E6 - Marina V.K.

Today’s episode is all about the hustle.

  Marina V.K., in just her early 30s - is the incredible business mind behind Cadmen Barbershop. Starting from very little - her business acumen, coupled with the talent of her husband and partner Francis, has allowed them to attract and sustain other talented stylists and are now the go-to upscale barbershop of many GTA athletes and VIPs.  

  The Cadmen Barbershop opened its doors in Clarkson 6 years ago, opened a second location downtown and has recently announced they are franchising. 
  In today’s episode, I sit down with Marina to learn about the challenges they faced in their early days, how she gets inspired and the role of social media in business.

  This episode's Lorne Park Local Legends - Brianne Law and the other volunteers and contributors to the "Pumpkins for Piggies" initiative - which helps local residents by collecting uncarved pumpkins and donating them to an animal sanctuary.

  Do you know someone from South Mississauga who would make a great guest on the show?  Send your suggestion to lorneparkliving@gmail.com.

  Also, make sure to subscribe, rate and review!

Information from the Episode:

  Cadmen Barbershop:  1684 Lakeshore Rd W #18, Mississauga, (905) 822-8998
  www.cadmen.ca   
   https://www.instagram.com/cadmenbarbers/ 

Do you know someone from South Mississauga who would make a great guest on the show? Send your suggestion to anuja@anujapereira.com

Also, make sure to subscribe, rate and review!

Follow me at www.instagram.com/anujapereira.homes

Transcript

Anuja Pereira: 0:00

Today's episode is all about the hustle, Marina VK and just her early 30s is the incredible business mind behind Cadmen barbers, starting from very little, her business acumen, coupled with the talent of her husband and partner Francis has allowed them to attract and sustain other talented stylists. And they are now the go to upscale barber shop of many GTA athletes and VIPs Cadmen, barbers opened its doors and Clarkson, six years ago, opened a second location in downtown Toronto, and has recently announced that they are franchising. In today's episode, I sit down with Marina to learn about the challenges they faced in their early days, how she gets inspired, and the role of social media in business. Welcome to Lorne Park living. I'm your host, a Anuja Pereira and each episode, I get to help tell the story of someone in the south Mississauga community who is a difference maker, making here such an incredible place to live. In what I'm sure will be an inspiring conversation. Marina v k is here today to tell us more about how she used the grind to bring Cadmen barbers from humble beginnings to where it is today. I'm so glad you could join us here on Lorne Park living Marina.

Marina VK: 1:24

Thank you so much for having me. I'm absolutely honored when you asked me to be on your podcast. Well, I'm so excited.

Anuja Pereira: 1:31

I'm excited to I'm so glad you could join us. And, you know, we've had a chance to talk a little bit, but I'm so glad our listeners get to join in on the conversation today. You know, I want to start off just learning and listening a little bit to where you all started from in the background, where the shop started from how did it start and when did it start.

Marina VK: 1:54

So I do have a partner who is also my husband, so he's been a barber for about 18 years. He started off in his garage when he was 15. And he opened his first barber shop when he was 21. But here, Ontario and Donbass and just like most barber shops, in the area, it was, you know, cash base, no appointments, no customer service, co receptionist, no website. And they were pretty successful. They've been running for about four years. And then him and his partner ended up splitting up. And at the time I was finishing university. I was working in the financial district. And my husband was well, at the time, he was my boyfriend. He was very devastated. His partner left, he lost a shop, because all the barbers left to go to the new barber shop. So he had to go back home. And I always wanted to start a business. I always knew I wanted to grow something special. And so I said, Hey, look, work from your dad's house for now. I'll still get my experience downtown and then we'll open something. So a year goes by we saved up and we found the most amazing location, Clark's and village we got so lucky to find the spot. And yeah, it's been six successful years. We love the community. We love the BIA the businesses around here. So it's been it's been a great ride so far.

Anuja Pereira: 3:44

Absolutely. Well, when you say you want to start something was a barber shop, what you envision the business that you would grow? Is that something that you knew a lot about?

