Brandon Patton: How To Execute And Achieve Success

Do you ever feel like you’re full of ideas—but struggle to actually execute them? Or maybe you’ve waited too long, only to see someone else bring your exact idea to life and succeed with it?

And on top of that, have you ever dealt with stress so intense it started to affect your confidence—like unexpected hair loss? It’s something many men experience, but few openly talk about.

In this episode, Men’s Hair Specialist Brandon Patton—a content creator and co-founder of Evan Alexander Grooming—shares his journey from early struggles to building a successful grooming brand. He dives into how he created the first beard leave-in conditioners, along with the setbacks, lessons, and persistence it took to get there.

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Brandon’s Business: https://evanalexandergrooming.com/

Brandon’s YouTube : https://youtube.com/@blackmensbeard?si=_HE0QRCK-dLQzIpV

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

80% of men are gonna experience hair loss at one point in their life. A large sum of people already have a predisposition to hair loss. People gotta understand, your hair is a luxury. When you start seeing your hair thinning, when you start seeing these things, you need to do something right away.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

How was Evan Alexander born?

SPEAKER_02 0:15

At that time, if I had an idea, I just turned my phone on. Because I knew if you think about something too long and you start thinking about all the possibilities of what can go wrong, you're gonna talk yourself out of it. Don't get caught up into how it should look. You need to get caught into momentum. A mom was like, Brandon, you call me every weekend with a different hustle. I was selling merch. I was doing music production at the time. I had a production company. Gross don't matter, it's your net, man. It's about what you keep, it's not what you can make. We're robbing Peter to pay Paul, you know what I mean? So, and then finally, man, something you know, something hit.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back to the Modern Man Podcast channel. Thank you guys so much. If you're new here, this channel is all about how we can grow, level up to become the better version of ourselves and redefining what it means to be a modern man in today's world. On today's episode, you're gonna learn about what it means to build a creator-led brand. Our guest today is a creator, but also building a business, a men's grooming business that is booming. It's been eight years in the making. And on this episode, we talk about hair loss, we talk about men's grooming and how passionate our guest is when it comes to building a men's brand that helps men become the best version of themselves. Let's get into the show. So I'm gonna welcome today's guest, somebody who is near and dear to my heart, my brother, my friend, someone who has a huge impact on my content creator journey. Obviously, if you guys follow me on any other platforms, you know that my whole brand, even the modern man brand, is meant to elevate men and make them feel more confident. And I gotta say, today's guest had a huge, huge influence in that. Today's guest is someone who's very passionate about the same thing, but also was my first mentor. He's extremely passionate when it comes to helping men, when it comes to grooming, hair loss, proficient in all these areas. This is the guy you want to talk to if you're starting to see your hairline recede, if you're starting to see anything going on with any grooming areas, he's gonna get you right. He is also one of the first people I've ever met to have what is today known as a creator-led brand. Today I want to welcome our guest, Brandon Patton.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Man, wow. I need to uh I need to like get that on a clip and uh put that in in front of all my videos. I need to all my videos, all my audio, everything. That was that was amazing. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Hey man, I gotta big you up, man. People gotta know what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That was huge. That was huge. Man, I was like, oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

It's all good, man. I just appreciate you being here, bro. Um, obviously, I know we we talk all the time, but I just want to know, bro, how you feeling? Like how's how's life for you right now, bro?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

All is well. Uh my life has been in expansion, uh, family has has expanded, you know. Uh, and so I've just been really just adjusting, uh, making the adjustment to uh, you know, kids, wife, business, and uh, and even with that being said, you know, with that happening, my schedule has to adjust. Um, how I look at life uh has to adjust as well, too. So uh I'm just in a new uh just a new uh leg of my journey. And uh and I'm just you know making sure that I just map it out precisely as much as possible.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, I know we were just talking about that right before the cameras turned on. So how has being in this new stage walk me through what had what what have you had to do to be as organized as possible now as a as a husband and father?

SPEAKER_02 3:42

I would say one is create rules. You know, I've had to create rules in terms of um when I go to sleep, um, when I wake up, and what are the things that will keep me from going to sleep? So before, man, I'm I would be a night owl, a night owl. I'd be up at two, three, four, five. Sometimes I'd just be up for a 24, four, 48 hour hour sprint. No sleep. No sleep, literally. Not the healthiest thing to do. Um, and I I don't recommend that uh for anyone, but that was what I was doing at a time. But there's a trade-off. And so now uh I had to, you know, making sure no phone, no media, nothing that's going to distract me from uh making sure that I hit my goal. My goal is, man, I need to get this get to bed before I need to be in bed by 9.30. 9.30. If I don't hit that goal, then I gotta figure out, well, what did I, what rule did I break? Um I make sure that I'm I eat at a certain time. Um I don't drink anything like, you know, caffeine, caffe caffeinated drinks that's gonna keep me up. Um so there's rules and that I've been able to put in place that has helped me to stay on task and target. Um, everything that I have is on my calendar. Uh I don't, I try not to do anything, just nothing's a surprise. It can't be for me. I can't have surprises at all, as much as possible. So I try to manage that. I mean, things happen, of course. You know, things break, uh, things come up, and I manage that accordingly. But uh I would say that's the biggest thing that has helped me to make sure I'm mapping out my day, my week, and so on and so forth, you know, with the family, with the business I'm running. Um, time is not something I can just waste away.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Bro, I understand. And I think a lot of guys, like we were talking about before, I think a lot of guys don't understand how much time you really do have to get things done and having like just guardrails. I know you're really big on systems, and I think I I want to say, I feel like you talked to me about systems a long time ago, but more so from a a content standpoint, about systems of like about how you do a lot of things. What were your systems uh prior to like before like you get into this stage, before you were a husband? And I know you've had Martel for a long time, but before uh your son and uh your daughter and son.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Uh for just content?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

For content, I would say uh some of my the systems that I have put together was just focusing on um one of the things I I knew, okay, you know what? Uh the end goal, of course, is to get content out the door. So from there, I'm starting from that particular point of how do I get content out the door? Well, I know I have to shoot the content, uh, I know I have to plan the content, I know I have to research uh the content, I know how to go through all these particular uh particular things. So I would just I would just figure out, well, how many pieces of content do I need to produce a month? Um, and then how many pieces of content can I produce a week? Um, and then how many how many pieces of content can I produce in a day? Right. So I kind of work from there. And then at that point, if I know I need to get out, you know, if it's five pieces of content, then I know like, hey, on a Monday or a Tuesday, whatever that particular day, I need to have my research done. I need to have my script done. But I typically try to separate those, those, those, uh, those pieces because as you know, you don't you don't want to be researching and shooting content on the same day. Right. Right? You don't want to be scripting and shooting content on the same day. You want to be able to like do your script, do your b-roll. You want to just get that because that's these are two different, these are different hats you're playing. You're playing project manager here, you're playing creative here, you're the researcher here, you're the script writer here. Like these are different hats. And so, and and yes, they do blend from time to time, but you want to make sure you define those and and keep those separate. So for me, that's kind of how I would like organize everything. And in my mind, I would know, no, you're not in creative mode because sometimes you can hallucinate or are you kind of get off beat because you get into your creative juices, and you're like, oh man, I got something going. I'm like, wait a minute, be disciplined. Right now, you just need to do research. The next step you need to do, okay, now let's just take the research. Now we need to get into figuring out what the topics are, then then we can get into the scripting. Then from the scripting, then now we can get into actually actually executing on those particular scripts and making the content. Yeah. And so that was just pretty much how I would work it. And then, of course, you know, if I had a videographer, okay, what part they would play into um that particular uh process that that I would have. Um, and then, you know, a lot of things that I would use, like, you know, you using your Google Drives, things have gotten a lot better now, um, since back back then. But it was like, you know, using uh project management tools. So at the time I was using Asana, I'm using a different one now. But I would use Asana and I would have my uh my videographer at the time. We were, you know, we were using that together. Um, and then that's where I would kind of manage the project through that particular uh platform at that particular time.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah, man, that is that's a whole system. And bro, I'm so glad you said that because you don't you you can't have you you have to turn off certain sides of your brain in order to do different things of your life. And so you can't write and take calls and produce content all in the same day. There's different sides of your brain you have to do, and even more so, I've realized that why the systems are so important in being all of the hats that you do play, right? So for you and I both, right? We're both creators, we're both husbands, we're both fathers, we're both uh businessmen, and you wear all these different hats. And there it's that's why I think systems are so important because you have to set aside time to do each one because you can't, it's it's so hard to walk in the house and you know you have something to do. And it's like you be knowing that, ah, okay, but I need to help my wife out with this, I need to sweep this up, or I need to give my my child this type of attention. But then also, and if you're anything like me, you know, when your purpose is pulling at you, you need to get something done, your your mind be like split in half. You'd be like, I hear you, but I don't hear you. And it's so good that you're talking about the cat, the I've I've I think I got locked into using a calendar like, I want to say two, three years ago. And I never looked back. I put everything on the calendar, bro. If it's not on the calendar, it don't exist. It don't exist at all, bro. B, where you from? I know where you're from, but where you from?

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Where you at? I know where you at. Where you at? So I was born in in South Bend. If anyone is a Notre Dame fan or if you're aware of the school or whatever the case may be, I mean, we down south, so you may not be. Uh, but Notre Dame, uh South Bend, Indiana. Uh, I was born and raised. But uh at that point, you know, I kind of uh was like a nomad. And so I kind of ventured off into from New York to LA to the A, back to to LA, um, just various places around the corner of the country in the Bay. I was just, man, I was a I was just a nomad. Um, but uh definitely um born and raised in South Bay, Indiana.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

By yourself, you moved to all these places? By myself. What time did you leave that? I mean, how old were you when you left the house? 18.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

18 and you was out. I didn't look back. I like literally I remember telling my mother, I'm not coming back. And I didn't come back. I didn't come back for about um, man, it had to be like six, six years maybe. Yeah. It had to be like six years. I f I came back, but that was due to the fact that uh somebody had passed away at the time. But um, but other than that, man, no, I don't I don't go back.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

And did you play like sports? Did you have like a f lot of friends and community in in um Indiana?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Yeah, I played basketball. Yeah, I played basketball, AAU.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Um and high school.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

I mean, I've been hooping for, I was hooping for like like hooping was like that hooping was my life. I didn't do nothing but hoop. I ate hoop, I slept hoop, I slept with my ball, woke up with my ball. Um like I was a I was a walking smelling gym, especially when I was, you know, uh a lot younger. Um so yeah, I hoop, man.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah. Do you still communicate with a lot of like your teammates and friends that you grew up with back home?

