{"id":111389,"date":"2019-05-28T00:02:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T06:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/?p=111389"},"modified":"2022-04-15T14:36:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T20:36:34","slug":"biggerpockets-business-podcast-05industry-thinking-differently-daniel-santana-chris-bossio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/biggerpockets-business-podcast-05industry-thinking-differently-daniel-santana-chris-bossio","title":{"rendered":"Disrupting an Ancient Industry by Thinking Differently"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today\u2019s guests are harnessing technology to change the face of a blue-collar, brick and mortar business that\u2019s been around for 7,000-plus years: barbering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Daniel and Chris<\/strong> break down exactly how they opened <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.headlinesbarbers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">their first barbershop<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the Tampa Bay area and how reinvesting the profits allowed them to open six more in a few short years. They explain why every entrepreneur should set aside some funds for \u201coopsies,\u201d and they offer tips on projecting expenses, choosing a location, hiring a team, and conjuring up creative ways to get customers in the door\u2014guidance that applies to each and every business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, can a barbering business really scale?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Theirs does! And it&#8217;s because they launched a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomb45.com\/shop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">line of barbering products<\/span><\/a>,<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> including razors, shears, air compressors, and wireless charging mats. So if you\u2019ve ever considered direct-to-consumer sales, you\u2019ll want to listen for their advice on doing business overseas (hint: hire a consultant!) and growing sales online.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, Chris reflects on building a massive <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/c50bossio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">YouTube<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> following and explains how providing free education to his 250,000 subscribers helped build his company\u2019s brand and attract high-caliber talent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to change your industry by taking a fresh approach, this episode will leave you inspired and ready to take action today. Download this one now, and subscribe so you won\u2019t miss the next one!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biggerpockets-business-podcast\/id1460051721\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0to listen on iTunes.<\/p>\n<h2>Listen to the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;\" src=\"https:\/\/art19.com\/shows\/7062093e-949f-4752-abdc-0cdbe09da5cc\/episodes\/cca6c12e-b4fb-482f-8c0c-c2f28798b228\/embed\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Read the Transcript Here<\/h2>\n<div style=\"overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 400px; background: #eee; padding: 20px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Welcome to the BiggerPockets Business podcast, Show #5.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>\u201cThey say, no, I\u2019m giving up my $1600 a month in free cash flow because I\u2019m not hiring these two guys because they don\u2019t fit our vision\u2014that was really nice and I think that if you build that into your business case and you build that into your concept vision and you stick to your leadership thought and you don\u2019t give up for it\u2014you don\u2019t give up, you don\u2019t sell your morals and your thoughts for cash flow, then you can ultimately reach your destination, whatever that may be\u201d.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Welcome to a real-world MBA from the School of Hard-Knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it. Whether you\u2019re already in business or you\u2019re on your way there, this show is for you. This is BiggerPockets Business.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Hey there, everybody. I am J. Scott. I am co-host for the BiggerPockets Business podcast and I am here with my wife, Mrs. Carol Scott. How are you doing today, Carol?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I am doing great, honey. Thank you so much. I want to tell all of our listeners something really great that happened this morning. So, we were doing a real estate deal, go figure, and no matter how many deals we do, once in a great while, there is one that we just don\u2019t know which way to go with it, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we decided, you know what? We need to go out there and get some help. So I reached out into our network, found somebody who isn\u2019t even a real estate professional but somebody who I knew could be entirely objective, and give us some really good clarity. Well, guess what? He did just that and I am eternally grateful. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It made such a big difference and helped us move forward. So the little tip of the day from that is, no matter how knowledgeable you might be in the industry, no matter how much of an expert you are, do not be afraid to go out there, pick up the phone, ask for help, and it might just change your entire perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Love that tip. Now, with that in mind, we have a really great show for you today. We have two guys on the show, Daniel Santana and Chris Bossio. These guys are awesome. We had a great conversation. They are literally changing the face of an industry that has been around for over 7,000 years now, the barbering industry. And they are going to help us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">They are going to teach us how if we\u2019re starting a business today, how we can start that business in a way that we position ourselves in a way to be able to grow and scale that business in the future. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>And do you want to learn how to attract business people into your business, both as customers and as people working in your business? Well, make sure you are listening all the way through because they are going to tell you their strategy for doing just that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You\u2019re also going to love hearing how passionate they are about every single step of their business and how their passion led to them identifying needs in our industry to help it grow even more. So throughout this episode, we are going to throw a lot of stuff at you. We are going to mention a ton, so to find out more about it, go right to BiggerPockets.com\/BizShow5. But before we jump in, let\u2019s hear a word from our show sponsor. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Wize Hire helps you understand your own personality and the personality of job candidates, which is totally crucial if you are trying to find the perfect match for a position. They do this by using DISC personality assessment, and if you are unfamiliar with it, DISC is a simple survey that explains a lot about you. And it helps you build better relationships.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>The BiggerPockets staff actually uses DISC assessmen in their teams. So here\u2019s how it works. Wize Hire simple software and expert hiring coaches help you write a quality job description and then they post your ad to 60+ job boards, including Indeed, LinkedIn, and Zip Recruiter. Once your candidate starts applying, Wize Hire automatically gives them a personality assessment and stores their score as well as their resume in one place for you to review.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Over 3,000 small businesses and teams trust Wize Hire to help them grow. So check it out today at WizeHire.com. That\u2019s WizeHire.com.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, go out and support our show sponsor. Now, let\u2019s jump into our episode with Chris Bossio and Daniel Santana.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Let\u2019s welcome to the show Daniel Santana and Chris Bossio. How are you doing today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Doing great, doing great. Happy to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Thanks so much for joining us. Have been really looking forward to talking with you. We\u2019ve watched a lot of videos on both of you. We\u2019ve learned a lot about your shop and we\u2019re excited to hear it from your perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019ve learned a whole bunch of stuff about cutting hair the last two days. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s really cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So Daniel, Chris, first let\u2019s start with a little bit of background about you guys. Can you introduce who you are and where you come from and how you got into the barbershop business?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, I guess I\u2019ll start. So, I was playing college basketball. And I had a roommate who was cutting hair in his dorm. And when you play basketball in college, you can\u2019t get a job so you\u2019re like broke. So this was during the recession. This is \u201908. So our parents lost their businesses and I didn\u2019t have any money and I was in the middle of nowhere Kansas. And I just saw my roommate cutting hair, making a bunch of money while I\u2019m starving.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You know, I got homesick. I transferred over to a school in Florida. And you had to sit out a year when you transfer. So I decided I was going to go barber school and learn how to cut hair. Fell in love with it. This was around the same time, it\u2019s funny, that I signed up for BiggerPockets, the website. I was working at Arby\u2019s and I was just trying to figure out a way to change my life around and not struggle financially anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I started doing some self-development stuff and I told myself that if I was going to do this barbering thing, I needed to own the businesses. I needed to start the business within that niche, within that industry, and so that\u2019s how I got started with barbering and meeting up with Danny. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So yeah, my side, it\u2019s interesting. Not the profile you would expect to be in the barbershop world or in the barber world. But after something in the area of 14 years in the business world, expatriate from Argentina, almost two million miles flown on a single airline by the time I was 32, running multimillion dollar teams, multimillion dollar deals. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I had a friend I had met since before puberty and he was struggling as a barber. His barbershop owner was a stereotypical barbershop owner, if you will. And we set up a shop together. Originally, it was just a loan and then I kind of enjoyed it. I met Bossio that was the first barber that came over to that shop. I was still doing some work in the corporate world. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Had a gig with a couple of VCs and ultimately what I realized is, this industry is full of extremely driven, extremely intelligent individuals who just didn\u2019t have a formal education. I wanted to jump on their wave, man, because they were helping me out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I was very lucky to fall into it and ultimately, that\u2019s how I got into the barbering world after starting my life off as an engineer, a systems engineer on the techie world, business development in the corporate world, airplane Joe for many, many years, suit and tie and now it\u2019s sandals, t-shirts, and hair. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So that\u2019s awesome. So you guys teamed up as a partnership where Daniel, you brought the business side of the equation, Chris, and I guess you have a third partner, it sounds like? And Chris, and the third partner, you guys brought the operating side of the equation. It sounds like a match made in Heaven.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>It is definitely a nemith circle, a full circle there between different teammates. A lot of growing pains, just as much on Bossio\u2019s side coming over to this side and he\u2019s an extremely quick learner, willing to read or listen, depending on if it\u2019s an audiobook or paper book, as needed, for us to sync up. While I have not cut hair\u2014I feel like I could after watching many of his videos at this point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s very fun. So I\u2019m wondering, you mentioned, like you said, we have the operator side, we have the business growing person side, and you mentioned there\u2019s a loan in there somewhere. So talk to us a little bit about you decided this might be a good business to start. Did you think you were going to start with this one shop, or did you have a bigger plan from the getgo?