Barberhacks is here to help you grow as a barber and think about the barbering industry as a whole. PROGRESS AND GROWTH When I sit down to think about where our industry is going I see progress and growth, but I have a few reservations. Having been in the hair industry for 16 years, I have lived through at least one major economic downfall without feeling pinched (but also without feeling exceptionally wealthy), I have switched to men’s barbering despite the fact that it was looked poorly upon by the industry as a whole (I have been barbering for 8 years), and I have seen barbering rise from ..read more

Barberhacks is here to help you become the best barber that you can be. This blog focuses on the mental side of the game, while my YouTube channel will teach you how to Barber Better. I spend all day standing behind a chair, and I hardly ever sit in one. I’m never a customer, so how am I supposed to relate to one? I’ve talked about this before, but since I’ve started researching for a book that I plan to write, I’m thinking about this idea a lot. What does a guest think, what does a guest want? We’re in customer service after all, we’re groomers, we make others look and feel good about them ..read more

MAKING CHANGES I’ve been making changes in my life. I had some health issues that led to crippling anxiety, fatigue and massive, hospitalizing panic attacks. I’ve had to take a good look at my life and how I had been living it and make some changes. CHOICES I’ll explain some of how I was living my life. I was smoking two packs a day, drinking often, dabbling with recreational drugs, I was working out seven days a week, and working 50-60 plus hours a week. I didn’t care much about anything, and I was living life fast and loose. My family didn’t care to talk to me much, I kept getting dumped ..read more

Barberhacks is an online resource for barbers to help them improve in every aspect of the business. Disorganized Chaos I don’t know how I used to do it when I was younger, I’ve gotten to the point in my career where that is pretty far removed from the present. Like a lot of barbers I’m mostly self-taught, meaning there was little structure in the way that I approached cutting hair. I have always had a disorganized chaos going on on my station while I am cutting, I’ll casually toss guards onto the countertop as I progress into my cuts. I’ll grab scissors and place them haphazardly about. I’m ..read more

Barberhacks is here to help you sort out how to barber better, and more intelligently, through the gaze of a guy working 16 years in the hair industry. EMERGENCIES It has been a couple weeks since I’ve written a blog and it has been a very busy couple of weeks for me. My father had a massive heart attack, a 7 out of 10, or so the doctors have told me, one that could have killed him. Through luck and an amazing health care system in Canada, he has survived, although he is recovering from open heart surgery, a quadruple bypass. I took a week off of work to be with him during this time, and ..read more

HAS SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGED YOUR LIFE? I’m sitting at a typewriter, writing a blog, (actually a tablet with a keyboard, but allow me my little fantasy) thinking about what social media actually does for me. When was the last time social media changed your life as a barber? If I ask myself that question...never. There is nothing that social media has ever done that has changed my life as a barber. I’ve hit the social media scene pretty hard. I blog, I have a YouTube channel, I have dallied with the ‘gram, I have Vero on my phone. At one point I was a hardcore Instagram user. Logged a lot of ..read more

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” ~ Lao Tzu READING A LOT I’ve been reading a lot lately, or listening to audio books, and there have been a lot of themes that I keep running into, but one has been grabbing my attention lately and I would like to pass it on to you guys, my amazing readers. Here is an exercise. Go into your barbershop, or another one, and take a look at the barbers cutting hair. Take a minute and really ..read more

MY CLIPPER COLLECTION I have a collection of clippers, so many in fact that I’ve probably spent a couple thousand dollars on clippers that I don’t use. They sit in a suitcase in a spare room awaiting a time where one of my lead instruments sings its final swan song and dies. I don’t need other clippers, I still use the first set of Andis Masters that I originally bought, and could use them for every cut if I wanted. I like my Masters, especially with a fade blade on them, I fade some beautiful cuts with those Masters. Things are changing in the barbering scene though. Clipper companies hav ..read more

I’m a fairly good barber. You can judge for yourself: https://www.instagram.com/crowbarber. I know most of my technical faults, or most of them that I can improve on, but there are a few areas that I struggle in when it comes to my mental game. NEVER TRUST AN ARTIST I’ve always had this saying, “Never trust a barber that says they’re an artist.” I’ve said this for a long time, because when I was younger I worked with some people that would brag about how artistic they were, and I noticed that they never listened to their customers, because they thought their ideas were better than their cust ..read more

Barberhacks is an online barbering network focused on teaching and sharing information having to do with barbering. Find Crowbarber on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crowbarber Check out our YouTube, there is a video at the bottom of the page. HEY THERE. MY NAME IS... I write this blog based on my own experiences as a barber and a hairdresser for the past 16 years. I wanted to write a quick, “Hi how are you, this is me” post, just so you could get an idea of who I am and what I deal with, something a bit more ‘real’, to make me as the writer of this blog a little more relatable. This ..read more