SPEAKER_02 12:06

My best friend that I grew up with, that we we would hoop, uh, yeah, we still communicate um on a on a regular, but everybody else, it's more like, you know, if you see somebody on social media, you might say something, but the way my life is set up right now, yeah, you know, uh I don't really have um, I just don't have that type of time just to be uh but if I see them, hey, I I you know I say hello and speak. Yeah. Or if they you know speak to me, then you know, I'll uh I'll like you know say hello. But other than that, man, I don't I don't really say too much.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

And when you were in high school, um obviously you were, you know, a big athlete. Did you know that you were kind of going this direction or you were just kind of like, you knew you wanted to be a businessman then? You know, it's funny.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

My my dad, he was always pushing, he was always an entrepreneur. I never, I never saw my dad working a nine to five. Uh he he always had his business and he always would push me. Even he would have me come and work in his business. I remember I used to be like, man, I do not want to be here. Uh he would have an office. I'm like, man, I don't want to be here. I want to be somewhere playing. I want to be, you know, I'm in I'm in high school. So uh I was I was at the time I was in middle school. So I'm like, this is out of all the places to be, man, this is not the place for me. Yeah. So uh, but he was always kind of planting those seeds. And even throughout high school, he would plant those seeds. And so once I got out of uh high school, I went to college. And, you know, I was just, I would do things. Like I was, I became, I stopped playing, I stopped hooping, but then I became a a referee. So I would, you know, ref basketball games. Uh high school, I would also ref um different tournaments where you have college players or former uh NBA players and things of that nature. They would come back and play in these particular tournaments and leagues and stuff like that. So I would do that, you know, in in college. So that was kind of like, you know, semi, you know, not so much entrepreneurial, but it was things that I was kind of doing on my own to figure out how to make some money, you know. Right. And so I so I took that money, purchased my first car, um, and I just was able to do a lot more things, move around. I was able to go travel and stuff like that because I had these, uh, I just had these different hustles. They were just hustles at the time. I just had different hustles at the time that that I was doing. Uh, and so when I got out of school, I ended up uh work getting a job, working a nine to five. And again, my dad has always been dropping those nuggets. Uh, and so it was just at that point, I was like, you know what? There's a friction point here. This is not something that I could, I I couldn't see myself doing for the rest of my life. And like working for somebody, working for someone. Like I just knew I was just like, nah, this, this is it, it, it, there was a visceral feeling, like there was this um this there was a war or battle going on within myself to get up every day and go do this. You know, not to say that the the job or what I was doing wasn't, you know, uh a great position and things of that nature. It was. And I was successful at it. But there was always that fight. That was always that battle within myself, like to figure it out. So from that point on, I just began to start different things and try different things. I remember my mom was like, she was like, You, she's like, Brandon, you call me every weekend with a different hustle. Every weekend, we we talking, I got a different hustle going on. I got this new coming up, I got this new coming up. And then finally, man, something, you know, something hit.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Something hit. So what did your dad do that you uh what kind of business was he running that you saw?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Um at the time he was in real estate. So this is before the 2008, 2009 um real estate crash. This is like a long time ago. And um, and so he was in the the real estate business uh industry. And so that's what he would do. You know, he had he had houses, he had a mortgage company uh at the time. And um and so that was his that's his business, what he was doing at the time.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Bro, I love that. You know, my dad, well, you know, you know my dad, but like uh it's the same, it's the same thing with me. I always like even though he, if there was a point where he that he did have to work for someone, yeah, I never actually saw him like do something like a regular job. And it was it it makes me kind of you know identify with you even more, bro, because it's in you already, innately. But of course, like my dad used to call it, he said, uh, you gotta pay your dues, you gotta pay your dues first, and you'll find your way. Because it's not like you knew instantly in high school, you're like, why am I here, dad? But it's almost like a dropping kind of like the seed, planting the seed already there as you're moving through. And you really end up realizing yourself, yeah, I I don't want to work for anybody. I don't want to do this. Yeah. What was the defining moment when you said it was the visceral feeling? Because I know like for me, when I finally realized it, it was just kind of like it was kind of like not not like emotional, but it was more so like I you feel like how you you know when you're supposed to go the extra mile at work, and you know because of hard work what you want to give the extra time to, and you know your capability, but you just don't have you just don't have it, and you can't figure out why. And you keep for me, it was like going from job to job to job. I always tell people I've had like 17 different jobs because it's just like I did what I have to do, but you know, what was it for you where you were just like, Yeah, this isn't for me at all?

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Well man, when I started to show up, I wasn't showing up 100% when I wasn't giving 100% to the job because I was giving a percentage of that to other things that I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Um so you already had side hustles.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

I was always, yeah, I had side hustles. I was selling, I was selling merch. Um, I was doing music production at the time. Um, I had a production company. Uh, I was selling merch. This is like, this is this is man, this is at the beginning, beginning. Um, I was this I was looking at figuring out ways how to um make money on on um at the time it wasn't like considered social media as it is what it is considered today, but on it was like, hey, you online on the internet. How do you make money on the internet? And that's what I was trying to figure out uh how to do. So I just had different hustles that I was just running. Again, I was burning in midnight oil. I was getting up early trying to get to work. Yeah. And it'd be it'd be times where because the the type of work that I did, I didn't go work at a uh I didn't have to go in and clock in. I had a work where it was kind of like almost like a work from home in a sense. But, you know, I had to go out into the uh out in the streets and and you know, at the time what I was doing, I had to go to different like gas stations, your Sam's Clubs, your Costco's, where uh they sold tobacco. So like I was, you know, pretty much like a rep. That's what I was a rep. You were a cigarello rep? I wasn't a cigarello rep, but I did uh I did. I'm laughing because I'm supposed to. Yeah, I didn't do cigarello, but I did cigarettes. Oh, so you was working for Marlboro? I was working from, well, at the time it was like RJ Reynolds and then uh Reynolds American. They changed their name. I don't know what the name is now, but anything Camel, Winston. Uh, we were the yo Marlboro was our competitor. So they were the number two company that I'm working with. And uh, yeah, and so it just got it was conflicting, man. Um, it was definitely a conflict because again, I couldn't show up 100% because I was I had, you know, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like having a whole bunch of chicks. You know what I mean? You can only give your your time and attention to so many. And if you got a main one, at some point the main one is gonna figure out something is not right. Yeah. And so that's what that's what ended up happening to me was I was trying to split the difference, but I couldn't, you can't split the difference. You gotta be able to uh uh hone in and zero in on uh on one thing. Um and so once I figured that out, uh, which was like later down the line, that's when my life changed.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

And that moment when where was that was the job that you were at when you had realized that you would you just quit that job and then start your kind of your own thing?

SPEAKER_02 19:57

I went on my own thing, yeah. I went and that was the hardest part. That's probably the hardest part because you have to, you're you're trying to, you have to change the your mentor your mentality has to change because your mentality is okay, you know what? I wake up, I go to work, I you know, there's you know, there's a set way of thinking and doing things. And so I had to get out of that mindset and and get 100% in the mindset of like you don't have a pair, you don't have no parachute, you don't have anything that's gonna save you. So you're on your own. You got to figure this out before you know you wake up the job, okay, there's there's order. Hey, step one, step two, step three, step four. Everything is already built for you when you get to the job. Versus now you have to create your own structure. That's the part, like structure, operation, that's the hardest part to do. Discipline, being able to do it, but also having the knowledge and and uh and understanding of what you need to do. But the the the but for that year that I left, man, when I got when I left the job, it was tough, man. It was like the toughest. I wouldn't even say that year, it was like for years, years it was tough. You know what I mean? So I was I had some ups and downs, man. I I've done some pretty stupid things and made some mistakes along the way. But uh, you know, all those particular things kind of added up to giving me the the wisdom and knowledge that I needed to. So once I was able to to to find the that the thing, that one thing, I was able to take all that information and and and apply it.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Gee, you got so much. Like you always like even by the time I met you, you had so much like wisdom and knowledge to share. And the the thing when you were talking, I thought about bro, is how did you get this like discipline? Like at I'm assuming at that time you were what you were on like what early 20s when you had quit that uh that yeah, I was well no, I was in my mid-20s. You were in your mid 20s at the time, yeah. Okay, yeah, I was in my mid-20s. Were you always like this discipline and regimen? Or like how how did how does a guy develop to be like that?

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Well, for me, it was sports. I had to get up in the morning, I did I remember my dad used to pick. Me up, he'd come, he'd be like there like four o'clock in the morning, banging on the door. I would tell my mom, Mom, please don't open the door, don't open the door. Why did you open the door? I just heard his voice getting closer. I'm like, wait a minute, why is he opening the door? I'm I'm still sleeping. Like, but in my mind, I'm saying this. But so, but that helped me. That it paid off because I'm getting up early in the morning, four o'clock, we go into the gym. Of course, I got school. And then after school, I'm I'm working out. If I got practice, I'm practicing after uh after practice. And then in the summertime where all my friends and everybody else was put going out there playing video games and riding bikes and just having fun running through the city. Uh, I was, you know, that was my regimen. I would get up. I got it was I had food, what I was supposed to eat. There was things I was supposed to eat, things I was supposed to do. So I had a set regimen. And that really helped, uh helped me to understand about you know how to grind it out and what it what will it take, what does it take to be successful and what you need to do. And so that helped a lot. That kind of was that was my foundation that I was able to springboard off of.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

So you learned that early. I feel like so many guys, even like myself, I feel like I wasn't really disciplined until I had to be. Like at like I would say probably after college. That's when I started to get more like disciplined. And I played sports too. And I knew I think I looked at, I was just telling Joy this the other day about like with the boys, like it doesn't matter what they like, they're still going to play a sport at some point because sports builds up so many different facets of real life that you need to know how to do, like working with people, working towards a common goal together, being able to be disciplined enough to train to get to the goal of being better at something. Cause it's like you can play a sport, but obviously as a man, you want to be a little bit competitive. You want to be good at it, you want to be able to progress and get better. And if it's not that thing, then what is the thing that we can be better at? I know you told me at one point, like Martel, your oldest son, was uh doing, was it taekwondo or karate?

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yeah, he was doing um taekwondo. Um and or we're not tack, taekwondo, jujitsu. Jiu Jitsu. I started doing it with them at one point in time because I was just like, wait a minute, you're not gonna you're not gonna better bing me on the top of your head, and I'm not gonna know what to do. Yeah, you're gonna get instructions, but I'm getting them instructions too.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

You're not the only one with the game plan.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Nah, no, we're not we're not, we're not gonna, you're not gonna be coming up in here, you know, hit me with a I'm on my back. Nah, I can't do that. So we we had to get that right.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

How was it? Uh I I I guess I never really uh because uh because Martel is how old? He's gonna be 17. He's gonna be 17. But he's 16. And how old are you?

SPEAKER_02 24:41

I'm 41.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

You're 41. So you were a young father.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

I was, yeah. I was considered a young father. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah. So what was that? I guess like when you became becoming a young father, I feel like has a I feel like that's hard, that's really hard. I feel like being a father right now is really hard. So being a young father, I'm sure, had to have its uh its pitfalls and difficulties. And kind of like, is it kind of like essentially you had to kind of Martell kind of grew up a little bit with you?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Yeah, he did grow up with me. Uh, but at the same time, uh, because uh his mother and I, we were not together. So, you know, so I I had a level of I was able to move a little bit more freely due to the fact that we just wasn't together. But uh when you do uh have when I when you know when he was born, that was the reality hit me, was like, oh, you know what, I need to buckle down and get super serious. Uh but so that is a reality check because that's not something there's certain things that you can uh you can get away you can get away from or you can avoid or you can act, you know, pretend that something's not there, but your child you can't never pretend that they're not there because they're there. Right. Uh so yeah, so that that really helped uh along the way. But um, but again, man, you know, even with that, you know, I've made mistakes, done some stupid stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

So what did you have to learn at that point in time? Because I know you already had the discipline, of course, but becoming a young father at what? Like you had um I was 25 at the time. 25.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

But you know, the thing about it was I was I was not in a father mindset. You know, I'm not versus now fast forward with my two little ones, totally two different uh mindsets, understanding, of course, experience, wisdom, things of that nature. You know, I was still I'm you know, I'm moving around the city. Right. You know, I'm still moving around and I'm still like, you know, I was still distracted by things. It was a lot of distractions. And so I wasn't, I didn't have the same supreme focus that I have right now and understanding. Not not at that particular age. So I was still like, I was still, I was, I had a son, but I was still immature in my ways.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yeah. What did you have to, what do you feel like you learned from that particular time period? And the reason I'm asking is because, bro, I'm just being honest. I have a lot of a couple guy friends that are single fathers, you know, some of them, and they do have to balance time, time between not being with their child's mom and being able to see their son and stuff like that. I feel like that can be so difficult for a lot of guys, um, especially here in Georgia, um, just because of a like a lot of laws. How did you make that work?

