Category Archives: Grooming

Sometimes you have to go on trust

December 19, 2014 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m looking straight up at a ceiling light.  I’m at my favorite barber shop and I’m about to get a razor shave.  The barber slathers some sort of alcoholic lotion on my face and then covers my face up with a steaming hot towel.  I can feel the capillaries and arteries in my face thumping and pulsing with blood as he covers me up. It’s supposed to make my face more pliable and easier to shave.  Somewhere behind me I can hear the wheet wheet of a leather strop.

Admittedly this is something of an extravagance in these days of electric shavers and disposable razors.  But sometimes in your private or professional life you need to have an outside eye to get a better perspective on a situation or to complete a task.  Trimming a beard is just such an occasion.

I normally trim and take care of my own whiskers.  But over time I find that my beard gets skewed or tilted to one side and you need someone else to look over the situation and fix what needs to be repaired.  Working in small shops for my entire career I have always worked with outside contractors and consultants; some good, some bad.  They are now a ubiquitous part of professional life in the modern business world.

The barber takes the towel off and dabs on plenty of shaving foam.  He’s not my normal barber.  I usually get the shop owner to do this but he’s busy working two chairs over.  The shop is packed with customers.  Guys talking about sports or politics or just gossiping.  The little blonde kid in the next chair over looking wide-eyed in my direction probably not believing that I’m about to let someone run a blade over my throat.

I have to admit I’m a little hesitant too as I’ve never worked with this barber before.  But I’ve known the shop owner for years and he wouldn’t hire a rookie so I must have faith and hope for the best.

It’s like that in business and in life sometimes.  You need help in something and someone, maybe a friend or business colleague, gives you a suggestion to follow or a recommendation.  You’ve no frame of reference to go on besides the fact that you know this person and he or she cared enough to give you this advice.  If you think that’s enough then you go ahead.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where I just don’t know enough about a subject or I don’t have the time or resources to do a particular job and I need the expertise or help from an outside source.  I then need to turn to my friends, colleagues and even acquaintances to steer me in the right direction.

The secret to shaving with a razor is little tiny scrapes.  Just a few inches at a time.  No need to rush.  The true professionals don’t need to be showy just precise.  If the person or company you hire out does a good professional job then that’s worth more than a hundred flashy business cards or a slick website.  The real professional doesn’t care about looking good but instead cares about the task at hand.

The crucial moment.  My throat.  That spot right over my carotid artery.  I try not to think about how my veins were thumping and pulsing a few minutes ago.  Trying not to breathe.  A steady hand and total concentration at this critical moment.  The essence of being a good consultant.  You need to be there for your client when and where you’re needed to finish the project or product or service when it’s needed.  Not tomorrow or later on but right at that moment.

The moment passes and everything’s okay now.

Now this barber has become a known quantity.  Now I can trust him to do this service for me in the future.  Hopefully that’s also true of the consultants that I trust for different projects.  But until they do prove themselves the only thing you have to go on is the word of a friend.  That’s where you have to trust that good people know good people and that your friend or colleague wouldn’t send you a bad recommendation.

That’s the moment you have to leave it all up to faith.

 

 

Posted in: business, grooming, life in general, thought

the beard

December 3, 2014 6:19 AM , Leave a Comment ,

About June of 2002 it was.  The first company I had worked at just out of college had just shut down.  My old boss had died of a brain tumor and I spent the last month closing down the office and getting ready to start my consultancy.

So I turned in my office keys and walked out of the building for the last time on a Friday afternoon.  Oddly enough it was 8 years to the day that I had begun work.  Don’t ask.  These weird coincidences happen to me all the time.

Anyways, next Monday I woke up without a thing to do or place to be.  Going through my morning routine I reached for the razor and then paused looking at my scruffy ‘weekend’ face in the mirror.  I realized it had been awhile since I had no real responsibilities or a schedule to keep.  I decided that I wanted to take advantage of that.  I was 31 and this might be the last real chance to be a bum.  So that’s what I did for the next 2 months, and the first step in that process was to do something (or rather not do something) that I had wanted to do for a long time.  Grow a beard.

 a popular web comic’s take on beards

Growing a beard is a difficult proposition in the modern office environment.  Specially if you are in a sales or other job that requires you to meet with people.  The growth stage is stubbly, awkward, and itchy.  Not things that you want clients to see.  But really there’s no other way to do it.  You have to go through the weeks of ugly, stilted, and ugly fuzz until one day it starts looking like a beard.

The first beard grew and grew over the course of the next two months and finally reached a Fidel Castro-esque stature.  I could actually wring it out after a shower.  A female acquaintance I had not seen for a while became mesmerized by it and wanted to touch it to see if it was real or not.

No.  No photos exist of this.  They were all “lost”.

Alas after a few months I decided to get rid of it.  My family hated it and since I was in the midst of my consultancy I decided I needed to look more professional for clients.

So I had a barber trim it off and leave a mustache.  I’ve always had a very boyish face and I wanted something to age my appearance to what I felt would be an appropriate look for my age.

For the next few years I carried on with my mustache till I turned 40 and decided I was now ready to start a new phase in my life and why not with a beard again?  But not a crazy all out beard as before but a trimmed and well-managed beard.  A somber thoughtful beard for a thoughtful somber person.

Officially my beard is a Van Dyke or a circle beard.  This is a short clipped beard connecting the mustache to the chin that does not connect to the sideburns.  Not as conceited as the goatee, not as scary as the full beard.  A beard with the benefits of a beard and not as many of the drawbacks.

I realize that a beard may be a turn off to some women and I’ve had some suggestions that I remove even this modest amount of facial hair for a clean look.  If the right person requested it I would probably shave it.  Perhaps one day I will anyways.  But at this moment I think it projects the image that I want the world to see.

More importantly, this is who I feel I am right now and that carries an importance in itself.  Don’t be the person that other people want you to be so you’ll fit their view of what you should look like in their world.  Be the person you want to be in your world.  When you are who you want to be then people will respect you for it and accept you, beard (or no beard) included.

 

Posted in: fashion, grooming