Hey everyone, Daniel Contreras (@dlucs_) here founder of The New Era Of Barbering. It's been a while since I have posted a podcast. Really, or really just anything onto YouTube. Of course I've been working the elevated mentorship program with other barbers allowing them to build their business. And honestly, I just haven't had to say recently I've just been working. I have like a little bit of a slower day today's Friday. And I thought I should at least upload at least something like a podcast or anything. Because I've been on calls with a lot of barbers who were interested in getting into the program. And I I've been seeing a lot of trends lately. I might make a few podcasts today going over that a couple of trends. I see. One is barbers who actually, you know, because of last year's pandemic and then now everything seems to be opening up again. You know, they raised their prices, however nothing's happening. And in fact they kind of are, are ruining their business or they're making a lot less overall. And they weren't, or they've been in that position for a while and they thought it would pick up and it has, it that's been one trend. So I'm definitely going to make a podcast on that because that is somewhat of an issue. I think we, at least I saw a lot of barbers who went up probably it wasn't justified for their business to go up, but they felt Motivated to, and it wasn't the bestDecision long-term right. Short-Term makes them feel good, creates it's a facade that you're better than what you are. A, long-term kind of up the business and I've seen this a lot, so will come at least maybe the podcast after this, this recording kind of talk about solutions to fix that, if that as your situation or if you're on the edge of doing something like that, how to avoid breaking the business as I like to call it. However, on this one, I wanted to talk about a little bit, it's somewhat different topic topics, still around the idea of business for a lot of barbers. And one problem that I do see it, it plays a part in what happened with COVID especially last year and, and down you know, every about every 10 to 15 years typically. And you can look this up on Google. Like there will be something that bad that happens to the economy, right? Something crashes something goes on like a lockdownIt's, it's, it'sA chaotic world, but like these patterns and trends they're almost like natural law. Right. and it's been going on for, I mean, like you just look, look at a graph it's, it's really astonishing. It's almost like every 10 or 15 years something crashes and, you know, puts a lot of people out of work. Or as I like to think about it, it wipes away the majority of the players playing the game of business. Right. And that that's, I somewhat think of business as game, obviously there's strategy involved. But you know, not a lot of injuries, you just think themselves as players of a game more so just an individual who is independent and self-sustaining yet, you know, you can still lose this game. And, you know, I think we saw a lot of people last year, they panic, they hit the panic button because they were not prepared.They, they you know, they, they didn't build this thing that I think of as, as a war chest, meaning like cash reserves money in the bank. They enjoyed the good times too often and they didn't prepare for these this natural law of like, adventurously, it's not always going to be good. And we saw a lot of people who were worried, stressed out in over their heads because they, they, I mean, they were just kind of blindsided by this. And I think if, no matter if you're like a who's been cutting for awhile, I'm sure you've seen this trend throughout your life, you know, back in 2007, 2008 financial crisis In the last yearCOVID, I mean, people were out of jobs, people getting laid off and people weren't spending as much money. Even if you're somebody who's, who's a little bit younger, maybe not been able to see this stuff, I'm I'm 27 myself. So I didn't really, I mean, I was like, and what was seven oh eight? That was like six, no seventh and eighth gradeFrom me, six seventh grade, maybe.So, I mean, I didn't really know what the hell was going on. Honestly, I wasn't paying attention that I was trying to get by math homework completed. Right. So, you know, even seeing this was, I mean, it was, it wasn't a wake up call,But it was more of like a, oh, this is what You know, I learned about, or just, you know, kind of told about, and now I'm actually getting to see a real life example of this. And what happens at least every 10 to 15 years with these trends in the economy is that, you know, like I said before, a majority of the players playing the game of business and whatever industry, it may be get wiped away. Right. Think of it as what is it if you've ever played that, that board game chutes in life, right. The, whatIs it? The shoot is, you know, it sends you back down the board, the ladder, you get to climb up, think of it as that cash reserves allows you in times of that are hard for everybody else take advantage of lower pricing, or just be able to weather the storm and be able to come out, you know, ahead of the game and have 80 to 90% of the other players wiped off and starting back at zero while you're still, youKnow, kind of at the place whereYou were at when, when bad times hit, which gives you a major advantage over everybody else. And I don't think enough people are thinking about this in the barber industry. Again, a lot of our industry is more people who get into it just to make enough money to live, right? Like rent, maybe buy a house, you know, have a family and that's it, but there's no real strategy in terms of how to grow. I think that mentality really goes into an in shocks people. Wouldn't, you know, I say within the elevated mentor program in a new era barbering you know, we're more focused on getting barbers who are stuck the five to 10 K mark up to like 15, 20, 25 or $30 or $30, $30,000 a month, right. 30 K a month. And it's, I think a lot of people are a little bit discouraged sometimes for barbering, especially at first, because you're around a lot of individuals who are not financially stable.They're kind of struggling. They're a lot older and you kind of future tense yourself and you're like, hold up. This is, there's no way in hell. I'm going to beat like this. Like this is not going to be my future. Or maybe you're not even aware of that. And maybe after this podcast, you might just go out and just start looking and observing other players in the game, meaning other barbers. And you will start seeing these trends of people who just, they set themselves up to be a barber for life cutting hair for 25, 30, 40 bucks. I'm doing 12, 14 hour days. Right. And yet even at that age, they are still not in a position to leave. They have to say cutting hair, or, you know, they're, they're, they're more, they basically like where I'd like to think of it is as well as like, you know, they kind of sold their soul to the long hours andThey traded, I mean,There was a deal taking place, right. They traded a lot of their time for just a little bit of money and they traded that, that time they could have been building something better to then eventually exit. And instead didn't take advantage of that time. And that's because I've also seen, like, people will always comment either on my Instagram, they'll have to send me a really mean DM or even on YouTube. Right. I mean, these comments are, are shocking a little bit because, you know, I'm, I'm more, I've always somebody who's more trying to push things forward. Right. I'm trying to do better. I'm trying to improve the business. I'm trying to improve and grow things to really a level that somebody has never really heard of prior. And you know, you see some of these people who are more mad about, you know, we have barbers who been able to get up to a hundred, 150, 200 bucks plus just for a simple haircut and think that's that's wrong when it's it's, it's really not.I mean, if you run your business properly, you, you will, you know, and you get those clients who pay those prices in it. