Video Transcript

Hey everyone, Daniel Contreras (@dlucs_) here founder of The New Era Of Barbering. So it has been a while since I've uploaded a podcast, great reasons to write all great reasons. Oh, it was on YouTube of course, working with Barber's and the elevated mentioned program that takes first priority first and foremost. Um, honestly been wanting to get back into like, just drop me a few podcasts because there is a lot that I could, I think a lot of value could bring, since I'm now running the elevated mentorship program. A lot of barbers I am in talks with, um, throughout the week, just seeing if it's a good fit seeing if I can help their business, um, with of course the business that we run and the business model that we have developed. But, you know, I think there's a lot of, it's very eyeopening seeing a majority of the industry coming in, sending in applications and kind of, um, I get to have like a, a different side look of barbers who are interested in building their business yet.Um, they, they just aren't there yet. Like I can't ha there's so much that's wrong with their business. I can't help them because it's just, it's just too much. Um, and I thought this would be like a great way to at least like, give some insight in like, look, this is what needs to happen. Because again too, like the, with new era Barber and the company I'm building, like, this is not something where we're going to be teaching how to fricking fade at all. This is not that type of like, I don't even know what the hell is it called that, but that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to at least be like allow and give the barbers any Barber the tools to be able to build up, um, their business, like an actual business, not like a cheap, like take cash, cut some hair, and that's about it.And, you know, get the business up to charging a hundred, $200 per cut while also, you know, progressively stacking up cash reserves at least have like a hundred, 300 K in the bank, couple years down the road, you could act to remove yourself from barbering. That's the goal, right? And I think too many barbers are so fixated with too being too in love with cutting hair. Right. And that's not a bad thing, but understanding, uh, building a business and liking, cutting hair as a daily thing to separate to two completely separate things. And do you have to like what you do somewhat, right? You have to like cutting hair and have some type of like interest in it, but you don't have to be corny and love the thing. Like you would, you would do it for free because nobody wants to work hard and do the business for free.I'm willing to bet you that. And honestly, if that's the mentality too, it's probably why you haven't built your business up. It's why I never built my up either because I was like, Oh, I love this so much. I would do for free. I near did. Right. Um, so a lot to catch up on, um, I don't think I've been on this thing since I shaved my head, which is kind of interesting, even though this is like audio version, but I mean obviously like different character changes in myself, developing myself. Um, there, I mean, there's going to be a different tone to this. I have a very different worldview now of like the industry and as well as like where, where industry is very falling short. And it's very frustrating to see at least because I think that the, the, the barber industry as a whole, a lot of barbers have a lot of interest in growing, but it, if you just don't be so, lazy, right.That's I mean, like seriously, the thing that I think gets a lot of barbers early on, it got me to, and I say this too, because it's, again too, I went through this, you early on you can, you, we all compare ourselves to like civilians. Um, and what we do and what I mean by civilian is like a civilian gets a job, right? They are employed and they collect a paycheck every two weeks. And as barbers, we just, because we removed ourselves from civilian life, we kind of compare us to what we would be doing if we were still civilian life. Meaning like, man, you know what? All my friends are making like 2,500 a month. I'm over here, cutting hair, making three K a month kind of, man. You know what? It's, it's a good trade off, that you're not in the same category.They are an employee. You are a business. Your competition is, is Jeff Bezos, not Fred who works, who works in, in the accounting for like part of the business, right? The, the cog you are the, you are the business. So first of all, switch that mindset up. I think it has to be first and foremost for everybody in the industry, especially I think that's what a better part of the, um, the, the, at least the direction the program has taken with a mentorship is just like, look, w we gotta run this thing. Like a business, not like backyard hustle. I'm sorry, this is not, it's not going to cut it. Right. And you, you, because like when you kind of frame it from the civilian standpoint, Oh. I remember I used to, um, I used to just blame everything. All right. Just to point the finger.Um, but you just, you just get, you just get lazy at that point in time because civilians are lazy. Employees are lazy. I just got off the phone with