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>It\u2019s really interesting because in reality, the shops are called Headlines Barbers. At the beginning, we used to joke that we were like the barber rehab. We were bringing in barbers that were working at stereotypical barbershops with owners, it was a complete lifestyle situation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When I built up a business case, I tried showing our third business partner, who isn\u2019t here today, Perez, how he can go get an SBA loan. He went to a couple of different banks, tried to get an SBA loan off of the business case I had built in with my experience. And unfortunately, his credit wasn\u2019t good enough. We have a lot of barbers in this industry who don\u2019t have good credit and would never be able to get qualified.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But after some talk, he said he had a partner. He came to me with what the potential partner was offering him and it was just one of those bad deals. And me being a friend and being in the corporate world for years, I decided, you know what? Here\u2019s the money. I\u2019m just going to loan it to you. We\u2019ll start there. There was no paper between us. It was just a handshake. I wrote a $50,000 check and we opened the first barbershop. And I think it was like 30 or 60 days in and I sat him down, I sat Bossio down, which was the first barber that I had met outside of my friend, Perez, and we put something together and we said, let\u2019s do five shops in five years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I expanded the business case where we rolled over 100% of the revenue that came into the business. None of us took any draws and 100% of the money went back into the second shop. But of course, at the time you build your third shop, you\u2019ve got the revenue from the first and the second shop doing it. Each business case showed the negative cash flow up from and you know, the ramp up and stuff like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There was a lot of learning curves on both our sides. Because we started as a lifestyle company and because we positioned ourselves as lifestyles\u2014it was always lifestyle over profits. So we don\u2019t have the most profitable business case but we have the deepest culture business case and that\u2019s what really has helped launched Tomb45, which is our product line and that\u2019s really what we\u2019re hoping can actually make us some money as well as maintain the culture as we scale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. So I know there\u2019s a lot of stuff to unpack there, but I want to start with something we talk a lot about on the show, which is partnerships and a lot of times we see partners come in and they have the exact same skills. They have the same strengths, they have the same weaknesses, because you guys made the perfect partner because Chris, you, and it sounds like Perez, you knew how to operate this business, this specific business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And Daniel, you knew how to grow and scale this business. So between the two of you, basically you had everything in place to build a business and then eventually grow and scale it. But the thing that struck me was that, Chris, you said earlier in the discussion that you kind of had the same goals moving forward. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You didn\u2019t just want to build a small business that you kind of go to. You didn\u2019t want to build yourself a job. You were looking to build something bigger. So you both had this vision. So before we get to the building it bigger, take us through a little bit about how you started that first shop. What went right? What went wrong? How did this partnership really start out with that very first shop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Let me jump in really quick here. I think we took a lot of the stuff from the corporate world, when you\u2019re hiring somebody, when you\u2019re hiring Type A business development sales guys and the idea was, why are we doing this? We answered a lot of \u2018whys\u2019 up front before we decided five shops in five years, before we put the effort in, before we started deciding on how to focus on customer acquisition and who were our\u2014defining our customers and market and all that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Before we ever got to any of that, we didn\u2019t worry about the colors, we didn\u2019t worry about what logo we were going to use. We worried about, what is it that he wants to do, and more importantly, why? Why is it that you want to do this? Why would you jump into a five-year plan where you\u2019re going to work your butt off and not get a single dollar? You\u2019ve got a day job and a night job and an evening job and we\u2019re going to be counting everything in dollars and pennies, not in hundreds and thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The answer, ultimately, was lifestyle. And then when we sat there and we thought about it and the other partners, all of us got together, we ultimately decided that we were all willing to make the same sacrifices for the lifestyle, first and foremost\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019m going to interrupt you for a quick second, because you\u2019ve used \u2018lifestlye\u2019 several times and I love that. But can you define, in your words, because everybody has a different idea of what a lifestyle business is. In your words, what were you trying to achieve with a lifestyle business?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Basically, as a barber, the hours that are put in as a barber are 10AM to 6PM or 7PM or 8PM on a daily basis. That\u2019s five days a week, plus you\u2019ve got Saturdays. That\u2019s not a 9 to 5 where you can pick up your kids at work and go. You\u2019ve got some flexibility because you can make your own schedule, but a lot of barbers like to say, I make my own schedule\u2014no, they really don\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s really a lifestyle in the sense that, from the corporate world, a lot of us that are listening, consider our 9 to 5. Our after-hours. Our kids go to sleep, we jump on our laptops and we put in some extra work. That\u2019s typically what we see but in this blue collar world, it\u2019s really a matter of putting in those hours day in and day out on the weekends, and sacrificing so much family time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That if you don\u2019t thoroughly enjoy going to the barber battles, if you don\u2019t enjoy going to the barber shows, if you don\u2019t enjoy going to the get-togethers, if you don\u2019t enjoy doing the events for the cancer societies\u2014that\u2019s one of the things that we do, cut hair for free. That\u2019s one of the questions that we ask all of our barbers that are coming on board, would you cut hair for free? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you can\u2019t enjoy that part of it, then that\u2019s not the lifestyle. The lifestyle is thoroughly enjoying the part where you realize the impact you\u2019re giving to anybody who sits in your chair, the conversation you have with anybody who sits in your chair, that\u2019s what I interpret as a lifestyle. What about you, Bossio? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Bossio: It\u2019s funny because I feel like in the barber culture, we like to say that the barber culture is hip-hop. It\u2019s cutting hair. It\u2019s all the same culture. It seems like the popular belief is just grind. You\u2019ve got to grind. You\u2019ve got to put your head down and you\u2019ve just got to work. You\u2019ve got to work all day, every day. And one of the things that struck me early on as we were building this because that was my mindset. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One thing that struck me with Danny that he would tell me is, it\u2019s a process. We have our destination but we have to enjoy the journey as well because we only have one life. So when we put lifestyle as a priority, it\u2019s you know, are we really able to spend time with our kids? Are we really able to enjoy this? So many barbers, they work so much that they work themselves to the point where they don\u2019t have a passion for what they do anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was like, the best analogy I usually give is when I play basketball in high school and AU, I loved it. It was so much fun. But once I got into college, they tell me every day, earn your scholarship. This is your job. And it got\u2014I hated it. I started to hate basketball and that\u2019s a feeling I never want to have in business or in barbering or in life in general.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s great, and I love that it sounds like the two of you have proven that if you do business right, that in a business that is typically not amenable to this type of lifestyle, where you can\u2019t have passion and love what you do, but still be with your family and do the other things that are important outside of that. You have managed by making the right choices, by growing the right way that you don\u2019t have to choose, that you truly can do both, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So it\u2019s like you\u2019ve really kind of changed. You\u2019re starting to really change the way that the industry is working by the way that you\u2019ve put things in place. That\u2019s a really cool accomplishment. Okay, so back to, you decided you need to open a store. Your very first one. How\u2019d you go about doing that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So, it was scary in the beginning. A lot of it, we didn\u2019t really know. Like, you know, he\u2019s a businessman but a lot of the stuff that we needed for the shop, we kind of overlooked. So one of the ideas that we put together was tabletopping. That\u2019s something Danny introduced and it was really eye-opening because I remember sitting down with Perez in the office at the first shop that we were at, and he was like, what do we need for the shop? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Open the door and look around. What do we need first? And things like floormats, things like garbage cans, you don\u2019t really think about. So we didn\u2019t realize how much money we were really going to spend to open up this shop. A lot of barbers, they just think it\u2019s barber chairs, the station, and we\u2019re good to go. So that was eye-opening, going through that and seeing, damn we\u2019re running through this money pretty quickly. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Really quick.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, it\u2019s easy. Like let\u2019s say you want to open a ten-station shop, a lot of barbers won\u2019t put a power strip in their business case or in their concepts, even if they don\u2019t write it down per se. But you\u2019ve got to buy some pretty high-end power strips. You\u2019re spending $60 a power strip, you just spent $600 that you weren\u2019t expecting. That\u2019s just one of many of the things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we definitely tabletopped to walk through the process several times of what you do during the haircuts. So I can come up to speed, identify the individual components. I try to write them down. Of course, we totally messed up our business case but we did put a 10% variance on our cap ex. We were pretty darn close at the end of the first shop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>How did you choose that location for the first one?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So we looked at several locations. We were actually very scared. We got a very high rent place, but ultimately, we knew we wanted to get somewhere where our customer acquisition cost was low. That\u2019s something that I go after repeatedly. That\u2019s something that\u2019s on my mind for everything we do. Customer acquisition cost. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Coming from the corporate world, we\u2019ve spent thousands of dollars on flights and entertainments with our customers and all that, and we put that to the budget center, so we decided at the end of the day how much it costs us to sign this contract. Well, for us, customer is getting them in the door. And then the barber\u2019s job is to retain them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But getting them in the door, for example\u2014we wanted to be next to high schools, next to junior high schools where the customer acquisition cost is low. We wanted to be as close as possible to a gym. And this is a very large L.A. Fitness. The same plaza we\u2019re in has a very large L.A. Fitness. And we said, you know what? We\u2019re going to bite the bullet and I\u2019m going to sign us up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>And it was very scary with that location. I think that was our fifth choice because the plaza is actually not facing the main road. It\u2019s actually the back of the plaza, facing there. So that was super scary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Sure, the demographics were, the street traffic was something that was advertised by the landlord but it was definitely not something that would affect us. But the demographics in the area were good. The L.A. Fitness plaza was good. And ultimately, it\u2019s a model we kept as we expanded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, I think four of our locations are in an L.A. Fitness plaza. You think about gyms, people who want to look good, they go to gyms. So it was a priority for them. It\u2019s a priority.