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Uh well for me, I where wherever my son was, I tried to be. So if he was, if he was in LA, I, you know, I I try to make sure I'm in LA. If he was in uh Atlanta, I make sure that I'm in Atlanta. Um and so that for me, that's that's was trying to make sure that I was wherever he was that I was. Not everybody had had have that uh that level of just autonomy to move like that. Yeah. But uh I did, you know, and so I made that those particular things uh happen at the time. So that it was it wasn't it wasn't easy. It's still a struggle, still still challenges because at that particular time, you know, I'm still trying to figure out how can I glue something that's going to be that I can stick my flag into and I can carry this out until, you know, something that's that that something with some meat on the bones. Because again, I was just hustling, moving around, uh, but these things would kind of fizzle out at some point. Uh, and so I was still trying to figure that out. With that being the case, I wasn't, I always had to make a decision. As you were saying, it was a split, it was a decision, hey, do I go and spend time with my son? Or do I make an do I make the trade-off is do I make an investment now for the future? And so, um, you know, and so those are those are the decisions and choices I had to make every single day. Um, and you know, I had to, in my mind at the time, once I caught wind of what I was planting my flag in, I knew I had to sink my teeth in it. And I had to, I had to give it everything that I had at that point in time. And that's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah. And during that time, man, I think from what I do know about you, you, when you say you went to LA, that was the time that you were sleeping on your friend's couch. Is that what Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

So I ended up, so I end up, it's crazy. I went to so I'm in LA. I'm sleeping on my cousin's couch at the time. Yeah. And yeah, and so I'm like I'm using her dining room as my content room at the same time. So it was like content room, get, you know, you know, my my little my little cousin had a Barbie. She would always like stick in my face in the morning time when I woke up. I turned, I'm like, okay, I got a Barbie in my face. But uh, yeah, so I I did that, man. And I and that's really where at that that was the that was a pivotal time in my life because like I said, I was doing these different hustles. Every week I had something. And then it was at that moment I realized, oh, this is what I'm about to do. This is I see it. I it was uh I can see so clear of what what what was in front of me, the opportunity, and what I needed to do to get there. And so that's when I started working on the beard company, or the actually at the time it wasn't a beard company. Yeah, it was just me creating content on on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Yeah. How did you come up on just like YouTube and content creation, right? It's just because like I think that that's a obviously you were still you knew you wanted to be a businessman, you had different hustles going, but how did you come up on, you know what? I'm about to invest my time uh and make YouTube videos. Because I think Instagram wasn't really popping like that like then, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Nah, it wasn't like what it is now.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah, like so why YouTube?

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yeah, YouTube was that was the center of gravity. That's where you want to go. Uh and at the time, well, before I I was on YouTube trying different, I've I've been on YouTube trying to different things, or you know, I had business partners and things of that nature. That for me, at like I always, at one point it was just background work. I was just gonna be the background guy, and then and whoever was the star, I was gonna, you know, hey, you're in the front, I play the back, and I do everything on the back end. That was my role up until this moment. It was that moment I was like, you know what? I'm about to be the front guy and I gotta be the background guy at the same time. And so um, so I was trying things on YouTube, and so finally, man, um, it hit me where I was like, oh, you know what? I gotta figure out how I gotta get a, you know, because again, my coins, I was getting low uh with my coins. Uh I didn't I didn't have any coins, but uh I was just I needed some money. So I was like, I gotta get a job. And uh if I gotta get a job, I gotta I gotta make sure that I'm looking, uh looking apart. And then it was at that moment I was like, I don't, I had a beard. I just had grew my beard out. And uh at that moment I was like, I don't even know how to take care of my beard. And then that's when the light bulb hit me. I was like, oh I think this is it. So I went into one, figuring out I needed to validate if this was true. Like if the beard market was a real was is that a real market? Is that a real thing?

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Before, I mean to cut you off, but before, what were the other things that you were trying that you felt like weren't working when you had the you were trying business partners?

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah, so um I told you I was selling, I was doing the merch. Yeah, I had the music production.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Did you just call a clothing line you just made up?

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So I had we had crew necks, we had t-shirts, we had hats, we had hats with um um at the time, uh, what's the cat store that was back in the day in the mall? I think Lids, yep. So we had we had hats with our uh brand with the Lids logo. We couldn't even this at this point we could never, we we we legally we weren't supposed to do it, but I had a connect. So we were able to do, we had the hats and stuff like that. I got pictures and stuff um with those hats in the in the shirts. So we did that, production company, and then from there, I had a um, I had a uh not a fitness company, but what I would do, uh me and my business partner at the time we were in LA, we would go to these different um out in Orange County where people who were going into these facilities for alcohol, for drug rehabilitation. So they're going to these particular facilities. And so what we began to realize was that, oh, you know what? The one thing that they don't have is okay, yeah, they, you know, they're trying to help them with overcoming these particular uh deficits. But what about fitness? What about health? But that's a big part of your you recovering. You got to know what to eat, what to drink. Not they're telling you not to drink, but what do you drink? What do you eat? How do you build yourself back up? And so what we did was we filled, we filled in that gap. So we would go to these different facilities and we I we I would bring in a um at the time a dietitian. I had somebody on the fitness side of it. Um we had to just, we had uh, we would take them to the to the gym. We had a workout regimen for them. They'll bust them in to the gym. So yeah, man. So that was a business that we were running for uh for quite some time. Um I also at the I was I was selling women's shoes online. So I had a a store where I was selling women's shoes, a collected women's shoes. So I would, I would go to uh uh I was on, I was, you know, I would find some a manufacturer out in China, ship them to me, uh, and then I would just you know sell shoes online. So these are just different hustles and stuff that I was doing before I really began to figure out, okay, you know what? This is you know, this I'm gonna plant my my flag into the beard um uh uh space.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Bro was a serial entrepreneur before 30.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Very serial, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah. That I mean that's the I actually didn't know that you were in the business world that long before um before Ev Evan Alexander. That's actually that's actually crazy. You really do this. You've been doing it for a while. When you realize that beard, uh that beard and grooming care was the lane that you wanted to go in, walk me through when you kind of realized that that was the one thing you want to like go all in on. And how how would you describe to me a guy listening that, hey, if you're when you find the thing that this the thing going all in on it? Because and the reason I say that, bro, is because you told me that helped you, that was the advice you told me that got me to where I'm at today. But I think it's so honestly, bro. I don't know if if you would have told me that, I don't, I don't know if I would have been where I'm at today. I'm just being honest with you. I always tell you that, but I have to always give you your flowers and tell you, bro, if you had not told me to go all in on TikTok, I can't say that I would have the audience that I have today and be doing the things that I am doing. And so how did you how does a guy, how do, how does a guy get to the point where they realize, hey, I'm going all in on this and this is the purpose, a direction I should go?

SPEAKER_02 35:39

Well, first I would let me respond to that comment. I appreciate that. Uh, but I all but I also know that you did the work. You any I I can you can point anybody in the direction, but if they don't do the work to get there, I think you would have been successful regardless, you know, to be honest with you. I mean, if we could tell the story how we was at, you know, you would come and just really quick story. This guy would would show up uh to you know my house, which we turned into an office, uh, like every night after work, you know. I mean, this guy would call me, hey, I'm I'm I'm on my way. Matter of fact, I'm here. I'm like, okay. Just to work on his craft and his skill to get better. So for me, when I it's it's hard to get people to work hard. You know what I mean? It's really difficult to get people to care that much about them being for about being successful. And you already had it. You know what I mean? It was just a matter of you just finding the right pocket. And then once you found the right pocket, then at that point, you know, you're here doing this. But to answer your question regarding, you know, it's finding the open market. For me, that was that's the easiest thing to do. I've done everything where I would go into markets that were already saturated and it didn't work for me, you know. And what I what I what I did was I would just try to find, okay, what's the open market, what's the untapped market, what is the the the market that nobody is really um putting a lot of energy and effort into. And then I wouldn't try to go big, I would find something that's narrow because it's easy to talk, it's easy to build a community and talk to people when you can just talk straight to them. If you're doing like 500 million things, no one knows what who what you represent, why like what problem are you trying to solve? And that was another thing fearing out the pain, solving the problem, and being that being that voice and trying to be as loud as possible. So when I identified that the beard in uh market for black men was an untapped market, nobody was no one was talking to us at all. I was like, when I found that out, I was like, okay, this is it. I knew it was it. So that that moment I went, I went so hard that it was impossible to like for me to fail. It was impossible. I mean, I could have failed, but it was impossible based on all the knowledge, everything that I had built up up to that particular moment, all the failures that I had, uh, and but being able to recognize those uh those those pockets for me. I think that's the easiest way to get to where you need to get to is don't try to go to a saturated market. Like don't chase the goal, don't chase um, you know, those headlines. You need to find these markets because that right there is where you're gonna be able to really build your uh your platform are and then you can kind of you know uh move forward from there. But I would say that's key, man. Always find a pocket, a market that no one has really tapped into, really tapping into. And the beard, yeah. If you had other beard companies, they were there were beer companies around, but no beer company that was talking directly to black men.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

So I would have so at the time when I would I would create my YouTube, like every day, I would create a video. I have a video like almost every day, and um and about talking about beers. And at this time, I just turn my phone on, turn it on. No matter if I was walking down the street or walking in my hallway or if I was in the bathroom, I was always on you know on camera, no matter what. If at that time, you know, if I had an idea, I just turned my phone on because I knew the one thing I uh I I always knew is that if you think about something too long and you start thinking about all the possibilities of what can go wrong, you're gonna talk yourself out. You talk yourself out of it. And oh, it's gotta be this, it's gotta be polished, it has to look this way. I saw no, don't get caught up into how it should look. You need to get caught into momentum. Once you get momentum, then at that point, you're gonna you're gonna refine it, it's gonna get better. And matter of fact, it becomes a much beautiful product because you know, when you start from the dirt and then you got something that's very polished and shiny, it's like, oh wow, that that's amazing. And that's what I did. Uh, and so I did that every day, man. I was just getting up every day, just doing that, doing that, doing that. And then, you know, uh just really started to build and cultivate a community. Again, I was just doing stuff on YouTube. I wasn't even selling any products at the time.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

So, and then it was at that time when I found out when the when the when people when some of the guys would hit me up on a DM, hey man, I got such and such product. How do you use this product? I'm thinking, like, you don't you don't know how to use the product? They're not telling you how to use the product. So I was just like, oh, so then another ding ding ding. Okay, I know I know what I need to do now. I need to figure out how to create how I I need to figure out how to create product. But I was like, man, how do I create product? Right? But how do I do this? This is a whole new world. Creating product, it was just like, I saw you, so then I was like, you know what? I can do I can leverage other companies, these small uh companies that were, you know, have beer products, leverage them, create a marketplace, and then sell their, then be the be the middleman. I have the community, they want to get to my community. I built a community, so now I'm just the middleman and bridging these two companies together. And so that's what I started doing at that time. And so once I start and I once I use that platform to help build my community and create a marketplace, then you know I kind of took took it off from there.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Bro, I love everything about your story so much. It even as you're talking about it, it helps me remember so many things that I saw. And look, y'all, everything that he's saying about turning the camera on, about not sitting on an idea too long, it's so true because it wasn't until like after I had already been working with you for a little while, I told you, like, you know, like when you follow somebody, you get subscribed to somebody's channel on YouTube, old videos, YouTube will serve you up like old videos. And bro, this guy, you would see I would see videos of him going into the grocery store, picking up different beer items off of the aisle and talking to the camera saying, Oh, you should use this for this, like through the grocery store down the street. That was so inspiring for me because it literally is, it literally is a testament of what you said, like picking up, doing the hard work and over time, compound effect. And you get better on camera over time. That was something, another thing I learned from you when I was coming over to your house and we were doing the videos. And guys, this is at a time in my life where I was working at Tesla. I had just recently moved back to Atlanta and B messages me and he says, Yo, you want to make some videos? You know, you want to like come work with uh Evan Alexander? I'm like, sure. I look, I look and I'm like, dang, this guy's popping. This guy already has motion on Instagram, got motion on YouTube. I'm telling my girlfriend, which is my wife now at the time, I'm like, hey, this big YouTuber hit me up and said he wants to, you know, I'm like, this is my big break. This is my big break. You feel me? And so uh just going over there and working with you, bro, I realized like it made me realize the hard work. It made me realize what it does take to be a creator, like videos in and out, in and out, and doing it yourself. Because at the time I don't think you had really a videographer or anything like that. You knew all the angles and stuff, uh, the setup yourself. Um, so I just think that that is so important to stick uh to stay on about how you picked up the camera and you still made it work. Nobody had to tell you, but you still did it. It didn't have to look polished. And it's so true when you said um you really sit and I sit even now, bro. I'll sit on an idea. If I think about an idea, whether I'm on a stairmaster, I'm running, or you know, just outside and I'll think about something. If I sit on that idea too long or it stays in my my notepad too long, doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen in the organicness that it would happen had you just maybe made the made the idea, moved on the the idea within the first, I don't know, two or three days. For you, it was you turned on that thing in like five minutes. Oh, you hungry?

