Dorian Barber is the founder of Cut Nova app and a barber in Washington State.

Today we're going to hear his story, how he created the app, what he wants to do with it, and what his vision is for the future.

Welcome back to the Hairdresser Strong show.

My name is Robert Hughes and I am your host and today I'm with Dorian Barber.

How you doing today, Dorian?

I'm doing great.

Yeah, it's looking like it's, it's nice.

Winter is coming to an end and you know, it's time to, you know, things to get picking up and going.

Yeah, really.

I know.

So the, the spring season is under, is, is coming, so let's all get ready.

So speaking of getting ready, you have an app that we're going to hear about.

But before we get started, why don't we, why don't you tell us like, you know, who you are, how long you've been in the industry and what, what your vibe is as a barber and beauty professional.

So I've, I've been a barber for almost 14 years now.

I've been at this since I was 17 years old.

I started in Florida actually, that's where I'm from.

So the basis of my barbering background came from Florida.

And I'm 31 now, still chopping it up.

I own the barbershop for 10 years and you know, now I'm looking to start a new venture with Cut Nova.

And you know, it's, it's, it's been a, an interesting and educational and fun and exciting and also nerve wracking adventure.

So what, so how long, so how long ago, how long have you been in Washington state?

I've been in Washington for like 10 years now.

Okay, all right, so you got started 11 years for like four, four years.

And then, then you moved to Washington state and majority of your career has been in Washington.

Yeah, right.

The majority of my career has been in Washington.

I started off in a rural small town area and I kind of monopolized it there as far as being like the only barber that brought anything modern because the only thing else that was there was pretty much cowboy cuts.

You know, there was like a barber inside of a feed store, so it smelled like a barn in there.

And so I, I showed up and then I started doing all these interesting designs like the ones that you can see on my Instagram.

You know, I, putting Pikachu on people's heads and sports team logos and just cool freestyle designs.

So I, I changed the, the entire vibe.

I made the county go from Cowboy cuts to something modern, finally.

Nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

So.

So, like, how long ago did you start thinking about this app?

And, like, what was your inspiration for getting, Getting.

Getting into it and starting it?

So it all started one day.

I was just in the shower with my thoughts, and I just started to think I was.

I was using a competitor.

I was using the Cut, and I started to think, like, how hard could it be to make an app?

And my version of the app could be different.

My version of my app, Cut Nova, could be something that actually empowers the businesses and allows us barbers to see each other and follow each other and actually build a community, which is something that current booking apps out there just don't do.

They're very isolated, so that the business is only just them.

It's just the business and their list of customers.

And the customers.

It's just a marketplace for them.

It's just a place for them, oh, I need a haircut book.

And then they don't touch the app for, like a month until they need another service.

So for.

Sorry.

So for the audience who doesn't know what is.

Can you tell us what is the Cut app?

So the Cut.

And there's a bunch of other apps out there that are just like this.

They have Booksy, Squire, style, C Fresha.

There's a.

They're all this.

They're all based.

They're all the same.

They're all the same.

For the customer, it's just a marketplace to find your next barber.

And for the business or the barber, it is just a place where you can manage your appointments and accept card payments.

Okay, all right, got it.

Okay.

And so you're saying that what it's missing is a social aspect for the operators to communicate with each other.

Yes.

So I pretty much built this on the idea that us barbers, we're already always looking for influence, inspiration from other barbers out there.

I myself do it all the time.

Whenever I see a.

A nice design out there, I want to replicate it, but do it in my own style.

So I always felt that the Cut app, for example, was very hypocritical because their Instagram page at the very beginning used to be just a repost page.

We're going to repost, everybody share you and you'll get recognition.

Share you and you get recognition.

But when you actually join their platform, it's not like that at all.

And you're not getting any actual real exposure as far as, like, gaining followers or anything like that on their.

On any of those platforms out There.

So what I created was I combined the boring, you know, marketplace and booking app with a social network.

