BarberSociety Magazine Q4 2025
Interview
Josh O’Meara-Patel
Reinvention takes ruthlessness.
Read the storyHow a disastrous haircut on New Year’s Eve turned a geography student into one of the world’s most influential barber educators.
The worst haircut of Josh’s life changed everything. It was New Year’s Eve, he desperately needed a haircut, and yes, of course he hadn’t booked an appointment. At his parents’ home, staring at his dad’s clippers in the cupboard, he thought: “How hard can it be?”
As it turned out, very hard indeed. He arrived at the party that evening wearing a hat. But there was something about the sound of the clippers that intrigued him. “That sound of the clippers ‘crunching’ through the hair grabbed me straight away.” A week later, he dropped out of his geography degree and started cutting hair in his parents’ kitchen.
That was ten years ago. Today, Josh O’Meara-Patel is an internationally recognised barber educator with more than 22,000 students around the world, creator of the patented D.F.S. Formula haircutting system and winner of ‘Educator of the Decade’ at this year’s CT Barber Expo USA.
Josh’s career hardly followed the traditional path; quite the opposite, he went his own way entirely. Three months after that disastrous New Year’s Eve, he got a job at a local barbershop. Three months later, he was in a more expensive, slightly more luxurious shop. Another three months on, he was working at the most expensive shop in town. After a year, he was already being asked to teach. “I’d only been cutting for a year. I hadn’t planned to become an educator at all. But whenever I posted haircuts, people kept asking me how I’d done them.”
His philosophy became simple: say ‘yes’ to everything. “I’ve always believed in doing things before you’re ready. My whole thinking is: if I say ‘yes’ to 1,000 things and only 500 work out, some people see that as 500 failures. Whereas I see it as winning 499 more times than you, because you only tried one thing.”
He taught his first class in Rotterdam, eighteen months after he started. Teaching came naturally to him. He had coached various sports throughout his life and had encountered psychology at a young age through his mother’s mental health problems. It made him “emotionally literate quite early on”, you might say. When cutting and teaching came together, it simply clicked. “I remember thinking: ‘This is it.’ From then on, it was just eyes on the horizon and go for it.”
Of his ten years cutting hair, he actually spent only about three working in a barbershop. “I knew quite quickly that I didn’t want to be a barbershop barber, which sounds pretty strange. But I’d always wanted to focus on the educational side of whatever I did.” Still, he went through every stage. “I worked in the local barbershop, the slightly more expensive shop, the city-centre shop, rented a chair, had my own barbershop. But each stage was short because I was driven by the idea that I had no time to lose.”
And here is where it gets interesting: Josh never went to barber school. “I never learnt to cut hair the traditional way. That meant I ended up simply doing what worked for me personally.” When he started teaching, people kept asking about his method. Then the penny dropped. “I realised that the method I was using was the product, not my haircuts.”
He developed his approach into the D.F.S. Formula. “What it does is bring visual cutting and technical cutting together to make precision cutting easy, logical and efficient.”
For him, the gap in the industry was clear. “In our industry, you often see that you have to learn hairdressing in its entirety to really progress. Yet hairdressing isn’t really comparable to a barbershop: the environment is different and the pace of work is much faster.”
His vision? To make this method the standard for how people learn to cut hair. “I genuinely believe that if you learn this first and then want to do a Sassoon course, for example, you would understand much more. Because barbers taking those courses now get confused, most of them at least. If we want to grow as an industry, it isn’t about 10% of us being good. It needs to be 100%.”
He is clear about what he is not saying. “It isn’t about everyone having to do what we do. What we do gives you a sound fundamental understanding of hair that you can use to progress within our system or any other system. That’s what our industry is missing: that fundamental understanding of hair and really understanding what you’re doing.”
Josh has taught on every continent, and his online academy has 22,000 members worldwide. Most are in the US, followed by the UK and Europe, including “quite a lot from the Netherlands, actually”. Until this year, marketing was purely organic. “We never really focused on marketing beyond social media and email campaigns.” Now they are putting together a dedicated team.
And that ‘Educator of the Decade’ award? He sees it not as a personal honour, but as recognition for the entire movement. “I don’t see it as recognition for myself, but for the movement we’re creating together, as a company and with our students. You can only do your very best, and then the world shows you where you can grow.”
He does not enter competitions. “I’ve never entered myself for any of the awards I’ve won; other people nominated me. I don’t need personal accolades, but I love that everyone’s hard work is being recognised in this way.”
Asked about his inspiration, his answer is sincere and simple. “The only way to describe it is as a ‘creative process’. The hair talks to you; it tells you where it wants to go.” His creative approach is almost Zen. “When it comes to creating, I want to be as surprised as you are when it’s finished. If it’s already in my head before I start, then technically it’s a kind of leisure activity.”
And other barbers? “My tongue-in-cheek answer is: I don’t care how other people cut. Other people’s work shouldn’t influence my desire to cut hair.” But he immediately qualifies that. “That doesn’t mean good work doesn’t inspire me. Seeing people do their best and grow motivates me every day. Anyone can inspire me. But I love it so much that I’d do it anyway.”
On trends, he says it is about what suits the individual. “I find it difficult when someone wants something that doesn’t suit them. On the other hand, I love creating haircuts that really suit someone, even if they’re ordinary or fairly simple. If it enhances that person, it excites me more than doing something striking.”
