Video Transcript

Hey everyone, Daniel Contreras (@dlucs_) here founder of The New Era Of Barbering. Welcome back to another podcast on this episode. I wanted to talk about this. I talked about my Instagram story literally earlier today. This perception versus reality. Now I've even talked about this on prior episodes. I think I was supposed to make this episode maybe like, I don't know, three or four episodes go. But nonetheless, here we are. So this, this is more going to be centered around again to like issues with not that I have, but I see Barbara's going through who are raising their prices up too quickly. And, and what is the second, third order consequences going to be? And you know, the perception of charging more versus the reality of like what that's actually supposed to do, because I, I don't want to say feel responsible for this.I think I take, I take everything that I see at least as something as my full responsibility, whether it be, you know barber, I worked in the program, isn't getting the results. They want you know, something in my business, isn't going the way it was like the way I wanted it to something crashes or something just breaks. I think I've just always, I think I've trained myself to have that over the years to take full responsibility that because I had some type of control over the situation and I know I could have done better. It makes me feel very grounded in that. And it makes me not a victim at the end of the day. So I just feel a little that maybe sometimes like, because I do at least am vocal about, of course the results that we get inside the elevate dementia program with some of the barbers that are inside of that, right?Like tough going from 35 to 110 months south bay, Chris who's now at 150 Berg who is now in one 40 Joel was at 200 son who was at 75 angel who's at 80 et cetera, et cetera. And we could, could, we can continue going down the list. But I, I don't want it to I've seen a trend and I've seen this coming for a while too. I just haven't been because I wanted to see how it played out. Like, you know, maybe, maybe this is the right move for people to do. But I'm kind of seeing the writing on the wall with it now. Just with what people I've been coming in contact are doing and picking up on it and basically going after the perception of what seems to be that they're doing, which is just raising prices.Right. and if that's all you kind of take away I mean, you're playing Russian roulette at the end of the day. Because these, these individuals, like they have, they have processes, systems and tools that I mean, make somebody a very deadly weapon in business. And I like to think of it as I w like, I always try to think about business as like how Bezos treats competitors and how we treat its competitors is basically like who are on selling on Amazon and there's a good product. What he'll do is he'll have whatever he's selling on that platform cause they have third-party sellers. And if there's a hot product that's selling and doing well, of course, the Amazon wants to be almost monopolized on their own platform. And so what they'll do is, is they'll lower the price as like lower than the competition, right?Because of course, everybody on Amazon is going to go after, or the majority of people are going to go after it, lowest price whatever's price lower. If it's the same product, the one that's priced lower, Hey, I'm going to buy that one. Why am I going to pay a dollar more for this other one with the exact same thing and maybe even free shipping or something like that. Right. And so the competition sees that and then the lowest price again, below them and just to stay competitive because they start losing business because all of their traffic flow goes to now what Amazon is selling. And then Amazon sees that again too, and says, cool, no problem. We'll go below that. And just keeps on going blower and lower and lower and lower and what this is doing. And you might be thinking, well, why, why would a company you know, lower their pricing?They're, they're, they're, they're not making money off that, right? Like they're kind of losing money and that's the point cause they don't mind losing money. The company that they're going up against has nowhere near the cash reserves and the war chest that bayzos has inside of Amazon Amazon's cash reserves. Can it think of it as like an air tank? Right? He can stay under the water way longer with the oxygen tank than somebody can with just holding their breath. And that's basically the analogy that I think is, is, is perfect for what, what they do to competitors, right? They'd basically drown them until that competitor either gives up because they're not profitable. They're not making money anymore. And it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to continue selling. So when Bezos does then is, Hey, look, I'll pay you for the whole company.And now I own that company. And now I, you know, I took out my, one of my competitors and I have a great product. Who's, that's making me more money. And then once that happens, they can raise the price back up to whatever it was regularly. And now nobody can come close to and they've built a moat and that's what business is. It's a strategy game, the end of the day, right? It's not who it's not, who can look like they're the most successful or by the, the flashiest thing or like charge the most. That's not the game. Like it's at the end of the day, you know, you want to build up that war chest because when you do go to war and war will happen at some point in time, right? Meaning like you know, we don't Barb, as in the barber industry, we don't have that type of like, you know, like thing to worry about, but you know, there's things like recessions or just you know, things happen in the economy every 10, 15 years.Like I've talked about before that, you know what, like most people don't take into account for. And if you do that's like building your moat so that when, you know, you don't have to worry during those times where everybody's stressing