So right now we're pretty much like, you know, the Cutapper booksy combined with Instagram.

And everyone can join for free, everyone can post pictures, and we can all start following each other.

And then if you are interested in doing, you know, the business side of things with us, then you can sign up for the business side and there you'll put in your hours for your business, the address, and your customers will be able to find you using Geolocation in the marketplace that's on the social side.

And they'll book with you and you can accept payments with us.

Do the other booking apps that have these marketplaces, do they allow for you to upload a profile, like by portfolio pictures?

Yeah.

So all these other.

All of these other booking apps allow you to create like your.

Your marketplace, your profile?

Pretty much.

And no interaction after that.

There's no interaction after that.

So my idea was to kill two birds with one stone.

So instead of all these barbers, and I've seen it countless times, there's a barber that's successful and he has a healthy, you know, heavier client list, but he's actually trying to grow his following on Instagram.

This guy is a really good barber, but he can't get over, like, he's got like 112 followers, and it's really hard for him to get over that.

And what I notice is that a lot of the customers, they will work with them, they will download whatever booking app it is, but they're not going to follow them on their socials.

So by combining the social aspect of the booking app, now you could tell everyone, hey, just follow me on, on Cut Nova.

And that's where you can also book an appointment with me.

And we have a lot of further plans to implement in Cut Nova.

Right now we're only doing pictures.

We have plans to bring videos later, kind of turning this into more of like a TikTok social platform.

And we're going to be introducing ads soon.

So in the later stages of things, as people start to generate more content, we want to offer a way to provide the content creators a source of revenue where they can get a portion of what it is that they generate as long as they meet the qualifications.

Cool.

Nice.

Awesome.

Well, let's.

I want to see it.

So would you share your screen and kind of walk us through it a little bit?

Yes, we can.

So let me hit this share screen button and bam, there we are.

So this is Cut Nova.

Can I move this?

Yes, I can.

So this is Cut Nova.

Here's the social feed right here.

And there's just, you know, this guy's new, he just joined.

We're, we're very early.

We don't have a lot of users.

We just launched this.

So if you're watching this download Cut Nova app right now we're available in the iPhones app stores and the Android Google Play store.

And then you could just go to.

Let me go to Don.

Where's Donald?

Let's use the search bar.

Bam.

So here's Donald.

He's been using the app for a few months now.

And we can go to View Business and we can go through the whole entire booking process and book with him, but I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to mess with his books right now.

So we'll just go back.

It's kind of hard to go back when I'm sharing the screen because these buttons are in the way.

There we go.

And then move you down here.

So now we'll take a look at the business side of the account.

This is my account real quick.

No, these are some of the designs that I do.

Pikachu and Spider man and stuff.

Nice.

And now we'll take a look at the business side.

So I'm not working today.

I don't have any appointments, but if I did, they would be up here and then services and products and all this stuff would slide on down.

And here you could see some of the products that I sell.

Or we could just do a custom charge.

And what about that product?

Is.

Are you.

Is the.

I'm assuming that the.

We have later plans.

Later plans for products.

So for now, a lot of our system is really based off of the appointments, which is tied to services, which have a time tied to it in order for the whole thing to work.

Products could be later as we implement kind of like a TikTok shop, an online store where brands can join and sell their products.

There are several ways that we could tackle this.

We could either do this all in house or we could more easily.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Implement like Shopify tools.

And as we add Shopify tools, it's all just going to be pretty much just done on.

On Shopify, you'll just be linking your Shopify account here and then however it is that you do it on Shopify, you'll be able to do it here.

Gotcha.

Yeah, here's the payments page.

So this is all money that gets Sent to my bank account.

And here are some appointments.

So I'll go to Saturday right now.

And, you know, I had a pretty good Saturday.

I canceled him by mistake, but I did cut him.

And, you know, there's enough time for walk ins and everything.

I like to stretch out my.

My appointments so that I can still try and take care of a walk in or two if I can.

So this was a pretty busy day.

This was like a $820 day here.