SPEAKER_02 43:32

I wasn't waiting to cook, I was putting something in the microwave. Yeah, it's like something and there. Yeah, I was skipping that. Uh so yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

And then to go back into what you said when you said about picking a a market, like you don't want to go somewhere that's too saturated. And I think that correct me if I'm wrong, I'm trying to uh to paint the picture, right? So you have the picture of the market is men's grooming, right? And then you're like men's grooming is very broad. So then you You want to get a little bit deeper into that, and then you found beard, what uh which is a uh a subculture of men's grooming. So then you have men's beard, and you realize that that part was nobody was speaking to another subculture of that, the audience of black men who have beards. So that was the open market where you were like open season, that's me. I'm getting in there. And that's where you started making all of the content and kind of gaining the traction from there. How did when you um created the market, when you started seeing that you were creating the marketplace, which I would think that's like the trust that you have from your audience, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Yeah, yeah. No, um, yeah, you definitely want to build the uh the trust uh before you try to, you know, sell something to them.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Yeah. And that's when the guys were DMing you and saying, hey, how do you use this product? How do you uh do this, do that? Did you are when they were messaging you, were you um and asking you for about uh advice on that? Is that the point that you kind of knew you knew you wanted to create a men's grooming brand?

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Well, at the time when they were asking me the questions, I again I didn't have the marketplace at this point. Then once I got an I mean, enough people started hitting me up, I was just like, oh, you know what? Uh they and I'm like, well, they was like, well, you know, uh, how do you use this? Or maybe they they wanted to know uh about different products, different brands. Because again, they were kind of, you know, they'll go in their kitchen and say, Oh, here's some olive oil, put it on their hand, smack their face with it, and or they'd get some coconut butter, or they use, you know, shampoo for their hair, for their beard, right? So they were trying. And I was just like, well, man, I gotta figure out, you know, about other other brands out here. And I was like, well, these some brands over here in in this particular corner, you you don't know about these brands? You know, so I was like, okay, well, let me go ahead and create the marketplace. I create the marketplace. Over time, as I began to run the marketplace, I began to realize that, oh, you know what? They have my trust. But then once I hand them off to the brand, then I'm still responsible for them. But I don't have any uh, I don't have any equity or I don't have any, I'm not, I'm not in the brand. I don't, I don't work for the company. I don't know what they do on a day-to-day basis. So I'm relying on their customer uh service team or customer experience team to, you know, uh take care of my, you know, my community. Well, at the time, you know, because of that, because it was a big again, I found a gap, you know, these companies, they had other endeavors and they had other focuses and my focus on black men with with uh with beard. So then, you know, I, you know, at the point I um my now my business partner Joe, you know, we got together and we created uh our business, Evan Alexander Grooming. Because I was like, you know what? We need to not we need to walk them through the whole entire process, but we need it, we need to control the process for them. Because if we're if we're getting them through the door and then we're handing them off, then they're coming back and then you know, they have they feel a certain way, then they're not looking for the company. They're looking at me because the company doesn't have no face to it. Right. Because it's a brand. Me, they know, they they know me. They like, oh yo, B, what happened to this? Why my product? Because I don't got my product. What this, this. It was like there was all there was these gaps. And so I was like, oh, you know what? I gotta figure this out because this is not sustainable.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

And so at that point, I was just like, you know what? Let me go ahead and create a uh a brand and be able to take care of my community the way that uh they deserve to be taken care of.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

That's so true. And I I love that you said that because it's like the audience trusts you. So it's like whoever, it's almost like like you got a homie, right? And your homie's like, yo, you know anybody who fix cars? And it's like, but he knows you you know a lot about cars. So he's like, oh, any tires anybody I should get from, you know, a tire distribution place or whatever. And he's like, You're like, you're like, yeah, you can go to this particular place. You point them in that direction and then give them horrible service. They don't tell them anything, they overcharge them. It's like they their feelings really aren't with them. Their feelings is coming back to you because I trusted you. You told me to go here. So now I'm feeling jacked up. And so it's like, let me just take the middle man out at that point and provide, provide you with not only the trust, the content, but also the product to help you. And I think that's so smart at the end of the day because it you it's a and again, you saw another open market. If the audience is there, then obviously the product and the sales are there as well. How did you meet Joe?

SPEAKER_02 48:41

So Joe and I, we met before uh before I before I was even doing the beard, you know, content. And before all that, uh, I met Joe. Uh, this is we met at a at a boys and girls club. It was a fundraiser. And a a a friend, uh, we had a mutual friend introduced us. And so that's how Joe and I met at that particular time. And then from there, we just, you know, we just built our friendship uh, you know, from you know, from you know, from that particular point.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

How was uh Evan Alexander born? Like the idea, the whole like thing between you two.

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Well, I already had a uh I already had created a viable product, right? MVP, you know, figure out, create a my create a viable product, and I already understood what they needed, what kind of products that the guys needed. So I had a I had an education based on that because I was learning from these other brands as well. I was learning what they were doing well, and I was learning what they were not doing well. And I start also figured out where the opportunities were where they just was not filling in the gaps. So um, so at that particular time, um, because I had all this particular knowledge, so you know, Joe and I, we got together and and it was funny because I was just like, man, Joe, I was like, you know, um, I had moved back to Atlanta and uh I was staying with Joe. Uh and then I was told him, I say, man, I just need two months, man, and and you know, so I could get on my feet. Two months turned into, you know, what, be like eight years, eight years strong now. So and um, but you pitch him the idea? I pitched him the idea, and at first he turned me down initially. He was like, nah, you know, he he was in real estate. He was a you know, a big, a big guy in the real real estate gang. He was doing amazing, he was successful. And he was like, nah, you know what, that's just not really my thing. But every time Joe would come in, again, I again I would work 24, 48 hours. So Joe would leave work, he would come home, he would wake up, go back to work, and he'd see me still up. So he was he took an interest and you know, he started to look at certain things behind the scenes, the operation aspect. And he would give me advice here. Hey man, have you tried this? Have you thought about this?

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Joe's great for that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 50:54

He's really great. So I would take his advice. I'm like, this stuff is actually working. And I asked him, I said, Man, have you, you know, considered, you know, us becoming business partners? And then, you know, he was kind of like, nah, nah, that's not really my thing. And then eventually, just one one day, he was just like, Hey man, you know what? Yeah, let's go ahead and do it. And so That's why y'all were still roommates, right? We were still, yeah, we were still roommates at the time. And yeah, he was just like, hey, man, yeah, let's go ahead and do it. And at that point, that's really what really took it to the, took that to the next level. We still didn't have, I still had the marketplace, mind you. Right. I'm still doing the marketplace stuff. And then we uh ended up forming the business Evan Alexander, Evan being his last name, Alexander being my son's middle name. And so we put Evan, uh, Evan Alexander together, and we would then we, you know, we we hit the ground running, you know. So, but the great thing about it at that particular time, you know, the things are already kind of set and built. And so now all we needed to do is put something legitimate on top of it on that platform. The platform was there. Now we need to add something that's gonna be um some meat on the bones.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

Yeah. How how does one figure out if they need a business partner in their business? Or and if they do figure that part out, the right business partner.

SPEAKER_02 52:08

One, you got to be honest about what you are, what you're strong at and what you're not strong at. Because if you're not honest about that and it's all ego, you're not gonna get far. Okay. So for me, I understood that uh Joe was great at operations. That's not where at that time, that's not where I was at. I was at on the front, I was the front guy, he's the back guy. So I was putting a lot of my energy on the front. The back end, I wasn't putting a lot of energy on on the back end. So we that's established, okay? So now we understand uh the the order. Uh and so once I was able to identify, because of course, just taking some of his ideas and his ideas was working, I was like, oh, this guy knows he knows what he's doing. Right. I uh and we we've already had a prior relationship before that. Right. So it, you know, I already knew that he was a hard worker and he was very successful what he what he what he did. But again, this is a different market. Um, but um, I was like, hey man, you know, do your thing and I'm gonna do my thing. And then it just made it easier for us to really be able to be clear about what our roles are. Now, and that's very, very key, just be very clear. Now, in terms of finding uh finding someone, there's a couple ways you can go about it. Either the relationship way, where someone you know, you you've seen their track record, you you kind of you know how they they they operate and move, there's a level of respect. Um, then okay, then and you know their skill sets, and if they're okay with that, then yes. The other way would be then to uh you know go online and you know, you can go on X and see if you can find someone there who's maybe an expertise in something and see if you can find someone in that particular department or you know, uh LinkedIn, see if you can find someone there uh as well. That's the that's the other the the other end of it. The cold approach. That's the code approach. The cold approach, that's gonna take a little bit more time because when you have your business, you're gonna be like, this is my baby, right? And so you're gonna go through that that process and you know, for and to trust somebody else with that. Even if it's a warm approach, you're still gonna have uh, you're gonna be holding, holding that tight, and it's gonna be a uh a process of just kind of letting it go. But those are two two ways, either somebody you know or you just try to find someone um online. Uh, I think if you can build a relationship with someone, that's a lot easier than finding somebody online because for sure. You just don't you the the the you just don't know what you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Yeah. I've been wondering that, you know, for a long time. And yeah, I always commend you guys' relationship, even just watching it um from a outside perspective. Like, dang, like y'all have like legitimately y'all have the perfect, perfect like business relationship, uh business partner relationship because you realize like your strengths and your weaknesses, and you guys can kind of move around, you know. One thing Joe's not doing though, he's not getting on the camera though. And I mean, and I think I think that's okay, you know, because I even just working with Joe myself, I can see the skill set because he is proficient in that, the operations, he knows the numbers, and he's very particular about it. And I think you need someone like that. And I think on the other side where you're upfront camera facing, and do you do product development too?

SPEAKER_02 55:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Yeah. So that kind of like that makes sense for the look and feel of the brand and some some of the aesthetics. So I don't know, man. I I don't know. I'm I'm asking just in case, you know, one day I I need to find me a business partner.

SPEAKER_02 55:37

I mean, man, you know, it in the in if we thinking about basketball hooping, that's kind of how I look at the game. I look at it that way. 100% of nothing is a hundred 100% of nothing is nothing, you know, and we can only get so far. We can only get push that boulder so far up the up the mountaintop that, yeah, it may go down because you got the momentum, but then there's a whole nother mountain you got to get up, get up to. And so it it becomes a a play to where we can't do it all ourselves, you know. Uh we we we need someone there who can see. It's like football, right? You have someone who's looking down on the field, and you have someone on the field. You that it's important, you know. You have you need to have these particular pieces, man, because it's certain things you just won't see. It's like things that I it's things that I was so I was blind to because I was so focused in this particular space that Joe was able to see. He was able to expand the business, expand our products, uh our categories. Uh, you know, I was focused on beards. We got into hair, we got into uh body care, we got into face care. He was able to do the deals and and negotiate the deals and things of that nature with these particular manufacturers and then hiring people from he wanted to hire people. I didn't want to hire anybody. He was like, yo, we need to get people in the door. Yeah, we ordered to order a scale. So even when you know, you would come to the house, you see how the operation operation was. It was like we had like eight people in one tiny room, yeah. And so, but we had our we had the uh uh make we had the we was making product, so we we had our little product section there. We were we was putting the product together, putting it in the boxes and shipping it out to UPS or or whatever, FedEx or USPS, right? We was we would that was a process, and I wouldn't have been able to do that successfully. I tried it. The furthest I was able to get at that point in time was just deliver picks and cones. I couldn't do nothing else. Like I was like, and then create content on top of that. No, so there's leverage, right? So I had to figure out okay, how do I get leverage? And that was been my whole game. And you understand the game, like leverage, right? So how do you figure out how to um get into these other markets? Uh and so for me, bringing on somebody with Joe, and that it is it is tough. I'm not gonna uh downplay that. It's tough when you've been doing it for so long. And who do you trust? Yeah, who's going to who's gonna die on this hill like you? Yeah, that's the part. Like I know Joe, he's gonna die on this hill just as much as I'm gonna die on this hill. So I know that there's nothing that he wouldn't do for this particular, for this business that we have, and for me, and I it's nothing I wouldn't do for him, right? So when you have that level of trust, and we've been able to build that, don't get me wrong, like we we we've had our ups and downs and things of that nature, but like anything, man, partnerships, business, uh relationships, and things of that nature, it takes time to kind of form and get polished.