out and you can get a competitive advantage. And then, you know, however you want to pivot off that. Now you have an opportunity while everybody else like, kinda goes back down zero. It's very strategical, right. Very strategical, strategical thinking. And I thought the same way when like, you know, running my barber business in like, especially what I work with, Barbara's inside the elevated mentorship program. Like, you know, we're not just going to be doing this thing for an ego stroke. And I think people sometimes get the wrong idea who are on the outside, on the inside. I think individuals really start to figure out, you could just be on one Q and a call and figure out how much strategy there is.And just, I mean, I'm like a shark at the end of the day. I'm ready. I'm I'm I see like what somebody's business, where somebody's businesses at and what they need to do to get to where they need to go. And it's like, look, do this, this, this, and this. Nobody's going to have a clue what you're doing. And then you can just attack with this, you know, raise prices by this date. And then we can go up after that, to on this date. But we're gonna have to do this, this, this, and this, and nobody can see what the what's going on behind the scenes. Right. And I mean, nobody's supposed to cause there's a program like people have to, you know, obviously get into to understand, but it is somewhat of, I guess this is the repercussions and I don't want people to get the wrong ideas about it, just about raising prices, because what I'm now seeing is that people are now optimizing just for the look or whatever number they charge.And forgetting that like, look, there's a number in the bank that matters. Right. and you shouldn't just because somebody raises prices, it doesn't mean like you should get. Cause I think, I remember like when I first started coming public about the elevate measure program, student results and everything, I started noticing barbers in those other areas of other barbers. I don't want to say flustered, but they definitely like, you know, they were like, oh man, if he's doing that, I'm just going to do it too. Which is fine. Right. I don't, I don't mind that. I think I just, I don't want anybody to like their business up because people have already, and I've talked to individuals and we even have somebody that I work with inside the program that has done that same thing as well. Luckily we've gotten him back on track.And I'll go into the details of that later is that maybe if that's where you're at currently or, you know, potentially thinking about like how to actually either get yourself out of that or even avoid it altogether. Right. Because I think that is very helpful just to have a case study of that. Again, the perception of just raising it because they should while the reality is like we revamped their whole operation structure and really just the approach of how to run the business model of a, of a barber. Right. It's very, very different. And aye, I think for a lot of individuals too especially as Barbara's, cause we like a lot of this is our first business typically. And I think again too, I feel somewhat responsible for not being vocal on this of like, look, this is what you should have at least at the, like if you're not at that position, which most barbers in their business are not, this is what you should be focused on.And maybe that's why I'm kind of creating that podcast to kind of cleaning up the mess. Just so people can get back on the right track and not try to play. Cause it, it gets to a point of like, you know, some people just start, start playing the keep up game, right. Or the catch-up game like, oh, he did this, I got to do this now. Like none of that is going to matter in 10 years, honestly. Right. Like businesses to do that. Even with Amazon you know, the wall street, just in general thought that like the business kind of was a scam. And people thought that Amazon was, it was a scam. I think this call this, I don't want to say scam is on books. I don't know if that's correct, but because the business on, you know, on paper at least looked like it was it was not profitable. Right. And all people were doing back then, the.com era was basically if you, if you just had like a really good like url.comAnd he had a good name for it, like peop and like you had like some idea you didn't even have to have a product. You just have an idea that sounded good. And people like investors would just throw you money because it was like the wild west and almost near every single one of those.com. It was the bubble, right. The.Com bubble, almost every single one of those businesses went under or just completely like, you know, closed down Amazons. I, to my knowledge, the only one and for sure the best one that has survived that, right. Even like eBay, like eBay was coming up at the same time. They're not even the same conversation to be quite honest, like they were at competition at some point in time, but you know, like again too, I think I mean, it's a great actually analogy right there.A lot of companies wanted that backing from wall street and like the stock price and everything like that. Because that was the perception of what the company was. Right. And that's, that's, that's not what a company is. I mean, Bezos has said this before, like a stock is not what is not a true value of the company. Right? Like check back in 10 years, like, we'll see what the true value of the company is and who actually survived this thing. And, you know, that's very strategical and like very against the grain of like typical, like corporate America, typical people in corporate America. Like they really just focus on again to what's the stock price, you know, the shareholders, the shareholders, not sure the shareholders and really they, they just want to focus on like, is it making money? Is it profitable?So that those shareholders don't back out and they keep feeding money in because they know that their dollar is getting multiplied. Right. and Bazell said, that, like, that's