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. Nobody's holding anybody captive, but this is the overall mentality that a lot of barbers share. It's more of a scarcity mindset. It's more of a mindset that really isn't progressive. It's more crabs in the bucket and more poverty linked. And it's not something that's going to get you to, again, making 15, 20, 30 K a month. Now, going back to basically the topic of this, basically the one thing that you can, that all Barbara should be able to do or can do right now to improve their business is start working on basically building the war chest. Right. I think a lot of people overall, and it's a hot topic of the industry, right. I see it a lot when I do go on to either post or let's say I'm doing a Q and a call with, with customers inside of elevate mentorship.And we're kind of going through and reviewing some things, I'll see things pop up. And I think a lot of individuals are too short, too short minded, and to focus on the appearance of looking like they're successful, meaning like charging more being able to brag about pricing or whatever it may be, right. Instead of actually, you know, cause I'll get in calls with these individuals as well, too, who want they're there? They've done that. They've put up the facade. I like to call it and they'll try to get into the program and we'll go over their whole entire business. We'll go over the financials. We'll go over. What is even what is actually truly happening with the marketing, right? We'll get a lot of people who post a lot, do really great numbers. Views wise have great followers yet two to three clients a month, new clients, at least, which is really.And we can cut right through all that noise. But one thing, you know, you shouldn't be going after that yet. Most people will try to try to go after the facade. We'll try to go after braising prices because of, I think it's like an ego thing. Honestly, I kind of see it as like an ego thing or a status thing. Now, when it's not any of those things, it's a business move to that you've built out throughout the however long you've been at that price point for them, you've done the things properly to build it up and you can successfully and skillfully go up without having to worry because it's still for a majority of individuals. They have to worry or they stress out once they go up. Right. And this is another part of that too, because they don't have the cash reserves they'd have not built the war chest up yet.So before you even think about going up, I would say the one thing all barbers can do right now to improve it, improve the business, at least just start building a war chest, right? Make it, make the business right now, more profitable. I'm sure you can look at your financials. You can look at what you're doing each month and you can spot where you're bleeding. Meaning like money's coming out too often or you're spending too much money on unnecessary things, more for facade reasons, image reasons and not, you know, for a long-term sense. And that is what a building war chest is. You're, you're stashing things away to be able to, you know, have work ups and, you know, war comes every 10 to 15 years. So,You know, there'sA, there's a couple of things, at least that I'm looking at my notes here that you can only start doing, then they'll go over at least some issues that barbers have. Obviously everybody knows you should be profiting more. Right. But there's, there's a lot of times there's these issues, a lot of it's personal issues that hold people back from actually building a war chest, we'll kind of cover those. And then of course, some practical solutions that you can implement, if that is your issue in this podcast, at least. So again, the first point I was going to, like, I kind of already went over is really, you don't want to look to move in pricing if profits are profits are not in a good level. Right. I think a lot of barbers do that in terms of they want to raise their prices so they can make more.And you know, I'll be on a call with somebody I'll say, well, why do you want to raise prices? Why do you want to go to the business? You're like, oh, I'm not making enough. I'm barely able to save up per month right now. And that's, that's really improper thinking, right? Because you're going to have lifestyle creep and a lot of what I've learned too, especially with working with barbers in the program, even talking to barbers, they ability to think the ability to have make a rational decision and just have a really clean, proper thinking and like a worldview understanding awareness of yourself.I mean, first of all, it's very rare. Second of all, it's if you don't have that, there's no, there's no tactic that's going to help you at all to be quite honest. Right. and that's why I've, I've seen myself also working with barbers more on this, more than the tactic side, because the tactics I it'll come, like just like that once, once you kind of have these ideas, principles, mental models just in play. Right. And you should really at least take a look at w w you know, just ask, why, why do I want to move up in pricing? Right. Or, you know, if you do have that inclination or just that idea of like, oh, I should raise prices. Just ask why what's what's the reason is it to make more money. Cool. Then why are you not making enough money right now?Right. Meaning like, you know, cause Barbara will be a wall. I just don't see enough at the end of the month. All right. Well, what's happening in that month then, right? Let's say you're making 5k, right? For just for example, making $5,000 a month, you're telling me that you spend $4,500, you have $4,500 in expenses, somewhere down the line, you made some really up mistakes and you have some really up decision-making if you have that as like your, you know, as your medium and you know, there wasn't a lot, a whole lot of planning and there should be cutting out more than adding more right. Less is more of this thing. So you don't want to start adding more on, you don't want to start like having to do more because you know, that will lead to more services, more work, more chaos. And the thing will just start mutating itself and growing into this, I think of it as like a mind virus. Cause it really mutates itself. If you don't take care of this thing and you don't take care of your clean thinking, this thing can really take diff a different life of itself.So that's number one. You really want to make sure you get good, a good lean business. You want to make sure you're at least understanding what's going out. What's coming in per month. And you know, if you aren't saving that much, well, just look at what the hell you're doing. Right. You're probably eating out too much. You're like, that's always number one. Especially if you're in a relationship, you're always going to be eating out way too much. You got to get, you got to bear down the seriousness thing too, right? Like, you know, you can't just be a worse and be like, oh, she's going to hate me. Cause like, we're not going out. Just eat, look, you're planning for the future. This is obviously something that you're gonna want to spend time with for a while. Right. Long period of time. You know, financial wise, you guys probably have to be really well off or at least cool.And that's going to take, you know, well, it's going to be a bigger priority than just going out and figuring out like what we're to eat out at night. Right? That's always like the first thing eating out. If you have any vices smoking, weed, drugs, alcohol partying, all this other stuff. You could easily cut that out too. And what I see this a lot too, a lot of times is, you know, it's more short term things. It's more short-term decision-making Y the financial, like there's no profitability in the business. All like the month's expenses came from short term decisions. Like, and they were, they the half-life of them. I mean, they, the decisions, I mean, there