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Yeah, it kind of just fits together, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I love the fact that, and Daniel, I was on your Instagram earlier today so I\u2019ve noticed you posted some things like spreadsheets for how, for barbershops for other people that might want to start a barbershop how they can do the numbers to create a profit and loss statement and kind of model out what it would take to open a barbershop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I love the fact that you guys like, from the beginning, it wasn\u2019t just, let\u2019s open a barbershop and see what happens. You actually sat down and thought about this. You thought about your location. You thought about the demographics. You thought about customer retention. You thought about the cap ex, which is capital expenses, all the big equipment that goes into the store. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You thought about all those costs. I assume you actually created a budget, a spreadsheet that said, if we have this many people cutting hair and we get this many customers per day, and they pay this much, and our costs are this much, at the end of the day, week, month, year, this is what our profits are going to look like. And you actually did all of that before you went out and you started building your first shop. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Oh yeah, I mean I calculated MPV. My first spreadsheet, I sat down with Perez and Bossio and they just scratched their head and I realized that you know, this was going to be a journey. So we dumbed it down and built it up and at this point, I\u2019m pretty sure Bossio can build his own fairly complex business cases. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s one of those things where, as a barbershop owner, we started defining different things. I define our customers as both the barber and the person getting a haircut, which was a different concept. And it took a while for us to sync on that, if you will, but the barbers ultimately pay us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We took the, again, going back to the lifestyle term, the lifestyle method where we wanted to give the individual barber an opportunity to make more money as long as we made our rent, basically. If we can recover, our business case showed a 36-month breakeven point and we weren\u2019t getting a real ROI until month 48. So we built out 48 months and at that point, we stopped. I think we had been in business for six months so yeah, it\u2019s been fantastic to actually build that out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Bossio has been trying to convince me to do the business classes per year so we decided up front, maybe not up front, but once we decided to focus on the expansion, that we needed to provide value up front through education. And again, customer acquisition costs. We defined it as barbershop owners that our customers were also the barbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And the barbers, we needed to acquire them just like we would any other customer. And we wanted to attract a higher level of barber, a higher caliber of professional, and we did that by putting out education and increasing our pool of addressable market and the addressable market grew quite a bit because they knew who we were and they wanted to come work for us. And that\u2019s where we were. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That is huge. I swear, you read my mind, because I was going to ask you about this. You\u2019re on your first shop, right? And you figured out customer acquisition, but clearly, you need people to serve those customers, so how would you go about getting them? And it sounds like by providing education, that you were able to do that. So how many barbers did you draw into your shop and how did you set up their payment structure or their shared rent structure and can you talk to us about how that worked out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And also how you guys differentiate. Because I know a little bit about reading your story. I know a little bit here, I\u2019d love for you to talk a little bit about how you guys basically changed the way you do things compared to much of the rest of the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, I think it was just putting the barber first, like Danny was saying earlier. We started doing a whole lot of YouTube videos and putting content out there and it was a blessing because we started getting barbers who probably weren\u2019t the best at cutting hair. But they were moldable. They were teachable. They were ambitious. And with our channel, we didn\u2019t just educate but we also inspired and motivated barbers to step their level up, of barbering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Because I think a lot of barbers, they think of barbering as kind of like a hustle. They don\u2019t see it as a real career. And so we wanted to change that mindset for the upcoming, the new generation of barbers. And that\u2019s been amazing for us because just like when I read <i>Rich Dad, Poor Dad<\/i> and it changed my entire mindset about how I think about money, I think we\u2019re doing that a lot for the new generation of barbers and that\u2019s what helped us get all these new guys in. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But you also have to invest into them. You also have to spend time training them and teaching them how to cut hair and teaching them how to save their money. And teaching them how to make more money and we\u2019ve set up a pay structure that pretty much amplifies that. And elevates them to be able to do the best that they can in our environment. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s cool. And even, I can tell from the language, simply from the language that you\u2019re using when you talk about your barbers. You want to elevate them. You want to educate them. You want to amplify their careers. I think that\u2019s a very different mindset, if you will, than how the industry is. I mean, I think that in most women\u2019s hair salon, for example, it\u2019s simply booth rental. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You come in and it\u2019s a salon professional. You rent booth space. You pay a certain amount of dollars. You keep the profit. End of story. But it sounds like you\u2019re doing it completely differently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Danny jokes all the time that we\u2019re terrible businessmen. Because businessmen would see what we do for our barbers and say you guys are crazy, right? And that goes back to the whole lifestyle thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>It\u2019s long-term vision, right? Short-term vision, we turned down so many barbers that would walk in and want to work for us. And I mean, we would ask them some pretty horrible questions over the barbers and insult them. If that was an issue, then we knew that was going to be a problem. If you couldn\u2019t answer why you wanted to work at my shop other than we have great traffic, other than I hear you\u2019re the up and coming shop, then that wasn\u2019t\u2014they weren\u2019t listening to what we were saying. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What we were saying was we want to not dominate the industry. We want to elevate the industry and by elevating the industry, they will follow us. There\u2019s a lot of fake leadership in this industry, a lot of guys that say they are leaders. But the thought leadership is only from a few different people. And those people are respected and thought of as in the industry as true leaders. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you know, sometimes we give it up. It was nice to be able to say, for a couple of years, that we didn\u2019t need to manage the income. These guys were living off of their haircuts. I was living off of my previous money from the corporate world. And of course, that was nice, the two or three years where we were able to completely reinvest 100% of everything worked really well for us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And being able to say, no, I\u2019m giving up my $1600 a month in free cash flow because I\u2019m not hiring these two guys because they don\u2019t fit our vision. That was really nice and I think that if you built that into your business case and you built that into your concept and into your vision, and then you stick to your leadership thoughts and you don\u2019t give up for it\u2014you don\u2019t sell your moral and your thoughts for the cash flow, then you can ultimately reach your destination, whatever that may be, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome, and another thing that I saw and it struck me that you guys are doing is, you\u2019re aligning incentives amongst everybody in the business. Like Carol said in a typical barbershop, it\u2019s not just women\u2019s hair salons but also the barbershop I go to, everybody is renting booths and so all these barbers are competing with one another.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So if I walk up and I say, I want to get my hair cut by Jane, Mary is over there saying, okay, I just lost his business and there\u2019s that competition there. And competition is good, but it doesn\u2019t, to use your words, it doesn\u2019t elevate the business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And what you guys are doing is more of a, hey, we\u2019re bringing in people and I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re technically employees or not\u2014that doesn\u2019t matter but basically you\u2019re bringing in people and saying, this is a family. This is a business. And we\u2019re all striving for the same goal. We\u2019re all striving to make the business successful, not ourselves as individual successful. And that\u2019s great. That alignment of incentives is good for the business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Well, it\u2019s that gig economy, right? So, in the gig economy, everybody\u2019s out for themselves. They want to catch the next ride. They want to catch the next customer. But in reality, what ends up happening in the barbershop world specifically is barber owners will over-expand because their rent is their rent. And of course, there\u2019s all kinds of analogies that you can use that you have to pay your rent regardless if you\u2019re there or not, which is the situation for many barbers. So that\u2019s really where the downfall in the industry is, if you set up rent without providing any income to the business, then the business can\u2019t strive and the individual barber is a business and we want them to survive so that we have longevity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We have barbers that have been with us for seven years. Five years ago, we built a flyer that said we have six or seven barbers going on to open their own barbershops and then in big parentheses, and we\u2019re proud of it\u2014even though they opened across the street from us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That\u2019s not going to affect me, per se. They\u2019re not going to affect us. They\u2019re just creating more of the same culture where the barbershop world can be seen as somewhere I can take my kids. I\u2019ve got a 13-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old boy and I want to be able to walk into any barbershops and make it happen. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>How did you know? What was the tipping point for the shop, where you said yeah, this is working. We\u2019ve got something good figured out here and it\u2019s time to move onto another. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So the first couple of days, we thought we were going to go out of business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>What? Share, please.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I\u2019m in the middle of a haircut, the power goes out. My clients had to call out of work. Like, we were scared like crazy. But I would say we started attracting some barbers like we said earlier, that were abused in the barbershop that they were currently at, and they came over and they brought clientele with them and their passion with them, and then from there, just start snowballing and I would say, by the end of year one, we felt like we had something. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>How many barbers did you have at that first one?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I would say we opened the second one when we had ten barbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Probably.