Finding Your Voice in a Crowded World

Is timing everything in the game of social media growth?

I’m currently in Bologna, Italy, and a question came up in class that I thought was interesting. Do you think you’ve had a better chance of growing on Instagram because of the timing of when you started?

There are plenty of ways to grow on social media; the hardest is finding your uniqueness in the way you deliver your experiences and message.

You never have to think, “Well, if I start now, am I too late?” That would kill the creator economy. Right now, it’s what's booming. Now it’s just a matter of finding your place.

You’ll never survive if you keep thinking you’re behind because you are actually in the right place.

I came across a quote today that felt like a very powerful equation from Dan Koe:

How valuable you are = the magnitude of problems you solve, the results of the solutions you create, and your ability to get people to care about your creation.

THIS is the very thing we are trying to do on social media.

You may have ALL the skills, but do people care to hear it from you right now over the other guy who has less years of experience than you but has 5X more followers?

Let’s break this down real quick.

We all know someone in this situation. The fact is, people can learn anything today. What took many years to learn is now way more accessible. People can learn online for free, attend a class, trade shows, hands-on classes, and one-on-ones when available. Then there’s the other thing, they figured out what works for them and you haven’t. What has worked for someone doesn’t work the same for everyone.

Here’s how I built my value in two areas - barbering industry & social media:

Barbering Industry: I had a strong focus on obviously improving my work in the shop, but when I finally picked up a camera, my goal was to take the best photos/videos of my work. Through that process, it taught me how to look at my haircuts in a different detail. When I would attend trade shows and there are people I see online that I appreciate their work, I tried to show them some love online and offline in a genuine way and maybe out of that build a friendship with. I didn’t force my way in, just kept it organic and natural and if the vibe is right on both sides, we usually keep in touch but also showing someone genuine love has to come from the right place. Not forced and fake because that’s also very obvious. I’m a super shy person so it already takes a lot for me to approach someone I don’t know. I remember some first few instances of people I did do that to. Lena, being one of the first female barbers I ever seen on social media and the TV show. Los, because I was using his fade photos for references so I could improve my work. Rob the original, I mean his artwork is just out of this world, so it was easy to show love for that. Iced out barber, Mayweather’s personal barber because it was just so fucking crazy and cool to see someone have that type of travel lifestyle with a mega-famous person. Dom Dom, because he was someone I followed who portrayed what I wanted to do but in the barbering world. He specialized in women’s hair but DIDN’T have to do color, just cuts. Bescene, being able to be a badass at bleaching Asians blonde and having that specialty I knew was a challenge because of my hair. Vince the barber and Julius Caesar, they were the LA Top Dogs in my eyes and meeting them through my early stages, being around them made me feel excited to get some of that energy around me. They were doing celebrity cuts and creating their own version of fades and styles that stood out online.

So you can now get a feel for how I’ve really grown these genuine connections. They all felt personal to me because they’ve all inspired me along my journey.

Now that’s the networking side, but for the building online side…what matters to me? The craft, right? That’s where it started. I want people to know how awesome barbering is. As a struggling barber, it felt important to me to share this art form with the world and when I say the world it was probably a few people because I had zero clue the expansion social media could actually do for me.

You have to be pretty invested in the things you want to grow. I don’t know that I can say that enough times because I truly feel that people really slide over that. You can’t take one area of work that you are exceptional at like being a great barber and thinking it’ll just translate in the social world. You also now, have to get good at how to create your edits, the design, keep them competitive with the current market, and at the end of the day, you gotta make shit people care about and find value in. My first few years, all portfolio work. Doing my best cuts and trying to sneak in a photo or video to capture it for later. I’ve said this in previous newsletters is that my goals changed through the seasons of my life so they will for you too. If you’re new to the industry and you’re reading this, you are probably just wanting to build clientele first and get a good social media flow going. If you’re seasoned, you probably are trying to figure out how to “catch up” or “get left behind” feeling. Either way, both require consistent energy and action.

So I posted consistently from 2012-2015 my best haircuts and in my captions was where I started really building value to people. My documentation of what I was learning and going through. Tips and tricks along the way towards the end of that timeframe. My struggles as a female barber, trying to gain clientele, barber daily struggles with late clients, using an app and wondering how to get less no-call/no-shows, I mean the list goes on…but it’s all very relatable topics that I’m sure many people were feeling too. It made social media feel like you were seen and you weren’t alone. While in the mix of that, I also shared a part of my life. My tattoo lifestyle, the shoes I’d like to wear, and I finally was open about my sexuality that I was a lesbian and not hiding it from my “PUBLIC WORK PROFILE.” Once I got to this place, it felt freeing to share because on the other end, someone found comfort in it. I started building just groups of audiences across those topics: hair, female barber, tattoos, and being gay lol.

That was my only plan. There was never a chase on numbers and where I wanted to be. I just was me and I lived my experiences and then got to relive them again while sharing to the social world. I’m trying to paint you the clearest picture possible of what I went through so you can understand that it’s not a chase to be somewhere or something. You just gotta sit in the pocket of where you are in life and prioritize what matters to you in the most genuine and authentic way.

Getting Started

What do you care about that you enjoy talking about endlessly? Clearly, you can build an audience in ANY area. You might be a barber in a saturated market, but you also might be that barber who has 85% of their body tattooed, loves to eat fried chicken with watermelon, and your family are immigrants who escaped a war... That could be the thing that connects you to that specific audience or makes you stand out because of all those details. You separate yourself by painting around who you are. I’m not saying in any way that you should overshare details of your life because yes, that does exist for people and somehow it does work too. But allowing people to understand your thought process, your creative process, and how you got to where you are, whether in business or personal, is where people are going to find a connection to you. Not only are we just trying to find a connection to our community, but it also serves as a perspective that we also need to find growth.

I’ve learned a lot more about myself as a creator in both spaces because I’ve had to output so much of myself that I’m able to really see it from a different eye. Hear myself talk, how I choose my sentences, how I respond to people, how I make people feel. Those are all things I reflect on and have learned about myself as it went on. It helped me get better at creating content because some shit works and some don't, and when I release it out into the world, I get instant feedback and a pulse on that thing.

Nothing too complex in the message I wanted to share with you today. Just another reminder that we overthink a lot of what we SHOULD do when we should just do and learn along the way. The longer you sit on an idea with no action, the longer it takes to ever get started.

You gotta practice, but is it today or tomorrow depending on what time you’re reading this? Or never.

Have a wonderful week. I’m jet-lagged and ready to head back home to the states. Side note... just seeing the barbering industry in other countries, man, we are so blessed in the states.

SOF!