were so short, right? Like, let's say alcohol. All right, cool. You drink some alcohol. You go out and party that's one night, right? Saturday. I mean, that's kind of done the half-life of that second, third order consequences.First of all, it's a drug. So it's going to get you addicted, been there before not the, not the best place to be in to be quite honest. Not like a dictator or anything like that. Cause alcoholic, but I mean just again, Andrew partying and Jordan going out, but you should, I only do it less. Now, the second order consequences of let's say he go out, have a good time to spend money. First order consequences. Obviously money's out of the bank. You had a good time. Ooh. Right. Second order consequences. You're going to have one hell of a hangover, unless you just didn't have that much fun. And third, you're probably going to be out of it. It's going to affect your work throughout the rest of the week. You're going to be sloppy, lazy making really, really bad decisions. Fourth order consequences. Guess what? Now the five, six, seven days later, you're going to want to do it all over again. And it's this really, really vicious cycle. Because again, too, it does get like, alcohol is a really weird thing. Cause like, you'll feel, up. You don't want to do anymore. Seven days later, you want to do it over again. Right? It's like it never happened. And it becomes this really vicious cycle and then becomes into really short-term. Short-Term decision-making right.Cool.Did you use to sustain this cycle? Like this isn't going to last forever and again, too, like we said, prior, 10, 15 years, something always bad happens and that's not going to be like, oh wait, you've been partying and enjoying your life so much. Nevermind. I'm going to miss you. You don't, you're not going to get affected by this. This still is going to happen to everybody. Right. Obviously what you want to do is be able to plan long-term to have long-term decision-making you know, like I said before, with the relationship, if you're going out, eating too much, spend too much money on doing stupid stuff before you actually make that decision, just think like, what am I actually trying to do? Am I trying to be a barber for the rest of my life? Am I trying to cut hair for the rest of my life?Am I trying to stay at this price point for the rest of my life? Am I trying to build my business or do I want to just stay at this position for the rest of my life? Or do I actually want some growth who actually wants it from freedom and who actually want to Excel and have more than what I have right now, if you don't want to have more than what you have right at that moment, by all means, go ahead and splurge. Do your thing. If you do want that, you should probably at least take a split second, have a sobering thought, right? Take almost like a third person, point of view on that decision that you're about to make and be like, all right, hold on. It. Obviously, this thing is going to be more pleasure seeking if it's an investment in, in the business. Sure. But still probably should at least make sure it's the right investment in the business. But you want to at least start to start having this type of view on things, right? Because if not, you will always, I mean, it's, it's, it's a pattern. It's a pattern of existence. You look at your bank account. It probably stays at the same amount each and every single month. And I'm willing to bet once you go up in pricing, if you were toThat bank account would say the same, stay around the same amount, because that's kind ofWhat you're tuning yourself towards instead of the inputs, outputs, meaning the inputs to that will get the result of money in the bank.Are yourHabits, your spending habits, your business money-making habits and your ability to cut out in things that aren't useful. And a lot of times like, you'll just kind of get yourself attuned to, let's say you have like 10 K in the bank. It doesn't matter what you make. If you're just tuning yourself to that as like your north star 10 K in the bank, 10 K the big 10 K in the bank, no matter how much money is coming in, you could be doing,I don't know, 50K a month or something like that. Right. And you could still just end up at 10 K in the bank because that's kind of like anything you see higher than that. You're like, oh, I can spend money. I can get, I can enjoy myself. And you'll, you'll bury that thing back down. Now. Obviously that's a more extreme example. I think a lot of individual, especially as barbers reside much lower, like anywhere between a thousand to maybe three K in the bank, which is very, very like, I mean, that's scary. To be quite honest, I mean, that is no way to like, even think that you can support a family on and like at least comfortably like Jesus, you might, you would to be stressing the hell out each and every single month, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to live without stress in that causes like a lot of health issues.Right? So you want to think about these things. Long-Term like, what am I life to be like, do I want to be stressed? Or I want to be, you know, in this position of where I'm struggling each month and each month is a grind and hustle. Cause guess what? That is what most barbers want when they first start out grind in hustling it out. But that's not very sexy when you get older at all. Right? In fact, it kind of looks a little bit like loser Rish. If you, you say you want to be good and be build a business, and yet you are still having these tendencies. So clean this up right now, again, to look to remove lifestyle creep, pleasure expenses or stupid buying kind of went over that as well, too. With that last point, I think that the final point I've just, you know, improving this on, on, on what you can do you know, start treating yourself and your business as if it was something and really that you were someone that you deeply cared about. Right? I don't think enough people.I mean, you mistreat yourself all the time. Just think about it for a quick second. I can think about times like before, when I was kind of running a very average businesses of Barbara charging, like 20, 30 bucks, not making that much. I didn't treat myself that well, meaning like I didn't take care of myself. In fact, I think you could probably, depending on if you played video games and what video game you played, right. Think about it as somebody like has played either two K. I used to play NCAA when that game was out. That's how long I have not played video games since then. But you know, all like these other video games, you could obviously create like your own player and you care for that player, right? You, you insure, like, let's say if it's a sports character or sports video game, you're going to make sure train that, that character to improve it skillset.Right. So it can get a better overall can Excel at what you are doing, have a better skillset. You know, and your, your whole ideas is optimized around getting this player better yet when it comes to an individual's life like your own. A lot of times I would find I don't have that same seriousness, or I don't have that same care with myself. I'm just kind of lazy. I, I'm scared of, of improving the business of working with people with doing things that can have a good ROI on my business or just overall like, you know, transcend self really at the core of it. You know, and, and you also have to treat your business the same, right? This is like a living entity. This is like a, I mean, I feel like I am in a relationship with my business.I'm single now, but like, you know, I feel like I'm, I've always been in relationship with my business overall. And you know, kind of think of it as like a I used to play halo too again, too, or gears of war or or even Assassin's creed and like, you know, the missions or the campaigns that you're on. You know, I used to treat those like really serious. Like I would like really work at them really like improve like the efficiency or just whatever it may be of like, where