We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brandon Palmore a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brandon, thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

I think the best way for me to describe how I scaled up, is the answer nobody really wants to hear and that’s I worked my ass off. I had a vision and idea of where I wanted to and how I wanted to grow my business, and I knew it was going to take persistence and making sure the right people were on board with me to help grow that success. For the first three almost 4 years of my business I cut back personal expenditures to the bare minimum so that I could continue to save money and invest it back into the business. So I really had to discipline myself to not go out as much, no Sunday fun days, new fancy dinners because I really had to pour that money back into the vision I had for my business. Working in the barbering industry, especially in the age of social media and Google reviews, one customer can either make or break your business. So having the mindset that each new customer or experience with that customer could potentially take my business to the next level or close my business for good; that’s the mindset I had. That may be a little extreme for some but what it did for me was mentally made me much more aware that each customer was a potential next step.

One of the biggest challenges, was obviously a worldwide pandemic that closed us down and halted all of my income for about 12 weeks. During this time I still had to make rent payments to the landlord and things were pretty tight all the way around, because I was in the process of planning a remodel for the Barbershop. One thing I recognized in all of that, was the tremendous opportunity that could be on the rise once we were out of quarantine. I knew that there would be a lot of people wanting to find Barber’s so I increased our marketing budget, and we saw an almost 70 to 80% increase in people looking for our barbershop. With that new growth gave us the opportunity to not only bounce back financially but to also expand our clientele to the point where we were able to hire on another barber.

Now that we’re in the planning process of opening our second location, the biggest challenge now is creating a consistent environment for success and that starts with the team you’re with. I’ve been really blessed to be around some really great barbers who have had a tremendous impact on the growth of my business and I want to continue that same vision. Finding like-minded people who understand success only comes before work in the dictionary, in any other instance you have to work to get the success.

Brandon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Brandon Palmore I am the owner of Mr. B’s Grooming Lounge here in Orlando Florida. Mr. B’s Grooming Lounge is one of the top, let me start playing, the top, barbershop in Orlando. All of our staff are licensed and fully versed in every texture and type of hair as well as every hairstyle. I have owned this business since 2017, and I got into the barbering industry as a licensed professional in 2006. There are 1 million barbershops all over but I think what sets mine apart from others, is the experience and versatility of the staff. This industry is still very much so segregated by race and hair texture, and there are very few places that can do all of those hair textures at high rate of execution, and we are the 1%. In addition to technical execution I also believe our level of client experience and atmosphere sets us apart, because we intentionally create an environment that’s comfortable for anyone, no matter their background everyone is welcomed. One thing I do want potential clients to know about us is that the quality of not just your service, but your overall experience in the building will always be something we strive to keep it a high-level.

In addition to owning Mr. B’s grooming lounge I am also an educator for John Paul Mitchell Systems and Paul Mitchell Schools. This position allows for me to travel to different schools, salons and barbershops around the country teaching current hair school students, hair school instructors and also industry professionals on better ways and techniques in the barbering field.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Some advice I would have is to consistently check in with your team. And by check in I don’t mean as it relates to job performance, but more so just how they are doing personally. Life happens to them the same way it happens to you, and to be sensitive to that fact. When your team has healthy avenues to vent for discuss what’s happening with them, morale and productivity increase, so it makes sense to make sure your team is doing well.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

One year into business, the shopping plaza that our location was in was sold to a new owner. One of the first things the new owner wanted to do was void everyone’s current lease, and increase the rent about 9 or 10%. Mind you we were in the first year of operation and an increase like that would’ve most certainly killed the entire business, we would’ve had to close down because I would not have been able to afford that. So I started to look for a new location and I found one that wasn’t the best looking, but the landlord made promises of revamping the entire shopping center. This new space was smaller, but the lower overhead would allow me time to save and plan for our next move. I took a step out on faith and moved the business to the smaller location and I was extremely nervous the first few months simply because it took a while to get settled in and the space still needed some improvements, but money was tight so there was only certain ones I could do at the time. Fast forward to now the new landlord did in fact revamp the shopping center, and that move saved my business. If we had stayed in our previous location, with the new rental increase and now knowing there would’ve also been COVID-19 to deal with, we would’ve had to close our doors permanently. So this move was definitely a step of faith and a prime example of taking a step back to take two steps forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mrbgrooming.com
• Instagram: @Barber_Phd