“Thank you for trusting me today.”
That’s the personal motto of Brennen McCaulley to every stranger who sits in his chair. For Brennen, cutting hair isn’t just a job—it’s an art, a lifestyle, and a way to connect with strangers. It’s a core part of who he is, and the foundation upon which he will build his life. From the second someone walks in the door to the moment he spins them around and unbuttons the cape with a proud flourish, Brennen’s goal stays the same: to make people feel seen, confident, and cared for.
Few people grow up dreaming of being a barber, and Brennen was no exception. Born in Altoona, Pa., he approached high school graduation still weighing his options. He applied to Penn State and considered joining the military, all in the name of finding the right path. Life came for him, instead. He had just gotten accepted into Penn State for the second time when he found out he was about to have a kid. He was 19. It was a sobering reality, and it kicked in then that he needed to get a job. Fast.
But the job hopping alone didn’t lead him to a barbershop. Brennen was 20 years old when, six years ago, he took his son to get his first haircut in Altoona. He spent the half–hour looking in awe at the barbers going about their day. At the end of the haircut, he approached one of them casually and expressed his surprised, genuine respect for their work. After a ten–minute conversation, the barber said, “Dude, if you like it so much, why don't you just give it a shot?”
“I was like, ‘What do you mean?’” Brennen recalls to me. We’re sitting on a park bench in Rittenhouse Square. As a warm spring breeze flutters cherry blossom petals down from the trees, Brennen holds my phone closer to his mouth to be heard over the ambient cacophony of live music, picnicking locals, and impatient car horns. “‘Just give it a shot.’ It’s not that easy, right?"
The barber referred him to Martin’s Barber School in Huntingdon, Pa., and Brennen’s life changed. A high school merit scholarship covered the nine–month tuition, and before long, he’d been thrown into hands–on training, giving seven to ten–dollar haircuts.
“I was nerve–racked when I first started doing haircuts in school,” Brennen says. “But I've learned very quickly that people who are paying that price for a haircut, they're not really expecting much.” His clientele was a lot of older people who, by and large, would ask for a specific, simple type of haircut. It was good practice, but the more he improved, the more he wanted to challenge the limits of his burgeoning craft. He followed barber influencers on Instagram and TikTok, such as VicBlends and 360Jeezy, and aspired to that level of self–possessed, effortlessly poised expertise.
Upon graduation, his first real barbering gig was at Mansion Park Barber Shop back in his hometown of Altoona. He spent two and a half years there, but more and more was starting to feel the pull of a big city. Philadelphia seemed like the perfect answer. When I ask him if, now that he’s made it here, he thinks he’ll stay in Philly forever, he lights up.
“Philly will be—” He pauses to think. “If this is not my home for the rest of my days, it's gonna be for the majority of my life. I love Philadelphia, and I love the people here so much that I could never see myself being away from it. As a matter of fact, since I was a kid, I always knew that I would live here. My mom was actually raised in Philly, and I would come here all the time for, like, two weeks on end.”
Fast forward a few years, and Brennen was working at Barber on 24th, where I met him for the first time. He recently made the decision to switch over to DAPR Grooming Parlour, and he also offers his own mobile services. He’s confident in the brand he’s continuing to build, and the clients he’s gathered over the years who are proud to call Brennen McCaulley their barber. His prices have risen to around $65, depending on the type of haircut.
“I know that’s steep for some,” Brennen admits, “but I dedicate myself to really making sure that every single hair on someone's head is cut to a precise point. Year by year, I sit back and reflect on where I'm at in my career, and ask, ‘Do I deserve to up my prices?’”
Ultimately, Brennen decided that yes, he did. It seems like he can do it all: skin fades, mullets, textured crops, slick backs, and even designs and dye jobs, with enough time. Skin fades are where he feels “the most artistically driven,” because he can show off the majority of the tools in his wheelhouse, and mullets are a cool creative challenge because he gets the chance to blend two different styles: a longer, more flowing haircut, and then also a skin taper. He’s at a point in his professional journey where he can step up to bat every day and fully understand the desire of each client, and how best to shape their request to their hair texture and head shape. And he’s providing an experience as well as a service—a good conversation, a pocket of enthusiastic warmth in an otherwise busy day, and a firm guarantee that you’ll be well taken care of, no matter what you're looking for.
