We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Frankie Leo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Frankie below.

Frankie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

I was my first client. My mom would cut my hair when I was little and then I would go to the bathroom and fix the spots I didn’t like. Eventually, I just started cutting my hair from start to finish. After that it was my friends and so on. The first time I made a little money was doing it for my dorm in college. I would set up appointment after appointment and charge 5 bucks a piece.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I graduated college with a music degree so I planned on doing music in some capacity. I moved to Louisville and started moving furniture. During that time I picked up some friends who trusted me enough to cut their hair. After one person, another person started and so eventually I had four or five people. I would cut every now and again out of my home. I soon quit the furniture moving and worked at a coffee shop. One day a friend of mine who was a barber came into the shop and generically said, ” if you know anyone who wants to be a barber, we’re opening another shop.” I texted him later and asked him how much it paid, etc. I soon told my wife that I was going to apply for barber school. She was skeptical. When I finished barber school we were deep in debt from school. I joined the Derby City Chop Shop and my first shop out of barber school. After the years there, I moved to another shop that was appointment based rather than walk in based. That shop was called Handsome Fellows Barber Shop. After a year there, I started my own shop, Forestry Barbershop. Where did the name Forestry come from? I initially started my Instagram it as head forestry like I was maintaining the forest on people’s heads but decided to simplify and just go with Forestry.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I needed about 35 G to start the shop in the space I found. That included renovations, barber chairs, furniture and appliances to make the shop functional.

Fortunately I had a client from Handsome Fellows that wanted to help. He loaned me the money to buy the chairs. I also used a home equity line of credit to find a lot of the other renovations.

Another really important factor is how my friends and family also came along side to help support us with financial gifts during the transitional time between my previous shop and my own. That was a huge blessing!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There was a time I thought we were going to need to sell the house in order to move forward with starting the shop. We were about to do it, and then a friend time is not to and handed us a financial gift in order to keep our home during the transition. Pretty awesome!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://forestrybarber.com
• Instagram: @forestrybarber
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forestrybarbershop?mibextid=ZbWKwL

Image Credits

Photos by Kha Do, Josh Russell, and Frankie Leo.