my mom talking about somebody from, you know, she has to go through state farm right now. Um, cause there was like a, um, homeowners and certain insurance things she has to go through and the employee there couldn't send in the right form. I mean, how lazy do you have to be to like, literally not be able to send in the right form. That's not just, that's just taking like no accountability for what you do. And as a Barbara, you are a business. I always say this, you are a business. You can't run your business like a lazy employee or else you'll get that type of result. I think a lot of barbers when they come to the industry, that's, that's how we run it.Cause it seems easy. Cool. Cut some hair, get collect some cash and don't gotta answer nobody. Yes you do. You got to answer to yourself and your business. So first of all, don't be lazy that also, that also incorporates into just being freaking average in the work that you do. I see a lot of barbers that, that, you know, they, a lot of people want to build their business. They don't want to put in the work. Right. You stop at a certain level of aboriginous. You gotta want to be better. Right. And civilians they're good. They're fine with just, okay. They're fine. With just okay. Work is to them. They don't get paid anymore. I think that's also a disease in a virus. This mentality that's in the barber industry of just like, Oh, that's good enough. Okay. I'll get them out of the chair.Get let's get the next one in good luck. Trying to grow dude or girl whoever's cutting hair. Right. That ain't that. Ain't going to cut it now. Should you like perfect. Every cut just to make the same mountain. Hell no, you have to have a proper business structure behind it, but you can't also just be okay with being, staying at the average level and expect to get great results. Right? I think so many barbers. I mean, I, for myself too, I never because, well, let me back up a real quick thing. Before we go into this humans that at a higher level, the humans need incentive humans need, and this has been throughout human history, right? Civilizations Roman empire. You could look back at that. I mean, they, they cold blooded killed people just to be incentivized, to rule over everybody else and reap those rewards right.To kill. Like that was their, that was their incentive for killing somebody. Cool. Now I wrote this whole. That's a pretty big sense of not saying you should kill anybody at all. That's the worst thing to do. But, um, a great example I love to come up with is like the Soviet union and the us back when we, uh, during the arms race, like in the sixties, seventies, right? Soviet union was supposed to be like the powerhouse of the world, right? Because if they structure their whole economy, their whole institution as a country to just solely focus everybody's workforce and attention towards, uh, industry right away from agriculture, away from all this other stuff, trade free market kind of, they just stripped everybody's rights away and said, Hey, Nope, we're look, we're focusing on this industry thing. Cause this is like, this is what is booming right now in terms of like racist space happened, of course, arms race with weaponry.Um, but the thing that they got wrong with that was, you know, you can have a lot of a whole mass population focused on one thing, but the incentive isn't there to improve it. I mean, they won't at the end of the day, like the arms race between us and the Soviet union, obviously racist space and everything of that sort us could not keep up at first, right? Russia's whole Soviet union. His whole mentality was we will crush you. And they were, they were crushed in the U S but um, the U S had incentives that drove people to improve, you know, weaponry, improve, um, industry, whether it be getting to space, whether it be improving, um, the military, cause they backed them up with patents. They backed them up with, Hey, if you do this, you'll be incentivized monetarily wise or private property.And the state will back you up. It will not take any of those things away from you. And if anybody tries to, they will be punished. So once you do that, you know, in terms of the progression, you're gonna get incentivize and that incentive can never be taken away unlawfully or unrightfully rightfully right. They didn't have that in the Soviet union. Soviet union was like, build something better than us or, and you won't get shot. It's not very high incentive. Right. And that's kind of like what the Barber industry is not like to that extreme level, but there's no, there's no incentive set up for anybody.That's why you have to build a business versus you. Can't just be average average. We'll just get you wake up, cut hair, go to sleep, wake up, cut hair, go to sleep. I don't think anybody's life wants to be like that. And I don't think, I don't think anybody's supposed to be a barber forever to understand that. Like that's not what I'm saying. I think look, a lot of what we got into this industry for was an easy way to make money and make a living without having to go to college without having to go to and do all this other stuff that a lot of us weren't good at, let's be straight up. I was