not what business is like, you know, that's maybe that's again to the short term yield. Right. You can make quick cash on that, but you know, if you want to make something long-term, you gotta think in the longterm. And if that's only short-term thinking we're not going to align with that at all. And that's, that was one thing that really pivoted my thinking on this. And I think more people should pivot their thinking because just raising prices very short term, especially if you have under 10 K in the bank, which I see a lot of barbers doing. I see a lot of individuals as well that I, I talk to that, that, you know, are interested in joining the program that, you know, they got themselves up to 60 bucks or whatever, and they have less than like two, three K in the bank, which is not again, like it becomes, what's the, what's the point of this thing.Right. because you're just setting yourself up again too. You have the perception you're feeding of the perception. You're not really in tune with reality. I've talked to many individuals who are charging well under 30 bucks, a haircut who have more than like 20, 30 K in the bank. That was even me when I was charging 16, 20 bucks. And it's very doable. It's just, you know, the end, it comes down to the individual at the end of the day, the money's just not going to run out of that account. Right. Like you can, like, first of all, there has to be an action for a reaction to occur. So there has to be an action for the reaction of money coming in. Right. Then there also has to be an action for a reaction of money coming out. And these things just don't happen on its own like money just as, and be like, oh man, I'm gonna fly out of here.It's not how it works. Right. It, it, it, it set up by you and that's kind of like the most sobering thing. And so if you're under that, you know, you always have to go back to what's the problem. Now, this is where clean thinking comes into play. Right. clean thinking, at least for me means that like, you're, you're thinking about this very rationally, you're not jumping to conclusions. And you're also also like, really, excuse me. You're also really just, you're, you're battle testing these ideas, and you're really thinking about this critically. Right? So I'll give you an example what someone, what one person might do or what one might do, I guess is a, I'm not making enough money. Therefore I should raise prices, right? That's a thought, I am not doing this. Therefore I should do this. And that's very short term.Like, like if, like, I think people just jumped the gun. Oh man. That, and it makes sense. Okay. And you, you have to battle test this thing. I was also going to make a podcast that was going to go over. Like, you know, there's a difference between theory and practice, right? That is like the exact thing. The theory is if I charge more, I'll make more. But the practice is completely different. Most times when somebody makes more, they also like keep less or keep around the same that they were at the lower price point because the person never changed. Right. The individual, the disciplines, the business structure, the disciplines never changed. Now trying to find my, find my space on these notes quick.Oh, so, you know, when you kind of figure out like, okay, what's the problem is, you know, not making enough money, so I'd therefore charge more. Why should I, why, why am I not like, just go for the, why not that therefore answer. Right. Forget that. Therefore, forget like the, what you think the solution is, go to what the problem is currently. So you have the problem. I'm not making enough money. Just ask the simple question. You could even literally write down a Google doc. I actually do this. I take a blank, Google doc. I'm looking at my, my desktop right now. And I'll open up a blank, Google doc, and I'll write down problem. Now I'll say my colon and I'll write the problem right. Below of what, whatever I'm dealing with. Right. And then I'll say why, right? Like, why is this a problem basically?I'm I'm, you know, why am I naked? Like, let's say, if it's, I'm not making enough money, why aren't you making enough money? Oh man. You know, like then you can just start thinking, right. Because I tried to start thinking like, I'm not charging up. That doesn't make sense. Right. cause you can be like, I don't think that that's true. Why are you not making enough money currently? Like what's, what's the real issue is you can kind of dive into while not keeping enough money. Right. I'm not, I, I, I, my bank account number is not high enough. Why is it in high enough? You know, it was just at the end of the month, there is no, there's no money left over. I'm not like keeping any money. All right. So you don't have a problem making money. You have a problem keeping the thing in there.Right. So it doesn't make sense to make the assumption then to jump to the conclusion of, well, then therefore I should raise my price. Cause that doesn't affect that. The keeping part, right. That, that, that almost is the wrong solution to choose. And this is where, again, too clean thinking comes into play rational thinking and really critically thinking critically about like the issue at hand, really breaking this down. And almost like talking yourself through it. And also this is the biggest thing separating from the ego. Right. Because the ego always tell you, oh man, yeah, I'm worth more. I should charge more. It's like, hold, hold the phone. Right. Are you really the like art? Do you actually have some discipline this thing? Right. like somebody, somebody who doesn't have a six pack who doesn't have like, you know, a foundational muscle group probably shouldn't do steroids.Right. Because they want to get ripped. They should probably like have some discipline in the gym first. They should probably get them newbie gains, fix the diet, go to sleep on time, not drink alcohol, not do like, you know, major cheat meals, drink, lots of water, stay hydrated, eat the right foods. Figure out what foods they