Meet Stephen Bertram

We were lucky to catch up with Stephen Bertram recently and have shared our conversation below.

Stephen, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I believe resilience is a virtue that we are born with, but it must be developed and honed. When we are young and learning to walk, we fall down, but we get up and keep trying. As a young man in the boxing ring, when I got knocked down the reaction was the same, I got back on feet again. In many ways boxing has always been a metaphor to me for life. When things get hard, I pull up my dukes. Life is a fight, but the good news is that i’m a fighter, so I fight back.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I guess foremost, I’m a barber. I have been cutting hair for half my life, I’ll soon be 43. The first 5 years of my career were cutting my teeth in intercity Philadelphia. I worked in both barbershops and high end salons. Since then, I’ve spent 16 years working in Nashville. Last 10 have been working for myself on Music Row, where I cut hair and self manufacture small batch grooming products.

While I am very proud of the skill level that I have achieved as a barber, I am ready for the next phase of my career, building my e-commerce brand. My dream has always been to create a full blown lifestyle brand, but my point of entry is what I know best, hair.

For almost a decade now, I have been self formulating and manufacturing hair products right here in Nashville. While the organic growth has taken time, it is finally paying off and I am ready to partner with a manufacturer to produce my products for me.

What makes my products so special, is that they are formulated by a barber, a good barber, one who truly cares. Not just about hair and quality, but about what I put my seal on. I think so much gets lost in translation between the chemists who develop hair products, and the barbers who help to develop them. They just speak different languages.

As my grooming line is taking off, I have already begun conspiring with a partner for the clothing line. He got his start by founding a punk label and very embodies a f*** the man mentality which defiantly vibes with the Kingpin message.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I hear this very often about entrepreneurship that the most important quality you can have is tenacity. I couldn’t agree more. Get ready for a losing fight, but remember, you can lose 11 rounds and still win the fight. Don’t ever forget that.

Adaptation is has been key in my process. There is nothing about myself that qualifies me to start an e-commerce brand. I have very little formal education and only one skillset that is employable. When founding Kingpin, I did’t even know where to start, so I just started somewhere. Most of my journey has been finding out the hard way what not to do. If you remain resilient, you can pivot and adapt…then wash, rinse, and repeat. Eventually your path will become clearer and your ability to pivot and adapt will become stronger.

I would say a quality I have that has kept me going is being too stupid to know that I cant. I’ve seen people achieve great things by shooting for the stars. They may not have made it to the stars, but they got damn close.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

Without a doubt my barbershop clients have been hands down my best resource. From inspiration, to advice and education, to connections. There is no way I would have made it this far without them. If you are starting a business on your own, it can be very lonely and difficult for long periods of time. Don’t ever be so arrogant to think you can do it on your own.

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