I lived most of my life with zero direction. I dropped out of college… twice. Worked so many jobs I can’t list them all. Eventually, I found myself working at head office of a vape shop that had 10+ locations. This wasn’t a passion of mine, but it paid the bills, kind of. The people at the shop were super chill and I really got a long with everyone and earned a lot of freedom there.

I wanted more and decided to try school one last time in the form of a Real Estate course. It wasn’t a REAL college course, just a few modules that you do and get a realtors license at the end. The problem was that I struggled to work a full time job and study at the same time so I started to look for solutions. I made a list of all my friends that had flexible schedules and sizeable amount of them just happened to be barbers.

I reached out to Khris416, Dave Rasie, and Pat Lauang since I was closest with them. Each of them were fantastic barbers and pretty well established at this point of their careers. I just wanted to talk to them about their schedules and how they manage their work/life balance. The crazy thing was that each of them told me they thought I would be good at barbering at some point of our conversations. That couldn’t be right, the only thing I was ever good at my entire life at this point was Muay Thai, and I had such an estranged relationship with Muay Thai at this point, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be good at anything again.

Dave offered to grab me some tools with a discount he had, so I figured why not? I have nothing to lose at this point. Then he called me over to his home shop to watch him do some haircuts. I had sat in his chair as a client before, but actually sticking around and watching him do multiple clients made me realize just how deeply he cared about what he was doing. Whether it was advising someone with a big life decision they brought up, or even just making sure their lineup was perfect he treated each task with such care I couldn’t help but admire it. By the end of the day he offered to build me a station in an empty corner beside his station.

I started inviting people to Dave’s house to give free haircuts, then $5 haircuts, then $10, then $20. Eventually I was building a clientele of my own and needed a place to cut them without inconveniencing Dave of his family, so I asked Khris if he knew any shops that would take me on. He talked to Jdabarbah who owned LA Section in Markham. They took me on as an apprentice and I promptly quit my job at the vape store. This is where my real education started, actual in shop experience. I now had to time myself and hold myself to a professional standard, I wasn’t just cutting hair beside one of my closest friends anymore. This was something I could actually do, and maybe even be good at.

And then in March 2020, two weeks after I quit my job the world stopped. COVID lockdowns hit and everything I was looking forward to just got hit with an indefinite pause. Thankfully I had a little bit of money saved up because I wasn’t eligible for EI since I just quit my job. Jay had plans for a new shop downtown that would open after the lockdowns. I helped get the shop ready to pass the time. By the end of the lockdown I moved downtown to be close to the new shop.

I struggled to deal with the fallout of the lockdowns and with them being on again and off again, I had to get a second job due to the uncertainty with the lockdowns. Eventually that led to me being forced to covert a room in my apartment to a home studio and I went solo for a while. I knew this was unsustainable because I had to be cautious of who I let into my house and on top of that I just really missed being in a shop environment. After a few months it got to me and I asked Khris if ColdKutz had any open chairs. I already knew the owner, Shawn and we got along well enough when we chilled. He gave me a chair and I was finally cutting beside one of my closest friends again, this time as a professional. It felt like a full circle moment and I’ve been with this team ever since.

Since then we’ve built such a great thing in our neighbourhood. Everyone at the shop has a specific skill set, we have the most diverse range of skills in the whole city and I’ll bet anything on that. Khris, Shawn, Austin, Kaij, Todd, Aydin, and Jafet are the best of the best at what they do and I know if I’m ever on vacation of unavailable for whatever reason one of them can take care of my clients.