Marina VK: 3:55

No, I never thought it would be a barber shop. But I always knew I wanted to have like multiple businesses. To me, it was very fun. I was always like an entrepreneurial thinker. And when I was working the corporate finance world, whatever ideas I had about improving the business, improving marketing, etc. It was kind of like ignored so, um, but a barbershop was never in my thoughts. It just kind of landed on my lap with the way things unfolded with my boyfriend at the time. But I also saw a huge, a huge need on the market. Because barber shops is something that every single guy uses, but rarely do they have appointments customer service, a website and rarely are they professionally ran like on the backend side where you have, you know, payroll where you set up The employees so that they're able to be financially stable in order to purchase, purchase a home and start a family, etc. And so there was this huge gap in the market where I thought I could fill. And that's what we did.

Anuja Pereira: 5:17

That's great. And do you find? I mean, you talked about being a co founder with your husband, and I'm wondering, I'm married as well. And I am curious how that works. How do you find working so closely and being married to the same person? What's that like for you both.

Marina VK: 5:36

So that was really our biggest concern is like, Oh, my God, we're gonna see each other all day every day. Right. But it actually worked out the best way possible. The reason for that is because we have completely separate roles. And so he has his own specialty and Nish, he's in charge of like the skills, the barbers training, education. And I am in charge of all business related matters, like customer service, you know, all the bills, marketing, strategy, growth, strategy, HR related things. And so we collaborate kind of like a puzzle piece versus doing the same role. And so I think one of the most important things is that we respect each other's roles enough where we listen to each other. So for example, if I need advice on like, okay, how can we make education better? That's his specialty. And then I listened to him, I take what he says, and then I put it into a growth strategy and marketing, etc. So it worked out really well. Hmm. Well, it

Anuja Pereira: 6:46

sounds like that's really good. Teamwork. But I can imagine also, a lot of time together, which is, which is interesting. I am also wondering, you know, you have grown a lot and change. I know that you have added other things besides just barbering, right, you've added the academy, you've entered the hair clinic, why do you think that's so important?

Marina VK: 7:10

Yeah, so I think that a lot of people think that we just sit in the same business all day, every day, that's actually not the case. He's usually training, he's usually out, he's a recording content for the Academy. We also have multiple locations. So we are rarely in the same place. A lot of the times I work from home as well, while he's either on the floor, or he's taking care of like TFC players on site, etc. So we're not together all the time. And we did add different branches under the Cadmen umbrella, mostly based on client needs. So we were really good with hair customer service. But the one problem that we were never able to solve for any of our clients was hair loss. And so we started a new business, which is a clinic, a hair loss clinic, and now we're able to fulfill that that need on the market. The Academy came about because of mostly our passion for growth or like in general, myself and my husband, like we're very passionate about always growing, always helping people around us, helping move our team forward. And so a lot of the times, we had people come to us asking for us to train them because there's not a lot of Barber schools, there's hairstyling schools, and they're completely different. Right? A lot of barbers are not allowed. Well, they're not interested in doing color. They're not interested in doing perm, lady's cuts, like they just wanted to concentrate on men's hair. And there's no schools like that. And so, again, there was a need. And so we created Cadmen barber Academy. And because of the COVID, and because of the high rise in demand for online learning, we decided to take it online. So it's an online academy, as well as we do in person classes. So basically, all the branches that we have is based on need and there is no other places that really fill that need.

Anuja Pereira: 9:37

Well, it sounds like you know, with your business acumen and Francis's skill in barbering, and fades and all the skills that he brings to the table that you're obviously doing something right you know, I'm curious what you know, what is it? All in all that you think you're able to do that a truck x such a high level clientele you know, you talked about TFC. I know, looking at your social media, not just TFC but Maple Leaf players, raptors, there's so many people celebrities who are coming to you. What is it about the Cadmen experience that is so unique and special.