SPEAKER_01 58:27

Guys, I want to talk to you for a quick second. I hope you are enjoying this podcast that you're seeing right now. While you're watching this podcast, I would love to invite you to join our Patreon community. It's the first link in the description. And as you will join our Patreon community, you'll get a behind the scenes of what it's like to put together this production. If you follow me on any other platforms, you know that this is new for me. And I'd love to talk to you guys and have a deeper conversation of what it means to build a podcast and how difficult this is and how much fun I'm having while building it. You'll also get a deeper understanding of value of what each of our guests know and what they're really good at. You'll be able to get your questions answered and you'll also be able to learn more about what you may not see on this pot right now. Thank you guys for listening to this, and let's get back to the show. What have been the pitfalls, like difficult parts that where you guys have had to go through with building a creator-led brand?

SPEAKER_02 59:19

Man, the pitfalls, whoo, where do we start? Uh like one, I would say, how do you price your product? You know, how do you price yourself? You know, what like how do you figure that part out? And then how to figure out on the back end, because you know, if you don't know how to do the the the your PLs, like you got money coming in, money going out. And it's easy. Like it can happen so quickly, like, yo, I'm making a lot of money on the front end, but on the back end, when I'm looking at my net net, because that's what matters. Gross don't matter, it's your net net, it's about what you keep, it's not what you can make at the end of the day. And so when you're looking at the the net, um, that's going to, you got to understand, like, for example, one of the things that are a big pitfall for us is this figuring out, okay, after our expenses, after we, you know, we paid out that, what can we discount? No, you go online, you see people doing 20, 20%, 30%, 80%, 70% off, whatever, right? They're giving a discount. Well, whatever you discount, that's gonna take off your net. So whatever that discount is, let's let's say my discount is 20% and my net is 10% is, let's say my net is 20% and my uh discount is is is 20%. Well, you know, I I'm not gonna end up with 10 10 net at the end at the end of the day. I'm gonna end up with less than that because every time I'm selling that particular product, that's just taken away from that 10% or that 20% uh net that uh that I have. So we didn't know that at the we didn't look at that at the beginning. We were just selling, sell products out of get product out the door, make content, get product out the door. Um, but then we begin to realize like, wait a minute, like something's not right. Like what's what's coming in and and and what we're able to keep and being able to pay our bills, we're robbing Peter to the the to pay Paul, you know what I mean? So robbing Peter to pay Paul. That's what we're doing. No, literally, yeah. And that's what's happened, like in that's what starts to happen when you you just the the the things you just don't know. Yeah, you know, there's the the the it's not it's not what you know that you don't know that you need to be concerned with. It's just what you don't know that you don't know. That's what you got to be concerned with. That's the part. It's the e these are the blind spots, the blind areas that you don't have. Unless you have somebody there who can mentor you and tell you, hey, these are your blind spots. But even then, they have blind spots too.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

You know what I mean? So there's there's levels to this in terms of, you know, when you're thinking about at least, you know, how we think about business and what some of our pitfalls have have been. You know, another pitfall was that we had overcompensated and we brought too much product, you know. So we another thing that we did was we went into a category that we shouldn't have been into. So we got into the soap category, you know. So we were selling soaps. So like bar soaps. Bar soaps.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

We selling bar soaps. That shouldn't have been a not to say that we don't eventually get into that category, but that shouldn't have been a category that we got into at that particular time. It's timing. So that wasn't a time to get into that category. So here we are now, we selling these bar soaps at a discount, you know, to get rid of the to get rid of the product. Because it's not a right now, it's not a good match because you gotta be able to, you gotta be able to sell the product, you gotta market, you gotta run ads, this stuff costs money. And here you have like all these particular uh categories. And if you're not able to, if you don't got the, and we find this this is coming from our pocket. We don't have a uh a big bank that's you know bootstrapped. We bootstrapping this all the way to the top, so we don't have nobody saying, hey, you know what I mean? Like Uber, Uber is not wasn't bootstrapped. They had people investing in it. They not, it was like several years ago, like a couple years ago, they just started making a profit before they was in in the negative for a while. And that's what happens, right? But that's a different business model. Our business model is bootstrapping, so every nickel, every dime, every lint, uh, every thread, everything has to be accounted for. Um, and so when you are just you you gotta be able to be intentional about the product because you know you gotta sell this product, but let's just say if you got fifty thousand dollars to spend on ads in a month and you you putting that into one category versus spreading it out amongst five different categories, you're watering it down. You're not gonna be able to get to the same amount of people with $50,000 in one category versus five categories.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

That makes me think. So, what is you guys' hero product now?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:33

So now our number one product that we sell is the My Hydration, it's a beard leave-in conditioner. That thing is excellent. That's our number one selling uh product. And then beard is our number one uh category. Hair loss is our second category, and then skincare after that. So it's it's being able to being able to really begin to say, okay, what's our bread and butter? Let's keep our bread and butter. And then let's say, let's see if we can have a little bit of something on the side if we can and we can build. But those are just some of the pitfalls and some of the lessons, you know, that that we've that we've learned is taking on too many expenses at one time, you know, because you got to manage these expens expenses. And so, but those just, you know, you just you just you live and you learn and you build and and we're still here, we're still strong. So, you know, we've been um, you know, we've we've we've been punched in the face, but we just we never was KDO. We never was knocked out.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

Yeah. How long were you have you have you guys been in business?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:29

Uh it's been it's going on, it's eight years.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:33

Eight years. And did you obviously you had already had the uh narrow focus of the beard market because of your content um and the channel, but did you know immediately, was was uh the my hydration, was that the first product you guys created?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

No. Um the first product that I created was and which was pain, was was just painful for me, was the beard oil. Why? Why is it pain? Because I was doing the I was putting all the ingredients. I still have my notebook, all the ingredients. I'm writing down how much ingredients I put, and then we made like 30, about 30, 35 iterations. I would go, hey Joe, which and Joe has a very peculiar scent. So you just can't give him something, and he's like, oh man, this is excellent. In your mind, I'm thinking it's excellent. To him, it's not excellent. By the time I got to the 15th one, man, my head was down. I was like, man, here you go. You want, hey man, check this out, bro. I was I was just like, man, check this. He's like, no, that's not it. That's not it. I'm like, this is not it. Okay. So I go back into the lab, make another iteration, make another iteration. And then finally, gave him, he was like, oh, this is it. I'm like, finally, I wouldn't even have to. I was just like relieved. I didn't have to make the product again. I was just like, man, what's going on? I'm like, I was like, man, you shouldn't have with your stamp. Like, how do you smell that? How do you notice this off? It smells excellent to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Was he the only one, or did you try it on like different people?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Uh he was pretty much mainly the only one. We have people who come in and they will smell it, but he was like the mainly the only one uh who smelled it. So we had a couple people who who would smell it as well, too. Um but again, Joe is like it has to be 100% like in it for for him, for his scent prof. He has a peculiar scent profile. And uh, and so yeah, so we got it right. And uh, yeah, man. So we start cooking up, cooking up, and then we started trying to make bombs. I started, I started, I so we got I we got the pot out, just uh, you know, a pot that we were making noodles on in. We got that. We trying to make up the bomb. Oh man, it was a disaster, man. That bomb was a disaster. That bomb took us so long to figure out how to really get that right. That was a disaster. And so then we went from beard oil to bomb, and then the leave-in beer conditioner to my hydration, and then we went into the beer wash and other products and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

So it took you a second to get to the hero product, which is the biggest pusher of the business.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:59

Yeah, because think about it, everybody was selling beard oil, everybody and mama, everybody literally everybody and their mama, even to this day. Yeah. So for us, we can't, we weren't gonna stand out in the beard oil, right? But I all but I knew, I always knew this one thing. I say, you know what? What's the one thing that everybody is complaining about? Man, my beard is dry. My beard is dry. Well, beard oil, they would say, Oh yeah, beard oil is is a it moisturizes, but people are thinking that it it adds water to your beard. No, it that's not what it does. So it's it's a sealant. So it would, if your beard is dry, it's gonna seal uh it was gonna seal in the dryness. If your beard is hydrated, it's gonna seal in the hydration. That's it. That's simple. But guys were sealing in dryness, so of course their beer would be dry. So then I was like, oh, we need a leave-in beer conditioner, right? Something that's gonna leave in, something that's gonna keep their beard nice, moisturized throughout the day. And we ended up uh getting to that point, making that product. No one in the market had that particular product. Had a leave-in beer conditioner at the time, no one had a leave-in beer conditioner. What year is this? This was 20, this 2017. 2017. Because again, I had already been doing the marketplace. So I already knew what products that we needed. No one had when we came into the game, no one had a leave-in beer conditioner. I was like, oh, this is it. I already know this is it. I had already did like a little test trial a little bit, you know what I mean? But I already knew that the leave-in beer conditioner was the angle in the door, and we would able to stand out again. Goes right back to that thread. Find the blue ocean. Don't go into a crowded space. Yeah, that's not where you you're gonna, it's gonna take too much, re too many resources to try to stand out in a crowded space. Go to where nobody is and excel.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:36

That makes sense again, because you're you're finding uh open market where people aren't uh crowded in the space. I didn't know that, that nobody in 2017 had a leave-in beer conditioner at all. Because for me, even to this day, like that that is the main go-to thing. You honestly, you get out the shower, or before you go somewhere, or before you go at night, you can use that. It it can stand alone by itself to be able to get your beer hydrated and still look good. What are the I I saw you made a video about beard oil. I and I I I felt I felt some uh some feelings about how you feel about beer oil from when I watched that video and when I just heard you talk about how you make like 15 different beer oils. Even though it's so common for guys, what is the common misconception about beard oil and how should guys properly be using beer oil to aid them in their beer journey?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

Well, as I was saying, they think that beard oil is all they need. They think that, you know, it hydrates the beard, it adds water to the beard. It doesn't. It's a sealant, it's it seals in moisture. It's that's why it says it's moisturized. Moisturize is a marketing term, it's not even a scientific term at all. That's number one. And so when you think of, because it has moisture in it, the kind of people think, okay, you know what? This is all, this is all I need for my beard. No, you need to, is it's there's there's a uh there's layers to it. So the first layer you have is of course, you know, um, I'm kind of gonna get into the middle of the routine, is that you got to put the leave-in beer conditioner, right? Then that's gonna hydrate the beard, then you add the beard oil or and or the beard uh beard bomb or beard butter to seal in that particular moisture and to kind of tame it and you know, uh give it that shine.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:18

Yeah. And what because I I heard that uh beer, beer serum was supposed to help you, beer oil was supposed to help you grow your beard. If you don't have a beard, does that help you grow your beard?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:29

No, the beard is is developed underneath your skin. The follicle sits in the skin. So that's how that that part, it helps to sustain the beard. It helps with the once the beer comes out of the skin, and so the beard is not breaking off, that you have can you know consistent growth, it's going to help with helping the beard grow and stimulate it from that particular standpoint. But um be if before it comes out of the skin, um, it does nothing. It's only when the beard comes out of the skin and you want to, because if you don't have anything that's going to help with uh sustaining the beard, then all it does is it's gonna grow and break off. It's like a dry, it's like a tree. If a tree was just dry and didn't get any moisture, yeah, it would just the limbs will continue to break off and it would never be able to glow grow and flourish.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