Nice.

And then.

Yeah, I mean, if you have any other questions, let me know.

Yeah, I do.

So.

So this is great.

This.

Let's.

Is there anything else you want to show us, Scott?

Otherwise you can stop sharing your screen and then we can.

Yeah, no, Right.

Right here.

You've pretty much seen everything that there is to see.

I got the client list here.

And you know, there's a lot of little.

You have to tackle things as you're creating these updates.

You have to tackle them one step at a time because everything ties into other parts as you're learning how to develop.

So my friend Brian right here, you know, he, he.

Right now we're making it so that his list of past appointments will show up here.

And then I'll be able to see all the dates and all his past.

We'll have a history put here and his phone number, which we already have it, so that it's saved.

Now we're gonna update it in one of our future updates so that his phone number will show up here on the client details.

So we really just do have to develop this step by step.

But we're actually talking to a team, and I'll stop sharing my screen now.

But.

But I started talking to a team called Cloud Elegant, and they're very closely affiliated with Amazon web servers.

And we're looking at ways to implement AI into Cut Nova.

So one of the things that we thought about was having a chatbot.

So right now we don't have direct messages, we don't have DMs, but as.

As we build it out, we can add dms.

And the dm, you go to me, you want to make an appointment with Dorian, you go to messages, and then Dorian's bot will talk to you and it'll answer whatever questions you need.

It'll do some automated replies.

Oh, how are you doing today?

We have this day available.

This is our address.

These are the hours.

Would you like me to help you make an appointment?

You want to confirm that you just want two haircuts and one beard for Wednesday at 10am okay, perfect.

Now it's confirmed.

So there's a way that we're trying to implement AI in this chat box and in doing so, we're going to be reworking a lot of the appointment aspects and just improving it across the board in order to match what our competitors are doing and then surpass them.

Nice.

So tell us a little bit about, like, so we got, we, we got your, your story, we got your, your inspo, we got some of your vision and we got to see the product that you've created.

And we, you talked a little bit about you're the future and what you see going.

I now I have some questions about.

I have questions for the entrepreneur and not the product developer.

You ready?

Yeah.

All right.

All right.

So first question is if someone out there that is thinking they have, they've had an idea for an app, not a booking app, but just say like, whatever it is, or like any idea.

Any idea.

Because like, what you've done is you've done something that stereotype typically we're not known to do.

Like, I'm not in a big.

I'm not, I'm not a technical person.

Right, Exactly.

That's, that's where I'm going with this.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So as a non technical person thinking about starting, having a startup, starting a business in the technical world, can you.

What are, what are we like?

I don't know, the top three things.

Top big, top three challenges that you had to overcome.

And, and yeah, so top three challenges.

This is an interesting scenario right here.

So it all starts with the concept of your idea.

And if you really believe in this, you're going to obsess about it.

You don't understand.

Like, this thing's like a parasite in my brain.

Okay.

And any successful entrepreneur will be like that.

Yeah, you are going to be honed in 110 on what it is that you're going to do.

And I've done a lot of numbers, calculating how much it is that we can generate, all the different avenues that we could be generating money from and what the expenses will be.

So you're gonna go through this phase, especially if you're not someone that's technical, where everything is a question, everything is a question.

And I have to kind of really think about this for a good long time and evaluate if this is something that I want to do now myself.

I saw a big, giant green bag of money at the end of this and, and I see a lot of potential and a huge missed opportunity that my competitors are not taking advantage of.

Because none of them.

One of the statistics that I.

One of the data points that's a very strong advantage for us is that on current booking apps, across the board, on all of them, only 10% are barbers and 90% are customers.

So I guess the first challenge will be for you to do a lot of analysis.

You're going to be wanting to do a lot of data.

That's the first challenge.

And as I found that that 10% is just barbers, 10 are just the daily active users.

Let's do this social media idea.

Oh, now we can implement ads and keep the 90% of customers here.