terrible at school. I really was. I didn't get studious until I started actually running a business. And I was like, okay, I see the incentive to like studying and doing better. I didn't see an incentive before. Um, I lost my train of thought because my screen went black on me. Cause I have my notes up in front of me. So my apologies. But um,You, you, you have to,You have to really take a look at like what you're doing, what incentives are set up for you to push this thing forward? Oh, that's what I was going on in terms of nobody's supposed to be, um, a barber forever say I'm a little rusty right now. Bear with me here. Okay. The first podcast I've done record wise and maybe a year. I think I upload it as an interview. And I was like, Jesus Christ. I haven't recorded one like a year anyways. Um, you're not supposed to be cutting hair forever. And that should not be the goal.I think when I gave myself a five-year time span of like removing myself from cutting hair full-time it happened. I think everybody should have that goal because nobody wants to cut hair when they're like 30, 40, 50 years old. Cause making that same type of money is not fun. It's not really rewarding. You kind of feel. Like if you're just being really being honest with yourself, making the same amount of money, doing the as hard of labor as barbering is, and most people who aren't barbers would probably look at us and be like, Oh, stop, stop warning. All right. That'll hard. All right, dude, try, stay on your feet for 12 hours holding like a piece of metal out. Like it's a weight, um, doing, um, you know, a Dumbo, uh, lat hold. Things is going to hurt on your shoulder after awhile, right?Do that year in, year out six, seven, five days a week. It's not pretty right. It's not what, what I think anybody should do, but because of the way we set our lives up before that look at the best you got right now. That's how, that's how I approach it. It's like, look at some point in time, I gotta be honest with myself. It's the best I got. I'm not going to go back to school. And honestly, that's too much time. I don't want to do all that. I can do a lot more with what I'm doing right now. And there's an opportunity to build your business. You just have to know how to do it. So what we provide with new era of barbering,All right. But I don't think anybody should just give up unless you're a loser. And then you probably just won'tWhen anything after that, but you got to want it, first of all.And you also have to understand, you know,Not in here to forever just build this thing up high. As you can get it, reap the rewards from it, build up the cash reserves and move on to your next thing. All right. But don't be average with this or get comfortable because when you compare yourself to his civilian life, Holy, we won't look at civilian life. Just look at like most people.Cool.I wouldn't want that wake up, go to work or ma now go on zoom. And they. For the most of the day, they talk with their friends, they joined a fantasy football league. They add. It's not fun. It's just stimulus. Right? That's what crushed the Roman empire. 30% of that population justStarted indulging in everything. Sex, drinking, entertainment, holdAnime collapsed below them beneath it. Like they just got ran over. Everybody got lazy. Everybody's wanting to go ahead and indulge and everything. So most barbers like run their business. Why this injury hasn't moved forward. Everybody just wants to get, get like three K 4k, six K a month and think they're winning. Holy. If you think you're doing that dude again. Think about like somebody like Jeff Bezos or somebody who is actually running a business compared to what that is. That ain't. And yet most barbers are out here running around with chains and trying to buy new cars and stuff with that type of business model. Holy. Like I'm I really want every Barbara to have the tools, at least be making 15, 20, 30 K a month. We have a barber in the program is doing that 30 K a month.I think. Yeah,We can consistently get them up to month in, month out. 40 K sometime in 2021.But most barbers are justLike, Oh man, 6k, this is it. They think they won.Holy right now.Like comparing it to from businesses. Civilian, you could clearly see why, why a lot of that people in the industry today, even a lot of people who think they're like, like people look up to Holy. They, they don't even, they even run by these rules to just like, just be happy, be grateful about build a business, right? Build something that, that you can actually move yourself from to fund all the great ideas you have instead of just building another t-shirt company with like logos. I can't tell you how many more times somebody has to hit my inbox with a t-shirt logo or product, please don't do that. Build this business up. Great first to have the cash reserves and also awareness of what it takes to really build something great, please. This is going to like this, the barber industry. Like I think everybody knows we are not respected whatsoever. I, I take that personally, right? I don't like it.People think like, Oh, you're the barber. Oh, you, you do the little hick haircutting thing. People always say, Oh, you do the