eat before they get to that step. Like that that's like accelerated. Right. They don't even have like a, like a foundational, like if you wanna think about like a foundational campfire, they're almost like trying to just pour gasoline on like a twig that even lit on fire. It's just a right. Like that's, that's the exact analogy, like what, what individuals sometimes try to do. And so when you kind of like, think about like the core problem, what's the problem not make enough money. Why won't no, like, you know, none of money is being kept in the bank account. Well, why right now you can be like, well, cause I you've got to face the fact that he probably just spend too much and, and you, or it's not again too, it's not like the thing. Just escapes or like crawls out. There's something that you did or decisions you've made in the past. Right?That nowTake money out of your account every month. Like maybe, maybe you moved out too quickly. Maybe you got too expensive, a place to live at. Maybe you got too fancy of a car because you want to flex. And this is where this, this idea of now auditing your past decisions or even your decision making comes into play. Right. Because it's like, all right, well, you can't just be like, Aw man, my car bill is too high. So now I need to charge more so I can make more. It's like timeout, timeout, timeout. This, this is still not making sense. Right? So you made a terrible, like does somebody made a terrible decision to buy a car that they didn't think about? Long-Term that is too expensive for them to upkeep. So therefore they now need to make more money and charge more just to keep up on that.I think the first thing somebody should do is like maybe try to reverse that decision. Maybe go back and be like, yo made a bad decision. Let me reverse this. I'm gonna just take this in. Give me, give me the you know, the Honda or the Toyota, right? Like let me not, let me not get too greedy right now. Let me fix it. Let me fix up my personal, because this is exactly what I mean when personal issues bleed into the business is when somebody has a personal issue with needing the validation or needing that, that flex or the attention and paying for that. And then thinking that now business there's a business issue. When there isn't a business issue, right? You could be doing 4k a month and you know, losing 500 bucks out of, out of the account every month because you've made poor decisions up to this point in time.It does not, it's not the business you need fixed, it's you. Right. And when you start like auditing your decisions, I remember I had to do this and it's very, very sobering. It sucks. I can't say it's easy. It sucks like, hell, but it's very eyeopening. And if you just start making this a regular practice, so, you know, when you're about to go make a buying decision, like, I don't know, maybe you're going to buy some new clothes. Why, why am I going to buy these clothes? What is the real underlying reason here? It's not because you want new clothes, right? Like if you have fine clothes, like you probably don't need to buy anymore. Right? Like you just kind of want to like really think critically about this decision. Am I really trying to buy clothes or am I really actually trying to flex to get attention?Because I feel lonely and sometimes you'll come up to like those like really depressing answers and he'd be like, ah. I got myself to this one. Right. And that's fine. I think everybody, at some point in time, especially as barbers, we've all done that. Because money comes into our pockets or into our hands, I should say every single day, at least when we're cutting hair. And it's very easy to spend money when we have a lot of it on hand and it's coming in continuously, it's very, it's a different discipline to like keep it and save it and not spend it so to speak. Right. So that's one thing auditing like your, your decision making process andFurthermoreLike auditing like further decisions that you make always being conscious. Is this something that, again too is a short-term pleasure or for a short-term reason, right? Like, let's say you're going to go get a car. Is this for a short-term reason?Because youKnow, whatever car it is or is this actually a long-term reason? I still drive a car Toyota Corolla. There was no way in hell. I'm going to buy another, a new car. I don't need a new car. I don't drive around anywhere. I don't need that validation. I'm good. Right. It, the thing's paid off. I've had it since like 2013, I'm chilling. I've even had people ask like, why do I still have that? Why would I need new car? Right. Like, that's a great, like, why w why do I need a new one? The thing the, thing's fine. It's going to last for like a while and gets great gas. And it helps them build cash reserves. Like I'm more focused on that than anything else. And I think everybody who runs a business, especially barbers, like, you know, like early on, like this was, this was just like gave me a stupid competitive edge because like everybody else was just more focused.Cause I was already 21 at the time everybody else was focused on wherever they made that night, go out to the club and spend it all right. And I was 21. And I didn't, I didn't really even have like friends to go out with really like, or that peep friends that like wanted to go out, like, so I just stayed at home, just like fell asleep, woke up, went back to work, did my thing and just like stowed cash away. And that's the best like strategy, like scaling, scaling a business, you enter a different variable. And again too, this is like what the elevator mentorship program, like what we tried to like really push across is that, you know, we, we want to battle test this thing. We really want to build it proper at that prior price point. And then with assistant processes, it's, it's like once we have a good bonfire, now let's add some gasoline on this thing to really make, go, go to the next levels.Not just one level up and then wait there, but levels really fast. And we just really just