Marina VK: 10:23

To be quite honest, I think it's just the mentality that we have, and then the mentality that we teach our entire team. So a lot of the barbershops that you go to, it's a very individual Doggy Dog, my client, my seat type of mentality. Over here, we literally have like core values where, hey, it's not about you, it's about the team, it's about the company, it's about serving the community, and anybody that doesn't grow into that mentality or comes in with that mentality doesn't really last year. And so I'm very team based mentality, growth mentality. And so when you deal with people that are, you know, like VPS, and presidents and TFC players, they already come with that mentality. And so I think that's what really attracts them to come into our shop, because they can feel the vibe, they could see the energy, they could see the efforts in our customer service to service them. Um, you know, there's no ego here. We develop long term relationships. We do sacrifice, like immediate things for long term relationships, right. So but I think it's mostly just like the mentality you can get on the client's level and how really meaningful conversations and relationships that's what brings them back.

Anuja Pereira: 11:57

So I want to ask you a little bit about when you were starting out in Mississauga, your first location, you talked about finding this fantastic location, it is a great location, right on Lake Shore. What was it like at the beginning for you did were there any challenges that you faced when you first opened up in Mississauga?

Marina VK: 12:17

Yes, so when we first signed the lease on this place, we actually had saved up for a condo and we decided, okay, let's just live at his dad's house for now sacrifice because you read in all these like books, that's what people do to get to where they want to do be. And so that's what we did. We decided to stay at his dad's house and take the downpayment money that we had to put it towards the business. We didn't have enough. And so after my corporate job, I would come in here and we would YouTube how to like do renovations. So we did that on the weekends. And we were lucky enough, I had some friends that came and helped us, but the renovations were done all by ourselves. And when we were finally done, we had the grand opening, a lot of people came to support. And then after the grand opening was done, it was like cricket Oh, no. Like, I'm like, Wait, so like, where are the clients? And so nobody tells you that, you know, building something out is just the beginning of it. And the hard part now comes into bringing the client said, working on your Google ranking, right, working on customer service, your prices, your training for the barbers. And so we had to learn very quickly. We were not searchable on Google for at least a year. That's usually how long it takes to rank first on Google. And so I would say like the first year and a half, it was a struggle. Sometimes we would have like, literally four clients a day. And so like I said, we didn't have enough money. So I printed out the flyers myself and I would call around the community. I would introduce myself to all the businesses I would attend the BIA meetings. I joined Mississauga Board of Trade. I literally did everything you could possibly like think of. And so we started working with the community to we volunteered in frosh weeks whether it was U of T Frosh Week, we did Elementary School frosh weeks. So we basically did everything we possibly could to get exposure while the Google the Google picked up the analytics. And so as we were going along, we kept learning we kept building clients building relationships. within the community, we were lucky we didn't have a mortgage to pay for we were still living at Francis dad's house. But it took a lot of perseverance. So yeah.

Anuja Pereira: 15:16

Do you think, you know, having to grind it out for those first months and that year? And, you know, does that really inform how you do business? Now? How does that change what you do now?

Marina VK: 15:30

Ah, I think that every, every certain period, like there's certain timelines, where you have to go through certain lessons and learn. So when we opened our second location, we did things a lot differently. That was a lot faster and quicker. And so now when we open the third location, it's going to be even faster. Because when it comes to, for example, Google ranking, we're going to start working on it a year before we open, right, that's just one of the lessons we learned. And many lessons along with each location that you open. I actually remember this one time, when we first open and we had like, I don't know, maybe it was like a third client ever that walked in from the community. It was a father and a son. And I was like, Oh, my God, a client. And so I tried so hard to build a relationship with them. I freaked him out, and they never came back. I became so awkward. I sat beside him like, hey, like, thank you so much for coming. Where are you from, etc. And the father felt so awkward. He's like, can you just leave me alone? I'm just waiting for my son to finish his haircut. And I'm like, Okay, I need to lay off. So, yeah,

Anuja Pereira: 16:54

it's funny what we do when we're desperate.

