Job Spotlight with Brandon Hicks, owner of The Nappy Root Barber Shop

Brandon Hicks always wanted to start his own business, but he never dreamed he would have such meteoric success.

Four years ago, he opened The Nappy Root Barber Shop at 4231 Macon Road, creating a cultural oasis for his customers. And in that short time, the business has become a community favorite.

Nappy Root recently won the Ledger-Enquirer' 2015 Readers' Choice award for favorite business in the barbershop category. For three years in a row, the shop also has been a finalist for the Steve Harvey Best Barbershop Ford Neighborhood Award, beating out barbershops in some of the largest cities across the country.

Earlier this year, Hicks was part of a creative team that did hairstyles for the movie, "White Water," a special that premiered on TV One during Black History Month.

Hicks said he built his business as a tribute to black culture and takes advantage of every opportunity to promote his African-American roots. He's also not shy about speaking out against injustices still prevalent in society.

A native of Davenport, Iowa, Hicks said his mission is to connect with the community and be a role model for youths.

"My whole thing is about being one with the city of Columbus," he said. "I don't want to just be a barbershop and have nothing to do with our people, because I know how important it is for our youth to see us doing certain things."

Hicks recently sat down with the Ledger-Enquirer to talk about his business and life as an entrepreneur. Here are excerpts from the interview, with questions and answers edited slightly for length and clarity:

What brought you to Columbus?

The military. When I joined the Army, I got stationed here for basic training.

So you must like it here because you stayed.

I do. It reminds me of home in the sense of it being a Bi-City area, because I grew up in a quad city, where we were on the border of Illinois and Iowa. And then it's about the same population, just with a higher population of blacks here. It was comfortable when I came here. So I stayed.

What’s your family background?

I grew up in a single-parent home. It was five of us and my mother handled five kids. Even though I did have a relationship with my father, he lived in California and we saw each other sporadically. The single parent struggle is what I grew up with. Things were tight. But it made me focus. I wanted to do whatever I could to help. Even at a young age, I saw things that were missing.

When did you open your business?

July 1, 2011.

How did that come about?

I knew for sure that I wanted a business by the time I was 18. I started cutting hair at like 12 years old. One of my cousins wanted somebody to cut his hair bald. I agreed to do it, but I asked him if I could cut it into a style first. I actually cut a fade on his head, and he wore the hairstyle instead of getting his head cut bald. I cut his hair every week after that.

My cousin lives in Mississippi and every time I'm around there, he brings it up. He says what made him trust me to do it was the fact that I used to draw. He knew that the majority of people who drew also could cut hair. And, actually, the day I cut his hair, I never drew another picture. I was focused clearly on cutting hair. And by the time I was 13, I was charging like $5 per head.

So cutting hair is like an art.

Yes, that's the way I look at it. I've been fortunate enough to make a living off of that art. It was something that I always wanted to do -- have my own business. I had one friend in particular, he and I would talk about it all the time. He used to sell watches in school, and just hustling. Something that helped us was a (business symposium for minority students) that they had every year at school. You would sit there and people would come and talk about their businesses and how they did it. Some of them had multimillion-dollar businesses. That was like the biggest impact ever, because we saw that it was possible and always talked about doing it. It was just a matter of how to do it.

How did you start out in Columbus?

I got licensed in 2005 when I finished Rivertown, and I worked at The Barbershop on Buena Vista Road. It was just an environment where I learned the business. Nate Johnson was my boss and I stayed in his ear like all the time. We've got a great relationship now and we still talk. But when everything lined up, I saw the opportunity to make my dream of owning my own barbershop a reality. My family supported me. And my wife, she really pressed me. She still does now. I push myself, but she always gave me that little extra encouragement and reassurance that I could do it.

How important is it for an entrepreneur to have a supportive spouse like that?

I don't think it would have happened any other way because you need that balance. In my situation, we have children now. And just knowing that she has that under control, I don't have to worry about the things that need to be taken care of at home. I can focus on the craft and the business to take care of home financially.

And then there's the extra push and encouragement that she provides, because you can't always see your total potential. It takes another eye and somebody who cares for you, who has a certain sense of your well-being, to really see what you're capable of being. We come from different backgrounds and view things from different perspectives. So I use her as my gauge.

You talked about everything lining up for you to start your business. Tell me more about how things lined up in your favor.

Once I decided that I needed to do this, it was just saving the right amount of money. I always kept my credit at a certain level. Once I got out on my own that's something that I learned early on -- not to abuse it and do whatever.