pour that accelerant on that thing and it will take off. Right. But if you don't have that initial business, I mean, it's, it's, it's near impossible because now you're fighting with somebody inability to be disciplined and inability to think longterm, inability to audit themselves and really think in a third person, point of view of like, all right, what the hell am I even doing right now? Like, what's the purpose of this. And I think that's what most barbers do. They live day to day, week to week, month to month, and even have families and do this. And this is like the bad thing, right. Again, to you've made like you ha you've made the decision to have a family now.Like, let's really like, we can't be like, take that one back. Right. So let's really make sure that this thing is efficient even with, with what you have in expenses, right. Let's really cut down in other areas that you don't need and is, is an ego boost. And you think that you're, you're doing it just to enjoy life, but it's just like, look, you keep yourself in like a really bad space just for again, the short-term high. And you have to sacrifice those like pleasures in the short term to actually get the thing that you want eventually in the long-term. Right. So I lost my kind of want not went on a tangent. So let me go back to my notes. No worries. Okay. So this is also like, cause I think that just some clarity is also needed for this too, because I've definitely gotten messages before of barbers that are like, oh, oh man, I'm out of the hamster wheel. I'm like, really? What did you do? Like kind of like, oh God, or you buy to things up, but what did you like? What did you do? Oh, man, I raised prices up like 20 bucks. I'm not cutting as much hair. It's great. I'm like. All right. Good luck. And the hamster wheel is not doesn't mean that like,Just because you're,It doesn't mean that you're just doing a ton of heads or that you want to avoid working hard or anything like that. Right. The hamster wheel in essence is like, look, you have a business and you've taken up to his max level and everything that you're doing, doesn't get a new result. Right. It's like, if you push it's like Jenga, if you push on a block, something else equally to the force that you applied is supposed to pop out in the other side, which is the block. Right. But in the hamster wheel if you push in on that Jenga block, like, like you could push it in as far as you want and nothing's gonna pop out in the other side, meaning like you can work as hard as you want. And you're still going to end up with the same amount of money each and every single month, but eight an actual business, like what we're talking about, like business disciplines, all this war chest, and actually having the understanding of like thinking long-term has to be there.Like you don't have a business if you're, if you're doing under like, I mean, I'm to be blunt if you're under like 5k, like, like it's it's and you're, you're trying to charge more, it's a little bit irresponsible. And it's something that I see Barbara's trying to go after and it's the perception of things. And I don't want it to be that way. I want people to understand like, cause you can have a very successful business, even doing 20 bucks. I was talking to a gentleman the other day doing phenomenally, well charging 21 bucks. Right. I'm not going to say how much he has in the bank. Cause that's personal, but he's doing phenomenally well. And it just, it all comes down to how serious are you? And I talked to individuals like this, and this is the end of these individual I work with inside the program. Right. we almost kind of laugh on call cause it's like, okay, cool. You're not one of them. Right. And when we, what I mean by that is like, you're not one of those individuals who's who's blinded or, or, or going after perception, but just look staying really in the true reality of things. Look, you, you have to be able to build this war chest.Don't be dumb. Right. Don't beNaive and go after the flashy that everybody else is doing because you shouldn't be a group think person, you should think for yourself, you should definitely like if everybody's out here spending money, enjoying themselves, spending money on new cars, getting like all the flashy.Don't justSuccumb to that. Right. Think for yourself, think, all right, what do I actually want? What do these people actually want? And what are they actually getting? Because if this is what they're doing now, what's going to happen 20 years from now because that's not going to stay the same. Right. I set it on my Instagram story. We'll see. In 10 years where everybody else is at, I thought that same thing five years ago when I, when I was like ma or not five years ago, but like back in like 2015, I was like, all right, by 20, 20, 20, 21, we'll see where everybody's at. Cause I'm cutting hair now, but I got, I got a different plan. I'm going to pivot and I'm going to build this thing to be able to make that move. And you know, you could see where in the five, 10 year span where everybody's at and it's, I think the same way as like, you know, that's doers versus talkers.And you could see that from, I was talking to one of the barbers who who's in the elevator mentorship program. Because I think everybody should get more in tune with who a doer is versus talker and avoid the talkers. I mean, just look at like I mean I love music. So I used to used to really study like artists and like hip hop and everything. So you could look at like, back-end when Drake was coming up. I mean that, that like that group of artists, right. You could say Drake ASAP, Rocky, big Sean Kendrick, you could, you could put like a couple barbers in our NEP offers Jesus, couple of rappers. Imagine if Drake was a barber couple of bar of rappers in that like category. And we like, even Drake said, we'll see, who's wearing 10 years. Like, like that's, that's, that's going to tell test of time is going to be truth.Right. And I think we see where everybody's at and where everybody like, you