I need to do a co accomplish. If there was a task that need to be done, I'm gonna go do it right away so I can continue improving the story overall. But when it guess what, when it came to my business and when it came to like actually being a business owner that same, that same thing wasn't there, that same little edge was, was, was missing.And it just, it's this weird thing. Like we'll treat other things and other people may be better than what we treat ourselves. And I think you just have to like, look at yourself and your business of what you're running as a barber, obviously as something that you actually give a about and you care, and you want to have, you know, you have the best interest for those things. And you'll do those things because, you know, if you think about it, like why would somebody get into drugs? Why would somebody like not work on saving up money or, or building war chest? Like, you know, these are very, just like personal issues that bleed in your business all day, and you can easily fix these up if you just cared about it. Right. actually had some craftsmanship with your work actually like improve the business, right.Instead of just talking about it now, there are some reasons obviously why somebody can not fix or improve the financial stability. Like we kind of talked about prior with the prior points kind of already talked about as well, too. One reason why somebody is not going to be able to prove, I mean, there's two short term thinking pleasure seeking, right? You gotta be able to spot these things in these habits as well. Because a lot of times these, these neuro-pathways are like ingrained in yourself. And they're, you know, the brain and neural pathways. I mean, they're, they're electronic signals sent, right. And they take the path, the path of least resistance. So if something is, you know, let's say he's not hard ingrained, there's no electrical current running through there and it's not like a wide your brain is not going to have like wide pass, but it's not like, like if you could imagine like a road or like a walkway, it's not a wide walkway.It's like a very narrow, it's very like hard to walk through. Like, you know, now I can get through there, you're going to go through the more spacious route. That might've been a really bad example, but or let's say like with water. So you know, if there's, if there is a like microscopic hole at the bottom of a water bottle versus like a two inch wide hole, guess where all the water is going to be coming out from that two inch wide hole, it's a path of least resistance, right? It's not, there's not so much resistance keeping that water in it, just letting it flow out as easily as possible. And that's the same thing with these habits. These short-term thinking and pleasure seeking. If you have not been aware of them, like, you know, that they will ruin your life, they will ruin your business and they will keep you at the same level for however long until you become aware of these things. I think self-awareness while you're a business owner is probably one of the biggest things and biggest assets you can I don't know if you can create, but just, I don't want to say, become aware of self-awareness, but you know, to at least implement, I guess is self-awareness and just being aware of like your thoughts, your actions, where they come from, why are you doing things? Are they long-term, short-term what's going on because most people are kind of You know, like ,If you want to go back on video games, like again, to like, I used to play Madden, there was this thing called, like, you know, you can simulate a season, like let's say, cause I really just enjoyed doing like the free agency trades, building the team up to become better. I didn't really care about playing the game. I just was more into the, the building of the team. So I was, I would SIM simulate seasons and simulate like all the games. So I could just get to like the free agency and trades and stuff like that. But you know, most people are just kind of living on like that simulation of just, you know, like they're not aware, they're not, they're not taking the, of like their business. And, you know, that's why I kind of focus on, especially with elevated mentorship. I think I've, I've said it on the website too.I know I've said it many times. I just give barbers the actual controls to run their business efficiently and for the first time, right. Cause most of them are on autopilot. Most of them aren't in the simulation mode of just listening to like whoever the hell they listened to in barber school, who honestly was working in Barbara soul school because they weren't a successful barber. And they, they never did anything. You know, they kind of just got exactly what that other Barbara got always got or they're going off misinformation from other people, which is really bad. And they don't critically think about things. So, you know, you should Def that is one issue. Like I said before, it's short term thinking or the pleasure seeking you want to spot those habits and that is one reason why somebody can't financially improve. Another reason is obviously there's just no plans for growth.And really hasn't thought about, you know, their future and their wants and their needs. Like we said prior, do you always want to be doing this thing? You always want your business at this level. Do you think if you had a family that depended on you would you be able to have that peace of mind or would you be stressed the hell out? And I don't think enough people like, actually think about this. I go onto calls with barbers and I, I mean, it's very simple. I ask them all right, you know, what's, what's kinda going on business. What's the problem. Why can't you get to where you want to go? And then where do you want to go? Right? How much do you want charge? What's the structure of this thing, at least like working day wise and then how much you want charge.And it's very surprising to me that not a whole lot of people actually think about these things. Not a whole lot of people actually think about how much they want to make. I'm even putting thought into how much they wanna charge. They're just like a lot of times I hear this answer when I asked that question, a lot of bars will tell me this, oh man, honestly, I haven't thought about it. And I just kind of stay quiet because it's like, well, think about it now. Cause like, this is what, we're this direction we're going in. And so you actually have to have some type of idea where the hell you're going to go with this thing. If you don't or if you choose like really low again to odd barbers who will come on the, on the calls, charging 30 bucks, I tell them, all right, what do you want charge? They said, they wanna charge 50 bucks. I said, why the hell do you need my help? You're 20 bucks off. You really need my help doing that again too. You're at 30 bucks, you want to get to one 50, 200, probably a lot of things that need to be that need to be changed up in your business to get you to that level could probably help you do in that 50 bucks.Could I help you do that obviously really quick, but that's not going to be a reason for us to work together. You can just easily do that shot on your own. And a lot of times it's more, I can tell that the Barbara just really hasn't thought beyond that point, they've attached themselves so closely did like this lower level thinking of like, well, nobody else has done in my area. Well, there probably is a reason for that because everybody else probably thinks like you as well. And the reason why you think the way you think is because, well, you know, you've only talked to people in your area for the same mindset, same crabs in the bucket mentality, scarcity mentality, and aren't really doing the right things. So yeah, obviously, you know, you're probably going to have some type of mentality that hasn't at least put some thought into this.Even wrote it down with a pen and paper, right? What do you want your life to be like in like 20 years, 30 years? I