little, you do the little haircutting thing. Huh? How's that? How's your little haircutting business going like you're some kid or something, dude, it's because of this. Right. I don't even cut hair anymore. I just work with the barbers now to build their businesses up. And I still get off about that. Cause that's still is like part of me, right? Just that. you. All right, cool. We're going to do this thing and that, and then when I, when I used to ask how much I charged my 200, you want call it a little barbering thing now? Right? So examples of this, of like, you know, people who have gotten, whether it be average, comfortable, lazy, comparing themselves, like not comparing themselves so much civilians, but what this, cause there were some great examples of this throughout time, right? Um, by my comparison to this is just for barbers comparing themselves to civilian life. We've already went over one, which is the Roman empire and just getting comfortable with lazy and then just lost it. All right. Collapsed.I think. Well, yeah,Any civilization is going to collapse at some point in time, but that's a great example of the indulgent factor of what the, and you can look at like rappers, you can look at entertainers, you can look at almost anybody in that in who's been in the limelight they've gotten to and dolls and to average too lazy. And that's when they lost it. All right. Another great example of this is Walmart. They never saw Amazon coming. They thought the internet was just like this little thing. Bazell said a different plan. Took them out, basically this laughing now, number one. So, you know, when you get comfortable, when you get lazy, those things can happen. Even at that large of a scale. Now, I guess, how do you, you know, I think a great point to go over and this is like, how do you actually avoid that though?Right? Obviously the obvious answer is like, don't be lazy. Don't be average. Don't be comfortable. That's the easy cop-out answer. I think every barber motivator will give you, right? It's not what we're going to do because what the hell does that mean even right? Um, how you really want to build win at business longterm wise, first of all, you have to think long-term not short-term right. Most barbers again, to where they get an average, comfortable, lazy standpoint. They just want to get a new car to flash around to people who are just lazy in civilian life. They want to get a house. They want to rent a new apartment. Like all this stuff, doesn't matter. Before you build a business. I can't tell you how many times I've hopped on calls with barbers and they're making about two K three K a month. And they either want to get a new car. They want to get it. And they also want to get a brand new house and then they want to get some, I don't know, designer clothes. I'm like, Holy. This is not for you. This program is not for you. This is only for serious people first and foremost, but also too.Yeah. Build something first. Even then when you start building something, you're probably gonna look at that and be like, Oh, that's that. It's not even fun. Building a business so much more fun. It's so much more worrying than buying any of that. I've done it before too. It's not that way. I was influenced by the wrong people with doing that. But how you win at business building moats, right? It's like, like imagine a castle. Um, and it has like the, the, the moats around it, like it's water moats that block people from coming in. The only way people can get in or close to the castle is swimming across. Like the Mo probably has like alligators and sharks and every deadly thing could think of. And the only other way somebody can get in or cross that is if you know the business or the castle, you know, lets down it's up, it's a little ramp or it's bridge. Right. So people can walk cross safely. That's what I mean by moats. You want something so deadly that somebody takes one, look at it and it's like, Holy. I don't want to even go up against that one. I'm good. All right. So what's an example of building a boat in a business. Now you kind of understand the, the mental framework. Well, easiest one would be, um, just improving product that fits the market needs. And I don't mean improving your fade, but improving the product that fits your market's needs.How has that building a moat? Well, I think a lot of Barbers, like a lot of people go ahead and try to improve overall just based off of a media platform versus like, um, what they're currently bringing in. What's sitting in their chair and then also to what's what is the market saying? And rewarding them for right. And proving that Mo too many barbers want to go abroad. I can cut everybody's hair. If I hear some, if I hear that thing on a, on a call, I know this, this individual already guys, a business and already a mindset again. So you want to be, hyper-focused one thing that's when the, and, and I think that's like one of the easiest things to do, improving your, your product to fit the market's needs. First and foremost, number two is much harder. And also to the harder it is for theHonestly the, the more, the, the, the hardestIs for you to attain these. It's also going to be