know, nobody even thinks about some of these artists, honestly. And Drake just got artists of the decade and it's like that, at least for me, like how I think about like how any barber should be running their business, like, look, that's fine stunt right now, make your noise. We'll see where you're at in 10 years. Right. We'll see where you're at in five years even. Cause this thing's brutal, this thing is harsh. And, and if you don't set things up properly right now, it's going to take you out. And it's, it's almost like also too, like I understand from a sense that it's like, w w what, what else were you guys trying to do? Right. Like w like I thought we were in this to win. I thought you were, I thought you were going to be a little bit more of a competition or somebody who's going to push actually harder than, than what youDid. AndLike, that's, that's the energy that like, like, if you listen to anything that Drake talks about, like, I mean, I think now he's a little bit more, again, he's playing the nice guy as a kid, but like, you know, before it was like, dude, what these, these, I mean, they're frauds, right? They're just not they're talkers at the end of the day. They're not about what they say. They're more into fashion. They're more into all this other stuff that really, you know, fashion and women, they're going to get caught up. That's fine. Watch what we do in 10 years. We're just focused on this thing. Right. We're building for a ten-year thing. Not like to be flashy or to have the biggest name out right now. We're building the war chest and, you know, guess who just built their own, like mansion the embassy. Right, dude.I mean like, come on now. So this is, this is kind of like how you sh if you track anything too, like, just look, look at back, back over, like people's careers. Other hip hop artists in hip is like, incredible. Just to look at doers and talkers. Cause everybody kind of chirps, right? Everybody chirps, like all this. You know, but who's where like, think about like people who were, who were like around you know, when Jay Z was coming up and making you name, like what, who the people like in that era, you could clearly see who the doers and the talkers. Right. That's where I'm talking about talkers. Talkers. Just they'll talk a big game. Aw man. Yeah. All right. 10 years, what are you going to be doing? Same thing. Still talking doers is going to be like in a completely different space and time.And that's the perception versus the reality. A perception is all about talk, talkers, love, perception. They love the perception of things they fall. They go after the perception, things, they fall in love with the perception of things. Doers just, just like, just show me the reality, but they're in tune with reality. They understand what is real. What's not, they could spot, they could spot those things in. Then this is, I mean, maybe I should make a full podcast on what to do, like how to, how to audit yourself of being a doer versus a talker. I think that will be super helpful, but like You could,You could audit yourself, like, who do you listen to? Like I started looking at who I listened to consumed like media wise consumed like music wise, consumed anything wise and just did research on the individual. Are they a doer? Are they a talker? Cause if they're talker, I don't want to have anything coming into my mint. I, my mental capacity, like I even stopped listening to certain artists because these beads people are talkers. Time has time has showed me what they are and who they are. I don't even want to listen to their. I'm not going to feed into it. I just want to listen to the doers. Right. I just want that energy. I want to be on that frequency. Cause that's, that's where I'm more interested in. Right. All right. So we kind of went through all thatBarbara great prices alreadyKind of went over that and you know, seeing a lot of barbers raising prices, but never had the actual business. Now this doesn't apply to everybody, but I think for a majority of people like I've talked to at least, I mean, it makes me, it makes me a little concerned. So I feel like I should at least make this podcast. Hopefully if you are listening Matt, as you, no worries. Like people make mistakes, just pivot off it. Right. so what to do about this? Right? So like I said before, we had an individual who also fell into this trap of like raising prices, never had a solid business. He actually went from 20 bucks to 40 bucks to 60 bucks and completely broke his business. And this is why I'm always very hesitant on even saying on anything on media of like, Hey, you should raise your prices.Cause they think it's very detrimental. If because it's a case by case study, you have to understand the individual, you have to understand the business. And it is a very curative process to get somebody up to that next level successfully. It doesn't just, it's not just like you raise it and it's not like a, what's it called that feel the dreams like you, you, you raise it and they will come like that doesn't work. Right? Like more barbers, like it just, people in general have like a hope and pray method than, than an actual strategical, like angle at this new house. Again, two businesses off strategy. It's, it's, it's, it has little to do with like you're hoping and praying. It has everything to do with you, your strategy. So how do we fix it? So simply you know, all we fixed was, I mean, you're going to hate to hear this, but we went back down and if that's like a situation, like that's the, that's the really, the only thing you can do, like if you didn't build it, like you can't scale up you can't be doing these things.You should just go back down and work on those other like tactics, right. Or just not tactics, but those other business disciplines really storing the war chest, like auditing your decisions, fixing up everything about yourself, so that these, these personal issues don't bleed into the business later on. BecauseIf you scale upAnd this person kind of had the same issue of