mean, this is very, very simple stuff that you could listen to some hypey podcasts about some guy. And you'll probably learn the same thing. The next thing kind of also went over this, you know, a lot of people why they can't improve the financial stability is again too. They settle for everyone else around them is doing. And it just comes into that group think model. Right? a lot of times, I mean, you think about like back in like high school for me at least a lot of my friends, they were into cars, they wanted like sound, they wanted like speaker systems. They weren't like souped up cars and they were really, they were really passionate about, they were really into like building their cars and fix them up and like going to car meets.And honestly I did not give a about cars. I never played with hot wheels. I, I really was not a car guy at all. Still not drive a Toyota Corolla. So I really don't give a about, about that. But for some reason I got into it, like I started like, oh man, I'm going to have speakers my thing, oh man, I'm gonna soup up my, my, my car. Oh man. I want to buy this, you know, like for no reason. And it's, it's really like when you're around that type of thinking. Like, I mean afterwards of like, I mean, even now I'm like, what the hell was I thinking? I don't even like cars. I don't even like that thing. I was just kind of going along with like what everybody else around me was doing. And I think that's also happens.I mean, not also I did for sure happens. Even with like career-wise career focus in terms of like, who are you hanging around people that you know, what they, what they want to be able to make. And what do they think they should do with their money? You know, a lot of people too, when I was at least coming into Arab high school into, I guess, barbering, all people really wanted to focus on was, oh, I just want to make enough money to travel. Jesus Christ. I wish like I that's traveling is the last thing on my mind even retiring. Not even, not even close on my mind because I just like to build things. I like to solve problems. I like to build things I want to build like really great, but he's I don't enjoy taking time off to be quite honest.I like maybe to recharge, refresh and just take a step back, but just to do that, just to do it, Jesus Christ, like you have to be some lazy person for that. And again too, if that's what you like, this probably is not your podcast. Right. because I'm just not that individual. I really enjoy progressing. I really enjoy transcending where I thought I could do or like what the typical belief of what somebody in industry can do. And I really enjoy, like I said, building things I really enjoy. I really enjoy the challenge of it. And it really like that, that I think what most people enjoy about traveling about them feeling alive. I feel most alive when I'm building things. And that's what also, I kind of stepped away from making content all the time because it wasn't going towards my business.It was going with, towards my business, most cutting hair. Definitely not now though. I guess maybe sometimes to at least like help some future customers of the program. Get a little bit more awareness on what we do get a little more words of me. My ideal, my ideas and really, you know, if this could be the right fit for them, but at the end of the day, I'm completely indulged with helping my customers get their business to the next level. So, and this, this would never happen unless like I kind of removed myself from that group thing type of thing again, too. I, I probably would have had like the most souped up like facet figures type of type of car and I wouldn't even liked it. Right. and you kind of need to like really remove yourself from these things and, and really ask like, what, what the hell am I doing this?What do I really like this? Or am I just kind of going on with the flow of what everybody else is doing? And we kind of see this in industry too. Right. I think we see it a lot with people who are trying to create like some type of brand or like a, I don't know, like some type of like product line when they don't have not created a business yet. And it's like, well, why? And it's like, well, you know, you look at people who they're around in the shop or their friends and they're out, they all have the, things. They all have brands. They just do it for look, they do it for like, because they think it looks cool, but nobody has yet to do anything really great. Right. and you know, in fact, you kind of start looking at, and you're like, wait, I don't even like do it in this either.Like this isn't what I, what I want to be doing. I actually just want to build the business and be great at that. And don't really care what the hell it is. So it comes into like a little bit more critical thinking. But that is, that is, that is major thing that at least I solved myself, you know, especially when I was in financial, disabled, just settling for what everybody else around me was doing. And like that worldview of what I thought my life was like Ben said, I was just too lazy to actually decide and think for myself. I think that's like one of the worst things too, is like, when you just kind of go along with what other people say, I think that's why a lot of people want to get into real estate or wherever that may be.Cause they, they they're, a lot of people say that and they're like, Aw man. Cause it, you know, it's a good opportunity. I'm like, do you really think that? Or did you, did you just we just talking to somebody and they told you that and you're like, man, that sounds good because that's what a lot of people do. Last thing I want to do is get into like real estate right now. And that's for my own personal reasons. I don't want to take care of any tenants. I don't want to do any of that. Trust me. Like, I'd rather just build my business with what I'm doing right now. And cause I I'll think for myself, all right, I don't need anybody to tell me what they think a good opportunity is. I'll I'll just think about like, what, what do I want right now?Next thing of why people can prove their financial stability. Jesus, yeah. Following low quality advice. Buying pleasures, buying the facade that they live again. A lot of times when, when I was growing up, even like people when, even when I was cutting hair and people knew I was making pretty decent money they, you know, people start telling you what you should, what you should do with that money now that you're making that you need to look like you, like you make that type of money. Right. you need to like go here where this buy this. Oh, you should get this. Oh, Mandy, do you see this? This is really cool. And again too, it comes back to this like group thing thing. Like, I didn't want any of that. I just wanted to continue. I really just enjoyed building things.Like I remember when I was younger, I really just wanted to become a professional athlete. Not because of like the fame or anything like that. I remember just saying to people like, cause I just, I would just really like to, I enjoy training. I enjoy training for something I really enjoy like being locked in, waking up, just like doing the thing, going to sleep, doing something better than anybody else is doing. It was never about the money or anything like that. And I think this is also like falling low quality advice. I mean, geez, I see it on Facebook groups in some barber in, in the industry. And I kind of think, just sit back and think like, what the hell are these people saying? Why are they even saying this? And I hope to God, nobody's actually taking this advice.Cause this is like the worst thing possible. And you know, sometimes you just have to really question you know, again, to a critical thing, what the hell is this person saying this is actually working. And I think a lot of times, and I've talked to Barbara before too. And they, they agree with this as well, too. A lot of times all you really need to do is Jesus, I've seen this before people just buy followers. There'll be