Marina VK: 16:57

Yeah, if you live in your learn,

Anuja Pereira: 17:01

you know what, I do think there's some beauty in the struggle, though, you know, I think there's something to be said, for the hustle. You know, like you out there. I'm imagining you boots on the ground. I don't think you're handing out flyers these days. But I think there's something to be said, for the effort that you put in, in those days, and probably something that you learned during those times that informs what you do today.

Marina VK: 17:30

Yeah, I think that opening the business, my mentality was whatever it takes, right? So we have a certain amount of resources, we could not afford Canada Post to give out our flyers. And so I'm like, Well, I have nothing else to do. So I'm gonna go do it. And then when one of our barbers was coming in, and he only had like, one clients a day, I would ask him to do it with me, right, so we cover more ground. And so that's just the beginnings of it. You don't know any other ways, because you're so new, you just do what you can. And then when you do that, you discover better ways, smarter ways. You know, as I was reading more books, more, listening to more audio books, watching YouTube videos, I learned more and more on how to be more efficient with my time to get more clients, etc.

Anuja Pereira: 18:28

Absolutely. And probably, I'm sure there's some appreciation for all the renovations as you look around the space that you're in that, you know, you did it with your own two hands, right or your own forehands, if you count you and Francis and all your friends,

Marina VK: 18:42

right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Anuja Pereira: 18:46

I'm also know that you are a young mom, and I am wondering, as an entrepreneur, how you juggle all that and how you find balance in it all.

Marina VK: 18:58

Um, so having kids and I found like, as much as I love, live and breathe business, I just love it, um, family and friends, and having a family of my own was always my life priority. And so no matter what, that's always going to be my priority. Business, you build it, you rebuild it, you know, you start new ones. I've learned not to get attached to the logo not to get attached to a location or the business, right i I'm very attached to growth, learning and just having quality relationships. And so I've always prioritize that. Um, but it's not easy juggling both because sometimes there's urgent things in the business that I do have to take care of where it requires me to sacrifice time where my Normally, and so I tried to make up for it, you know, maybe taking an extra day off the following couple of days or so. But it's definitely been hard, especially when I first gave birth, and at the same time, we opened our second location. So when you open a new business, it needs a lot of attention from the owners and a lot of love. And I wasn't there for that part. And so we were off to a slower start, because off the beginning, we hired, I think, like four or five different staff. And they ended up leaving after like, a month, because there was no leadership. Right? I literally just gave birth. And so that was a pretty low time for me personally, because it felt like I failed. Like we just opened a second location where we had people quit. And I have like, a four week old baby, and like, I have this, like, you know, my hormones are all over the place. Right, but yeah, it's just, I don't know, it's just one of the things you have to overcome. It's a great now,

Anuja Pereira: 21:12

you gave birth to two things at the same time, the baby and badness at the same time. Exactly. Well, you chose your child, which is probably the right choice at the time.

Marina VK: 21:25

100. Yeah.

Anuja Pereira: 21:27

I also know that social media is a very big part of the Cadmen brand. And I'm wondering how important you think that is for Cadmen itself. And, in general, what's the role of social media?

Marina VK: 21:46

I think that if a company's not on social media, they're, I don't I don't want to say not going to make it. But they're definitely not going to be where they could potentially be. A lot of the times, you know, like, a lot of our efforts go towards creating content, because that content translates into branding new clients. And then those new clients translate into like them going to our other businesses, sometimes them turning into employees. And so you have to be on social media. And you actually have to put in way more effort than I see most companies put in. And so we find it so valuable, that it's almost like currency as well. Like, if you see an influencer, and they have, let's say, 180,000 followers, right, you're willing to give them anything for free for a post or willing to pay them. Right. And so a lot of times, followers and engagement is a form of currency now, yeah,

Anuja Pereira: 23:01

it's definitely changed the game. And I recently noticed that you on your personal social media have a bit of a following as well. How is that important to you? And how has that played a role just from your personal side.

