More Cuts Does Not Equal More $$

Written by Daniel Contreras on August 30th, 2020

About this video:

Linear thinking will be the death of the industry. It has plagued many into thinking that more haircuts, more services, or more clients equal out to more income overall.

Let's start with the obvious problem:

1. More does not equal more

As obvious as this is, and how much the beginning of this post clearly states how this will fuck you over, the bigger issue is why do barbers continue to do this?

When talking to barbers who want to get into the Elevated Mentorship program, it's blatantly obvious.
They have built their business to rely on the cheap cuts so much, that they would need to start from scratch in order to just rebuild their entire clientele structure.

Most barbers who are making a "decent" amount, are too afraid to even raise prices by $5, let alone rebuild their entire clientele.

But with working with barbers inside of our program, that's the only way we must rebuild to create freedom.
The more equal more mindset never scales and will leave you stuck at a certain price point. Our job in the program is giving barbers the tools to go through this process easily and effectively in order to allow scale to happen as no one wants to be doing the same thing week in and week out.

The barber must build their business on a strong foundation that allows them to be able to charge what they need to, regardless of location, and be able to provide new clients at that new price point at will.

Ideally, this process should take you no longer than 6-8 weeks to accomplish.

Once this is at least fixed and put the right pieces in place to allow us to scale, we must begin to take a different approach when making future decisions.

2. Measure the downsides, not the upsides

This is the opportunist approach. One thing has a bigger side than the other, so obviously you must drop everything you are doing and go to that better opportunity.

No.

Doing this will always have you chasing "the better opportunity". Whether that's a better shop, a new city (please don't be like this with your barber career), or even a new career path.

Again, it's not the business that doesn't work, it's YOU.

You are always a source for any problem that resides in your business, and you must learn how to properly operate to get your business back on track.

While measuring the upsides can be fun and exciting to imagine the possibilities, we also must more importantly pit the downsides against each other to make effective decisions.

Let's take for example being a barber vs selling drugs.

As a barber, you might typically make anywhere from $3000-$6000 with a linear thinking approach.

This requires you to do a lot of work and long-standing hours.

Let's take for example selling drugs (I have zero experience so bare with me).

You would need a product, a clientele, and really that's it if your shit is good enough.

Maybe let's say you could make on average $15,000 per month.

However, the downsides for both drastically change.

With barbering, in order to scale you would have to find a model that works and allows you to scale, otherwise, you are stuck doing the same thing day in and day out.

Redundancy or working a little harder than you already currently are to generate cash flow per month of $12,000-$18,000 (yes, we have students doing these numbers in our program).

Downsides of drug dealing, well it's illegal for one, and if you get caught depending on your trade, you could be spending a little time in jail and have all freedom stripped away.

Obvious choice after that, but that is how you would want to approach a problem.

Otherwise, you will be the shiny object individual who can never just stay on one damn thing for more than 3 months.

3. Relentlessly audit all decisions.

Of course, no one is perfect with our decision making, especially when we first begin to switch out of a linear standpoint.

Auditing and keeping track of not only what went into your thought process but also the end result will bring you closer and closer next time to making the right choice.

Most people are too scared to make a choice due to the fact there is a 50% chance of being wrong.

I would argue when you first start, you ave probably an 80% chance, as you won't have prior experience of non-linear actions to base new beliefs on.

But this is how humans learn anything.

You learned to ride a bike by falling, you learned to walk by falling, you learned to cut hair by messing up.

Failure is great feedback to your inputs if you are listening correctly and not taking it as personal of "I'm a failure" type of cry baby-ness.

This is all an iterative approach, but one once you master you will allow yourself to have the wiggle room to make better and better long term decisions, instead of short term highs that continues to lead you back to your starting point.

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!

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Daniel Contreras


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.