Yeah, man. That uh that I feel like that is so much uh helped me grow my beard. So I feel like I've learned so much about beards from you, but the beard oil seems like it's always something that you may can take out, I feel like, or kind of you can put back in. But that that hydration, and I feel like the bomb, you told me about the bomb. I think I saw you, sorry, when we did that that liquor, that liquor video, and you were saying how important the bomb is. Um, can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

Yeah, the bomb, I would think that the the reason why the bomb is is, and again, this it all depends where you are in terms of your beard length. So if your beard is long, longer, uh, versus if you have a five o'clock shadow, then anybody who has a five o'clock shadow, you don't need to use a beard, uh beer bomb. If your beard is, if you have a medium-sized beard uh and and up, then that's where a beer bomb would be effective because beer bomb has uh we have wax, butters, and some oils in there, but it's the wax that's gonna help with taming the beard, keeping the beer tame, nice. Uh, and then that's why you wanna you wanna go ahead and tap into that um uh the the beer bomb. And so that's that's why I think like the beer bomb is probably one of the most underrated um products in the whole collection.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:35

What is the biggest goal for Evan Alexander right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:39

The biggest goal is profitability, making sure we're prof profitable. That's the we're focusing on profitability, uh, we're focusing on increasing our AOV. Uh, we're focusing on uh and and increasing our subscription. And so those are like the three things that uh we've been really uh focusing on or focused on for the for this year.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:00

Okay. What does AOV mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:02

Uh sorry, uh average order value. So it's so the average order value is that when somebody comes in and they make a purchase, uh so let's say if you make a purchase and you pay $25 and let's say somebody else pays uh $50, then you just take the average of the two of those two orders, and that that's gonna be your average order value.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:22

And you want to increase that from what is it right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:25

So right now we're at about $53, $52 and some change. So we want to get that to $75 at some point.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:33

Are you, I don't know if you're able to say, but are you guys looking at acquisition at some point?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:38

Or no, no, we don't we don't want to do any acquisitions right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:42

Uh you said profitable, that's why I asked.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:45

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. No, we're not looking into any acquisitions at this particular time. Okay, nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

And one of the questions I had, bro, is why I feel like we skipped over it earlier, but why why are you passionate about men's grooming? Like, why are you passionate about helping men with this section of their lives? Like, well, what is what is the deep passion behind it?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:07

Well, I go back to you know, when I was just getting started and I had to go look for a job and I had to go on these job interviews, and of course, my presentation was very important for me to get into the door or increase the probability of me getting the job. And so um, because at that time I didn't know how to, you know, uh navigate the beard um and I was lost. Uh, and that just kind of created some friction at that time. And when that point of creating friction, you just don't know, well, dang, like, you know, there's certain points of resume. Okay, I got my resume right, okay, uh, I got my suit right. I got those things, right? You can see, you know, those things are the you got those things in in order. But then it's it's the grooming aspect of it. Or do I got that right? Or is it is it in order, you know, with some with some things off. Like, you know, for me, I didn't know that at the time. And so when it, when I knew that my it, my pie, if I think about a pie graph, when I knew that that part of that pie was not complete, then me going into uh an interview, I didn't have the level of certainty, confidence, understanding, and that wasn't giving off. You know, like it's like it just wasn't, you know, you know, when you clean, you coming out the barbershop, like it don't matter what's happening in the world, you're gonna come up with the best ideas when you come out that barbershop. You can go in there, like, man, down on your luck, you know, head down, don't know what's gonna happen from tomorrow to today. You come out that barbershop, you're like, oh, I got it. I do. It's a it's a it's a it's a it just really does something to your attitude and that the way that you see the world. Uh, and so that to me was like, okay, you know what? If this can change for me, I know that this can change for others because I know that they're they're they're having their own challenges and things of that nature in the same vein. So that's for that's why I'm super passionate about this um this part of uh as far as the business, men's when it comes to men's grooming and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:01

And in beards, that's like your, I would say almost like your hero piece content, your the thing you started out with. But in terms, it's turned into a big sector is hair loss for you. And that particular part, I feel like it's very common. I mean, beards, but I feel like hair loss touches because only so many guys, there are a lot of guys that have beards, but not all guys have beards. But all guys have hair and experience hair loss at some point or another. What brought you to that particular part in making your content and making the product for Evan Alexander?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:37

Again, my my experience. I experienced hair loss. You did? Yeah. Bro, your hairline crispy is well where the hair loss? Well, where the hair loss at? Well, you can get hair loss in your crown, you can get hair loss at the top of your head. It's not just your hairline, and and it's you'll you'll you you'll be surprised. That's a lot of guys who are thinning in their crown, uh, and who are thinning in the top of their head. And some of them are camouflaging it, right? With sprays, with how they're how they're getting their hair cut, uh, with them. Some of them are growing their hair. And Beijing. Yeah, like people are, you know, they're camouflaged. They're wearing a hat, things of that nature. Uh, and so for me, uh, I started off with in the top on the top of my head, I was thinning. And I didn't notice that because I went when I went to my barber, my barber was like, oh man, your hair is coming out profusely. When she was what, you know, my barber's washing my hair, she's like, Your hair is coming out profusely. I was like, what? My hair is coming out. Like, what are you talking about? So I sat on it for a little bit and then I was like, you know what? Let me go figure this out. Right? I need it, I need to know if it happened, if it, if I'm losing my hair or what was going on. I went to a dermatologist, it was confirmed. I was diagnosed with two different types of hair loss, telogen of fluvian and androgenic alopecia, right? Which is, you know, which is very common. Um, and then at that moment, you know, I was like, okay, what can I do about this? And then I just went on, again, I just went down this rabbit hole of deep research to try to figure out a solution to my problem. And then at that moment, came up with a product, started using it. Uh, I went to the my dermatologist told me to come back three months later. And I went to my dermatologist. But this is the thing. So my dermatologist asked me two questions. Hey, do you well ask me one question? And uh it was like, hey, you know, you know, hey, I got monoxidil. And I was just like at the time, I was like, oh, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to mess with the monoxidil stuff. So then I was like, you got anything like natural, something like that? And she was like, Yeah, we have, you know, we have this particular product, salt palmetto, and with some other something else. And then I started thinking, I was like, I got back home, I started thinking, I was like, wait a minute, I'm about to pay $50 for a bottle of oil. I can make this oil myself. And I can charge less.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:47

And what what where was where were you at this point? Is this you already had the company?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:51

I already had the beer products. Uh-oh. So I already had, I we already had the beer products, we had the whole line. So I already knew, I already understood chemistry, I understood the product. I know I built, I made the beard oil, we made the beer bomb, like we made these particular products. So I already knew what needed, like how to make product. So once I knew that, like they would, they the pharmacy was trying to give this to me for $50. I was like, oh no, I can go ahead and figure this out. Figured it out, put together, got an oil, start using that, um, and then start using some shampoo and conditioner, all natural. Uh, things that had like salt palmetto, stinking at a root peppermint, uh, peppermint oil, um, this things that would help with creating a healthy environment for my for my scalp. So I was just like, let me go ahead and try it out. And the best way to know that it works is when I go back to my dermatologist, and my dermatologist is gonna either say, Hey, your hair improved, or two, or B, it didn't improve. So that's how I was gonna know if the product worked. Three months later, went back to my dermatologist. She's like, Oh, wow, your hair has been improving. I was like, Oh, okay. Went back to the house, told Joe, oh, we got something. Let's go ahead and put this into the street. Oh, we're cooking. We cooking that. We cooking. We got something, Joe. We're gonna have to go ahead and and mass produce this. And that's what we did. We started mass-producing our uh hair repair serum. Uh, we start, which that's what I started with, with my hair. Um, and we started mass producing the uh our stimulating um shampoo and and conditioner. Um, and then from there we started building out the line with our growth vitamins and gummies and and and derma rollers. So uh so it all started with, again, it started with me and my a problem that I had. If I can fix or if I can fix a problem for me, then I know I can help other people fix a problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:28

So then not only did he just go from there, but during the pandemic, I then, you know, of course, everybody's at home. I was like, oh, you know what? Um, I had a friend who was already a tricologist that I had been, you know, working with um some time ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:44

And for our audience, can tell us what a trichologist is.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:46

So essentially a tricologist is a person who focuses on hair. They only focus on hair. Helping, if you have, if you're experiencing hair loss, uh, whatever degree of hair loss you're experiencing, they just primarily focus on hair and they look at it from a whole uh from a holistic standpoint, right? They they're not looking at your, you know, your eyebrow, they're not looking at your nose, your ear, your eye, they're not looking at any of those particular things. They're just focused on your hair and looking at it from a holistic standpoint. What are all the different layers that that's this that can be impacting your hair? So, my friend, tricologist, uh master uh uh uh in tricology. And so ended up reaching out to my friend who was uh it's like, hey, you know what? You need to go ahead and become a tricologist because you're into this stuff. You're like really, you really know your stuff. You you know if you're already doing it, if you're already doing the research, if you go ahead and just go ahead and get certified and become a tricologist, and now you can add an extra layer to your bill.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:42

So that's what I did. Um got certified in uh tricology, went through my classes and things, things of that nature. Um, and so from there, that kind of just um um propelled me to kind of just take it a step further to not only just provide product, but not also uh I can provide service. So now I'm doing uh uh hair loss uh consults.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:04

Nice, nice. So you do that in tandem with selling the product too. So you still do um so how do you go about adding that? How do you go about adding that to the business? Is that something that like is through straight through Evan Alexander or you on the side?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:19

Yeah, it comes through Evan Alexander.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:21

Yeah, it comes through Evan Alexander. So, and that's kind of how that really has kind of changed the way I look at our business, or at least the front end of the business now, where it was before it was beard. Now it's like, okay, it's hair loss. That's the deepest pain point. 80% of men are gonna experience hair hair loss at one point in their life. 80% of men. 80%. 80% of men. At some point in their life, they're gonna experience hair loss.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:45

What's the biggest reason why so many guys are experiencing hair loss?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:49

Uh, there's several different reasons. Um, it can be uh they're not taking care of their scalp. It can be their uh it can be health related, right? Uh, you know, they're just not taking care of their bodies. Uh it can be stress related, and stress can lead to it can be job, it can be related. Like I get guys, it can be like I talked to some of my clients, I said, hey, you know, when did you start experiencing hair loss? Oh man, well, you know what? You know, me and my girl, we broke up, blase, blase, blase. And I'm like, oh, okay. Then I start experiencing hair loss. So the thing about it is we, you know, a a large sum of people already have a um a genetic code pre a predisposition to hair loss. That doesn't mean that we're going to experience hair loss. That means that that that the it's there and whatever on the in the outside environment that you do can turn that on. So let's say there's a level of stress, it can turn that on because you can be very sensitive. Because your body's your body's always trying to figure out, okay, how can we get it balanced? How can we balance this thing out? Your body's always your hair is a luxury. People gotta understand, this is your hair is a luxury. So what the body's gonna do is your vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin E, all these particular nutrients and minerals and vitamins, it's going to make sure that it's going to all your um your liver, your heart, your lungs, all the things that are essential. Your hair is not essential. Yeah. But you have a lot of minerals and a lot of vitamins that go to the to the scalp. So the body's going to re- you know, uh, redirect those things to the things that are essential when you're going through these particular stressful environments. Even if you live in a stress, let's just say you live in Chicago. Like I got clients that live in Chicago, and the climate, of course, it's a lot colder than it than it is in Atlanta. So a lot of times you got guys who are vitamin D deficient. I mean, 80% of black men are vitamin D deficient. So that's already a problem there because that vitamin D is going is going to get it will control and have a big influence on how your hair grows or if your hair grows. So that was one of my biggest issues that I had. I had I was low on vitamin D when I went to go get my blood work.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:54

And so uh, you know, so it can be, you know, the the most infamous uh dihydrotestosterone everybody knows, uh DHT. That's the the the the the if you if you was looking for uh you know a a criminal that's on their people's walls. DHT, yeah, this one. But what people don't understand, it's not just DHT because my I'm always thinking, well, what happened before DHT? Because if it was DHT, then when you was 12, what happened? When you was 15, what happened?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:23