Marina VK: 23:18

So I, when the lock downs happened, I had a little bit more time on my hands. And so I'm not a person to just stand still and enjoy life, like, I am going to create more businesses. So I think my long term goal is to write a book or a few books. And I'm very passionate about educating, especially what I know sharing the knowledge experiences, because if that means someone else can take my mistakes or my advice and apply it, and it helps their business. That's amazing to me, right? And so I decided to start sharing my knowledge. I did have like a few videos that went viral, one of them had like, over 1.1 million views, I believe. And so I just started creating videos because I really enjoyed sharing knowledge. I read a lot. I watch a lot of interviews and YouTube videos that are business related, or even like personal growth related. And so if I can, let's say take an eight hour book, and sum it up the biggest lesson in like 30 seconds. That's what I started doing and people started finding a lot of value in it. I disliked a little bit, but I really want to get back into it. Well, that's great. Who

Anuja Pereira: 24:45

Who inspires you? Who do you follow? What do you read? Who are the most influential people that you read or follow?

Marina VK: 24:53

I think in the beginning when I first started my business Tony Robbins, he just Just as a mindset, right, he really helped me set my mind straight. And then now I read a lot of different books. For example, right now I'm reading this book called Scaling up. And the books that I've read and people that are listened to it directly relates to this stage where I'm at in my business and my personal growth. So right now we have three companies, which is the barbershop franchise. We just made it a franchise, that clinic and the Academy. And so what I'm going through is growing pains of handling and growing three different companies. So I'm reading this book, it's called Scaling up. And it's been really helpful. This guide basically just explains and uses example companies of how they went from where I am, to the next level. And so that's what I read. Oh, that's amazing. Just really depends on where I'm at.

Anuja Pereira: 26:05

That's amazing. Cadmen is going to be franchising. That's incredible news.

Marina VK: 26:10

Yes, but thanks to COVID Well, we got held back for two years, but that's okay.

Anuja Pereira: 26:17

Yeah, that's incredible. Why franchising? Tell me about that.

Marina VK: 26:20

So I wanted to grow, I would never go into this business or any business just just for you know, one location. I always knew I wanted to grow based on the industry and based on, you know, the revenue each location makes based on basically like, the business model, it made sense to expand into multiple locations through franchising. One of the major reasons to is because when you have a barber, 95% of them want to have their own location, they want to have their own barber shop. And so we wanted to provide that for senior barbers, right? We don't necessarily hire and encourage people to go and take the franchise, but it's there for an option because everyone loves to grow. Right. Another problem again, there was a need on the market, right? Because a lot of barber shops are owned by barbers. And what that means is they're busy cutting hair and not working on developing the business, developing their marketing plans, developing their team. And so when they open a franchise with us, the whole business side is given to them. And they're trained on a silver platter, right? Because it took us six years to put something together that makes sense, you know, financially and from like, the business perspective, marketing, etc. And so, usually barbers, they're not trained on the business side. And so we provide all that all the resources, we show them how to do, you know, like accounting, bookkeeping, how to do the hiring HR processes. Just stuff like that, that a regular barber doesn't know how to do but they want to, but they have nowhere to go to find out knowledge.

Anuja Pereira: 28:27

We know you are so incredibly good at seeing a need and finding a solution. You are very skilled at it. I can tell it's, it's very, very cool to see I am wondering, you have a location in downtown Toronto and a location here in Clarkson Village and I'm wondering how you see them differently. And, you know, our listenership is certainly geared towards Clarkson and Lorne Park in South Mississauga, and what do you think is special about the South Mississauga area?

Marina VK: 29:01

It's actually very special because it's a community versus Toronto is more passing through. Right. And so over the years, so we've been here for six years, we've literally had clients that have been coming to us for six years the whole time. Like it's almost a tradition where certain families come in once a month, with the entire family, a mom with three boys or a dad with two boys. every other Sunday. There will be no like to ask for lollipops or popcorn. It's very community based, right? We see a lot of the same faces. And it's very steady. With Toronto downtown. It's it's great. It's very cold like street Queen streets. It's very Queen Street. It's very have a lot of financial debt. straight guys. And a lot of tourists, not so much with the lockdowns, but most of the people are passing through.

