimizing and not been posting this for what I actually truly want. If what you want is growth. Does this apply to actually building your business or does this apply to just getting yourself recognized to getting yourself more or less popular in the industry? For me when I was posting, of course, I wanted to figure out exactly what worked on social media platforms to be able to educate other individuals. So you saw me post a lot of different things in different content and trying out different things, because I wanted to see and understand for my soap, at least what the reaction of that was going to be like.So I was learning that process throughout and really taking information. I wasn't just posting it and saying, Oh, that's cool views. I was posting it to be able to understand and learn to progress myself further. Now, uh, like I said before, simple way, a simple exercise to go ahead and do this as track literally every single day, what your actions are for the second that you wake up to the moment you go back to sleep for myself, I track these things, uh, and really ask myself whether it be watching a Netflix, which I hate doing, uh, whether it be even going to the grocery store, right. Is this optimized for student results? Is this my time optimized best for student results? Or is this a better way? Is there a better way to do this? Is there a different way to do this, to get my, uh, overall goal quicker and more effectively?Because if not, what is the point of doing that thing? Because then we just waste time. And for me, when I worked with a lot of barbers, the first thing that we tend to do is really cut out the time that they waste, because there's no reason that there's nothing else that we can add onto somebody else's career. That when we put them at elevated mentorship, to be able to raise prices, build up their social media platforms, build up their business approach and take a different look at the industry and really see where they are at that if their plate is already full, you actually have to subtract things out. And the best way to do that is really understand what is your ultimate optimization. And you can literally do this with anybody. It doesn't have to be, let's say a barber. You can literally see anybody on social media and ask these questions of what are they optimizing for.And you'll see, a lot of people really want to be on social media platforms, not to build a business, but are optimizing more so to one create influence, influence, right, or to be popular, or to be well liked and recognize to get sympathy too, gets more of likes to be looked up to, I guess. But when you take it, like I said before, a business approach, all that gets cut up. All that gets cut out and you really lock in and hone in on what needs to be posted, what direction you need to go with as well as the next steps of your business. I think a lot of barbers, especially that I talked to, uh, when we're getting them into elevated mentorship, they don't really know exactly where they want it to go. And it's more because they have not defined that point of optimization.They are Congress going around doing different actions and just hoping and praying, seeing something works for them, but they have no desired end goal, or they have a desired end goal, but they don't know how to get there. And you have to be able to optimize for literally everything to one direction. So, like I said before, for me, when I was cutting hair, it was growth and understanding social media platforms better, um, for the new era of barbering and right now with elevated mentorship, it's student results. When you, when you really clearly define that one thing, when you get clarity on that, hone in on that every single day. And I spoke about this on my last video about like the six things that I learned throughout, like building up my business, seeking clarity is one of the most powerful things you can do on a daily basis because the mind is always going to be distracted.The mind is always going to waiver off and we have to be able to figure out exact pinpoint of where to go. Everybody's heard the analogy of, if you don't know where you're going to hop on a plane with no destination, you'll end up literally anywhere. And that's what optimization of actions, goals, and outputs will give to you. It also will have a huge effect on people. You will listen to people, you will sit down, not people, people you listened to for in a big thing. I see a lot of Barber's doing is they're like, Oh, I listened to this person. I listened to this person. I listen to like, they'd name off like five to six different barbers or influencers that they listened to. And when I hear that or read that in the DMS, I asked them, cool, do you understand that each and every single one of those has a different point of optimization for their business?And what is the point of listening to five different people who have different points of optimization or different things they're optimizing for? Because the end date they're going to, you're kind of going to come up against contradiction, contradicting factors. And I, when I learned this myself, I actually stopped looking for more people to listen to because they didn't go to the overall goal that I was wanting to get to as well too, and actually shortened it down and shorten that list about only about two to three people were there inside the industry or outside that had the same focal point of optimization that I was going for. So there are a lot of individuals that like to be motivated that liked to be a feel good or feel as though they are more likely to feel good about themselves, but does that promote growth and that not saying that's wrong, but if your optimization point is of growth, what is the point of that?There really is no point [inaudible] like, honestly, there is no point of that. And for me, when I started looking at things of only two, one to two people individualized looked at, or, or one to people that I listen to and take in information and actually apply it, it actually became a lot simpler when you simplify things and cut out all the. What I learned from myself, at least in, in doing this was I actually gained progress quicker. I have an understanding of where I'm trying to go. The information I'm listening to doesn't contradict itself, right? There's nothing, there's nothing that's hitting up against walls or, uh, two opposite points. And when you take things in from every single person or little, listen to everybody, you're going to come across points of, of. Well, this person says this, but the other, this other person that likes says the opposite to do.And it's because simply they have different points of optimization. Some people want comfort. Some people