Staying True to Yourself BY WASSIM BAYDOUN
I started my Passion for the barbering industry at the start of 2012. Barbering has always been extremely significant in my life from an early age. I was a street boy from a Middle Eastern war zone, disowned by my mother at 9 years old and at the same age met my dad for the first time. My dad wanted me to have a better life, so my sister and I were migrated to Australia when I was only 11 years old. I learnt to speak English at the age of 12.
School from very early on wasn’t for me and I attended multiple schools until I got to high school and I still disliked it. I would get home from school, and instead of doing my home work I would start cutting my own hair and lining myself up, So when I would go to school the next day my friends at school would laugh at me and say, why don’t you go to a barber to get your hair done? I would reply to them, “why would I go to a barber when I can do it myself the way I want it cut”. I had stopped going to the local barber because he didn’t listen to what I wanted, so that’s what got me cutting my own hair. As the year went by I started cutting my friends and cousins for free before and after school. I used to skip school to cut local friends hair. One day I got a phone call from a local barber shop when I was 17 asking me if I wanted to work for him, I said I couldn’t because my dad wouldn’t let me leave school even though I wasn’t good at school. I would get suspended every year in high school because school wasn’t for me and I knew that from year 7.
I had the drive to prove to my dad how serious I was about barbering as I knew I could work hard at it, and really loved the industry. I also felt that this way he wouldn’t see me as a drop out by not wanting to be at school. Unfortunately he had no faith in me at all so I started working on the weekends at the local barbershop. After I finished year 12; I started fulltime at the barbershop. At the start I didn’t think I would be able to progress through the industry but with a lot of drive and persistence I am proud of the barber I am today despite all of the up’s and downs as well as doubts because of my dads expectations. I didn’t get paid for the first 6 months, because no one would teach me the right way of cutting so the boss felt he didn’t have to pay me straight away, so I went and got a secondary job as a security guard on Thursday, Friday, Saturday evenings to make a living and so I could follow my passion. Some days I would only have 3 hours of sleep and wake up to go to the barbershop by 8:30 am and start a 9 hour day, I did that for a year and I can safely say barbering changed me for the better and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. 38 Barber Shop Year 5 Issue 4
I started cutting by the 8th month of being in the shop, and I was put on a weekly wage of $650 first year because I picked it up really quickly. I went home and did my research on YouTube every night, to better my skills and myself. I would stay awake late at night and research how to cut hair or how to fade or how to do beards and I would try everything that I watched the night before and put it in practice as the months went by. I started to see good results through teaching myself how to become a great barber at my job. After working for two years I opened my own shop at 19 years old and it was called Clean Cuts Hair Studio, located on the south coast of Australia in a suburb called Warrawong. I worked so hard to build my clientele at such a young age and I found that many people wouldn’t give me a go at my new shop because I was so young and thought I didn’t know how to do my job. Months went by I started cutting a few St George Dragons Players and some of the up and coming players. After that, a lot of the locals and young school kids started coming to get haircuts. cont’d on page 40