“I'm not giving you some random haircut, trying to get you in and out of the chair as quickly as possible,” he continues. “If we're having a conversation, and it's something that's gonna make your day or it’s gonna make you happy, I have no problem just sitting around and talking for ten more minutes just to put a smile on your face and leave you feeling confident.” He loves all of his clients, and without them, he wouldn’t be able to make a living.
“We are social creatures,” Brennen says. No matter how many hours he’s worked or how tired he may be on a particular day, the gift of giving someone a perfect haircut always keeps him going. Every customer service professional has long learned how to compartmentalize, to shut out their personal lives when they go into work and give their best self to their clients. But for Brennen, it’s more than just putting up a positive front.
“I just know myself in the barber life,” he says. “I love doing what I do, and I think being personable with people and the connections that I gain are the most important things to me. There's no better feeling than having somebody walk out that door being like, ‘Dude, you killed it,’ or, ‘Bro, I feel so confident.’ Especially when somebody comes in and they're maybe not in the best mood, and then I can change their mood with a conversation as I'm cutting their hair, turn them around in the chair, and make their confidence go through the roof. They feel so good, they're gonna go conquer their day. Hey, man, go out. Make some money. Go out and get engaged. Go out and have a great day.”
Then I ask him a variation on the old Penn adage: Do you live to work, or work to live? His answer, unsurprisingly, is a mix of both. Right now, he says, it’s the grind for his 20s—long hours on his feet, no breaks, building a foundation while he’s still young. But he’s playing the long game: a future where he owns his own barbershop—or maybe a few—and has enough loyal clients and good employees to step back a little, spend more time with his kids, and still be proud of the business he built.
“Is it the end of the world if that does not happen?” he asks, with that ever–present air of optimistic modesty. “No. Because I will always adjust, and I will always make do with what I love. I think that it is so important for people when they are young to try out many different things, find out where they feel happy. What sparks a smile on your face? Chase it, see if it's something that you could actually surround your life with. And if you can make money off of that, do it, because more than likely, it's gonna be so much easier for you to make money doing something that you love.”
Okay, describe your idea for your future barbershop, I half–joke, and he takes off. You can almost see the lightbulb switch on in his brain, pure passion replaces the blood in his veins. He starts to describe a long, rectangular space with epoxy floors—smooth and marbled look without any tile edges. Very reflective, very shiny.
“I want to have specks of gold throughout the floor. Gold touches everywhere. I want all of the art to be modern. I want there to be lots of neon lights. I want there to be a fridge where the clients are able to walk in and grab a beer.”
I laugh at this, and he does too, but I can also tell that he’s dead serious. “I think a lot of people have lost touch that barber shops were, at one time, the epitome of what a hangout spot was,” he continues, wistful. “People would sit around for hours and just have conversations about absolutely anything and everything and sometimes just nothing. I think it's a great place for a lot of in–depth interactions and for strangers to get to know one another.”
In the face of AI alternatives for almost every job, our world is constantly changing in a scary, seemingly–boundless way. But it’s because of how personal he gets, how up–close he has to be with every new person, that Brennen is confident that his career will be fine.
“We will always need barbers,” he says. “I don't think my job is going anywhere. We’ll have robots, yeah, but everyone will always need a haircut. I don't think a robot will ever be able to replace me cutting hair, nor would I trust a robot with clippers near my face. Even if it could, do you want to lose the human connection?”
The job isn’t always easy, as Brennen will attest. Muscle aches, hair splinters, posture damage, sharp clippers—all of these are little–known pitfalls of the barbering profession. Most days, he doesn’t eat, drink, or sit down for eight, nine, ten hours at a time. I have to push him to express these complaints; he emphasizes, “the only times that I really feel like I'm working is whenever the toll of the backaches and the pains on my feet actually starts to hit me, and I do want to take a seat, but I can't. But, you know, really, I have fun with what I do.” He’s positive that, if, right now, he had a strong enough financial standing to start it, his barbershop would succeed. But entrepreneur Brennen and manager Brennen will never abandon that young barber who started it all.
“I've always told people,” he says earnestly, “I don't think there will ever be a point in my life where I will not be cutting hair. I think that I will be that old man who still wants to give haircuts to all of my immediate family at all times, because I just love doing it that much.”
Long after the aches and long days, after the floor is laid down and the walls are strung with neon, Brennen McCaulley will still be doing what he set out to do from the beginning: making people feel a little more connected, a little more seen. Some dreams take time to build, but some callings are there from the very first cut.
