Bailey Snowden, founder of Snowden Hair and the educator behind Snowden Academy, knows that a barbershop needs to nurture fresh talent to stay sharp.
As part of growing his business, Bailey has taken mentees under his wing and trained them to work full time in his own barbershop. Here, he explains why mentoring is not only good for the next generation of talent, it’s vital for the success of a modern shop.
Mentoring is a powerful way to grow your business from the inside out. You get the chance to establish a name for yourself, share your industry knowledge, develop your leadership skills and even work on your own technical precision.
Expand Your Technical Skills
Breaking down your skills to the foundation again gives you the luxury of working on your own skills again whilst you teach. As you are breaking everything down step by step in a way that your mentees can clearly understand, you get to work on your precision and develop your skills with an entirely new perspective.
Developing Leadership
By guiding young barbers, you have the perfect opportunity to shape your communication, leadership and management skills in anticipation of growing your barbershop business and managing a larger team. This will in turn lead to smoother business operations for you longer term.
Building The Perfect Team
Taking on students within your barbershop, means you are also able to shape the perfect barbering team. Showing them the shop standards and client etiquette early on in their training will result in high consistency and strong client care. This can result in you creating a highly efficient workflow that maintains your premium standard and builds high customer loyalty.
Industry Recognition
Mentoring is also a great way to establish a good reputation and create a name for yourself within the industry. The larger hair trade is built on community and networking, by building yourself as an educator, you can create connections with top talent and attract new, up-and-coming barbers to work in your business, overall helping you to grow your barbershop.