When you was And just because I think some people may not know what is can you break down by DHT? What is DHT?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:29

Yo, so DHT is is called is dihydrotestosterone. And this is when um DHT, we all, you know, when we get that deep voice, hey, when you hey mom, your mom like, wait, wait a minute, you got a deep voice, or when you start growing hair on your body, your chests, you know, your legs, that's because of DHT. Right. Okay. Um, DHT contributes to that. That's the only reason why you're able to, these things are happening. So it works for you. There's a there's a reason why you have it. However, there's a uh the other side of it, right? DHT can also have an impact on your hair. It can miniaturize your, it can be uh part of the re a big part of the reason why your hair is miniaturizing as well. Right. And then, you know, you have inflammation, right? You have all these particular things. So DHT is like the biggest culprit because it's it's so it's it's like one of the it's a low-hanging fruit. But I always tell my clients all the time, it's like, you know, you want to be able to think at it from a holistic standpoint because if you are, if you have a car and let's say you have fuel in the car and you trying to figure out, well, shoot, I already saw the fact I have fuel. What's going on? What my what my car? Why my car is not not running? Maybe it's your fuel pump. Have you thought about that? Maybe it's your engine. Have you thought about that? Maybe it's your your your your there's gonna be so many different parts in our bodies um that we have to kind of think about uh when it comes to our hair. And again, I open up my guy, I look at it from a holistic standpoint because you can be missing so many areas. Um and then another thing is like if you're not taking care of your scalp, so you like so you have guys, some of my clients who who come in and their scalp is very inflamed. You can see it is very red, right? Because they haven't been taking care of their hair. And you know, I'm not talking about the normal K wash and condition. It's like, well, what products are you using? If you're using oils, well, for our scalp, for our scalp, oils may not always be the best. Not to say not to use oils. I'm just saying you gotta understand how your hair is functioning. You gotta understand it. So that they come to me and I give them a diagnosis. I kind of walk them through the process of how we can turn the thing around. And if you're using oils, then oils can then trigger uh what they call malestesia. Malesthesia is a fungus. So then that creates inflammation on your scalp. I've dealt with that myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:37

And that can be- Using the wrong oils.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:39

Using the wrong oils, or you may just be using oils that you're just using oils at period. You probably shouldn't be using oils. Maybe it doesn't work now and it just doesn't work for you. So you probably need to you need to figure something else out. So even for me, like uh uh here's another story, right? So um this is back in November, and I got I got pictures, I did a video. About this, I experienced hair loss again.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:03

And it was you were losing sleep though, because I wasn't sleeping.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:07

It like my whole lifestyle was messed up. It was turned around. You know, I'm I wasn't sleeping and I just wasn't taking care of myself the way I should have been taking care of myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:16

And I started losing the hair uh hair again. You know what I mean? And so um, but then I started, then I put it, I put up just like I do with my clients, I put a protocol together and I was consistent with my protocol. And in in the next, well, it was like it took me about like 30, 30 days to try to you grew your hair back in 30 days from when you realized your hair loss. Yep. I went to my barber, I would go to my barber and my barber's like, oh yeah, man, your hair coming back. It was like, it was like game day. Every time I would go, he was like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like, Yeah, I see it. I get in the mirror, I'm looking in the mirror, like, you know, he gave me the mirror, I'm like, okay, okay, okay, we we working with something. It's I was able to see it grow. And then over time, as I continue to take care of it, it's growing more and more and more. So I was able to do that, man, and really get it turned around. But again, you know, went to go get my blood, my labs. I do everything that I tell my clients, my clients to do. You know, I'm doing, I had to do the same thing. I had to live it. I'm lit, you know, I'm I'm living it. So now I'm being very a little bit more uh dialed in, uh, more so than I than I was at the time when it comes to uh you know my hair. So these things can have an impact on uh, you know, your your lifestyle can really impact your hair. And a lot of times what happens is guys, they wait until it's too late. And then then they, you know, then you know, it's like, oh well, you may or may not be able to do something.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:36

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:37

So yeah, man, guys are, you know, it's like when you start seeing your hair thinning, when you start seeing these things, you need to do something right away. Don't wait until it's too late.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:45

So, what are your thoughts? Because you look at everything from a natural, like you said, holistic standpoint. What are your thoughts on, because obviously I feel like I know what you're gonna say, but what are your thoughts on putting a band-aid on it, right? I feel like putting a band-aid on it from your perspective is like when you, because you know in your story you talked about uh minoxidil. You were like, no, absolutely no, no minoxidil. And as far as, you know, we had another guest on that, you know, went to Turkey when everybody everybody's going to Turkey. So you have the two things that a lot of people are doing. They think that as soon as I experience hair loss, they're going in that direction instead of maybe, you know, getting somebody like a tricologist like yourself or going to more natural routes. What are your thoughts on that?

unknown 1:30:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:30

At the time, as a um as a tricologist, I have to, I always have to do what's in the best interest of my clients. So for me, I always ask them three questions. Do you want to just three lanes? We have lane one, we have the natural lane, lane two, we have the pharmaceutical lane, and lane three, we have a hybrid. And it's it's it's hybrid between lane one and lane two. And I allow them to choose. I'm the guide. I'm just here to, I'm just here to help you along the way. Right? I'm not here to dictate which way you should go. I would give you my suggestions based on your scalp, based on your health, based on all these particular things. I'm looking at all these markers, based on what your blood is saying, based on your lifestyle. I'm looking at everything. And I want to say, let's put you in the best possible position. Um, and then at that point, then you know, we kind of work the system, we kind of work the the um the system from there. So I'm not uh, so if somebody wants to do monoxidil for nasceride, like some of my clients, I have like, you know, we if we've maxed out the natural approach where we're just like, okay, well, the natural approach only got us to fifth grade, but you want to go to college. Okay, so how do we get to college? Well, what got you from uh kindergarten to fifth grade is not gonna get you to college. So what do we need to do? Okay, we need to figure out how to get you to college, or even if you take sports. What got you from uh you know to high school to varsity, it's not gonna get you to the NBA. That same work ethic, that same what you put in, you're gonna have to take it to the next level. You need something different. Yeah, need something better. So uh with uh it's the same approach with natural. If if it if it isn't the natural, so for some people it does work, some people it it only takes them so far. Then it's like, okay, well, if you're okay with this, fine. But if you want to, you know, take it to the next level, then let's bring in uh something else. And then we begin to talk about these other um uh alternatives like the the the the pharmaceuticals. But the thing about it is I don't tell people just to jump in the deep end. For some guys, I just be like, hey, let's microdose, let's slowly walk into this, let's see how your body's responding.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:33

Because if your body doesn't, you find that it doesn't respond well based on our micro-dosing, that's kind of like doing baby steps, yeah, then we need to remove it. So then that's what we do if that's the case. But if we're microdosing, your body gets adjusted and you get you build more confidence into it, then we continue to use it and utilize it. Uh, but yeah, some people, like I said, some people, um, I just make sure that I just let them know what is happening with their scalp. This is this is the condition that it's in. Here are the different directions that we can go. What are you most comfortable with? Because it's all about what you're comfortable with at the end of the day. I'm not here to push anything. I'm here to, I'm here to work with you. And then if we need to cross that bridge down the road and have that conversation, then we will have that conversation. We need to, you know, when we cross that bridge. So you got guys like that, but then you also got guys who are going out there and you know, they're going to Turkey and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:21

Going to Turkey. That seems like that. That's uh, you know, you if you have a little bit of extra bread, that seems like a good way to Well, there's uh this is the thing about the um when you're going to Turkey and you're getting a hair transplant.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:34

This what people, you know, don't understand. It's not a it's not a cure. If you're going in with the mindset that this is gonna cure, that's not what that is. You're going in there to get surgery done. So somebody's gonna take some hair from one part of your section of your head and they're gonna put it in another section of your hair, head, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean that you still can't, you're not vulnerable to the same things that you were before. It's not a cure. So that's the part where people have to go in when you're going into that. Go in there with a better with an understanding that you're gonna have to take care of yourself. You know, you got to take care of this hair. You know, some people, and then also understand that you might have to come back and get another hair transplant.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:15

Yeah, yeah. I did see that you gotta try to.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:17

So it's so it's it's a life when you get a hair transplant, it is a lifelong commitment that you're making. So you might have to come back. Um, and so you just gotta be aware of these particular things. And so uh I hope that you know they don't put a ban on you going to Turkey or you probably be, you gotta find somebody else. And that is something that you probably find yourself in a really terrible place because if you got to go to another surgeon who has to go to over who has to go over the work of somebody else, maybe they have two different philosophies, two different experiences. You know, I'm not saying don't do it because you know, for some guys, it helps. It it turns on that you go from not being a confident guy to the confident guy. Yeah. And that means a lot to the guys. So I never take that away from anybody who does that. I always just tell everybody go in there with the with that understanding that you're gonna have to make sure you make a commitment to taking care of yourself. So if you've been drinking, smoking, whatever your your vice is, whatever your thing is, you're gonna have to like dial that in because if not, then you're gonna be right back to you know, square one again.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:18

Like you said, it's three directions that you give your clients. And I think that that's any direction you did you can decide to take in life as a guy, depending on what's important to you, because it can, like you said, the hair for men, that's a luxury. I've heard a lot of other guys say that hair is like men's makeup a little bit because it can totally transform a guy in so many different ways, including the beard. And when guys, what he's saying about when you start using monoxidal, it's so important to not go full throttle, whether you're using it on your beard or your hair, because I will tell you, I am I am the catalyst mistake for using monoxidal too hard too fast. What happened? And I didn't tell you. Oh, okay. So, what happened when I started experiencing hair loss and I was trying to uh grow my beard more because Brandon got me to Brandon got me to college. I was trying to go to the NBA because on social media, I'm trying to base, I'm I'm like, oh man, I'm trying to get the big beard, you know, the big beard everybody has. And so for me, I'm like, how can I do that? And at the same time, I was talking to you about how, oh, you know, I think my hairline is thinning, you know, on my left side. So I get minoxidil, so I start using monoxidel. Meanwhile, during this time, this is in 2023, my um oldest son is born. So meanwhile, I'm doing my grooming routine and I'm going hard. I'm using the it, you know, it's said online, you know, use twice a day. So I'm using it twice a day. Lathering up, putting it on my beard, putting it on my hairline, but not to do it's all over my face. It's everywhere. Then at that point, start seeing that my son is growing hair on his legs. At this time, my oldest son is like maybe like seven or eight months, seven or eight months old. And so we're just like, oh. So we done took him to the doctor. We're like, hey, he has hair growing on his leg. And then he started growing a unobrow. Like he had a unobrow. And then his hair started kind of like touching, like down here in the middle of his like forehead to to in that direction. And we were just like, so we me and my wife started asking each other, so do you have hairy people in your family? You know? And she and she was like, Do you have hairy people? I was like, I mean, I'm hairy a little bit, but not to this extent. And so then we start going down the list and we're like, okay, is this uh, you know, is this a thing where like is it like what cultures we got in our family that may call, you know, may cause this? And it got to a point where I was like, well, maybe it has something to do with I've been using Minoxodil. She's like, what's that? And I'm like, I've been using this thing that helps me grow hair. And so she looked it up online and she's like, yes, that's what she was like, stop using it for three months and see what happens. The hair went away on him instantly. Because obviously, like, you know, I'm carrying him, I'm doing stuff with him and whatnot. And I stopped using it, and yeah, it it his hair could see he didn't have no more hair on his legs. He didn't have any more hair anywhere else. But, you know, of course I felt bad. I was like, okay, I guess this is my fault. You know, but that's what happens when you go too hard and you don't really understand the product that you that you're using. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:33

