All in one

By Any Means Necessary

Growing up under the care of a single father was memorable. My father was left with the responsibility of raising two young boys into two grown respectable men. My brother and I spent time after school in our father’s barbershop everyday – even on the weekends. When I would get out of school my father would pick me up, grab a bite to eat, and take my brother and I back to work with him. Our homework was done more at our father’s barbershop then it was done at our actual home. After I completed my schoolwork, I had to sweep hair or clean up. Filling the snack machine was my favorite – as a young boy with a fast metabolism you can imagine why. My father used to tell us, “One day sons, you will have children of your own and you will realize why I do the things I do and why you guys sit in the shop with me all day instead of home alone or with a next door neighbor.” As children we fail to understand certain things our parents do and say. My father’s barbershop quickly began to feel like a home away from home and his employees were like family. The barbers who worked with my father spoke to my brother and I as if we were their own, it was like having five uncles who helped my dad watch over us. Some of the clients who visited the shop frequently would always come with questions about school and little gifts when report cards came out. The atmosphere was always encouraging and inspiring in my father’s barbershop, which ultimately led to my reasoning for wanting to own a barbershop when I got older.

Cutting Corners Culture

By Any Means Necessary

Cutting Corners is a barbershop I built from the ground up. Cutting corners is a safe place for men and women to express their opinions, debate about culture, showcase their individual talents, and most importantly feel like a “boss”, whether they are sitting in the chair or holding on to the clippers. Men and women should be happy to walk into Cutting Corners, get a haircut, talk about their day, and walk out feeling a little more confident than when they walked in. The late, great Malcolm X once said, “We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” Motivation and the ability to provide great service will be the key to maintaining a successful barbershop – by any means necessary! Great service is a part of the culture at Cutting Corners, however, great service is not only directed towards clients, but also from myself to Cutting Corners staff with intentions to promise a satisfactory working environment.

As a business owner, I am going to motivate my employees by providing an inspirational environment, rewarding my employees, setting realistic shop goals, in addition to training and developing my employees. In order to create a positive working environment, I will ensure that my employees have a clean, comfortable, and spacious break room with snacks and beverages of their liking. The break room will be an area where staff can sit back, relax, de-stress, and share inspirational advice between one another. This break room will have a board where employees can write their favorite quotes, whether they are personal or from a role model of theirs. Before opening the shop, I will meet with employees in the break room and go over the quote for the day and give my barbers the opportunity to say how the quote inspires them and what they will do to live up to it. The staff and myself will go over goals for the day and share ideas, which will allow employees to feel freedom to express their creativity and share opinions – like a football pre-game huddle. This break room will benefit the employees with a healthy working environment by relieving any stress my employees may be experiencing, in and/or out of work. A healthy environment is one of the factors that contribute to employee satisfaction, allowing employees to handle pressure situations and provide better customer service (The Importance of Employee Satisfaction, 2017). Although, the atmosphere of a barbershop is very vital to business, the work that is done is the overall most important part of the job. By giving employees a comfortable, inspiring place to work, the work that they do on clients will be done with focus and precision due to the fact that the break room will be designed to distress the employees causing the energy in the shop to remain positive throughout the day.

Another way I plan to motivate my employees will be to reward them. There are multiple ways to run a barbershop, I believe in people earning their money and not being cheated when it comes to what they work hard for. With that being said, I will only charge my barbers a monthly booth fee and everything they make goes to them, no percentage cuts or anything. I plan on rewarding my employees by making them feel important and reassuring them constantly that they are all an important asset and add their own unique value to my business. One way I plan to reward employees is by putting up their work all around the shop, which is a smart business decision because clients sit in a barbershop and look through magazines with haircuts done by people who are not in the barbershop. By showcasing employee’s actual work it will allow clients to see the many talents that are all around Cutting Corners. By showcasing employee art, it gives employees a sense of satisfaction knowing that their focus and unique talents are not being taken for granted. Workers who are satisfied in their job typically take more pride in the final outcome and it tends to be more accurate and complete (The Importance of Employee Satisfaction, 2017).

The goal of Cutting Corners is to give men and woman the opportunity to be the best artists they can be. Because growing up in a barbershop, I learned from an early age that cutting hair is not just a one-sided job. Cutting hair is a form of art, how no two fingerprints are alike; there are no two barbers that are alike. They may have the same taste and similar creative style, but once a barber gets a hold of his or her clippers, their canvas is their inner-self coming to life. Their canvas is a form of expression; it is an escape from the stressful world of balancing a happy family and a healthy diet and whatever else may be stressful to him or her. I will feel like a successful business owner once I know my team and my clients feel like they are walking into a family members house on their favorite holiday. Cutting Corners will feel much more than your average barbershop, it will feel like home – By Any Means Necessary!

References

Personnel Commission. (2017). The Importance of Employee Satisfaction [Ebook]. Retrieved from https://www.laccd.edu/Departments/PersonnelCommission/Documents/EmployeeBulletins/04.29%20-The%20Importance%20of%20Employee%20Satisfaction%20-%20Supervisoryute.pdf Comment by Shane Nelson: Double space

Rubric:

Motivation

You did a nice job on this week’s assignment!! Your paper showed your understanding of the subject matter and flowed smoothly. The only area that needs attention is APA. Please see my comments in the assignment and let me know if you have any questions!

Shane