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>At ten. So you had ten. Go ahead, J.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I was just going to ask, did you have a plan for when you were going to open the second one? Was it we get ten barbers so we open the second one, or we get a year in where we open the second one, or is it just natural organic growth?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>No, it was the cash on hand row on the spreadsheet. So when the cash on hand was enough to justify the next business plan and still provide a cushion for the original business shop and all that jazz\u2014once we felt we had enough cash on hand, as I said, it was rolling over month to month. That\u2019s basically when it went in. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">For some reason, we decided to put in a cash injection, and by cash injection, I\u2019m talking like $2000 each. We\u2019re not going to put in $15,000 to $20,000 each. If something happened, then we would do that at different times for different shops but for the most part, it was the rollover from Shop 1 to Shop 2 to Shop 3 into the cash on hand account. And then once that cash on hand was enough, we would jump to the next one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s cool. And when it was time, and you do have enough cash on hand to do that next one, were you able to apply a lot of those initial things that you did from the first shop so did you find that you made significant changes when you went to Shop 2?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Shop 2, we got creative and we tried something different. We wanted to\u2014we did so good with the first shop and it worked but then we deviated from that and we decided we were going try to change, be innovative. That\u2019s always our thing. We want to be different. We wanted to bring in complimentary beer and have the barbers dress up nicely. We wanted it to be a higher end barbershop. And our customers just didn\u2019t want that. We found that like after six months of trying that, we had to change it up and go back to what was working. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>So were they just like\u2014what did they say? How did you know? Were they polite about it? I\u2019m so curious how it went down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>They loved it at first. But we knew when no one wanted the complimentary beers. No one\u2014you could tell that it just wasn\u2019t working with our customers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>It wasn\u2019t worth it but you experimented and you were innovative and you tried something, so kudos to you for doing that. That\u2019s cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So from an operational perspective, obviously Chris, you can\u2019t be managing shop number one and cutting hair and at shop number two, and at the same time, be watching shop number one and at the same time be over at shop number two and managing that one or shop number three, so at some point, did you have to transition from cutting hair into a manager role or how did you cover the management of each of these shops?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>The second shop, I definitely had to be a leader in the shop and I learned a lot through managing other people who believe that they are their own bosses and they are independent contractors and it\u2019s really hard to manage those different personalities as well. I definitely had to change up the way\u2014they used to call me Hitler because I wanted everybody to do everything the way that I wanted it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I had to learn that there\u2019s different ways to lead people, to get them to do exactly what you want and do it in a different way. The way that it worked out was Perez stayed back and he managed New Tampa, which was our first location, and then I managed Northdown. And we learned from that and we found our leaders in each of those shops and they ended up being the ones that would go out to three, four, five, six.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, from a macro perspective, from my perspective in not being in a day-to-day operations. Trying to teach my management model to these guys of hands-off macro was interesting. I\u2019m the kind of guy that says we go north, and if we\u2019re going northeast, that\u2019s okay. Try to nudge more towards the north. So I\u2019m definitely not that sniper. I\u2019m much more of a shotgun, if you will. A lot of my pellets and shots miss but then you\u2019ve got the managers that are very sniper but they take three months to make a decision. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That\u2019s definitely not the style and the concept that I was after. I left the corporate world specifically to get away from some of that and you know, from that perspective, when you\u2019re looking at the business case, you\u2019ve got to put\u2014I\u2019ll use the Spandex CEO\u2019s term here, \u201coopsies\u201d. Right? You\u2019re going to have some oopsies and you\u2019re going to talk about them and you\u2019ve got to put some money aside for these oopsies and know that they are going to happen and remember Bossie and I had a heated discussion one time about how good this direct mailing was going to work, that we were going to do and you know, we were going to do it the least expensive possible way. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We went out and sorted all of the postcards. We did the rubber band on them and we dropped them off ourselves and all that, but sure enough, it didn\u2019t work. But what you learn there and what you learn from allowing your individual managers as you scale to find themselves and then nudging them in the direction of the vision. And losing some barbers. Some really good barbers along the way because you\u2019re invested in that management team, no different than the corporate world. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You\u2019re going to lose some employees but you\u2019ve got to invest in your managers and you\u2019ve got to invest in your partners so that they can then realize the confidence that they have in their leadership and their thought and it\u2019s okay to lose some money. It\u2019s okay to lose somebody. It\u2019s okay to lose a resource if you will. Make some mistakes and then learn from them as long as they are all going north. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. So it\u2019s always about the business and the long-term vision, not necessarily about what\u2019s easy in the short-term. Sometimes it\u2019s easy to deal with employees that don\u2019t see the same vision you have in the short-term by just saying, okay, well, we\u2019re just going to disagree. But that\u2019s not good for the long-term viability and health for the business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, you can\u2019t just veto your management team and your leaders and what you\u2019re trying to build. If you just veto them, you\u2019re blocking their personal growth. You\u2019ve got to realize that there\u2019s a cost to that. I mean, some of us went to school and had that cost. Others sent out some mailers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Others lost an employee that would have brought in some revenue for a couple of months and you lost that revenue for two or three months. And that personal growth ultimately I think is what built a team that has become you know, kind of where we are, not just in the barbershops but with Tomb45, the product line. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, we\u2019ve done the flyer thing four times knowing that it wasn\u2019t going to work. We\u2019re still doing it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Doing it anyway. Well, you mentioned your flyers and your track mailers and that type of thing. I\u2019m curious, it sounds like so far we\u2019ve talked about the leadership that you have at every store. On kind of the more corporate level though, have you brought in other people like in addition who aren\u2019t barbers, who their main expertise isn\u2019t barbering? So if you brought in or considered bringing in or even consulting with other marketing people or PR people or other types of leadership? Is that a road that you have explored yet? Or how does it work?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So we do have, oddly enough, we\u2019ve got a meeting set up where we\u2019re flying in a few different guys. We do have a guy that we call our acting CTO. Mostly not into the barbershop business but into the Tomb45, into the products business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So he\u2019s our Acting Technical Officer. And then we\u2019ve got a couple of other guys that we do bring in, into the software side, we\u2019ve got a COO. Pretty penny there but he\u2019s definitely a business guy and helps us manage and run that. And bring some brain power and thought process to our vision and helps us implement it. Not even enough hours for the rest of us to do a lot of that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Between the software and the product company, we have brought in marketing, technical, and executive support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That is awesome, and again, that is, I think, completely unheard of in your type of industry. So you are really so innovative in this. It\u2019s really cool. Now, before we move onto the next part of our show, let\u2019s hear a word from one of our show sponsors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Real estate investing is known for a lot of things, mainly making a select group of people a lot of money. But being on cutting edge experience is usually not one of its hallmarks. Well, that\u2019s no longer the case. Fundrise is the future of real estate investing. Their revolutionary model is transforming the industry, thanks to software that cuts out costly middlemen and old market inefficiencies. Fundrise delivers the kind of investing powers you usually only see in giant institutions, bringing real estate\u2019s unique potential for long-term growth and cash flow to individual investors.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Getting started is simple and usually takes less than five minutes. When you invest, you will be instantly diversified across dozens of real estate projects, each one carefully vetted and actively managed by Fundrise\u2019s team of real estate pros. Then, you can use their intuitive investor dashboard and real-time reporting system to monitor the progress in each property within your portfolio. That\u2019s the future of real estate investing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>So, ready to get started? Visit Fundrise.com\/BPMoney. That\u2019s Fundrise.com\/BPMoney to have your first three months of fees waived. Again, that\u2019s Fundrise.com\/BPMoney.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>What other marketing efforts do you have in addition? I know you have a YouTube Channel. Do you think that is drawing a lot of customers as well as barbers? Are there other channels that have been really effective for you in gathering those people?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We have a team that we call Tomb Squad. It\u2019s a group of influencers that we\u2019re friends first. We all have a very common vision and common ideas of where we want the barber industry to be. But we also happen to be influencers. And you know, the name came out\u2014I don\u2019t know how it came about but that\u2019s what they call us now. It\u2019s probably me and maybe four or five other guys that we like to say, we influence the next generation of barbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I think that\u2019s our biggest draw as far as customers and followers and supporters. And then we do other things, too. We\u2019ve tried Facebook marketing and things of that nature, but I would say influencers is our biggest draw.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Influencers. All right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>For Tomb45, that\u2019s definitely true. So for the barbershops, it\u2019s a little bit different as well. On the barbershop side, what we\u2019ve got\u2014again, focusing on the acquisitions side, we talked about some acquisition as an owner, acquiring a barber as a customer, right? Somebody is going to process that. But getting people in the door is very interesting. So when you have your barber, unless your barber leaves or you move, a lot of the people who you want as customers are pretty faithful to their barbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So to get them to change is rather expensive. So what we did is we focused on the young crowd. Basically when your child tells you to stop taking him to SuperCuts, when the kids stop letting mommy and daddy take them to SuperCuts and wants that fresh cut from the barbershop, that\u2019s who we went after. So we went after the middle school kids, the high school kids\u2014it got to the point where the sports directors for two different counties in our region knew us by name. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">They would call us and say hey, get us some more Gatorade. We know how much Gatorade you can fit on a palette because we would buy it by the palette, put our names on it, drop off two bags of Gatorade at each high school in the area. At this point, we have seven shops and quite a few high schools and middle schools and say hey, if you want more, here\u2019s my business card. Call me. We would love to support you. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Instead of dropping off a whole box, that way we generate our conversation, we met the football moms, we met the basketball moms. We used our relationships from the people who sit in our chair, Beef O\u2019Brady\u2019s, these other restaurants, and said hey, this football team needs a meal sponsored on Friday. You know, we\u2019ll pay half of it or give it to us at a really good deal and then we bought the meals and we took them the gameday meals. So by influencing the middle school and high school kids in these sports and the band and stuff like that, that gave us the expansion, if you will. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We never gave discounts. We\u2019re not a big fan of discounts for acquiring customers. Groupons and stuff. No Groupons ever. I hate them. I think it\u2019s horrible. I don\u2019t want that customer who is chasing the discount. I want that customer who sees the value. And so what we did was we gave the coaches free coupon codes and we told you, listen, we want you to give this free hair coupon code to your MVP for the week. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Don\u2019t give it to your quarterback. Give it to the guy who got good grades, to the guy that had to walk home because he didn\u2019t have a ride. And that really worked for us. That really helped us generate a relationship with the community and to different middle schools and high schools. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. That\u2019s a really humanizing touch that really builds relationships and ultimately drives your business at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>For Tomb45, it\u2019s definitely Tomb Squad. For the barbershops, it\u2019s much more local and micro.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>You know, at the barbershop, we say it all the time. It\u2019s the community hub for a lot of areas, a lot of communities. And if our barbers aren\u2019t giving back to the community or aren\u2019t creating a relationship with the community\u2014and it starts with schools. It starts with parents. It starts with kids. If we\u2019re not doing that then you know, what\u2019s the point?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And if I may, I\u2019m going to give a shout-out to True Hair Culture. It\u2019s run by this guy, Tony Suarez. He is a manager at our St. Pete location and after spending I think 15 years in jail, turned his life around. And is now running this True Hair Culture, which basically uses all of its profit to help at-risk youth. And sometimes he goes to the schools, he finds the kids that can barely make it, he gives them rides to and from school. He buys them tools as needed. And that\u2019s definitely something we\u2019re happy to support. And I think that level of community interaction is definitely helping us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Absolutely wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesoe. Okay, let\u2019s jump ahead. We\u2019ve talked about the first store. We\u2019ve talked about expanding to the second store. I assume at this point, you guys have gotten this down to a science. You have a spreadsheet. You know what it\u2019s going to cost. You know where to find your locations. You know how you find your barbers. You know how to find your customers. And so, I assume over the last few years, you\u2019ve just kind of grown this and grown this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I\u2019d love to hear a little bit about where you are today, how many stores you have, how you\u2019re expanding geographically. But you guys have also started, and we\u2019ve kind of touched on this a little bit but I wanted to save it until the very end here. You guys have also started your own product line where you\u2019re going out and you\u2019re manufacturing products to help barbers and help the industry, so I\u2019d love to hear about that as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I guess break that into two questions. Where are you now with your scaling of your shops, and tell us a little bit about the product side of your business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>You want to start by telling them how we accidentally opened our last shop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Yes, please. We have to hear that now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So, we actually, we got on this you know, in this mode where we opened three barbershops, I think in a year?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>A couple of years, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>And then we opened those shops but then we told ourselves, we weren\u2019t going to open anymore shops. We were going to focus on the product line. And then we get a call from one of our landlords, who is an amazing person, that she was opening a plaza and she wanted us in there. So we said yes and ended up opening this barbershop. I\u2019ll let you explain kind of the details of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, so basically we established a relationship with a couple of different landlords who would basically call us and that\u2019s how we ended up opening, going on a rush there at the end. I think like at the end of year three through year five, we went on this crazy rush where the cap ex wasn\u2019t as intense. The tenant allowance wasn\u2019t being provided. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was much better\u2014they weren\u2019t used to barbershops that paid the rent on time, that elevated the traffic to their salons, that got good responses from the neighbors, that didn\u2019t allow, if you will, a riff-raff of clientele to hang out in front of the door and stuff like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So because of that, that relationship was established with the landlords. They came to us and provided a lot more, tenant allowance, gave us much more favorable lease terms. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Offers we couldn\u2019t say no to, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Build-outs. Complete build-outs. So yeah, I think there\u2019s one lined up for 2022 that they wanted us signing and even though we\u2019re not really looking, we\u2019re going to go ahead and do that because hey, if it\u2019s not going to cost us any cap ex to open it, we can definitely run it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We literally sat down and said, no more barbershops. We\u2019re done for a while. And now we\u2019re opening\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>They can\u2019t stop. They need you. They need you in their space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. Now, tell us about your product line. I think it\u2019s called Tomb45?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Tomb45, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>How did that get started? What\u2019s the goal? Tell us a little bit about that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>One of the things that I was doing because of YouTube was educating a lot. And I started touring. I started doing my own tour, put in a list of cities and people would book me to go to teach their classes. And I started going to these shows and these expos and seeing the level of education that was being provided and like Danny was saying, earlier, it\u2019s almost like the same thought leaders for so long, and they were really I feel like old school with their education.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Selling out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, that too. So we wanted to go to the shows and start teaching but the we found out that there\u2019s a cost. And that when you go to these expos, you\u2019ve got to pay them to do free classes. So we needed to figure out a way, how to fund this. So I talked to my subscribers and I told them what I wanted to do and how I want to help them physically, not just through a video, and they told us, why don\u2019t you just start making product?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And the first product they asked us to make was the shave gel. And we made that shave gel in our kitchens in a bowl with a hand mixer. Literally.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You did not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yes, we did. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Has the time expansion passed for the FDA to still come after us?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Hopefully not but like literally hand labelling, hand pumping, hundreds and thousands of bottles of shave gel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Hundreds and thousands?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Wait a minute. From your kitchen? Hundreds and thousands of bottles?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>No, thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So I sat my wife down and I mentioned to her, babe, I need you to understand that these boxes are going to be in the garage for the next five years, okay? This is something your boss really wants you to do. I think it\u2019s something we need to support. It\u2019s one of those things that you\u2019re going to invest in your leadership and invest in your management. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you know what? This whole training situation and education team, is it even going to get us out so we can get more barbers? And my wife is like great, so what\u2019s going on in this kitchen? What is all this stuff everywhere?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So we thought of a name and one of the things I wanted to do was stay true to what we were about and so barbering started during Ancient Eyptian times. It\u2019s one of the oldest professions that\u2019s still around. Back then, you weren\u2019t given a tomb or a proper burial unless you were royalty, a priest, or super wealthy. But there was a barber named Barber Meryma\u2019at, who was actually given a tomb. His tomb number was 45. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I found this guy because I was trying to find the most successful barber ever. I couldn\u2019t point to you. There\u2019s no one to look up to in the barber industry like there is in any other industry, right? And so you know, this guy has a statue in the museum in Pennsylvania and it showed me that were barbering started, it was respected, it was a real profession. And the culture that I wanted to build was bringing that back. So that\u2019s how we came up with a name Tomb45. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That is so cool. That is such a good story. While we\u2019re on stories about naming things, I think I got a little glimpse of the story about how the name Headlines came about and I think our listeners would love hearing that. Can you share it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, that\u2019s a funny one. We were in the barbershop and Perez wanted to name it some name that we\u2019re embarrassed to talk about. He doesn\u2019t like people knowing about it. But we\u2019re coming up with names and we hear the song that Drake made, Headlines, come on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I\u2019m like, you know what? That would be a really good barbershop name and we talked about it for a little bit but I didn\u2019t think he was actually going to go get the logo made in a couple of days later, and I\u2019d be looking at a logo that said \u201cHeadlines\u201d. So that\u2019s how we came up with the name for the barbershop. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Very cool. And I love how your logo, you mentioned earlier, it kind of all comes full circle now when you\u2019re talking about who your target market is, with all the middle schoolers and the high schoolers and the whole community. It really looks like your brand very much reflects that. It\u2019s almost very comic-book like. Kind of just, it\u2019s cool and hip and fun. Yeah, it\u2019s still very professional, all at the same time, and it really reflects like raising people up in those communities. It\u2019s a really good fit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019d love to hear more about where you\u2019re planning to go with the products. Are these products that you are selling out of your own stores or are you trying to sell them through retail or at other trade shows to other barbershops and what types of products are you looking into expanding to? Is this going to be a key part of you business or is this just a secondary thing to try again to push your education side of things like it originally was?