equally as hard, if not harder for somebody else to come in and get this. That's why it's a moat, right? It's hard to get in and hard to attain this. And typically that, that barrier for entry just turns everybody away. I think that's also why a lot of barbers just are so lazy, honestly, like, like, think about how we, how starting a Barber business is. It's stupidly easy. You go on Amazon, you buy a pair of Clippers for 90 bucks and you post something, Hey, I cut hair and you get somebody and you cut their hair and they pay you. 90 bucks is not, Hey, like the worst. Like it's not that hard to start Barbering, but building a business, you get every barber falling off the brick with that because they have no, first of all, nobody knows what the hell they're doing to any type of pain threshold that comes from trying to build a business. Everybody just dips and says, Nope, I'm good. And that too hard.So you always want to be looking for like,Be careful with this guy knows somebody. There's going to be somebody out there that takes us the wrong way. You want to be looking for the hard things to accomplish. And what I mean by that is that they are directly associated with goal. So this one is directly associated with goal in mind. Don't just go out there looking for hard to do. Like, if you're like, Oh man, you know what? What's hard. Ooh. Building an entire barbershop building from a dirt lot. That's hard. Nobody else wants to do. I'm going to do that. No, it's not it. I know somebody is going to think that way to the heart. Like one of the hardest thing I think for most barbers is building some cash reserves that is like the ultimate building, a moat. So Amazon does, you try to go up against Amazon, Amazon even welcomes people to come onto their platform or try and test them.Right. You try and go ahead and, and, um, like doing Amazon FBA business, the whole game with that is that Amazon allows you to sell in the platform till they see that something's working. And then they'll just drown you, meaning they'll put their head up beneath water and wait for you to like, see, see who comes up first. And they have oxygen tanks, which is just their cash cash reserves, because they're able to go ahead and duplicate that product, sell it at a lower price, which means more people are going to buy that more than your stuff. And there's going to drown you out. You want to go lower than them. Cool. To go even lower. Those would those be staring at you, but they're just smiling. Like, cool. We want to play this game. We'll make it free. We'll see if you still want to be doing business at that point in time.And then once you leave the marketplace and everybody else leaves the market, they go ahead and boost the price up so they can make profit. It's only because they have cash reserves. Now that's not something that you should be doing the barbering, which is like making your haircuts less and less and less. It's not what I'm saying. Right? What you should be doing is building up the cash reserves of how much you have. I'm willing to bet most people, most barbers don't even have $50,000 saved in the bank. Right? Cause I know w w when I was two, those two years, while I was just, there was no way in hell I had that. Right. Even, even like 20 K at the time, the bank was like, I felt like pretty, like that was pretty hard to do at that time. But you know, most barbers, they especially like trying to build their business.They tried to with like maybe four or five, 10 K in the bank at most, that's not a cash reserve. That's like survival mode still. You don't want to be in survival mode where you're trying to build a business. That's the worst thing to do. You want to at least allow this business to be very cashflow heavy, build up the cash reserves, which means, guess what? Can't be flashy. Dude, probably need to sell that new car. I still drive the same Toyota Corolla that I did from 2013. I love it. Gas efficient. I really don't even drive that much. Like if I had a car that was nice, now I have to have drive everywhere. And then I got to pay for the gas. That's just more money coming out of my pocket for no reason. The car doesn't. It has nothing to do with the business wise. You're gonna need to optimize everything around the business. I got, I got into the flashy clothes too, for a little while. I was influenced by the wrong people with that. But I got out of that now. I w we're pretty much near the same thing every day. If not just the same overall brand that's cheap. And I know it looks good and I don't have to think about it.Most people, they want to see what else they can add on with a new watch, jewelry, grill, earrings, all this other that just does not build a business. Again. If you want to do that, go back to the civilian life. Business is not for you. And also to have, if you like civilian life and you want to be a barber, that's fine too, but don't complain when everybody else who's taking it seriously. As a business five years from now has that 300 K in the bank removed himself and is doing something even better. That makes more cashflow per month. Well, you still might be making three, four K a month doing the same thing. Civilian life versus