There's a lot of money to be made from ads, you know, so doing a lot of data analysis is definitely your first big step, you know, trying to study what it is that you're trying to build, trying to see the outcome of it all and really try and solve a problem.

And then the second part, the second biggest issue I would have would be if you're not technical, if you don't know how to code, which the majority of us don't.

We don't know how to code.

I don't know how to code.

You know, it's like looking at the lines on the matrix, like I can't read it.

Okay, yeah, you're gonna have to find some technical people.

And I've been fortunate enough to have found some people that I've been working with for two years now since I've.

I've been building Cut Nova.

We've been at this for two years and I've been fortunate enough to have Akash, a good friend of mine, now that I consider.

He's been a mentor to me in this entire journey and he's taught me the ins and outs of, you know, know, owning a domain, getting your own, you know, professional email, being the owner of all this.

So I, I am the account holder for the AWS web servers.

And so just making sure that you are prepared to control everything and also work alongside technical people.

So that's probably the second greatest challenge was because a lot of this, I was very stupid.

I didn't know anything.

I was dumb.

And I've learned.

And I'm still not the smartest person, but I'm always willing to learn and adapt and just keep on growing.

And that's probably the second hardest one is learning and getting a technical person.

So that's the second one.

And the third one I will say will have to be funding because a lot of this will cost money and it's going to cost A lot of money.

I am not proud to say how much money I have spent on this and how little the app has made, but the majority of the cost has been right now towards just building the app, just getting it built.

So we built the first version of it.

It wasn't the best.

Then we got around.

I spoke to the developing team after the developing team built the first version.

They understood what it is that I was trying to build.

So we completely rebuilt it for the second version and it is a lot better.

And it's everything that you've seen here, it's a lot better now it works.

I use it every day for all my appointments and I process all my payments on it.

It actually turns into like a, a card reader.

So I can like tap someone's, I can tap someone's phone or card to my phone and accept the payment like that.

We can also connect it to an external card reader.

We use Stripe in our back end to process all of our payments.

And yeah, you know, a lot of it will go into research and development, research and the developers part because a lot of times these guys know how to code, but they're also learning how to code this specific thing.

So it's, it's.

No matter what, it's a learning process.

Yeah.

That's interesting.

So, so when you first started, would you say that you had a crystal clear vision or were you kind of figuring it out when you first started too and it took you.

It's, I will say it's a mixture of both.

It's a mixture of both.

Definitely.

I had it.

What you see now and the layout of like the feed and the profiles and the, the, the point of sale system and the appointments.

It's pretty much what I've had envisioned since the very beginning.

I, I don't know how to code or put together stuff, but I managed to build like a little rough draft where like people could swipe and hit like home, even though like home was fake and all that stuff, because I couldn't code in the actual user data permissions and stuff like that, I was at least able to build a rough draft.

And then I, when I did find the developing team with Akash, Akash was able to understand the layout of what it is I was trying to build.

Gotcha.

But it's definitely a mixture of both.

You're going to learn a lot along the way.

Yeah, I mean I can imagine that you have somebody who has an idea like a, that is not a technical person and then you have this, you have this idea and then you start working on it and, and then you find out that, oh yeah, we could do that, but it'll add like 20% to the budget or it'll add another six months or something like that.

And something else I will say is, in development, always expect delays.

It's just, it's.

You can't tell, like, hey, they're trying to build it, man.

Like it's.

This thing is nothing and then it becomes something.

And that takes time.

Good things take time to build because let's say they do build it.

Well, now you got to test it and that's going to take about a week or two of testing it and then ironing out the kinks.

So it's not just like one time said and done, and that's it.

It's, you know, there it is.

No, you have to get it built, test it, reiterate, test it again, and keep going until you have a product that's good.

You want to build a good foundation in the tech industry, it's called an mvp, the minimum viable product.

You want to build something that's not super good.

I'm not building a TikTok right now.

I'm building something that's basic.

It's the minimum, but it's viable, it works.

And this is the product that's working right now that's going to help us start to make money.