want growth. There are two different things, especially in business. And in my barbering business, when I learned what I was doing to stay comfortable or just stay in the same area versus optimizing for growth, I literally like got honed in on the vision of the actions and understood why they take action. I need to take, and it's not easy action. But when you have the optimizing point of, this is what I want, I'm going to cut out everything else. It's just becomes a checklist that you need to do every single day. And it becomes simple. It's also like what I talked about before of having idea of what successes, right? And when you have the idea of what success is for yourself, some people, they have an, a skewed point of what successes for themselves, right?So they look at success and they say success can only be had if I go through hell, fight through everything else. And at the end, at the other end and went, almost kill myself. That's we'll have success. So literally they'll see anything that is easy or something that is simple to do. They say that can't be success. That on the other side of that, that's not success. I have to look for something hard because I know what successes, I know that success almost kills you. So I got to look for things that do that. And it's no wonder why they continue to put themselves in holes of hardships, of holes, of stuff that, that almost near kills them. Right. And burns them out because that's in their mind. They're like, cool. This is what success is. I'm burning out. I must be getting close when in fact that couldn't be farther from the truth and it just puts blinders on you and it puts, um, glasses or allows you to see the world from a different point of view.When you have these things clearly defined out. Now, when you go ahead and start doing this, you even start, uh, understanding actions of your day-to-day habits. Like I said before, when, what time I wake up getting out of bed. Some people like hate getting out of bed early, right. And to get the day started or go to sleep early. Some people, some individuals hate sleeping early, but when I started understanding, okay, if I wake up early, what does, what effect does that have on my student results? Well, I'll be able to work a little bit longer. I'll be also be able to have a lot more sharper mind as well as if I go to sleep and get actual sleep. And instead of only sleeping for like two to three hours where I used to do, and actually getting a full eight to nine hours of sleep, I'm going to be, I'm gonna be more efficient to go ahead and deliver results to my students, to deliver a program that actually gets them results quicker because I'm going to be sharper and whatever helps me out to help give out my students better results.I'm going to take that on anything that does not retract from that. That thing has to go. And when you go ahead and start thinking about this, it's more about the things you can cut out, especially the smaller actions that you do, maybe laying in bed for 30 minutes, maybe even scrolling on your phone before you get out of bed. Maybe not having a morning routine, not going bed early and getting to bed on time, not being able to take care of your body. The foods that I even eat now are all optimized for student results, because it makes no sense for me to eat a big unhealthy meal, feel tired afterwards and have to take a nap for an hour or two hours and lose that time to be able to put into my, into my elevated mentorship program to get, like I said, soon results because I'm sleeping.I'm not going to get results for them. If I'm sleeping, I'm not able to progress and grow my program and my business the way I would want to. And when you start looking things of that sort, when you start getting into the nitty gritty of things of that, especially just cutting hair in general, that's why I stopped watching and stop creating YouTube tutorials because it's literally like, what's the point now I do create like a tutorial, like once a month, but that's not for reasons of, um, I just have the extra content, you know what? I might as well put it out there. I'm not trying to optimize content for YouTube to get popular or to entertain. And I think a lot of YouTubers also do that as well, too. Some YouTubers, they put out the content that kind of is very bad. Redundant it after a while.It's like, all right, well, where is the progress in this? Where is the, um, point of emphasis to get attain growth? And everything has a purpose. Everybody has a purpose in this industry, but I, for me, it didn't fit my purpose of growth and suit results because I never found growth after watching my a hundred thousand tutorial, I got grown, optimize, whatever. My point of optimization, I got super clear on that and actually started taking action. Not wasting time watching another tutorial of how to flick out my wrist or how to put another guideline. Now, like I said before, everybody has to learn that at some point, but if you are trying to grow, you have to go ahead. And once you understand those base metrics, actually start going head and, and taking practice on that. Visualization is another great technique to go ahead and use for that as well, too.I love to go ahead and visualize haircuts and to be able to progress myself because it's all a mental wreck. Now, this is simply just from my experience, um, and what I've been able to learn from myself. But the most profound thing, not only just for myself, with my students as well. And I think that's why a lot of people, when they see elevated mentioned students like, Holy, okay, well, I'm a just study your students and I go ahead and see what they're doing, but you don't understand the point of optimization that they're trying to get. Each every single individual has a different point of optimization. We all have things where we want to go ahead and achieve different goals. And it doesn't make sense to take somebody else's outputs when you don't know what their inputs are when you don't know what, why, what point they're trying to get at, because that point is not the point that maybe you want to go to at all either.And that goes along with people that you listen to influence wise, that goes along with books, that you read content, that you watch, um, videos, movies that you watch as well, too. Everything that you input creates an output. And you want to go ahead and be very, very tactical with the inputs that you create. They all go towards and have the overall goal of the point of optimization. So even with that too, going on social media and just scrolling aimlessly is not the point. I'm not trying to go on here and post a video every day or two days or a couple of videos a week because my, I don't think student to get