the loudest they'll sound the most convincing. And then all of a sudden everybody will take that thing. It's true. Yeah.Please. At least like really question, why the somebody saying something because that can be like one of the worst that could be like it's these false gatekeepers, right. That say that, you know, the business requires this, this, this to in order to do this or all you need to do is this and this will happen and that will get people really in a up site. Right? Look at the end of the day, you could do whatever you want, but I'm also just speaking from my own experience and what I've seen. Other barbers who have been in the program as well, just talking to barbers for like a year now you want to be in the program. And it's, it's always this trend of, of just like, like, well, where did that? Where the hell did you hear this from?Oh, I went to this one class or I went to what's one thing I'm like, I don't even know who the hell that is. Why would you listen to that person? And then I kinda just go into w what's their business like, oh, they're only charging 30, dude, do you want to do that? Cause that's, what's going to get you. Or just again to the opposite, sir, somebody is making good money, but again, they're, they're buying into pleasures, they're buying the facade. They want to put up a facade, an image of themselves that really isn't that that's not in accordance with reality. There's perception is reality. And a lot of people live in the perception of things instead of the reality, I think for myself, even I got caught up in that a little bit sometimes when you're too much on social media, that thing will just really rot out your idea of what reality and perception is.You can get caught up in some bad trends but you have, you have to fight to stay, to stay really within that reality space, you have to really, really, really like audit yourself and your decisions and who you're listening to. Because a lot of people, even like people that you, you might look up to, honestly , they put on this, this, this more facade and they, again, it's more of the perception thing. What do people think about them and is this going to make their perception look better than actually what the reality is? I just read the podium play in reality, you could take it or leave it with myself. Right. I don't really give a anymore to be quite honest. And I think you always have to audit people who I mean, this, this also takes like I mean, just experience kind of like I mean, I've been taken advantage of, of in business opportunities or just things of that nature.And you kinda just start understanding like these, these these underlying principles are like these really like these red flags that you kind of wrote off was like, ah, but this sounds good. And you should have been paying attention to other things. Right. it's kind of like really, really abstract, but hopefully, I mean, if you've been there, you could somewhat understand if not, trust me, you will have to at least like go through some, some vetting process of just learning. Everybody has to learn of like, you know, who to listen to, what not to listen to. And you're going to make some mistakes along the way, but as long as you're learning quickly and not learning slowly, that's always the best. It's always the best practice. Finally, why somebody cannot improve financial stability is even on lean living.They're basically breaking even, right? So maybe that you could do everything I just talked about and you could fix up everything. But the reality of the fact is, is like you just don't make enough, right? Maybe let's say you make a thousand dollars a month. I mean, and you have rent, maybe you live in a really good state that has low you know, cost of living, which is great, but reality of it is you're still making it. You're still only like having to work with a thousand bucks. Right. and Mo more than likely these individuals, if you're, if you're doing that as a barber you just need to take your more seriously. Honestly. use this as like a little bit of a wake up call. Let's get some, let's get a little more responsible about this thing, right?Let's not be too scared. Let's not just get caught up in your head too much or, or, you know, there's multiple reasons why, and we'll kind of go over that next. But yet a lot of times the people who are just breaking even still, even when they do live lane, even when they do all the things we kind of just said prior you just need to work. And I hate saying that, but you know, sometimes you, you know, a lot of times I'll have barbers who hop on calls and I'll, I'll even I'll even vet people out of like, look, you know, if you're like in two of your, you're doing like under four to five K a month there, there's still a lot more room for you to grow on your own, you know, you could probably get that business up to a good level.Am I saying that I'm, I'm not going to work with anybody making none of that? No, of course. They're like, I have plenty of barbers who have, you know, I've worked with in the program who started out with that. But more of the trends that I see is more laziness. Especially with individuals the who want just they're, they're too lazy. They don't work hard enough. They blame everything else and they want somebody else to fix it for them. Right. And I'm not in that type of business. If you think that way, please please understand, first of all, do not, do not try to apply to work with me because I will not, I will decline that immediately. But also too, like you sh you should really, you should really take a hard look at yourself. What you're doing like, okay, is this, is this I'm a really bullish bullshitting myself.Am I really living in, in, am I really in touch with, in, in tune with reality? Or am I just like to caught up with some? Right. and more times than not, you know, some, some people are, even if you're just starting out, that could be a reason why too. No computers pretty good. My computer screen froze now it's back. Now. The last thing is like, cool. So we went over, of course, what you can do to improve financial stability some issues that might happen and occur why you can't let's at least get into some ways that you can solve this. Right? So kind of starting off what we were talking about before in terms of lean living, but you're breaking, giving even, or even just any of the other ones. I think this can like relate to everything else.Number one if you have any of these issues, you probably should stop blaming and pointing the finger as if it's everybody else except you. Trust me, it's not your clients, it's not the city. You work in the barbershop, you work in. It's not the people you work around. It's not the environment that you're in. It. Trust me. It's all you. And as, as blunt as that may sound it's more of like the w when you actually come to grips with that, it's, it's a very I don't wanna say rewarding, but it, it does, you don't, you do calm down because, you know, it reminds you, yeah, I'm in control of this thing. And you know, it is my fault. I let this thing, you know, get out of hand or haven't been taking the responsibility to have responsibility that I should have been doing.And it's, it's, it's quite calming at that fact, right? You kind of like, straighten up your, you get everything in line and you know exactly what you got to cut out. Right. And trust me, it's, it's never, it's never your clients. Like I have a lot of people, all my clients just won't pay me that much. It's not your clients, it's you, they're, they're coming into your business. This is your thing. So act like it, right? It's not your city either again, too, you can build a business up to a level that's way higher than what you probably expect yourself to right now. But again, too, you're holding yourself back with those limiting beliefs or with the idea that every it's it's everybody else's problem. When you are some golden child who doesn't stink. And you know, that's going to come back and bite you, or you can just stay where you're