What Services Can I Offer?
The Barbers Guide to a Diverse Skill Set
Newsflash—you CAN do it all.
Sure, maybe you’re a badass barber and you rock in your traditional barber field, but if someone ever sat you down and told you that you couldn’t offer other services that might fall outside of the conventional barbering repertoire, we’re glad to report that they’re sadly mistaken.
In fact, there’s a long (long!) list of services you can offer within your licensed skill range that you might not know about—and further, there are even more services you can offer if you decide to continue to invest in your education and enhance your service list, too.
If you’ve ever been going through the motions of your daily barbering duties and wondered to yourself, “is there more to barbering than just this?”—know that there totally is.
The ultimate goal of this blog? To show you that the sky is truly the limit. The barbering world is broad and bold—anything you want to do, accomplish, and set out for can totally be done.
Not sure what we mean? Keep reading for the spoiler alert on a variety of services that you’ve been wishing you’d known about.
Diversify Your Barbering Services: A Few Ideas For Switching Up Your Skillset
Believe it or not, there are a ton of services you can offer as a barber that you might now know about it.
That being said, much of this will vary from state-to-state and will require a little extra research on your part, so make sure whatever services you’re getting into you’re licensed to offer to clients. So, what exactly can you offer to your clients besides the basics (cutting, shaving, neck massages, and more!)?
We’ve listed out a few extra services you might want to consider! Remember, this is just a little inspo list – there are several more services you can likely offer as part of your barbering services!
Hair Coloring
So, let’s ask the age-old question that most barbers are probably wondering about right now—can barbers actually color hair?
The shower answer? Yep.
The longer answer? Yep, but you’ll need to ensure you have the right market, the experience, the training, and most importantly, the licensing to make this sort of service a possibility.
Like we said, you can totally dive into coloring hair with your training as a barber. Through a proper barbering curriculum, you’ll likely learn how to mix colors correctly, how to correctly dye hair, and how to recommend colors for your clients (based on what they want). This part is super important—even if you do end up with some basic hair color training in barber school, you want to offer quality services, and that means stepping up your training so you can do just that.
Beard Coloring
Just like with hair coloring, beard coloring is a supremely lucrative service you can offer. The hair coloring skills you learn in your barbering curriculum will surely transfer over to the principles you need to master beard coloring.
That being said, know that these practices will be different. If you don’t feel confident in your beard coloring skills, remember that practice makes perfect. There are also courses available for you to take if you would prefer to advance your skills that way!
Professional Braiding
Braiding is an enormously impactful opportunity for a variety of your clients.
While it’s certainly a skill that takes a lot of work, experience, and time to become a verified pro, it’s an enormously important and crucial service that needs to be more present and available in barber shops across the United States.
Specialized Texture Cuts
There’s no shame in knowing that every head of hair is different. The cosmetology world has absolutely embraced this, encouraging stylists to specialize in curly cuts, natural textures, and more.
This option is totally on the table for barbers. And why wouldn’t it be? Not only do you serve female clients in addition to your male clients, but also, your male clients also have unique hair textures and styles. Specializing is a totally lucrative option in the barbering industry.
Deep Conditioning
Deep conditioning treatments are something you can offer, too! While you can’t necessarily offer everything under the sun like a lot of cosmetologists can, there are certain deep conditioning treatments you can add to your service repertoire.
Want to add more services like this? Continuing education courses, local classes, and even hands-on experiences at expos and symposiums will likely offer these sorts of opportunities.
Brow Care and Management
Newsflash: Men care about their eyebrows. And you know what? They should.
A well-groomed gentleman knows that their eyebrows are a big part of their self-care regimen, and you, as a barbering professional, are totally capable of offering this to them. Further, brow care and management services can attract a whole new set of clientele.
You will likely go through brow care and management skills and services in your barbering curriculum, but if you’d like to advance your skills further, you’ll probably need to take continuing education courses.
The Big Why—What’s the Benefit of Offering These Unique Services?
Now that you know there’s more to barbering than what you initially believed (probably even more than you learned at barber school), you’re probably thinking about all the ways you can implement these into your practice.
If you’re still struggling to understand how these additional services could be valuable to you and your biz, fret not – we’ve laid out a few prime benefits of adding in these additional services to your barbering setlist.
Men Want Their Hair Colored, Too
Even if you service mostly men, it’s important to remember that men want their hair colored, too.
Whether you’re helping someone cover up their grays, gifting them the color of their dreams, or simply providing them with a wild-and-fun-hairstyle, the need for color is certainly going to pop up at some point. Isn’t it better to know how to do it beforehand?
Crazy Trends Catch like Wildfire
Neon mustaches. Colored fades. Ombres.
There’s always something new happening in the hair world. Colored hair is a big hit in the hair industry and people are consistently attaching themselves to the fads.
Why not offer your clients the opportunity to hop onto the hair color trend? As an added bonus, colored hair (especially facial hair in crazy colors) does great on social media and can likely draw in new clients for you!
You Can Draw in the Female Crowd
Most of the time, people assume that barbers are specifically for men, but this simply isn’t the case.
With services like brow care, hair coloring, and conditioning treatments, it’s likely that your establishment can become a little female-friendlier and offer an accessibility point for your lady clients.
Beard Services Rule
Need we say more? People love great beard services – especially when there’s color involved. Take one look at Instagram hair trends and you’ll find all sorts of wild beard colors. Doesn’t it make sense to offer this to your clients before they even ask?
It’s an Opportunity for Advanced Training
There are several services you can add to your barbering set-list, but they might require advanced training and continuing education. We say that’s all the more reason to tack on some services.
Any opportunity to advance your skills is ideal, so if you have to give yourself this kind of excuse to add a seminar, symposium, expo, or even enroll in more classes, we think it’s totally worth it!
Diversifies Your Business
More than anything, adding on extra services always advances your business and diversifies your customers. The more variety you offer, the bigger your market.
While some of your traditional clients won’t ever want their mustache died purple, it’s likely there’s someone out there who’s looking for a trendy color and ensuring this is in your skill set can only help draw in more clients, grow your business, and allow you to thrive.
Loving our sound barbering biz advice? We sure as heck hope so.
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