To help barbers, from a barber

Where I started

I learned in a walk-in shop in Edinburgh and spent around eight years moving between shops. Always on a split, mostly 50/50 and 60/40, with a short spell paying weekly chair rent. Eight or nine cuts a day, five days a week.

Then I stopped, because I thought I had fallen out of love with cutting hair. I was wrong. I just needed some time away.

Coming back is what made me notice. Being a barber, and the daily joy it gives, is an absolute privilege — and there I was sitting with a calculator, working out how much I needed to take to cover the bills, then how much more to save for a holiday. Every barber I know does some version of that. None of us should have to.

My biggest money mistake

It was not a bad investment or an expensive chair.

Not being prepared with my tax. Not saving for a rainy day. Walking away after a great week and thinking that’s the new norm.

That last one is why I wanted this built. One good week feels like the new normal. One quiet week feels like the end of the world. Neither is true, and you cannot tell which is which without something to compare it against. A few weeks of numbers settles it.

What it does

Seven numbers a week, about a minute. Back comes how full your week actually was, what you earn an hour, what your free spaces cost you, what the shop’s cut leaves you, and where any of it is heading.

It shows you the numbers. It does not tell you what to do with them. Barbers do not much like being told what to do, and I would not want to anyway. Here are your numbers. You decide.

What it will never do

• Ask for your clients’ names, numbers or bookings. We do not want them.
• Connect to Booksy or Fresha.
• Rank barbers against each other by name.
• Tell you your prices are wrong, or that you should be working more.

On shop owners: I do not think mine would mind at all. Most would be pleased you were taking your own numbers seriously. This is not about hiding from your boss. It is just yours, and it stays that way.

Where your numbers live

On your phone. Not on a server anybody could be asked to hand over. We hold an email address so you can sign in, and nothing else. If that ever changes we will tell you before it does, not after.

Who is behind it

Two of us. I am the barber, and I decide whether a number is worth showing and whether a sentence sounds like something a barber would actually say. My cousin Liam builds it.

That is the whole company. Scotland to start with, then the rest of the UK.

Haircuts can be forgotten. The relationships you build with people won’t be.

That is what I wish somebody had told me in my first year. The numbers were never the point of this job. They are just the part nobody helps you with.

Getting hold of me

Email hello@knowyourchair.com. I read it, and I would rather hear what is wrong than what is fine.