at, right.Or even the shop, right? Oh, this person isn't like, treat me, well, I should be getting this, should get this, you get this look, there are always going to be situations that, you know, maybe you don't have the upper hand, but guess what? You can always take control of what you are doing, what your output is. And you can well, you for sure improve what you're doing without like being this victim. Cause that's exactly what you're doing. If you point to anyone else yourself, you're a victim. And that's just again, to a little blunt, but sometimes being blunt, being straight up and being, having that honesty with yourself about something that you run, which is your business. It's not my business like that. You own it is your business. So take some control of it. And honestly, owning and running a business will show you exactly where your flaws are at.And if you're aware of things, or if you're aware that things are not going well, well, that's probably a telltale sign that something's not right with you and right with your thinking. I remember I said this on a talk to a customer in the program. We're kind of working through his business. And I remember that was just like something we'd conquered on that topic of like, oh yeah, this happens a lot because you know, a lot of barbers just don't they don't think properly. They, a lot of people just in general, I'm Barbara, just people in general don't where responsibility, they kind of just blame everybody else. Probably got taught that as a kid, that they can kind of diff kind of avoid pain or avoid looking like a fool, right? If they could just point the finger and it's like off of them, that's not, that's not how reality works, that's perception, but not reality.Next thing, obviously, we kind of talked about, be responsible track your finances, have a plan holds and hold yourself to that standard again, too, if you're fluctuating or if you're not, you don't have a clue what's coming in and out of the business. Again, it's, it's not even made biz and it's not anybody else's business, except yourself. You better take some responsibility for this. Right. Because tell a lot of barbers is when we get on a call, I can't help you. If you can't help yourself first, get, get yourself to a good position, five, 10 K a month. And if you want to double, triple that, awesome. We have the systems and processes in place that will help you do before then. It's going to be more of like a, you versus you battle, no matter what process or what tactic. We give an individual it's sometimes like that.I mean, not sometimes that would never work. Right. It's always has to be, you have to fix itself and then, you know, we can implement everything else. And this is just simple, like. I'm sure wherever you're listening at this at, right. Whether it be, maybe you're in your room, maybe you're in your car. Maybe you're at the barber shop and you look around, right. Just look at whatever is your space that you're in right now. Maybe again too, it's your car. Maybe it is your bedroom. Maybe it is your apartment. Maybe it is your, your haircutting station. Look at that thing right now. Would you feel comfortable right now? The way it is taking a picture and having let's say, I don't know. Who's what's like a popular news thing. I don't know. W would you be comfortable like posting that?Cause I don't want to say posting on Instagram. Cause some people might be like, oh, I only got three followers. I'm not going to care. Right. Like if that was like plastered all over the internet as like, this is your space, would you feel like pretty self-conscious about it more times than not. I'm willing to bet you will. Right? Even I can have like some boxes and trash. I could probably take out right now. Right? If we look to the worst things that you have, or, or that the worst places, I mean, are you hiding it? Are you, are you, are you taking care of it? Like you just be responsible, the simple things, get your life in order, track your finances, understand what's coming in, what's coming out, right. Take some damage control, have a plan, write this thing out, hold yourself to a good standard.Treat yourself like you actually care about yourself. And like you care about your business. You know, these are very simple things that can easily get you up to like that 5k per month. Mark, if you just like stop making excuses, you can get this thing up right now. Second thing, or second thing, third thing of we could do to solve these issues. Obviously, just question the advice you get. And this isn't like question like, oh man, are you right? Or are you wrong? Like just critically think about it. Like actually, like I've been told you know, these, these podcasts actually help a lot of people think more clearly about like what they should do. Obviously a lot of stuff makes sense because, you know, I just thought about it critically. I thought about like, well, what the hell am I doing this thing for this doesn't make sense?Like why, why is, why is it being done like this? Or w you know, you just really gotta make sure this thing's airtight. You can get to like, almost take all stances at it and like, see if it actually stands from, if it doesn't, well, there's probably something wrong with it. Right. you know, a lot of times to advice that, that you know, people might give you or just even just other people that are in the shop, like, let's say other barbers who are you're around, look maybe for right now, you all have the same short term. Cool. You're a barber. You cut here. Long-Term wise that things like I'm willing to bet. Like if you have people in the room, all in the same industry right now, 10 out of 10, maybe nine out of 10 have the same short term goal.10 out of 10 also have 10 out of 10 people also have very different goals long-term wise, right? Everybody has a different long-term goal. Everybody might have for the most part, majority wise the same short-term goal. So it doesn't really make too much sense when you would take somebody's advice that look, same short-term goal. Long-Term wise, you guys are on the same path. Maybe they just want to be a barber versus their life charged, charged 30 bucks. Maybe you don't, maybe you want to charge a hundred, 150. Maybe you have those goals, right. It doesn't really make sense to take advice from those individuals. So you really want to, again, look at those future, a future project out where they're actually going after, what is the optimized for, why would they even be saying this again? To a lot of things that I say maybe not a whole lot of people would like it because there are two short-term sighted and maybe they'll have the same long-term goals, which is fine again, too.I think I'm more I just want to build some really dope. Right? And some people just don't want to do that. Some people to want to relax and enjoy and all it's never about the money. All right. We'll see what happens in another 10, 15 years now. And you know, if you're going to be complaining to the government, this should give you hurry up with your stipends, right. Or, or your government relief. Right? Cause that is what happens. People will get, again, it'll start playing this victim role last but not least. Oh, this is easy to come up with daily, a good of the game, game plan of inputs, outputs that are game game, daily game plan of inputs that will generate the outputs that you want. Right. Again, too, if you want to make more money, if you want to like get these things in order, a lot of times it is people focused on the wrong thing.A lot of people focus on the output, which is the result. Meaning like, let's say, if you want to make $3,000 a month, let's just say, you're starting from zero. You want to make three K some people just focus solely on three K, three K three games. They want to manifest this thing. Jesus Christ. If that's, if that's your game plan, you're going to be taking so long at this thing. All right. What you really want to do is come up with a game plan of inputs, outputs. What are you? Inputs