Amassing a following of more than 340k on one social channel alone, Josh OP is a global leader and pioneer within the barbering and men’s hairdressing industry. As the co-owner of OP45, the owner/director of Barber.Josh OP Education and the sole creator of the world-renowned cutting method; The D.F.S Formula™️, Josh brings seven years’ experience educating the world and we were lucky enough to catch him in Australia thanks to Dateline Imports and his Australian tour.
Q. Tell us your story of how you started in Barbering?
I feel like every single thing that ever happens to us leads to where you are today. And I think that I started my career and unlike many, I wasn’t really that kid in school, who, who didn’t like school, and I wasn’t really that kid who wasn’t academic, which a lot of times in our intro to very creative people, and they’re coming from a creative background, I was the opposite. If you’d have told me that I was going to start cutting hair, I would have laughed at you. When I told my parents that I wanted to do something creative, they basically were laughing at me. But it was like a spark in me. Specifically, I remember, it was New Year’s Eve, I started, I needed a haircut in my town of Stourbridge in the UK. but the barbers were all full. And I was like, it can’t be that hard. They were the exact words I said to myself, ‘it can’t be that hard.’ My dad had some clippers, so I started the clippers and it was the worst haircut I’ve ever had, I had to wear a hat for New Year’s Eve. But there was something in the sound of the clippers, cutting my hair on the crunch, genuinely that just had me hooked.
Q. How have you kept moving forward and growing in the industry?
I think that when it comes to our industry and our people, they don’t always try to keep growing from things, they just want to get good at the haircutting part. Whereas I sort of matched my academic side with the creative side. And so when I started to get asked to go teach, I started to really think about, okay, how can I build a real curriculum out of this? How can I really turn this into actual business? And how can I sort of use my strengths that I already had before being creative, as well as this to really sort of like, propel what we’re going to do. I always said what we do is built by students, because especially for me my passion behind barbering came from just pure curiosity. That’s what I felt when I started cutting hair. I felt like when I found myself I was very lost before I started cutting. In some ways I was in a dark place. Not like anything drastic, but I feel like it was my own sense of desperation. I felt psychologically that I had no real idea of who I was and bad haircut helped me to find that. It’s the free haircuts that teach you the most too where we are curious and something makes us want to be better.
Q. From starting Geography and Physical Education at university what has lead you to where you are today?
A lot of writing at university was about giving your opinion on things moreso than fact. So I enjoyed it to a degree and I knew it would give me a broad scope of teaching. But then I also like travelling, which is why I picked it. Because you got to go on a lot of trips, travel. So it kind of crazy, though, because then it came full circle because I got to travel the world and teach but just doing something I actually loved, which was is crazy, really a sort of full circle moment. Yeah. But it’s definitely a strange introduction to the industry. Let’s put it that way. Because when I first started doing barbering, I was practising at home before I looked at going and doing an apprenticeship. Because I dropped out of university after a few false starts, I didn’t have time to spend a year two years, going through learning stuff that I thought was the most stupidly common-sense thing ever, which was to be sanitary, and to learn how to service people. And I was already very good at talking to people. Yeah. So that was like, my own path. Yeah, it’s pretty much I knew for some reason I was understood in the Barber world.
Q. Describe your style aesthetic?
What I create depends on the models or clients. I’m not going to bring this style of cut or that style of cut and if it has to be a reverse fade on a particular client then that’s what I’ll do. The same goes for Social media – we should be targeting on social media what we want and what we do, it should be your perfect client – everyone on social media is trying to look the same, say the same dress the same – what the real advantage is to be different. People in life don’t like the journey, but you have to enjoy the journey – remember going on a journey as a kid, you only liked the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes. Social is your own journey.
Q. What do you think would be some of the biggest chart changes in the barber industry maybe in the last few years you’ve seen?
So one thing I think the last 12 months has definitely done, which is a good thing is how it has begun to popularise the creation of content that is more client based. Because I see a lot more content now that isn’t just haircutting based and is more actual client interaction. More to do with the clients before and after, rather than an up-close picture of a haircut like this, because it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen most barbers doing that I do it because my clients are barbers.
@barber.josh.o.p
Q. So what excites you most about the BaBylissPRO FXONE launch?
Well, because we live in the States. I’ve used them a lot already. And they’re phenomenal. So I’m excited about it launching here, because they’re amazing. I didn’t realise that you guys get them like six months later or something, so I think is going to be huge, because when they popped off in the US, they’re insane. I think it’s the best idea they had. Because when I’m using them teaching all day for example I can last all day with the battery. Sometimes I’ll do tutorials all day. Some I’ll do like six tutorials or like a tutorial for me if I’m filming if the Online Academy, typically two hours because I’ve got to do all the camera work, I’ve got to stop and start to move the camera around do whatever so I booked two hours. That’s like 12 hours still then what I love about this is my clippers will last me just one charge all day.
