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

Alright, Labeeb thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I believe it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to be successful. Everyone knows it takes hard work to be successful, but can you be dedicated to always work hard and more importantly, be productive in your hard work. Those are two different things, you can work hard and not be productive. You can work all day and still only be productive for a couple hours.

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’m a professional barber, I’ve been cutting hair for about 5 and a half years now. I guess I have always been around and maybe subconsciously been fed the idea of becoming a barber by having my mom cut my hair for the first 16 years of my life. Ironically, at that point, I hated getting haircuts. I would wait out as long as I could before my parents would force me to chop off my rugged ‘fro. My first experience going and having my own barber was a very positive one. I loved the idea of booking an appointment and getting to go chop it up (talk) with someone who wasn’t much older than me and was his own businessman. I was a senior in high school at that point and was really unsure of what I wanted to do with my life beyond school.. I enrolled in my local University and set out to study business as I have always had a love and keen fondness to becoming an entrepreneur. I quickly learned that University would not satisfy those cravings. Changing majors every semester for the first two years had me feeling very lost. I felt like I was wasting time and didn’t have a clue on what I should do next. Then, my dad suggested I try barber school. I wasn’t to fond of the idea for I didn’t believe it could be a career and never viewed it as much of anything more than a hobby. Nonetheless, I enrolled in a local community college where they had a barber program that would take me a year and a half to complete, and when completed you would graduate with your associates degree. I finished the program, completed all my required hours and haircuts, and didn’t even attend my graduation. I just wanted to start on my journey. When I graduated from the community college and got my barber license, I started working in a local barbershop that was a tattoo shop as well. It didn’t take very long for me to start gaining some attention from the people and other barbers in the town as I was one of the newest barbers on the block charging some of the highest prices for a haircut. $18 at the time. This didn’t go over well with the other barbers who had been cutting for over 10+ years in the same town. Nonetheless, my personality and ambition had struck well with some of the football and basketball players at the university, soon enough I was cutting up most of the teams.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

After a few months of working in my first shop, I kept getting into altercations with the owner over things that I felt like he should be taking care of by me paying him rent. I would pay him our agreed upon rate and he would do nothing to improve the shop. One day as I was in the middle of a haircut with a client, the electricity gets shut off, the lights go out. Luckily most of my tools were cordless so I was able to finish the haircut and send the client away with a half decent haircut. That was the last straw for me. I decided that it was time for me to make the first biggest move of my life, I was going to pack up all my things and move to the biggest city in New Mexico, Albuquerque. I would make frequent trips to Albuquerque and had a few friends who lived there. I immediately began searching and inquiring for good barbershops that had open booths for rent. I found one that was fairly new and already had 4 barbers set up in there. I decided this would be my new spot and within two weeks, I packed up all my things, signed a lease on a apartment that was 10 minutes away from the new shop and was enthusiastic about starting my new journey. I started work, and actually did pretty well the first few weeks. I had a lot of clients that actually made the drive (2 hours) to my new shop to get their haircuts. It was also the beginning of summer so a lot of my friends that were going out of town would come stop by and get freshened up before going to the airport. After a few weeks, when all the buzz settled and all my friends and old clients had came by my new shop, I quickly realized my mistake. I had started at a brand new barbershop where it was mostly appointments only. I was so busy taking care of past clients that I hadn’t realized there wasn’t really any walk-ins. Somedays, I would go into the shop for 8 hours and would leave with $20. Life became very difficult after that. The lease I had signed was for a pretty apartment well out of my price range and I wasn’t bringing in enough money to even cover the day’s meals. My balance quickly went into the red (negative). I started door dashing and delivering food via postmastes to get by. I would go to the barbershop from 9-8 and then deliver food from 8-1 or sometimes 2 am. At least I was making enough to buy food.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My dad came to visit me in my new city, in my new shop and he immediately could tell something was off. He could tell I was very unhappy and unfulfilled. He took me out to eat and shared some ideas. He told me I had a relative who lived in Dallas who was in the flooring business and was making good money. My dad had reached out to him and asked him if he would hire me as a salesman and teach me the business. My relative agreed and my dad advised me to make the move. I always listen to my dad’s advice. I agreed and within a month, I packed up everything in my luxurious 1 bedroom apartment into my little Toyota Camry and set for Dallas, TX. My first day in Dallas I had learned of a falsifying statement, my relative didn’t intend on hiring me as a salesman but rather me work for his business partner who had just opened up an office supplies business. I felt betrayed and misled but because of family and with nowhere else to turn to, I took the job. By day I would go work at the warehouse, 8:30-5:30, and then by night I would go work in a barbershop salon my relative found for me. I hated working in the warehouse from day 1. It wasn’t why I came out here for. Once I had built up around 10-15 clients at the barbershop, I quit working at the warehouse and took a chance on myself. Now, 4 years later, I have built up an amazing clientele, work out of my own private suite right next to the Galleria Mall, and am living the life I’ve alwanted to live, on my terms. I’m so blessed.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Labeebthe_barber