I never listened to fly-by-night schemes. There are a lot of things that I look back on now that could have destroyed everything if I had listened to certain people. But I was always real careful about my credit. So when the time came, I just saved a certain amount of money, picked the building and continued to work while I got everything together. Even after I told my boss what I wanted to do, he let me work up until I was comfortable stepping out. The day I stopped working there, the next day I opened up here.

And why did you choose this location?

Really this was an alternative choice. My first choice was Cross Country Plaza. But we went in, agreed to the paperwork and then they came back and wanted me to change the name of the shop. They came up with some crazy excuse. I really could've pressed it and gotten a discrimination case going on. But the way I look at it is I didn't have a lot of money. And that money would have gone to a lawyer instead of the business. So I just took that energy, and it motivated me to pick this location because it was down the street, still on Macon Road.

How did you come up with the name of your shop?

I wanted something to identify with us and our people. And "nappy" is the perfect thing, because it's associated with hair and it's associated with our culture, and you can embrace it all at the same time. When you look at the word "root" and what that means, that's where everything is created and, from there, anything is possible. If the root is right, you nurture it, you water it, you're going to have beautiful fruits and a beautiful family line. There's a root to everything.

For some people, "nappy" has been a negative term. So tell me why you see it as a positive one.

It's just a term associated with our culture, and I want to embrace it because it's a strong term just like our hair is strong.

How many barbers do you have here?

There are six of us.

How is business these days?

Oh, it’s great. We’re staying busy. Each day it grows steady. I couldn’t have dreamed it would go the way that it has. We have been open four years, and to be nominated for the Steve Harvey Neighborhood Award three of those four, that’s unheard of.

So tell me about the Steve Harvey nominations. How did that come about?

Really from customers suggesting it. It's by popular vote, and to be nominated you have to be among the top four in the nation. People vote online in a 12-hour window from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. You're competing with barbershops from bigger cities. You've got L.A., New York and Philly. This is Columbus, a city with a population of 200,000. And so, to be in that number with so many people just believing in what we're doing and stand for, it means a lot.

What sets your business apart from other barbershops?

Everything is teamwork. If you can't understand that concept, you will not work one day here. No barber is put above anyone else. It's just strictly about the customer, and we're comfortable with them going to other barbers to get service. It's not always like that at other shops.

What are some of the activities that you've been doing at the shop to promote black culture?

Well, right now all our energy is on the Million Man March. We have partnered with the local organizing committee, and we're trying to get a 1,000 people from Columbus to Washington for Oct. 10. But on a daily basis we're all about our culture, when you look at the people who we've got on the walls, the music we typically play and the movies we typically watch. It's all about embracing our culture so some of these kids who come here can see us and our art in a certain light. We also give backpacks and school supplies to children every school year.

Why are barbershops such a big deal in the black community?

So many places we compromise ourselves and our culture. And in most arenas we have to conform to other people's standards, what they want us to do and what they want us to be. But particularly in a barbershop, you can be you.

People don't realize how often customers and barbers interact. There are some customers that we see every week. I've been cutting hair in Columbus professionally for 10 years and there are people I've seen go from age 10 to 20, and I'm still cutting their hair. You deal with these people and develop a relationship. You hear their ups and their downs, trials and tribulations.

And now it's changing even more because you have a lot of single parents who are bringing their boys in. We focus on making it a comfortable environment for a woman to sit in, where it's not just male-dominated. We really promote family. And now there's a national program that's promoting books and reading in black barbershops. We're going to have a book stand set up to encourage parents waiting with their kids to read books.

What's your five- to 10-year vision for your business?

In five years, hopefully, we will have a regional presence. And wherever we're located, I want to have the impact that I think that we're having here as far as connecting with our people.

Bio

Name: Brandon Hicks

Age: 33

Hometown: Davenport, Iowa

Current residence: Columbus

Previous job: Barber at the The Barber on Buena Visa Road

Education: High school diploma; 2005 graduate of Rivertown School of Beauty in Columbus

Military service: Served in the U.S. Army, 2000-2004, stationed at Fort Benning, with a tour in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom,

Family: Wife, Latasha; two children, Symone and Brooklyn, ages 2 and 4, and expecting a third.

Leisure time: Enjoys watching sports, reading and watching documentaries about people he admires, such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.. Russell Simmons and Jay Z.

This story was originally published August 29, 2015 at 4:43 PM with the headline "Job Spotlight with Brandon Hicks, owner of The Nappy Root Barber Shop ."