No, that would have been like, yeah, that's a that's a wild story. Um, I have a client who he just had a newborn uh like two weeks ago. And um we had a conversation about uh pharmaceuticals because we were doing natural approach, and uh we got a scalp right to where in terms of like it was the right foundation where we needed to where we can add something else. And the conversation I had with him was essentially like, hey, you know, uh we can go with the uh topical approach or the oral approach, but the topical approach, which we you have a newborn, um you don't want that to rub off on them. And that is a a risk that can that can happen. Uh so I was like, hey, let's go with the oral approach, where you just take a tablet, like you're taking your supplements in the morning. Yeah, uh, let's microdose on that, and then let's kind of build up from there. Um, and that way you could uh reduce any risk of them getting exposed. So nah, it definitely happens, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:27

It does. I wish I knew about the the the pills. I would maybe I would have gone the pill direction during that time. But you know how you just be looking up stuff online and you're like, let me just handle this myself.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:37

No, absolutely. I mean, that's anything, right? Like we we're just kind of diving in and trying to figure it out. Uh, and so that's why it's very important. I tell guys, um, you need a roadmap. It's very vital that you need a roadmap because you just wouldn't get in a car and start driving if you've never driven a car. You see people driving, you've had little cars, you probably had a little magic car that you was riding in when you was a kid and things of that nature. Maybe you get you sat in the in the in the front seat, you know, when you couldn't touch the pedals and you pretend you were driving. Yeah, you probably experienced those particular things. And that's all great. But when you actually have to get out into that road, it's a different beast. And so you need somebody who can train you and and really uh uh put together something for you to where you can learn how to drive your drop drive the car. And it's the same thing with the hair. Uh, you need someone who can put together a roadmap for you, some a system uh uh to where you can begin to be consistent and you can follow it. And then, you know, we can make micro adjustments along the way if necessary. Um, because a lot of times guys are just wasting a lot of time trying to figure it out and they're hitting these roadblocks, and some of them are hitting the roadblocks and they're defeated and they kind of go go back home with their head down. And then some people are, they may be a little bit, may take them a couple more roadblocks, and uh they're still kind of they're making the situation worse than than than what it should be. So uh I just tell all my uh, you know, the people that talk to, if you're gonna, you know, make sure you just get a uh, you know, you get get some get with somebody who can build that for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:01

Yeah, man. Should have got with you sooner, but but you know, I made my I made my mistakes. Um man, what I do want to ask you is I try to ask every guest, like just to uh go through a list and uh get into the mind of the guest. And I ask people their top five, right? I know you're a big basketball guy, so I want to hear your top five all-time best players in the NBA. Uh Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. Whoa, whoa, whoa is this the order? Are we going in? Are we starting from You asked me my top five, right? Yeah, so you're starting with Michael Jordan.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:36

Michael Jordan is definitely number one.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:37

Number one. Oh, okay, okay. You're going one to five.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:40

You you just want me to do random? No, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is one this one to five. So uh definitely uh Jordan and Kobe. Uh I would say that is like the the the top two. The the third one, uh Alan Iverson, I'll go with AI. Uh the fourth one that I would go with. Um my top five, man, uh that's that's uh um I gotta go with my man Golden State. Um Steph Steph. Steph, he changed the game. I mean he's like, yeah, he's he's he he he's amazing. And then fifth, my fifth one that I I would say that I would want to go with. Hmm. This this is gonna be a tough one. Um this is gonna you can always kind of rotate the the the two, but I can't really I say maybe Shaq. My top my top five. That's uh my key word there. Everybody, that's the key. My what you what you want? Where's LeBron? I mean, he's he's somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:51

He's on somebody's top five.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:52

He is on somebody's top five.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:55

LeBron is not in your top five. No, LeBron is not in my top five. Shaq before LeBron? Yes. Walk me through that. Why Shaq before LeBron?

SPEAKER_02 1:43:05

Uh I think that um LeBron is great. I mean, you can't deny that. Like, that's something that even a bl even even Steven Wonder can see that, blind man can see that. Um, but there are components of basketball that I grew up on. I didn't, you know what I mean? Like I grew up on um on uh the the the game in terms of when I if I look at uh a Jordan, you know, everybody looks at stats and stuff like that. Like that's easy. Like you can you can look at stats and be like a person can be like, well, never seen somebody, like, oh man, this person must have been super great. They got all these stats. But if you know the game, it's it's a game within the game. And um, I look at that's that's kind of how I look at uh these particular these particular players. I mean, you look at Jordan, um, yeah, he was he had all the the the magic. Um, you know, he made you want to watch the game. Like the world stopped when when um when Jordan played, like literally the world stopped. Granted, the world was a little bit different at that particular time. So there was a level of mystique that really helped him along the way. But I think he just played the game so hard from floor to floor. I can appreciate that. I love the fact that he the way he approached the game. And when you start hearing these backstories in terms of how he approached the game, it makes it makes so much sense. Kobe Bryant, like the hardest working, like for me, when I would, when I for my work ethic, um, like Kobe Bryant was the man. Like, I'm like, oh, you know what? He is the he is the epitome of working hard because he wasn't the most athletic. Like Kobe, yeah, he was six, what, six, six, six, six, seven. Yeah, but he wasn't the most athletic uh when he came into the league, right? But guess what? He became the best, he no one outworked him, so he became one of the best players to play the game because he had he knew that he had certain deficiencies and he worked on these particular deficiencies. I mean, the guy would go to left, he would go with the right. Um, I mean, he was he would show up for practice and he would be there early. He wouldn't, every when people tell you like he's there early, he's out there late, um, and he was just a uh a killer on the court. And so I can appreciate the way that he approached the game, that particular mentality. Um, but um AI. Yeah, AI was your third, right? Yeah. AI is my third. AI, again, if you think there's like a outside, I would say outside of Shaq, um, um, there is a silver lining between these particular players, the way that they played the game, um, at least the top, at least the top three, they all went out there. They be they gave it they all. AI, Kobe, and Michael Jordan. They they never took, they never took a day off. Like, even if it meant they putting their bodies on the line, and they all did.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:38

You know, they all like Steph too, since Steph is your fourth. I would say Steph for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:42

And I say, you know, I say Steph because I mean, of course, Steph changed the game. If Steph wasn't around, LeBron James would be a whole lot bigger. But because of Steph, he's not that he's not as big as he. If Steph wasn't around, if if it was just LeBron James and everybody else, that's what it would be. But now it's it's LeBron James and Steph. Because Steph, he changed the game. When you change the game, like how I look at it, when I go on the court, it was when I would go out there and play on the playground, whoever people would like want to be like Mike. They got their tongue, they doing everything. And then it was like Kobe, you want to be out there. Now, who everybody wanna be like? Everybody wanna be like Steph. Steph, that's the influence. It's it's it's very important. It's it's it's because you can relate to him with with uh LeBron James, he's great, but you can't relate to him. He's so he's he's just like a one-of-one.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:25

Like you can't read, like there's nothing that you can relate to. He's just and going from your two to your four in your top five, it makes sense because Kobe, AI, and Steph are all relatable because they all number one, you said Kobe wasn't as big as he is. He had to work to get as talented as he is. Steph, Steph is probably who I started, even though I'm a huge LeBron fan. I started watching Steph and identified with Steph probably more than LeBron. Because like when you look at LeBron, LeBron's like, LeBron's like this superman character, right? Like you said, one of one. So it's like drafted in 03, went straight to the NBA, 18 years old. Everything was set up, not to take away from his talent, but he's was already, he he was already in the Avengers. Yeah. With Steph, Steph started from a different play. He played from a school that like people don't look at. I only watched uh I only watched Davidson to watch Steph Curry play. I remember when LeBron came to his game in college because he was making so much noise. And even when he started his first couple years in the NBA playing with Baron Davis, it wasn't like, oh my God, Steph Curry, what he is today. But the biggest thing that between AI and Curry is they both culturally changed the game of the NBA a lot. Because Steph extended the court. AI, he let he let everybody, that was when everybody really said, this is how you handle the ball. This is how you take someone 101 and get to the uh and get to the cup as a smaller player. Because him and Steph are both was AI's like what, 6'2? He probably 5'11. 5'11. The stats are different. 5'11, but I think Curry's 6'3. He probably 6'1. Probably 6'1. With shoes on. If you how called how tall is Curry in real life? 6'4? He's 6'4. I mean, but I I like that. But why why Shaq? Why Shaq number five?

SPEAKER_02 1:48:22

I think that Shaq was, uh, even though Shaq was, I kind of just threw Shaq in, be kind of quite quite honest with you. Like, I think Shaq was very dominant, um, one of the most dominant players at that particular time. Um but um, you know, I think I like I think Shaq was just, it was just more so a personality. I like Shaq's personality. Um, but there's a lot of fleet players I could have threw in in that particular five spot. But you know, that's like I said, that's that's rotating. That's rotating. You go to the road. But then first four. First four is solid, definitely first four. They all, you know, they all got something in common. It's that it's it's just that they they had to get to a point to and to work up to that particular, they had to become. LeBron was, you know, when he it was, he was just he would like you said, he was, you know, I mean, not to say that he didn't have to work to to to certain things.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:11

Because he better at some things in this game over the years for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:13

But if you played the longer you the one the longer you're in school, you know, you should be, you know, even you should you should be progressing to it to a certain extent. And he works, you know, he works hard, he works hard on those particular things. And so, um, but I I think that like I said, if Steph wasn't in the game, then LeBron would be the biggest, he would be the biggest thing. But when you got somebody who comes in who's winning the amount of championships that he won, Steph did, and changing the game culturally, that has that's that's that's impact. Like you're gonna know LeBron James, but um, but Steph Kirby is when people say Steph, when they shooting their shot, who's in their heads? That's the part, that's the they're not saying LeBron, you're not saying I say no people are not saying that, but it's just the mat like the the the the um when you're looking at the entire game of basketball and everybody who's playing it, There's more, there's more players who are uh uh shorter than there are taller.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:05

So when you're looking at the percentage-wise, it just makes sense from a percentage-wise why people, why Steph would be a lot more relatable than uh LeBron James. He's respected and people like him, and he's like, oh wow, he's like a really great player. He's doing all these amazing things, he's done all these particular amazing things and he's doing amazing things. But at the end of the day, when you start to say, Man, you know what? In terms of relatability, I can relate to the most. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:26

That's true. I would normally fight you on that whole not LeBron thing in there, but I like your reason and I do like Steph a lot. Shaq, I like Shaq a lot too. Yeah, Shaq is a is a is a legend for sure. I think NBA champion, businessman, had a I mean, I would say that at some certain point he was a face was a was a face in the league after Michael.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:50

So, I mean, yeah, no, yeah. I mean, bro, there's so many people you can rotate in there. Tim Duncan, it's so many different players, and he's it these are styles. Like, what style of player that you like? What style, like it's a these are just different styles, and I think that they all they've all been able to contribute to the game um in a in a real way. But um, for me, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:10

So yeah, hopefully, hopefully you got uh you guys can share this video out with other people so they can see our take and then they give us some equity in the NBA too on top of that. But man, uh I think I asked you all my questions, bro. You really dropped a lot of gems on hair loss, grooming, and your story so much in this uh this pod, bro, in this video. I'm just grateful for you having for you uh for you to be able to come on, man. Appreciate it, man. This was great. Thank you. Yes, sir, man. Appreciate you guys watching. Make sure if you guys are having any issues when it comes to hair loss, beard care, if you just have questions about how you can elevate your whole grooming aesthetic when it comes to your skin, check out my man's Brandon's channel. Make sure you message him to ask him questions and become a client. My man's gonna help you because look, we can show you some pictures of what I used to look like and what you know. Y'all see, I'm I'm flourishing now. I'm flourishing because of my man. And make sure you check out uh there'll be a link in the description for you guys to get products from Evan Alexander Grooming. Appreciate you coming on, man. Appreciate that, big bot. Yes, sir. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for watching this episode. I hope you truly enjoyed it. And as we go on a journey together, the modern man is really about cultivating a community with you guys and learning together with each other because today's guests, we learned so much when it came to men's hair loss, men's self-care, and more. And if you guys want to get more in depth and more knowledge about those things, make sure you join our Patreon channel, which is a link in the description right there, where we can get a deeper understanding from different questions that you guys may have from learning from our guests. And let me know if you do have questions of things you want to see on the Patreon and you want to learn from our guests, comment it below.