We recently connected with Mat Brown and have shared our conversation below.

Mat, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I kicked my journey into the community off in very much the same way that many people do in this industry. It wasn’t my original plan – And that is the cornerstone of my experience. I originally sought out illustration. And failed. From there it was going to college to be a Math Teacher. And I failed. then It was music. And I failed again. during all of that, I was slowly picking up on photography and haircutting. I would use anything I could find to cut hair and it was riveting to me.

In order to learn the craft after starting school, I had to humble myself.

I had never held a comb properly a day in my life, yet here I was. I learned that my two best teachers were going to be failure and secondhand experience, and the better days were always when secondhand experience was clocked in.

My affirmation since my first week in the industry has been “My determination equals my success,” and I knew that if I didn’t allow myself to give up, then progress was within reach. Since then I have become a Master Educator, written curriculum utilized by schools across the country, developed tools and systems that can be found in use by professionals and students in the entire continental United States, and Have produced work that has been published and in print globally.

When I look back at things and consider how it all began I would have to say that if I had slowed down and focused on fundamentals in the beginning, I would have had a stronger foundation to have learned more about the fun and creative side of things that I found myself obsessed with straight out of the gate.
I can see it in photography as well. Stopping myself from lofty ambitions, and instead learning as much as I could about Light, Exposure, Proportion, and Balance, has propelled me to have had the opportunity to compete and win in national competitions, and to see my work in print in magazines, shared by global organizations, and featured across the world within my community.

That truly is the way to find sustainable growth. Accept that you can only give up to 100 percent on any given day and that 100 percent today will not necessarily be the same as it is tomorrow, and look for moments where growth is happening.

My most essential skills across every industry can be boiled down to three: the capability to learn, The willingness to try something new, and the determination to figure out anything.

They don’t sound like “technical” answers because the Path is only 15 percent technical to begin with. regardless of where you are headed. If you are technically the best, you are 85 percent worse than everyone who isnt.

The biggest obstacle for me going through all of this has been ambition. Every single time I have ever failed it is because I allowed impatience and ambition to take control of the decision making process rather than patience and sustainability.

parting words – Fast is useless in the long run because it is sloppy. Slow down. If you slow down you will be quick and only have to fix minor challenges. to compress it : Fast is sloppy. Slow is quick. quick is accurate, and accurate is better than fast.

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?

First and foremost – I am the Left Handed Middle Child. So I was predestined to be the odd ball in my family. My path starts off as a severely asthmatic kid sitting inside at home unable to keep up with everyone else in the neighborhood otherwise risk a trip to the hospital to get hooked up to machines. I wasnt really that great at anything physical like the rest of the kids around me, so I tried to do other stuff. work on computers, draw, play with cameras, and musical instruments.

I found a lot of my satisfaction in art and music pair that with the fact that repetition is the mother of skill, and eventually I began to experience some success.

eventually I took a risk and put all of my eggs in the music basket. and failed in 2008 during the housing and economic crises. the best choice at that time was to go to hair school because I already had an interest, and I understood it as a recession proof career. What I learned is that recession proof was not even the half of it. Entering the beauty industry exposed me to all of my passions filtered into this sub culture of a community surrounding hair, fashion, and style.

there is a cyclical experience to life. and what I found is that in phases of growth, we will continue to receive the lesson until we learn from it. that is how I wound up where I am in my career. currently, I put in work in a number of capacities :

– I work as the education leader and cutting specialist for a hair school
– I produce Educational content for virtual courses.
– I provide photography services for other professionals and creatives in and out of the industry.
– I provide one on one coaching to others who are looking to walk a similar path
– Every year I provide a series of classes called “Cut With a Purpose,” to raise money for various charities. this year I believe we have raised over $24 million as a network, and I am grateful to have been able to contribute even a small amount to that.

– and in my free time, I am a hobbyist leather craftsman :D

I would have to say that I am most proud of the behind the scenes impacts I have made.
It still will blow my mind when traveling to another place altogether to see a set of tools someone is using that I got to help develop. I hope to continue to contribute in that way.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Consistency over time.

The best advice I can give to anyone is to stick it out and stay ready.
make it past your first day. then week. then month. then year.

If you will trust the process of being consistent over time, you will absolutely experience growth.

and when you stop growing do three things in this order: slow down. learn something new and relevant, and raise your prices within reason.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Vision. – the ability to see what is possible, even when it isnt there.

I love to execute on that vision and see something come to life from nothing.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matbr0wn/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLi9j1sh4BwI8FneEF1a-6w