are basically the actions or the daily things that you can do every single day. Almost like a checklist that will get you the output. Right? A great example of this is I used to play baseball in high school. Obviously I wasn't that good, but I thought it was pretty decent.Right. and I say that good because obviously I'm not playing anymore. But I remember one season I thought I was going to do really, really good. Sophomore season, I really good season playing varsity. I had like set these big, old goals. I'm going to hit like 400. I'm going to get this many home runs as many RBI's. And what I did was I focused on the output. We'll do basically every after every game, I would calculate all my stats my junior year. And I would come up with like what I had towards my goal. And then all I would do off of that, it's like, oh man, okay. My average is like this. I got to get this many hits this next game. And then I got to this many hits the game after that. And guess what? I sucked. I think I wanted to hit like 400.I think I hit like two 60, like just terrible, like three, like three home runs, like just a completely season. And I remember thinking after that, like, I really up something happened. I only have one season left. I got senior season and all I did the next season was I'm like, I'm just, don't even show me statistics. Don't even show me what's going on. Let me just focus on staying in the work. Right. Just working on daily habits and actions of by swaying daily habits of my game to improve that. What ended up happening again too? I hit really well. I think I wanted to hit like 400, I think it forward 20 or something like that. Just kind of like every single stack that wanted to have I over exceeded in that category. And it was because I just didn't look at the output.I didn't look at the result. I just stayed focused on the inputs and the outputs will figure themselves out. I think bill Walsh has a book. I don't even know what the title of the book is. There's a book that bill Walsh wrote. I remember hearing about it and it was like, oh, it's that same principle. I know exactly what that book is about. I think it's something with like the score will figure itself out or something along the lines, right? And basically it's, it's whole ideas. Like if you just focus on your job, what you're supposed to be doing that play or that drive that play that single split. Second of what that is supposed to do, the score is gonna figure itself out. Don't worry about the score. Don't look at it. Don't score word, watch don't stat watch. If you focus on just that very next play and what your job is, and actually do that job to the best ability ever.Like you will get the output that you want, right? So if you're a business and you want to grow it or it's struggling, or let's say, even look, you may be, might be making money, but it's not getting the profit margins. You want just go through a daily inputs outputs. All right. If I want you to say this much money a month daily inputs is I have to look over my expenses. I've tracked my expenses daily. I had to keep it in a tracking sheet. I have to, you know, make sure I remind myself I'm only gonna you know, switching out things and bills wise in terms of like recurring bills, I can cut down on find alternatives that are cheaper, not go out to eat as much, make my own food, these types of things, right? These are the, and that will generate you.And if you stay honed in and just really find a good rhythm undoing, those, the output is going to happen, right? That's one of the most amazing hacks that you can possibly do now to kind of recap again, to one thing that every Barbara can do right now in their business, look simply just build up the cash reserves 10, 15 years. Something's always going to happen. You better have been a good position and have a war chest for when war comes. Cause the last thing you want to have is have war happened. And the only thing you have is a paper sword, cause you were going to get killed, right? Like it's, it's just not going to happen. So improve the financial stability of it. Don't look to go on profit. Don't look to go bond pricing, look to go up on profits and look to stretch out that margin as best you can right now and build a proper business.Don't like it too caught up in the facade of the perception of things. Just stay in reality. Trust me, it's going to help you out a lot. Remove lifestyle creeps, plan long-term and start actually treating your business like a business and like somebody that you care about. So with that hopefully you found something or that you found this a value. I don't know how long this podcast has been. I do plan on maybe if I have a couple other days that are not as busy for myself, I might go ahead and start making a couple more. I don't know about YouTube as of yet, as of now, podcasting is very efficient for me. And again too, if you're stuck at that five to 10 K mark and do want to double or triple it, and you are interested in joining the LVT measure program so we can set you up with the systems and processes that we use to get Barbara's up to that 15 K 20 K 25 30 K per month, mark.I will go ahead and leave a link down below to go and book call with me. And we can figure out like, first of all, is your business, the right place? Are you in the right place? And does it make sense for us to work together? We'll kind of run a diagnosis on your business again too. I don't work with everybody. So if you do get your call canceled, just know I will put some directions in what you can do with your business right now, and some resources that can help you out. But that's just the reality of it. Okay. So again, if you're making that under five K per month per month, mark, just make sure we can have at least some that war chest up. Cause that is, that is something that we want to have. If we're going to be scaling your business is we want to make sure you're not in a scarcity mode, but you do have that war chest.And, and typically, ideally we want to have like four to six months of loony expenses, right? Saved up at least start scaling this thing up now to remember it's been a minute since I've made a podcast. Oh, I mean, if you enjoyed this podcast and you'd feel like this would be beneficial for somebody else that you don't own the barber industry to hear by all means, feel free to share it. If you also, oh, and also if you feel like giving this thing a rating, of course. Go ahead and leave a review down below. Let me know your thoughts. Also, if you do leave review please go ahead and leave your Instagram outlive, go check out your work. I will not be DM-ing you or anything like that, but I'll always love to see who is watching. So by all means, if you leave review down below, please leave your Instagram.Cause I would love to at least check out what you are doing in the barber industry. And again too, if somebody has sent this to just know that they have your best interest in mind and your growth in mind, so you might as well pass this thing on as well, too. Right? Other than that, I'm a mom, a mom. If you want check out anything else, of course, any other resources you can go to the new era, barbering.com. I can go to the resources section either. You can look at more podcasts or you can look at the blog videos. We also have some tools up there as well as some customer interviews that I've done as well too with past students and past barbers who have been through the program who I still currently work with and building up their business. If you want a better idea of that again, too, if you want a book call with me to see if you're a good fit for the program, you're at the five, 10 K per month, mark with double or triple that I'll leave a link to go ahead and send an application and book a call.And then now we'll go ahead and see, see, so with that, make another one right now, Michael gets something to eat, but until then until next time, thank you for always tuning in and that guys next time.
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.