He sees longer styles returning in the US. “Over the past two to three years, people have been choosing tapers more often than fades.” Yet the internet is blurring the distinctions. “TikTok and Instagram are blending all those styles together. The internet is turning the world into one community.”
Is that good or bad? “Both. Being different is the most beautiful thing there is. I’d rather see you being the best version of yourself than trying to be a copy of someone else.” Walk down any street and you see the same haircuts everywhere, all equally mediocre. “The social media barber world is perhaps ten per cent of the industry today. Our real task is to get the other ninety per cent — the people who don’t use social media — to care just as much about quality.”
Josh’s relationship with BarberSociety Live has mainly been “long-distance” since their first meeting at BarberCon in 2018. “Every year they asked me, and every year I was already fully booked.” This year, they got in early. “I’m glad we managed it for the 10th anniversary, because it’s going to be something really special.”
He is travelling from New York, while Tony and Montel are coming from the UK. Having several educators there matters. “Nobody is trying to be someone they’re not; everyone brings their own value and speaks to a different type of barber. If we create only one kind of person, we aren’t representing the industry very well. I want everyone to feel represented.”
His name was recently mentioned on the Barbersessions radio show as one of the barbers Dutch fans most want to see. “It still feels surreal, because ultimately we’re all just barbers. I feel the same doubts, the same procrastination, that same little voice telling you that you can’t do it. We’re all the same.” The growing momentum behind their work means a lot to him. “It’s about more than a haircut. It’s about helping people grow, not just technically but as individuals too.”
What can visitors to BarberSociety Live expect next year? “It’s going to be intense. I’m going to explain everything in detail, mainly through a system that helps barbers scale up and improve not only their skills but also their understanding. Ultimately, success in cutting hair is more about making the right decisions than technique alone.”
The theme of this magazine is “Reinventing yourself”, and Josh has a clear view on it. “Reinventing yourself means getting closer to your true self. Every time someone reinvents themselves, they move a little closer to who they really are. It’s a growth in confidence, daring to show who you truly are.”
But growth and scaling up do not come without pain. “Scaling up is always followed by resistance. Every time you think or act bigger, you move further away from other people’s comfort zones.” He turns the classic comfort-zone narrative on its head: “It isn’t your own comfort zone that holds you back, but other people’s. What limits most people is their fear of stepping outside someone else’s comfort zone.”
Josh constantly reminds his team: “If you want your world to look different next year, you have to get the people in it to be different too. If I grow and that makes you uncomfortable, I’m not going to hold myself back to reassure you. That might sound ruthless, but sometimes you have to be to build the success people want.”
For barbers, that is often particularly difficult. “Barbers are empathetic, real people pleasers. That’s partly why we love our work — we make people happy every day. But that very desire to please keeps you small. You hold yourself back so other people won’t feel uncomfortable.”
And the solution? “You have to dare to let go of that mindset. If you want to be the best version of yourself — as a barber, educator, parent, whatever — you have to look after yourself first. Fill your own glass first. Don’t be afraid of losing people. Your world changing is normal. In fact, it’s necessary.”
Josh O.P. / D.F.S. Formula
The first time Josh really messed up a haircut, probably his third, proved decisive. “It was on a family member I saw every day,” he laughs. That mistake gave him the focus he needed. “From that moment on, I became almost obsessed with getting better. That was the moment I thought: ‘This must never happen to me again.’”
Now, at 31, Josh finally wants to really see the world, rather than just teach in it. “I’ve been to Brazil nine times, but I’ve never seen anything other than an airport, a hotel and a venue.” Professionally, his focus is shifting. He wants his team to become the stars while he concentrates more on mentoring within the creative industries. “Lately I’ve been exploring dopamine and productivity — how to manage a creative brain. And that’s not just theory: I talk about it because I struggle with it myself every day.”
He is also working with barber schools to embed the D.F.S. Formula in their teaching from the very beginning of training. “So students get a solid foundation from day one on which to continue their education.”
His advice for aspiring educators is clear. “Just say ‘yes’. Just do it. If you don’t feel ready, that’s exactly the right moment. If you do feel ready, it usually means you’ve already had enough validation. Confidence is simply validated experience. And if you only act from that confidence, you’re no longer really challenging yourself.”
You do not need a huge social media following, according to Josh. “One of our best-selling educators only has something like a thousand followers, because he understands marketing.”
Start at the bottom. “Do it for free first. Teach in salons and schools without charging anything. Build up experience.”
And stop waiting for perfection. “People say they want to become educators, but their scissor work isn’t good enough yet. Then I ask: ‘Can you fade? Yes? Well, teach that, then.’ Because you also have to learn how to teach. By the time your scissor work is good enough, you’ll already have experience as an educator. There will always be something you don’t think is good enough. So there will always be an excuse.”
Ten years after that disastrous New Year’s Eve, Josh is still hooked on the sound of clippers cutting through hair. He still says ‘yes’ to everything with conviction. And he still believes that, at heart, we are all barbers with the same challenges, the same dreams and the same love for the craft.
What began with a botched haircut and a hat to hide it has grown into something much bigger. A cutting system now taught around the world. An online academy with more than 22,000 students. Ten years of education that have helped change the way barbers look at their craft for good.
At BarberSociety Live’s tenth anniversary, Josh stands alongside Tony and Montel, ready to deliver three hours of detailed instruction. For someone who once dropped geography to cut hair in his parents’ kitchen, it has been an impressive journey of discovery. And to think it all began because, one New Year’s Eve, he thought: “How hard can it be to cut your own hair?”