Q. Okay, and what excites you most about barbering in Australia compared to maybe other countries?
From what I know, I feel like there’s a lot of good talent here. But I feel like it’s still relatively unscaled and I suppose very isolated still. So there’ll be a lot of good talent, but very, like sporadic around the country, and in different areas. And in every city or town, there might be a few guys or one shop that is excelling. But again, it’s just about scaling that now. So I’m hoping I’m, well, I’m excited to hopefully help in the scaling of that. And I feel like this expo I think it’s the biggest Barber expo of the country’s had for barbers specifically and I’m hoping that this will be a good spark to get everyone into the inspiration you get from those kinds of events. The networking, you get, the inspiration you can take from it. And hopefully it starts to get people to be better.
Passion to really help people get from student learning to full admission, I’ve only felt really, really good at cutting hair in the last three years, I would say. I knew I could cut hair before that. I knew that I knew why before that. But when I say technically, I was a very good technical haircutter but my passion is the people to advance with us.
Q. How important do you think engagement on socials is to your business or brand and how has it changed?
Alongside social media you also should be simultaneously running email campaigns, ad campaigns that kind of stuff. But when people get to see ads, when people get email campaigns, text campaigns, you just feel like one of a number. So it’s all about the personal mix. Because you, you know, everyone’s getting their wares on social media, If I showed you the messages people are like, ‘Oh, thank you so much for reaching out, I really appreciate it.’ And you’ve got to say thank you to the people who said yes, as well but using it for marketing, not just to look good is important. I promise you a slow growth on social media is going to be better than quick. A fast increase is going to be a growth on a specific thing. Meaning you have to just repeat that thing. Wherever the slow growth is, you know, people are following you, and your business and your growth and your world. They want to be part of it. So it’s a big, big difference that people look at my following and think it’s like, good. Yeah it’s decent – it’s not incredible yet, but it’s also eight years. And if I keep going, yeah, probably hopefully one day we get to a million. But it will be a million people, if I market to a good amount of them will actually be students and if an online academy is your thing, tune in to wherever we have 16,000 people in a platform completely away from just socials. You got to use social media to build a world outside of social media. And I think that people don’t think of it like that. Even when I tell people about the network and the reaching out cold outreach, the warm outreach, people look at me like I’m mental, but like in a good way that like that’s like so stupidly easy, but no one ever thinks to do it. I used to spend an hour on social media in the morning, an hour, every day, doing the same thing. I’ve done it for years and years and years. And it works phenomenally.
Q. What’s your current passion?
I love seeing the team do their thing. Like we got to the point now, where already this year, we’ve had weekends where we’ve had like four or five classes going on in different countries at the same time. And that is super, super powerful, because I feel like as a brand, we’ve almost gone a little bit under the radar, which I love. Because people have already started to really notice that we actually have a team selling classes out in different places across the world, like our UK team have got five or six shows and they’re all booked out from one on one’s to private events. The whole of the year pretty much the US team have classes lined up all year, they go on tours to Mexico just as the team and that’s what I’m loving because I because it allows me to take a step back and focus on my mentoring and to focus on the business growth and diversifying the business into in in not even our industry. Like that kind of stuff, travel has always been a huge passion of mine.
Q. How do tools and innovations help you stay relevant in the industry?
Me personally, tools wise I use only BaByliss PRO. And it’s not that I’ve never tried using anything else. I think it’s just always been the only real clippers that I’ve loved. I feel like when I first came here, I learned to fade properly at the first time I felt good at fading was when I use the original corded effects. And everyone hated it because the grip was weird. It was heavy, it was horrible. But the click, the click lever allowed me to learn how to fade properly. So I just built an affinity for them. And so even now, I still prefer the round body than I do anything else, but I always have used Babyliss. I really think that and again, as much as I focus on education that your tools, not only will become part of you, you have to find the ones that work for you and actually complement what you do.
Q. What is your advice to others when it comes to education?
I always focus on personal development first, because it’s a way for people to connect with themselves better. Because that’s the aim of education. It’s not about them connecting to me, connecting to the brand connecting to anything, it’s about them connecting to themselves more and learning more about themselves in the process.
Q. What would you like to see more of in the industry?
Definitely more togetherness at the end of the day, like we are one, but we should be one big family. And that’s what we tried to create in our Online Academy. Have a family approach everything we do. And that’s why like, if even if you look at some of the blog posts that I’ve had for classes, the companies I’ve worked with overseas, a lot of people have been doing these classes with us for years. A lot of the team have been doing this for years. For me, it’s what you should be doing to support into that overall building, networking and growing, as well as helping each other out. And that’s what I want to see more so in that end, but in the individual side, rather than just a collective. I want to see more doing. Let’s talk more and do it is 100 per cent. What I want to see is less posting just hair and more posting things that are going to bring you customers.
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