like scaled up this personal issues, still keep on blaming the business. And it's just this self-fulfilling reflective cycle that just spins somebody down to the ground and like just really buries you. And as much as it's going to hurt the ego, it's the smartest thing in the long-term right. Again, too, if it, if, if, if you, if you have done that and you are so prideful about going back down, you should definitely look at like, what are you really like trying to do? Are you trying to live in the short-term things or the long-term things? Because if you're living, long-term, you're going to have to take short-term sacrifices. You're going to have to bite the bullet and the short-term long-term wise. It won't be the case. If you're living in the short term, may God help you?That's all I gotta say. So we went back down and we just started building, building the proper business right before we could actually implement like a lot more of the things, storing cash reserves, understanding how to actually run the business properly at that price point. I think we went from 60 all the way down to 30 now, and he's doing phenomenally well. Like he just had his best month. Last month he got like 20 or 30 new clients. And it's, it's the busiest he's ever been as a barber period. It, it, it, it, I'm completely proud of the dude, if he's listening to this, I'm not going to say his name, but if he's listening to this, he knows how incredibly proud of him I am of him. Because it's been, it has been a battle of like, not really so much pride, maybe a little bit of pride at first.Cause he was one of those individuals that like we had a call, he thought he could do the thing on his own build the business owners zone really screwed himself up until he was like, alright, I up, I need your help. And then we started working in like really like all give him all the praise because he really was open-minded and just did everything that I asked him to do. And he's reaping the benefits today. It's really like, I'm, I'm always really amazed to see just, just how, how much he'll continue. You know, pushing forward. I'm, I'm honestly really excited cause I definitely want to do an interview with him just so you know, everybody can hear his story and kind of hear what happened and also learn from that because I think this is a very good learning opportunity for the rest of the whole industry in itself. And again too, I couldn't be more proud of the duke. NowYeah, that's, that's just at least how we fixed his business. I'm just looking at what the rest of my notes are. I want to make sure I get everything that I wanted to say. Oh yes. So kind of went already over this too. Like again, if that's, again, if your situation is that look to go back down or just scale down in the business, like work on building that also in terms of working on self or working on your habits you know, consumption wise, fixed by auditing your diet and your media consumption, exercising, et cetera. Like every single action you take from the moment you wake up, you should audit, is this short-term, is this long-term is this thing that I'm eating and that I'm drinking that I'm consuming right now? Is this just for a short term pleasure or am I trying to get a long-term thing? And I've completely audited my entire life from how I drink? I mean, not like alcohol, but like, you know, just water, no sodas really clean diet.I mean really clean exercise too. Like any like exercise, a big one. Like some, like what I noticed a lot about myself was, was I was too far deep into like the short term exercise of like trying to lift the heaviest weights. And just no form just trying to pump up the best, biggest weights and that's it. And like, I just kinda threw all that away. I just do all body weight now and it's like completely changed my mindset. And because it's all form, it's like, you have to stay in that thing long-term wise and you can't get out of the, you know, you can't, you can't escape the pain, right? Like you really should just audit everything. You do audit the music. You listen to audit like a media that you watch audit, like people that you listen to, like, just look at everything that you're doing.And just like take a real hard look at it. Like, is this the right thing I should be doing? Is this like, short-term, is this long-term, what's the real reason why I'm doing this or listening to this? Is it because like I need validation? Is it because I need like some short term high or is, is this actually helping me to build something? Long-Term, that's why I switched to more reading books. It's why I switched to, I really only just watched CEO interviews. And I just don't, I mean, like, I, I don't think I ever watched like some, some like real stupid like Tik TOK videos, or just scrolling aimlessly on anything like that. Cause that, that thing will get you. Even if you do that, if you just find yourself aimlessly scrolling on social media or just watching things for entertainment, anything entertainment wise, you should probably just cut out.You know, I'm not saying like anything enjoyment wise, like I enjoy watching like MMA fights. I enjoy watching like on Instagram at least I, I really enjoy watching animals eat each other as, as like brutal as that sounds, but like everybody in the pro in the LV dementia program knows that I really enjoy it. What does that nature is metal. I really enjoyed that one. I really liked seeing like animals in the wild, just attacking each other. It's just something about, I absolutely love I like you know, philosophy, I like learning about more philosophy you know, doing research on individuals like that and less, you know just entertainment stuff. Right. and I think you should do the same thing because this, this is going to help like top down business again, to get yourself out of the perception versus the reality of what you want to go after social media is a terrible one, especially with tick talk.There's a lot of perception going on versus reality with that thing or just any social media. Even, even