business life is drastically different. I think it, it plagues a lot of barbers just by comparing them. You are a business. Start comparing yourself like a business, and you will think move and act very differently. Not only your daily habits, that was dumb.I don't know what the hell that was, but also just the wayYou structure your business. And also like the F the future moves you're gonna makeRight athletes, the best athletes think of their body, like a business.Ron James thinks of his body like a business. He invests in his body, Tom Brady, same thing, invest in his body, invest in his, his overall business, or just takes care of it and runs it like a business, because that is what makes him the money.These other guys,Eyes, Jamal, like eight. I don't want to call it JaMarcus Russell on this thing, but JaMarcus Russell. At least when he was in the league with the Raiders, that somebody who, who does the civilian thing,Right.Who doesn't treat it like a business, that's the direct, that's how most barbers run their business. We're doing things like Tom Brady and new era of barbering. Everybody else is being the DeMarcus Russell.So with that toy, I'll have to sayKind just, um, random. I've been wanting to get on a podcast, honestly, um, probably need to get better. Mittens blue, Yeti. I don't know how good this call is going to be. So if it was too or like, it would just pop too much. My apologies again, I was trying some different things. Um,Now, if you know,I don't even know what the hell am I supposed to say for like this thing? Like, I've done been doing YouTube. Like, what do you do? Subscribe. I think you do subscribe to podcasts, right? So yeah, if you enjoyed this podcast, I'm not going to say I'm going to be dropping one every week. I don't want to tie myself to this thing. All right. I have a business to run and I have barbers that I do help build them up to making 15, 20 twenty-five, 30 K a month. That's where my focus is at not podcasting or being an influencer. That's running a business and helping people run businesses. If you want more information on that, you can go to the new era of barbering.com.We have a lot ofCustomer interviews, a lot of free resources as well, too. A little more insight of like what we do as well as from, for free case studies as well. I'll leave the link to that below, because I actually liked that podcasting allows you at least on Apple music and on about Spotify, but it has like the little link, the very bottom. So I'll drop that. They're free to go and check out as well too. Um, yeah, I'm not going to tell myself to like a podcast every week. This might just be, Hey, whenever the hell I want to do it. Because I think to also are also too, that's proper English. I think the best content comes from when I actually want to do it. Not when I feel like I have to, and I have to pull something out of my. That's not the best to do.It's not going to be the best help to you. So might be Saturdays, right? This might be Saturday night, Saturday night podcasts. I think we used to do that too. If I'm not mistaken for people who've been OGs to this podcast should have it to y'all for sticking around still. Um, again, too. Um, if you enjoyed this podcast, yes. Feel free to listen to everything else. So it's a little more out of date in terms of like maybe a year ago or so, but still great information. We're back on here every so often. And Hey, look, if you enjoyed it, go ahead and drop a rate it's rating, right? Five star rating, or I think this way you could do, you could rate the podcast, leave a comment, give yourself a shot, not in the comment to drop your Instagram name, knocking you, but I'll always see it on my checkout.Check out your Instagram page and just know I'll be, I'll look at it and be like, thanks, dude. But it's about it. I do. I do look at everybody who does drop their Instagram there. Cause I always think that's pretty cool just to see, I always like to see who at least listens podcasting is very different than like Instagram or YouTube. I can't see who the hell actually listens. And I kind of, I'm always interested, like who the hell being listened. I see the number. Like I see how many people listen to each episode, which is always cool. I'm like, who are all these people? I didn't know this many people still listen to my podcasts. So with that, um, yeah. Yeah. I don't know when the next one's going to be. It might be next week might be two weeks from now. It might be a month from now, but, um, it's just gonna be quality content.So with that, y'all I appreciate you guys for always sticking around again too. If you want to check out anything else of what I've been up to, or keep up to date with the program, as well as student success, go to the new air, barbering.com and check everything out. I've put out a lot of free resources for you as well, too, to help you help you build your business as well, even if you're not in the program. Okay. If you do want to be in the program, obviously you could set up a call with me. Um, please not come on with a civilian mindset or also ended obviously pretty off like they listen podcasts. Um, but, uh, that y'all, I'll talk to you when I talk to you.