Nice.

So on that note, what is your.

First of all?

First of all, I want to say that the vocabulary you're using is clear, that you're either you've either studied either formally or on your own, or you have somebody that you work with.

Because a lot of these things, like the entrepreneurial business stuff, you can, I can tell.

Do you have.

What.

How did, how did you learn about all this?

It's just like Googling stuff or did you have somebody call a lot of YouTube?

YouTube.

Akash, my.

My main developer has been.

How'd you meet them?

So I was investigating how to build my own app and I was going to attempt to build it myself at first.

There's this no code building solution which for me didn't work.

If you're trying to build what I'm trying to build, it's not going to work.

But this is where I built the first rough draft where I could navigate all the pages and it was called Adalo.

It's free to use and free to play with.

It's.

Even though there's no coding, it's still very confusing.

It's some advanced form of thinking.

Because if I did somewhat successfully code this right, and now I give you permissions to post and stuff like that, but, but I mixed up some permissions somewhere along the way.

Whatever you post, I could have the ability to delete if I did it wrong.

And with what I wanted to build with appointments and payments and for this being something that many businesses could use across the board, especially with the payment parts, we were going to have to integrate Stripe to process all those payments.

We decided to build our platform on Flutter instead, with everything hosted on aws, which is, it's a, it's a harder thing.

You have to code everything that I really had to be hands off with.

I was more of just approving designs and suggesting where, how certain things could look.

But I forgot what the question was.

How did you meet your mentor?

Oh, so I, I was playing with it on Adalo, then I went on the Adalo forms and I posted there that I was looking for a team of developers to help me build this.

Then I met with Akash and Akash there told me, okay, I'm starting to understand your vision.

I think we can build this.

And then he says, but we can't do it on Adalo.

We have to code this.

What you want is too complicated for Adalo to build with no coding solutions.

And from there we've kept going.

And, and Akash hasn't just been a contracted developer that I've been paying and he's trying to, you know, reap some rewards.

He's been a great mentor for me and I think that's more important that if you can find someone that's already in this space and they're knowledgeable and they're here trying to set you up for success is the part just themselves that's very strong, that's, that's incredibly powerful.

And I have nothing but good words to say about Akash.

Akash has been an immense full help along this entire journey.

He's helped me set up everything, the Stripe accounts, the Amazon web servers, the domain, and all the other little bits and pieces that help put this all together.

So I'm in control of everything.

I have access to add people, to give them permissions to code or to remove people, give people administrative access.

And I've learned a lot in this journey.

So I've, I've met Akash and he's helped me a lot.

But really, really, if anyone out there is looking for someone technical like I, I found a guy like a needle in a haystack.

It's, it's very hard to find technical people.

There really just aren't that many technical people in the world, I will say.

There's a lot more barbers, I think.

Well, and then on top of that, it's the one, like, it's hard to find them who are good because the ones who are good usually are making a bunch of money somewhere.

And that was my experience.

This has been great.

This has been awesome.

It's.

We got.

We got to.

We got to meet you.

We got to see.

Learn about a new tool and exciting.

An exciting startup, and we even got to learn a little bit about the startup process and recognize one of our own people who is out there in the tech space, which is, for me, a very exciting thing.

I'm trying to become that next Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, yeah.

The barber.

Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, this has been a pleasure.

Where can people find you?

They can find me on YouTube or Instagram at Dorian Barber.

Very Googleable.

You can Also check out cutnova.com and see what the app is about.

If you want, or if you know someone that would like to be invested in Cut Nova, they can email me@dorianutnova.com and then we can talk about, you know, some sort of investments or equity deals.

We are looking to accelerate this.

We're just getting started on a marketing campaign right now.

So it's a little bit of a slow start with the marketing campaign, but as we start to push out more content, we'll be pushing out more ads.

Nice.

That sounds super exciting.

Well, thank you for joining us today, and until next time, I'll see you later.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

Okay, that was good.

I'll just stop it right there.