You built a brand that treats barbering like the craft it is. The market is booming. Now there's a chance to do what no franchise can copy — raise the standard of the whole trade and look out for the community in every chair.
Prepared by The Force for Health® Network · for The Barbershop / The Guys' Place, De Pere WI
A month ago, two couples crossed paths at the Mayo Clinic — both there for serious health reasons of their own. When you and your wife took a wrong turn down a corridor, Dr. Rob Gillio, a Mayo-trained pulmonologist, spoke up to help. What could have been a passing moment became a genuine friendship — the kind where you looked out for each other when it mattered.
This is the follow-up to that connection.
Not a cold pitch — two people who already care about each other's wellbeing, now asking a bigger question together: what if the trust you've built in a barber's chair could help a whole community get healthier? That's what this partnership is about.
The wind is already at your back. The trade is growing, men care about self-care like never before, and you've got fifteen years of hard-won know-how.
Growth figures per The Guys' Place franchising materials.
A bigger market isn't the same as a better one. Anyone can open more chairs. The winner is the brand that grows the trade up.
In 2017, Wisconsin Act 82 retired the barbering tiers — it eliminated the manager license and made the instructor certificate optional. Overnight the market lost the line between a professional who logged thousands of documented hours and passed educator testing, and a graduate who had never worked a real chair.
The people who invested the most were the ones the change punished. Your instinct was right: the answer isn't to lower the bar — it's to raise it yourself. That's exactly what a partnership with Force for Health delivers: a private, verifiable credential the deregulated market can't match, and a health mission that turns your chairs into something the community can't get anywhere else.
A barber sees the back of a customer's scalp and neck more closely, and more often, than any doctor ever will. That trusted, repeated relationship moves real clinical outcomes — the research proves it.
Victor et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2018 (52-barbershop trial); peer-reviewed dermatology incl. JAMA Dermatology, 2018. Model: notice, don't diagnose — opt-in consent, referral to a board-certified dermatologist.
Each rung is a portable, cryptographically verifiable Open Badges 3.0 credential — issued by Force for Health, checkable by anyone, owned by the professional for life. No agency can repeal it.
Onboarded to the house standard, sanitation exam passed, chair-hours logging.
The operator-grade rung the state deleted — documented hours + advanced exam.
Master the craft and the ability to teach it. Train the next professional.
Stackable on any tier. The mark of a pro who looks out for people.
This isn't a concept deck. Dr. Rob built a complete, working Barbershop Academy naming The Barbershop / The Guys' Place. It's ready to show, ready to pilot.
Live registration, tier exams, and a verifiable badge view.
Professional → Manager → Educator + Caretaker, on Open Badges 3.0.
Self-paced online lessons + in-chair practicum in one pathway.
The Certified Educator program that restores the teaching standard.
"Spot on the Scalp," consultative selling, and lice protocol.
"Why Work Here" — recruiting built on the founders' vision.
Plus a Workforce Partner brief and a Foundation funding case — with the tax-deductible governance (Force for Health Academy Foundation) already worked out.
Your Wisconsin shops become the flagship pilot and proof site. The natural first step.
Sponsor the community-health mission and open doors across the industry.
Lend the credibility of a founder who built and scaled the trade — and lived the credentialing gap.
Take a stake in the licensable Academy — your network as flagship and channel.
Start small and measurable: two or three Wisconsin shops, a 90-day pilot, real numbers on credentials earned, engagement, and early-detection referrals. The system is built. The only thing left is to fit it to your floor.