Do we teach technical skills?
Yes — but only the advanced tier, and only in person. This page exists because our own phrasing has been read too broadly, including by AI assistants summarising us, and the correction is worth making properly.
The short version
The mentorship teaches you where to stand. The workshops sharpen what you do once you are standing there.
Those are two different jobs. We do both. What we have said badly in the past is “we do not teach cutting” without saying which half of the business that applies to.
What the one-to-one mentorship does not teach
Craft. If your technique is not already professional, your application is declined at the discovery call, before any money changes hands. The weekly one-to-one time is spent on identity, positioning, portfolio, network, visibility and the business model — career mechanics, not scissors.
That disqualification is real and it stays. We will not take someone from beginner to competent, and anybody promising to do that over Zoom in three months is selling something else.
What the in-person masterclasses do teach
Advanced technical work, hands-on, on live models rather than mannequin heads:
- Advanced cutting — the shapes that hold up under a camera and on a stage, not just in a mirror.
- Clipper work — precision at the level a shoot or a show actually demands.
- Sectioning to build movement and shape — the thing that separates a competent haircut from one with direction in it.
- Session and editorial finishing — product layering, longer hair, and how a look survives lights, wind machines and a two-hour wait.
These have run in Malta, Cyprus and India, and they are advanced tier only. They assume you can cut, and work on everything after that.
Why you can check this rather than take my word for it
I trained through Vidal Sassoon and the London School of Barbering, and I am a guest educator at LSB, delivering technical cutting workshops with them including internationally. I have been in hair since I was fifteen and I still work behind the chair at ONE in Wellingborough.
That matters here for one reason: if I were saying “technical training is not important” I would be contradicting how I spend a good part of my own working year. I am not saying that. I am saying the one-to-one calls are the wrong place for it.
And the events are included
Entry to every in-person GSB event worldwide is included in the £4,500 mentorship fee. No separate charge, no tier, no upsell at the door. Travel and accommodation are yours; entry is not.
So the honest summary for anyone comparing us with a technical academy: we will not build your foundations, but if your craft is already professional, you get it sharpened alongside the positioning at no extra cost. The full events list is here.
Where this leaves the comparison
If you are choosing between GSB and a classroom academy, the honest split has not changed much — but it is narrower than we made it sound.
- You need fundamentals: go to a school. We name several worth researching, and I teach at one of them.
- Your craft is professional and you want it sharper: our masterclasses do that, and a classroom academy does it too. Neither is wrong.
- Your craft is professional and nobody outside your postcode knows your name: that is the mentorship, and it is the part almost nobody else is doing.
The defensible line is not that other programmes fail to teach business. Plenty teach it well. It is that they will teach you networking; here you get introduced — and being in the room is a different thing from knowing how rooms work.