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I think the company has grown way, way bigger than we ever anticipated. Again, we started with shaved gels and making it in our kitchen then in our backyard and then when we talked about scaling up and Danny, he\u2019s a great businessman. Two million miles flown. Scaling up wasn\u2019t the normal typical scaling up. Scaling up was going from a bowl to a five-gallon bucket to a drum to backyard to a garage. That was scaling up for us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>But we got so much support from our followers and subscribers and stuff\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So just for the record, we buy containers from a real factory today. Everything is done legit. FDA-bottled.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I wasn\u2019t questioning you. Of course it is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>But it was definitely humble beginnings. Now, like I said, it\u2019s crazy the growth we\u2019ve had and where we\u2019re at today with the product. We didn\u2019t think it was going to be our focus like it is today. Today, it is our focus. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So, we are focusing on distribution and I think that when you launch a new product line, regardless of how you\u2019re doing it, a lot of our listeners are probably looking through Amazon podcasts and how their people are building their businesses on Amazon and one of the ways you can build it is through your own product line. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the pull-through is something very interesting. Amazon has opened a direct distribution like to many, many customers. You\u2019ve got direct access. The direct consumer model, if you will. That does not mean that B2B is dead or business to business and the distribution concept and the distribution value chain is not there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What it means is we have a different line and a different vertical for attacking those customers directly. So when we launched a new product and we started putting it on Amazon and we put our own label on it, we had to pull through because we had the name recognition. We had the name recognition because we had the online presence. We had the online presence because we provided value first. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So unbeknownst to us, we were building this trend of a culture where the industry was hungry for something along those lines. And it kind of worked out. If I was to go back and say I was going to do that purposely, and I wanted to build my own product line and be able to launch it, I would say, you can do it in the same way. You can follow all the rules that they tell you to follow with advertising your product and trying to build up the clientele. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You can go after influences but buying influences is not the same thing as syncing with influence. The synergetic view of the influencers and the team that we call our core team that actually have the same vision, that is actually what creates the strength for the brand. So we do have a direct line distribution to the consumer, either direct through the website, which we have a decent amount of volume through. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I would say today that it counts for 50% of the business. And the other 50% of the business is probably through distribution. We are opening international distribution, which has been a logistics nightmare and an extreme growing pain for us. How do we do it? Especially when you consider that our strategy is both to direct consumer as well as distribution. Old school B2B distribution. When you got direct consumer, you\u2019ve got to worry about opening all your taxes, opening all your VATs in European countries and Canada and South America. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Yeah, so it is all of that. The main thing with our growth and our growth strategy is through innovation. When you look at our shaved gel bottle, which is we\u2019ll start with the first product. Bossio brought me the shaved gel bottle and I\u2019m like, this doesn\u2019t look good on a shelf. There\u2019s no way that this is ever going to sell. But when a barber sees a shaved gel bottle and they\u2019ve never seen it before, they\u2019re like, this is fantastic. Why didn\u2019t somebody think of this before? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So obvious to them. You can see it\u2019s clear when they are running out as opposed to opaque, which when you know you ran out is when you pump it for the last time and there\u2019s nothing there, kind of like a shampoo bottle. That\u2019s when you know you ran out so you have to go out and buy something. Here, you know when you\u2019re running out. You\u2019re good. It\u2019s got an applicator nozzle so you hold it upside down and shake it and you can get 100% of the product out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Because you can get 100% of the product out, you\u2019re not cutting the bottom of that pump so that you can scoop it out with your fingers because you\u2019ve run out at the last minute. And there\u2019s so much innovation in a very simple package that I was just blown away. We even colored the gel green because green means \u2018rebirth\u2019 in Ancient Eyptian times. So everything we did was on purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When we looked at the next product, you want to talk about the razor handle, our second product? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, the razor handle was interesting because we see things in different perspectives. I\u2019m in the shop working and he comes in and he looks at our behavior in the shop. And one of the things he noticed was, we have these razor handles and you put cartridges in them. But barbers, they want the razors that sits in the cartridges to be exposed or non-exposed or medium-exposed. Why don\u2019t we just include all the cartridges in one package? No one has ever done that before. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>There you go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>It\u2019s like one of those things, like TV products where you\u2019re like, why didn\u2019t I think of that? Nobody thought of that. So that was our second innovative product that I thought was really cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And so the same business model, when you look at the spreadsheet that we built for Tomb45, it looks very similar to the Headlines business model, especially with the cash on hand. It\u2019s a rollover month to month. There\u2019s a learning curve when you talk about somebody\u2019s\u2014myself and the rest of the team. Nobody on the team had managed inventory and the logistics and online shipping and none of that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So there\u2019s been a learning curve with that. And we still mess that up quite a bit. Fortunately, we\u2019ve never run out of product for long periods of time. We\u2019re out of gel right now and backordered and we\u2019re going to be out of gel for ten days. So I think we\u2019re going to survive this one as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And that\u2019s happened a couple of times where we\u2019re running right on logistics. But I think that as we look at the real fun part of what we\u2019re doing and where the money is coming in and what we\u2019re looking at down the road, it\u2019s definitely through innovation that fixes a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So it\u2019s not a commodity. Even though shave gel is a commodity, we were able to add that value. We were able to find somebody that was value add, market the value add, define the value add to the market, ad get it going. When we had the razor handle, we did the same. And of course, now, we\u2019ve just launched this week a product which we\u2019re really proud of, which is a wireless charging mat<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we\u2019ve got three patent-pending innovation on this one and basically what it is, is we\u2019ve got a device that connects to the clipper, trimmer, or shaver that converts a wireless clipper shaver trimmer that does not charge wirelessly into wireless charging. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you\u2019ve ever charge wirelessly into wire charging\u2014if you\u2019ve ever been to the barbershop, there\u2019s a lot of wires everywhere. And when I walk into the barbershop, it\u2019s just like, oh, God. All of these wires everywhere. But they need it because they plug in. Because at the end of the target\u2014your battery is dying down. They\u2019ve got this rat\u2019s nest. They\u2019re cutting hair with the crazy rat\u2019s nest rattling around everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But if you can charge throughout the day, it would work so we innovated an input device, a conversion device. We were able to get a patent on that. Or a patent pending on that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I would have brought it if I knew it was going to be on video. It\u2019s beautiful. It\u2019s a mat that lays on your barber\u2019s counter. He puts the attachment to his clipper, lays his clipper down, and it\u2019s charging. He\u2019s never going to have any issue running out of battery. It stays on\u2014it\u2019s a game-changer for the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s just so cool listening to all these stories. Did you bring a lot of outside consultants or did you really just realize by operating your shops that these are just things you need? And so you just kind of figured it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We do like crazy stuff, the whole shotgun theory. We didn\u2019t know how to get things started, but Danny, I remember one day we just bought flights to China. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Jump on a plane and go. Because in reality, none of us had been a product of the element, like true product development. Like R&amp;D of a product. None of us had defined a product, engineered a product, and managed that. I had done some product management in the corporate world but it was all business intelligence software stuff. It was never anything physical.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Right, so when we look at something physical, you\u2019ve got to physically draw it. You\u2019ve got to draw it in Autocad. You\u2019ve got to create tooling for it. Then the tooling has to go through, you\u2019ve got a source component. And we basically jumped on a plane, went over there, wasted a lot of time on our first trip\u2014and money. Actually, we took a big step back with the amount of money. We bought a product that we were going to launch the product guide here, and it was so horrible, we had to throw it all away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And cash on hand, we spent the cash on hand for this next product. And we literally opened the dumpster and threw it in there because we weren\u2019t putting our name behind that. We were not putting our name behind that. The manufacturer was not backing it. They weren\u2019t going to replace it and we were done with it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So then we built the cash on hand back up. We jumped on the flights, went back out there again. And you know, by the third or fourth time, we realized that we didn\u2019t need a consultant. We have a team in China now that helps us out quite a bit. We land. They pick us up. And they\u2019re with us until we take off. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">All of a sudden, the food is so much better. All of a sudden, I can take a taxi. We don\u2019t have to fly everywhere. We can jump on the trains because getting a train in China, if you don\u2019t speak Chinese, that\u2019s fairly difficult. And our airports and our hotels are much cheaper, too. To the point where if you\u2019re going to spend ten days in China and you can hire one of these consultants, he will probably be cheaper than what you\u2019ll spend on your learning curve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And a much better experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s a great tip. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And then of course, we launched a product, an air compressor last year in September and we were told that this was going to be exclusive to us. We helped them finalize the design of it. We launched it, and two weeks later, we saw a competitor with it. And now two and a half months later, we saw it on Alibaba for a fifth of the retail price.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>It was one of the products that we made the market for, we developed it, and yeah\u2014they screwed us over. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Ouch, that\u2019s painful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>But we learned from that. We moved on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You learned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We learned and we recently launched our newest compressor, a cordless compressor. It\u2019s got double the power of anything out there, wireless charging capability, it\u2019s another game-changer for the industry. But if that wouldn\u2019t have happened, we wouldn\u2019t have come up with the new innovations we have now. So I guess you\u2019ve got to fail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>But I\u2019ve got to say, the coolest part of launching that was when we added wireless charging to that device. So we launched it on December 9<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\"> and what we did was, I wanted to fly in our influencer friends and we realized, wait, that\u2019s a big ticket item. Why don\u2019t we associate with the training thing? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we did the training class where we did some education and then from there, we also had the influencers and we basically launched this product. We tried to do an Apple Steve Jobs thing. As we learned, we\u2019re going to get better at that. But when we launched it, we launched it and we had this wireless charging capability built into it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We could not tell anybody because if we told anybody, they would obviously put two and two together. They would start thinking of wireless charging additional tools. So we launched it, sold it. People were receiving these devices and not knowing that it charged wirelessly until we launched. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. What a great\u2014if that\u2019s not icing on the cake, right? We\u2019ve got this great tool, and oh, P.S., you can charge it wirelessly. Boom. That\u2019s amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Value up front, right? Lifestyle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We launched and then, they\u2019re like wait? My compressor charges wirelessly? Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s so cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So I think the thing that stands out to me so readily is you guys have really been innovators in this industry that\u2019s been around forever. You\u2019ve innovated on the business model. You\u2019ve innovated on the marketing. You\u2019ve innovated on the employees or the contractors in the business and now you\u2019re innovating on the product side. And I absolutely love that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Again, this isn\u2019t a new industry where there\u2019s always a lot of change going on. You guys took over an industry or jumped into an industry that like you\u2019ve said have been around for thousands of years. Tremendous credit to you guys for what you\u2019ve accomplished.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Thank you, yeah. We\u2019re definitely looking forward to a post-September or December maybe follow-up. We\u2019ve got a software as a service product that we are launching and again, I think that innovation is because it\u2019s looked at how to make life easier. We\u2019ve identified problems, not problems, but challenges inside the barbershop from the individual barber and from the barbershop owner\u2019s perspective. And how can we make life easier and more efficient?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Not just from that perspective but when you look at a charging mat, it\u2019s a modular growth, if you will, because of the economics behind it. You can start off slow and then you can add modules to increase the capacity. So everything we\u2019ve done has been from that concept where it\u2019s\u2014we\u2019re conscious of the cash flow available for many of these barbers. We\u2019re consciously of the cash flow for the barbershop owner and we\u2019re conscious of the individual growth that they can have. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I can\u2019t wait until we do some software stuff, which is our next one. Because as much success as we\u2019ve got going on now, we\u2019ve got some products that are launching June 2<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>nd<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\">. We are going to be introducing the additional adapters for more hardware that will allow that hardware to charge wirelessly. But that\u2019s done and over with. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>The next big thing is our software bit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s so cool. I think it\u2019s fair to say that you\u2019re not only innovating, I think it\u2019s fair to say that you\u2019re revolutionizing the whole barber industry. Because the way you\u2019re talking about this is clearly just stuff that hasn\u2019t been done in a many thousands of years old industry and you\u2019re just changing this whole thing up and it\u2019s amazing. So much fun to listen to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Thank you so much for all of that. So now we\u2019re going to jump into the part of our show that we call <i>Four More<\/i>, okay? So we\u2019re going to ask you four rapid fire style questions. You can take turns answering them and then at the end, you\u2019re going to tell us about where we can find out more about you. Sound good?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Let\u2019s go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Okay, J, you take the first question.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, and this is for both of you. I want to hear answers from both of you. What is your first or your worst job that you\u2019ve ever had, and what lessons did you take that you\u2019ve used in your industry today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Dishwashing at a buffet. Worst job ever. And my dad used to pick me up and laugh at me because I took the job because I was upset about him. Or upset about the job he was giving me. And the thing that I learned from that is, take control of your life. You\u2019re not going to be happy with everything that you receive, but look at the cup half full, not half empty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>I was thinking about it while you were answering. I\u2019ve only really had one bad job. And it was just micromanagement hell. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to be upper directorship level management, executive level management in the white collar world for most of my corporate career and then working for myself, I get to call the shots and that\u2019s pretty much my personality. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And when you\u2019re managing a group of such talented people, kind of like I am, I got really lucky with the Tomb45 group and the Tomb Squad with the talent they have and the drive and passion that they have, you cannot micromanage that personality. I mean, I realize that it\u2019s doing really well for Elon Musk, apparently, but not me. I can\u2019t do that. I can\u2019t be managed like that. It was micromanagement from hell. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was very late in my career. It was a gig that I was looking forward to. I\u2019m a nerd at heart and I want to do some cybersecurity stuff and I wanted to play with it. So I took a job and three months later, I had to tell them I had to go. And what I learned was basically reinforcement from that. Yeah, I\u2019m definitely macro in my style and my beliefs are much more micromanagement styles than micro. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Love it. Okay, next question. What\u2019s an opportunity along the way that you\u2019ve said no to? And do you think it was the right decision? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>A lot of sponsorship offers with bigger companies. I didn\u2019t sell myself out. I wanted to be able to give an unbiased opinion on all the products that I use. And then what I was doing and not taking these sponsorships. I feel like a lot of people would or the culture, in the barber industry, they kind of look up to that and decide no, we\u2019re going to build our own thing. We\u2019re going to do it ourselves because we can. We can create our own platform. And I think that was the one thing that I turned down that I\u2019m happy I did. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, I think for me it was basically, I married my middle school sweetheart and somewhere around 34 years old, my wife came back. We were expatriate in Argentina. We came back to our home in Tampa and she didn\u2019t pack. She was done. She wasn\u2019t going to expatriate. And I think most of my peers would have just kept their career. I gave up my career at that point for my family. And I\u2019m thankful I did, obviously. Everything\u2019s worked out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So what is some of the worst advice you hear in your industry or some of the worst advice you\u2019ve been given, and how do you turn that into good advice?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>There\u2019s so much bad advice in this industry. There is so much bad advice. In this industry, we hear a lot of people talking about hey, I\u2019m going to go get my LLC. Okay, so who are you partnering with? What do you mean who am I going to partner with? It\u2019s just me. So you\u2019re just going to do a single-member LLC. Why are you doing a single-member LLC? Well, I was told I have to have my own business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And there\u2019s no context and understanding that an LLC is designed in order to protect him from me and me from him. It\u2019s limited liability from your partner, not from your customers, people. They\u2019re piercing the corporate veil. Come on, you still need insurance and all that. So there\u2019s this misinterpretation of business setup which is the very first conversation. And unfortunately, from there, it goes downhill. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I would definitely say sponsorship is the second one. A lot of people say, go and try to get sponsorship. But then you\u2019re selling out. You\u2019re not standing for everything. There\u2019s no why. It\u2019s just a what. There\u2019s so much what to do. You need to get a company. You need to go get a sponsorship. But nobody really asks why do you need to do that? And does that flow with my mentality and my vision and destination? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Great. Okay, so fourth question\u2014in your personal or business life, what is something that you\u2019ve splurge on that\u2019s been totally worth it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>For me, I don\u2019t know if this is splurging but I went on like a year where I spent a lot of money on self-development, on education. Like, classes in our industry for continued education are pretty expensive. There\u2019s been times where I\u2019ve spent my month\u2019s income on taking a class because I wanted to better myself and be able to share this information with other people. So I splurged a lot of money on that and cars that break down. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>He won\u2019t let me buy him a nice car. This is a true story. Bossio drives a $1000 car. His car broke down. We went and I find him a $15,000 car and I\u2019m like, I\u2019m going to buy it. Let\u2019s buy this car with the company money and stuff, and that way we\u2019ve got a reliable car. He says, no way we are spending that much money on a car right now. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Find me a cheaper car. So I found him a $7500 car and he says, no way. So I jokingly showed him a $1000 car, which he says, that\u2019s the one I want. So now we manage\u2014we define every expense on the number of Bossio cars. So if we spend $3000, we spend three Bossio cars. When we spend $10,000, we spend 10 Bossio cars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I just have really bad luck with cars so I\u2019m not putting more money into it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s a true entrepreneur right there though, who is proud of their car if it costs next to nothing. That is like entrepreneurship wrapped up in a nice package.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>I splurge on my home. I live on the water and it gives me no excuse to not pick up my six-year-old son and go fishing three times a day. Because it takes me five minutes on my boat, two minutes to get on the water where I can fish. I sat next to a lot of what I call airplane Joes where we are obviously workaholics. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We obviously put in 60-hour work weeks. We\u2019re listening to this podcast and every other podcast that can feed us information and we\u2019re not present when we\u2019re home. I try to leave my phone at the dining room table when I take my son fishing. I try to put my phone down when I\u2019m driving 99.9% of the time in the car and talk to my daughter. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I sat next to so many airplane Joes for so long that have told me, don\u2019t let your kids\u2019 life go by. And you wake up and they\u2019re gone. So for me, I splurged on the house and being on the water and I do a lot of fishing with my six-year-old. And he swears, he\u2019s caught 15-pound bass. He swears he\u2019s gotten this close to catching alligators. And that\u2019s perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Of course he has. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. Daniel, I think you wanted to mention a little honor for Chris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>I am super excited. This weekend, we attended the world\u2019s largest barber expo dedicated to barbers, known as Connecticut Barbers\u2019 Expo. It\u2019s put on by a fantastic person, Jay Majors. He\u2019s definitely elevating the industry. We\u2019re very proud of where it\u2019s going. And we did the first ever Barber Grammys, which is just put on fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I mean, it was done right, it was elevated. It\u2019s something that the industry is going to look forward to. The cosmetology industry already has something like this and now we\u2019ve got something like this, too. So the first ever Barber Grammy was won by Chris Bossio for Educator of the Year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Congratulations, that\u2019s amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>He almost got emotional on stage. He was right on the edge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I almost cracked but I held my composure. It was just amazing to get some recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I can imagine\u2014do you know how many people are in this industry?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We don\u2019t, but there\u2019s a barbershop on every corner here in Florida. I don\u2019t know about you guys.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>It\u2019s got to be a ridiculous number of people. I mean, that is a huge honor. Congratulations, Chris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Congratulations. It\u2019s wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I appreciate it, guys.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. Okay, we\u2019re going to take this last piece of the show and I want to give you guys an opportunity to tell us a little bit about where we can find more about you, how we can follow you on social media, how our listeners can get in touch. And most importantly, how we can buy your products and visit one of your shops.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So for me, I\u2019m all over social media. I\u2019m on every platform as Chris Bossio. You can just look up my name and I\u2019ll pull up, especially YouTube. That\u2019s where I spend most of my time and Instagram. And the website, you can find us at Tomb45.com. All of our products are there. And then we have an app. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We didn\u2019t even talk about the app. But we have an app, Headlines Barbers that you can go and see all of our locations as well. And then Danny just started becoming an influencer. He signed his first autograph the other day at the Expo. And so he\u2019s on social media now. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, so our industry is in need of some basic education so I\u2019ll be putting out some very basic stuff. And then hopefully building it up. The more complex we get, the more we\u2019ll lose people so we need to keep it basic and eye-opening. But yeah, Tomb45.com. I\u2019m on Instagram at @TombDoc. But Tomb45 is spelled as Tomb Raider, but Tomb45. That\u2019s where you can find us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We are on Amazon as far as North American markets go and we are expanding internationally at this point. Hopefully in the next couple of months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>The Tomb45 Instagram is @OfficialTomb45. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>That\u2019s right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Official Tomb45. Excellent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And all of your shops are in\u2014I don\u2019t think we even mentioned. You mentioned New Tampa at one point, but all of your shops are down in Tampa, Florida?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>In the Tampa Bay area, yeah. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Awesome. Can\u2019t wait to come see you guys. Thank you so much, you amazing barber revolutionaries. You\u2019re inspiring people, for sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Thank you for having us. It was fun talking about this stuff. It had been a while since we told anybody. Actually, I think we kind of kept it under wraps though. We actually did the actual product in our kitchen for a little bit. This may be the first public time that we tell people that we did this product in our kitchen for thousands and thousands of bottles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I\u2019m proud of it, though. To be where we\u2019re at today. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>The Origin Story. I love it. Cool. Well, thank you guys so much. We appreciate having you here and we will talk to you soon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That was an awesome show. I love those guys. What did you think, Carol?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>They are such the real deal, right? They are so completely authentic and I love how they immerse themselves in the community and they talk about elevating the industry. It really shines through in every single thing that they do. I love talking with them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And I love the fact that they make such a great partnership. So Chris, he\u2019s the constant operator. He knows the business like nobody else. And then you have Daniel who, he\u2019s the business guy. Between them, they figured out how to scale and grow this thing tremendously. I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Me too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, are we good?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Let\u2019s wrap this up, baby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay. She is Carol. I am J.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Now go do something small but figure out how to make it big today. See you later, everybody!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Bye!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"podcast-youtube-video\">Watch the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Disrupting an Ancient Industry by Thinking Differently | BP Business 5\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8PLoj6MhjMg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>This Show Sponsored By<\/h2>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-108026 no-display appear\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/wizehire.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 268px) 100vw, 268px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/wizehire.png 367w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/wizehire-300x112.png 300w\" alt=\"\" width=\"268\" height=\"100\" title=\"\">WizeHire<\/strong>\u00a0is an online recruiting service that fuses recruiting software with the personal service of a hiring coach to help you find the best candidates for the job. They do all the heavy lifting for you so you can stay focused on what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n<p>Visit\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wizehire.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WizeHire<\/a>\u00a0today!<\/p>\n<h2>Mid-Roll Sponsor<\/h2>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-95450 no-display appear\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review-300x66.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review-300x66.png 300w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review-768x168.png 768w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review.png 775w\" alt=\"Fundrise\" width=\"300\" height=\"66\" title=\"\">Fundrise<\/strong>\u00a0enables you to invest in high-quality, high-potential private market real estate projects. I\u2019m talking anything from high rises in D.C. to multi-families in L.A. \u2014 institutional-quality stuff. And each project is carefully vetted and actively managed by Fundrise\u2019s team of real estate pros.<\/p>\n<p>Their high-tech, low-cost online platform lets you track the progress of every single project, and keep more of the money you make. Oh, and by the way, you don\u2019t have to be accredited.<\/p>\n<p>Visit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/fundrise.com\/bpbusiness\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fundrise.com\/bpbusiness<\/a>\u00a0to have your first 3 months of fees waived.<\/p>\n<h2><b>In This Episode We Cover:<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>How providing <strong>free education<\/strong> can bring a high ROI<\/li>\n<li>How their product line <strong>began in their kitchen<\/strong> mixing shave gel<\/li>\n<li>Tips for <strong>traveling to China<\/strong> to meet manufacturers<\/li>\n<li>How they negotiated a sweet <strong>leasing deal<\/strong> with their landlord<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u201cGatorade marketing\u201d<\/strong> to local youth sports teams<\/li>\n<li>Becoming the <strong>community hub<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>And SO much more!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Links from the Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.truehairculture.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">True Hair Culture<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctbarberexpo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connecticut Barber Expo<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Books Mentioned in this Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/emyth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>E-Myth<\/em><\/a> by Michael Gerber<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/richdadpoordad\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Rich Dad Poor Dad<\/em><\/a> by Robert Kiyosaki<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Tweetable Topics:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;We have our destination but we have to enjoy the journey as well.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22We%20have%20our%20destination%20but%20we%20have%20to%20enjoy%20the%20journey%20as%20well.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%205%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow5%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Make some mistakes and then learn from them as long as you&#8217;re going north.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Make%20some%20mistakes%20and%20then%20learn%20from%20them%20as%20long%20as%20you&#039;re%20going%20north.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%205%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow5%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It&#8217;s about becoming a community hub.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22It&#039;s%20about%20becoming%20a%20community%20hub.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%205%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow5%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Everything we did was on purpose.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Everything%20we%20did%20was%20on%20purpose.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%205%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow5%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Connect with Daniel and Chris<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/c50bossio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chris&#8217; Youtube Channel<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/bossiocut\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chris&#8217; Facebook Page<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bossiocuts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chris&#8217; Instagram<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/tombdoc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daniel&#8217;s Instagram<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/officialtomb45\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tomb 45 Instagram<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/tomb45.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tomb 45<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/headlines-barber-shop\/id524514832?mt=8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Headlines Barber Shop (app)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode, guests Daniel and Chris talk about how they are harnessing technology to change the face of a blue collar, brick and mortar business that\u2019s been around for years: barbering. They break down how they opened their first shop and how reinvesting the profits allowed them to quickly open six more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":573575,"featured_media":111391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6803],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizshow"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/573575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}