student results. You want a platform and watching my videos every single day serves you no purpose, right? My videos are simply here to go ahead and watch intake information and go out into the real world and apply and actually gain progress on that, right?It's not to keep you here and like, keep you subscribed every single new day. Hey, go ahead and jump on here and like, try to get you all flashing, everything like that, or entertain and get you get a good life. I'm simply here to go ahead and provide value. And then you go ahead and go off and go ahead and execute on that as well, too. And I think for any individual who wants to grow from the Barbra industry, taking yourself off social media platforms and scrolling aimlessly, or just watching another video cert really serves no purpose. It serves the purpose, but once, like literally once you go on, especially YouTube search up that video, search up content that you need to a question or something that you want to learn, watch that video, take it and then go out and practice it. It serves, you know, purposes, continually rewatch and rewatch.And we brought some videos all day long. Now, if you needed to come back to that video or watch another video in the future after you took took action, by all means do that, but it doesn't make sense to continually come back to or continually stay on the platform. When, if you're a true optimization point is growth. If you're really trying to progress in the industry, scrolling on Instagram, scrolling on YouTube, scrolling on Facebook, swollen on Tik TOK, even serves you no purpose, go out and start taking action, right? And this is why I want, especially like to drive the point home with this is I didn't go ahead and be able to charge 150, $200 per haircut simply by scrolling on social media all day, I got the information I was looking for, or I learned the principle because I had an Optima, my optimization point of what it was.And I would just go out and execute. I'll come back post, do whatever I need to do, uh, implement stuff in my business. See the results from that. Maybe a different question came up. Cool. Let me go ahead and see if I can find that question, search up that answer online or, um, in a video. And then I'd go ahead and go back and start, start working again. So try to stay off social media as much as possible when I'm not on social media, I'm working on my business when I'm not on social media. When I was cutting hair, I was working on my business. It serves no purpose to aimlessly every single day, watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials. I know people have said that before and done that, but that's not the best use of your time. Best suits. Your time is to go out and actually do the thing.Once you understand where you're going and clearly define, find that, then go ahead and audit all of your actions and actions that you need that are taking you and holding you back or not in line with the overall objective and even doubling down on the ones that are, you'll find that that list is actually very, very simple, and you will be able to actually hone it a lot easier. And I talk about focus a lot, a lot as well, distractions and how the mind is always on distractions. But when you have this overall point of view, okay, um, asking yourself before every action does this, like for myself, does this video, does me posting this video, serve a point of gaining student results? If yes, great. Make it, if no, then that will get me, that, that I can do to get me student results.And that's how I make decisions on, on items that I do and invitation, especially this next week, or whenever you watch this video for the rest of the day, simply track in your notes in your iPhone or any accident do literally when you, when you, and I would recommend stop after this video, quote, like close out of YouTube and go out and start taking action, go out and start on with your day. And every single action you come up against, I just ask, okay, is this going towards my point of optimization? Or is this, or is this kind of like a waste of time? Why am I doing the thing that I'm doing? Am I doing it because I wanted to say comfortable? Am I doing it because I want to be recognized? Am I doing it because I want to go along with the crowd or does it go with growth?Does it go with, um, elevating my business? Does it go with actually building a high end pain clientele? Yes or no. And then once you ask those questions, get those answers truthfully. And honestly, to yourself, you'll actually start seeing progress with that. And that's what we try to do with elevate and mentorship is not only do that, but also implement a lot of different items into an individual's business to get the growth they have not seen before to be able to charge a hundred, $200 per haircut. So with that, get off YouTube. After this video, this video is done with we're wrapped up, get off of YouTube and start writing things down. What's your point of optimization to track your actions and go do for the results. Don't worry. National YouTube tutorial. Don't click on another video. Don't go back on Instagram. Don't go back on Tinder.Don't go back on whatever the health other things that you want to go on too, because if that does not go towards your overall goal, there's no point in you doing it. So with that, like I said, before I go ahead and create a video like this, at least each and every single week, it could be a video like this, or once a month, there'll be a haircut tutorial. Um, that actually has different. I don't go step by step because step-by-step serves you no purpose, get results. There's a difference. I have a different approach of going ahead and do a haircut tutorials with the voiceover. And it gives, I try to give as much game as possible, similar like this, but at least for people who want to see a visual representation of a haircut and a different approach of that as well too, I also offer that each and every single week. And make sure if this video brought you a value, make sure you go ahead and click the link or not click the link, click the like button below and also make sure you are subscribed to this YouTube channel. And I will be dropping a video next week. And I hope to see you then IO.
Daniel Contreras is spearheading the industry with his New Era model that helps overworked and undervalued barbers to work less and make more. His students are some of the fastest-growing barbers in the industry and he has helped them gain market dominance in their respected areas of business and online. If you're interested in getting out of the old traditional model of barbering and start your New Era journey, click the "FREE Demo Breakdown" button above to request a strategy session.