Anuja Pereira: 30:12

You talked a little bit about some of the volunteer activities that you did while you were starting up. I'm wondering what things you know, you're obviously established and don't need to, you know, promote your Google algorithm anymore. Are there things that you still do to give back to the community now that you've been here for a while?

Marina VK: 30:33

Yeah, so my absolute favorite day is Halloween, when it comes to the community. I actually this Halloween, I brought my daughter here. We went around, I just love it so much. And it's incredible how many kids are around this area, how many parents? How many businesses on the lake church has come out together and they're just fully 100% community? It's been great. So we always participate in it. I always make sure we have at least 1000 candies. Because even there's been a couple of times where even 1000 is not enough. Like it's busy. Um, we still every single year, we do raffle donation gift cards. It like we do a lot of events. We actually did paint the town red, a poor credit. So we do tons of events. But again, not in the last two years because of everything. We did barbecues we did charity barbecues we did. We rented out a basketball net, and we were running kind of like a little competition. So we've done tons of stuff here. Yeah, that's

Anuja Pereira: 31:53

fantastic. I think my two girls probably ate a lot of those candies that y'all gave out when we buy. It's a fun day Halloween and clerks and it's it's not to be missed, that's for sure.

Marina VK: 32:05

It definitely Well, you're

Anuja Pereira: 32:06

in the area. Are there any places that you just love walking around when you're in Clarkson village or poor credit?

Marina VK: 32:15

Rotary conservation area. That's my favorite. During summer, that's where I usually go to kind of like take a midday break. I just walk. Um, I love one does. One does Jamaican food. Yeah, that's been great. This is so good. That's

Anuja Pereira: 32:36

your favorite place to eat?

Marina VK: 32:37

It's definitely one of my favorites. Yeah, I feel like all the places are great. There's a trend kitchen that just opened as well. Yeah. I always go to keto girl to get like low carb pasta. Yeah. So yeah,

Anuja Pereira: 32:53

that's great. I ask at the end of every episode, my favorite question to ask is that if you were building a home and money were no issue. What is one design feature? You would be sure to include?

Marina VK: 33:07

A pool for sure. I love homes that have like the roundabout. At the front. Yeah. Where? It's like a little statute in the middle. I feel like if you have one of those, you've made it in life.

Anuja Pereira: 33:23

What would you what would your statue be of?

Marina VK: 33:28

Oh, that's a good question. I think just the waterfall. Okay. You know, like, a live

Anuja Pereira: 33:34

waterfall like a fountain fountain in the middle of sound.

Marina VK: 33:38

Yeah, I would. I would like buy some birds and there. I don't know.

Anuja Pereira: 33:45

Alright, so a round about driveway. That's how you'll know you've made it.

Marina VK: 33:51

Yeah, exactly. You will not actually in Clarkson village. There you go. You

Anuja Pereira: 33:55

will not be delivering mail by foot. Once you've got the roundabout. That's for sure. Sounds good. Well, thank you so much, Marina for being here. And it's been so nice to chat with you.

Marina VK: 34:08

Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. Wonderful. Well,

Anuja Pereira: 34:11

that's it for our interview with Marina today. But stick around for a shout out to this week's Lorne Park local legends. In each episode, I get to do what I call Lorne Park local legends, a chance to thank one or more people for their grassroots work that impacts this community. This time, I'd like to do a shout out to Brianne law for her initiative pumpkins for piggies. Each November she collects uncarved pumpkins from local residents and delivers them to an animal sanctuary near Hanover. In 2021. Our community collected enough pumpkins to fill a 15 foot U haul, keeping waste out of landfills and helping feed pigs and goats to Brianne and her other Volunteers and to all the community members who have contributed to helping feed the animals of the sanctuary. We thank you here today on the Lorne Park living podcast. I'm your host and Anuja Pereira. Be sure to subscribe so you can catch us next time when we get to hear the story of another difference maker of this community, making here such an incredible place to live. See you next time.