like with books too, or people that like wrote books. I always ha I I'm very, like I put my guards up on people of like, oh, you should read this book. It sounds like a perception thing. I'll do more research. I'm like, yeah, it's a perception thing, not reality. Too many things are, and again, this goes into theory and practice too many things have too much theory and not enough practice. I just try to base everything I do off of the practice. And you can easily spot the theory versus practice when something just it's just, oh two over theorized. And I can't explain, I guess, on the spot as that. Well, because that might be a different topic for a podcast, but I mean, again too, it's something that I tell like barbers in the program all the time.Like I just focus on what I've done. I don't over theorize anything. Theory is theory. Theory is basically putting a, being able to communicate what the practice is to another individual. Right. so let's say if I am playing catch with somebody, right, I'm throwing a baseball playing catch. If I want tell somebody how to properly throw that's theory. Right. But the practice is them actually doing it and actually feeling it out. And then hopefully some somewhere around, like when they do it, the theory, like if you communicate it and PR and put the theory properly, they'll understand it. But no matter what, you're always going to be losing a tad bit of, of the practice and you won't get that completely a hundred percent into the theory. There's just no way, even, even like what I try to do with business. I like, there's still so much that like, you know, even on Q and a calls that we just cannot get to, because it was just like the practices it's so dynamic.And if you've ever played a sport or anything like that, and you'd like to, it's like trying to like read a book on how to play baseball or basketball or football. Like there's, there's a theory on how to do it. And there's also a practice, right. And you should have like a really good even mix of the two, but more, I always try to lean more on the practice side. I breathed theory kind of called on it. I'll go find out on my own practice. So we might get into that next time of just like how that can apply to your business or just whatever it all. But I'm getting a little thirsty. So I kind of wrap up this podcast, but I appreciate everybody who has been listening on again too, if this is you know, in terms of elevate mentor program, if you're in a position with your business as a borrower where you're doing about again, the four to 10 K per month, mark have a proper business, like we've talked about you know, in terms of, you know, you have the cash reserves, you, you you've been able to build things properly.You're not looking at the short term, you're looking at the longterm, you're that type of individual, and you want to scale, but have hit that hamster wheel, where it looked everything you try to do. It doesn't work, whether it be adding on more services or it's going too slow, and you want some help to actually put again to the the gasoline or the igniter fluid on top of your business. So it can actually scale. So again, it, you can get out eventually from cutting air full-time. What I'll do is I'll put a link down below, you can schedule a call with me and we can talk to see if it makes sense and you're, and you're a good fit for what we do inside the LVMH elevate a mentorship program to work with me personally. So I really want to make sure again, to have you apply, make sure you give me as much information on your business.I really want to make sure it's a good fit for everybody. Again, to about age 75, 70, 70 5% of people, it just not going to be the best of time. Even the ones who I do hop on calls with. That's just the reality of it. And we're just looking for a specific individual who's they're in the right place. But at the very least, if that's you, you know, we'll kind of go through like what's going on with your business, what are the problems? And at least maybe kind of give you a clear eye view of what, what you should be going towards. So that's you again, to go ahead, I'll put a link. It was say, like to book a call or like ready to get help book a call with me and you just book a time and we could talk, figure things out.That's a good fit. Great. We'll start working together. If not, no worries. We can come back for a later time. And again, to, if this is your first time listening to podcasts, welcome, make sure to like subscribe, drop a review and rate the podcast as well as if you felt that this was beneficial to you and just the overall growth. If you're a barber and you feel like somebody else needs to hear this that you know of or would benefit from this, feel free to share it to them. If you were the person who got this podcast shared to them, and now you get, did you get to this part of the podcast and somebody shared it to go ahead and thank them because they have your best interest in your overall growth in mind. And again too, maybe we should pass on that favor and send it to somebody else as well, who you think should and could benefit this as a barber in the industry.Because I think this is something that is very beneficial and, and probably does need to get on more radar. So with that again, to be more active on here and make sure you go ahead and, and follow also on the YouTube channel, but a little bit active on that as well, too, dropping videos every week, I have a couple more good ones coming up as well. I'm very excited to kind of share just kind of like for barbers and their business. So make sure you follow or subscribe, not follow to the YouTube channel, or you can check that out at de Luxe, I guess that's it deluxe the YouTube channel. And then if you want any more resources or want to check out the gals, the new air barbering.com, great place to go resources, customer views, as well as you can also schedule a call with me through there as well too. So we'll drop a podcast. Thanks everybody for watching or not watching, but.