Why Irish Barber College Exists
Traditional Education Didn’t Work
My name is Ryan Hatfield. I’m a barber, mentor and the founder of Irish Barber College.
I wasn’t very academic early on in life, not because I lacked ability or care but because the education system had no place for how my brain worked. I always struggled to sit still, I struggled with abstraction, and I was eventually pushed out of school altogether. ADHD wasn’t understood in any real way in Ireland at the time, and in many ways it still isn’t.
One thing I was good at was working with my hands and connecting with people.
I started cutting hair at 13, which was 24 years ago now. First it was on my own hair and then friends, family and anyone who would let me. When I was cutting hair my mind would go quiet. There was only the client, the vision in front of me and a clear feedback loop between effort and result. It was the first time where learning felt natural instead of forced.
There was no clear path in life for people like me. If you weren’t academic you were often labelled as lazy or difficult. There was no respected, structured, hands-on route into any trades unless you found it by yourself, and that stayed with me, especially during the recession.
Learning Barbering the Old-School Way
I cut hair unofficially for years. In 2015 I committed fully and trained professionally at the Dublin School of Barbering which was owned by the Waldorf Barbershop and the late Liam Finnegan.
Liam was as traditional as it gets. White jacket. Old-school shop. Classic techniques. No nonsense. He won the only lifetime achievement award ever given in Irish barbering for a reason.
Walking into the Waldorf felt like stepping into a time capsule from the 1960’s. Barbering there was treated as a trade and not just a trend. It showed me the possibility of what the work could be if it’s taken seriously.
Even then, Dublin School of Barbering (now closed) being the best entry to barbering at the time, something was still missing. Classes were large in volume, models were limited and students were left standing around alot. The other barber schools in Dublin like Grafton or Knights school, students were expected to provide their own models or were sent outside to offer free haircuts on the street.
This was often labelled as “experience” and at that particular time I thought it was completely normal.
What Was Being Called “Experience“
I went on to work in and manage some of Dublin’s most well-known barbershops, I helped many barbers open their own shops over the years and then later spent time working as a barber in California and Boston. Along the way I became the person that barbers around me would come to for advice, correction, structure and help with building their own systems.
My entire career I’d seen the same pattern in new barbers:
people with certificates
people called “qualified”
people full of confidence
…without any actual client experience to support it.
I saw beginners pay serious money for courses where they barely cut hair. I saw “intro to barbering” courses charging hundreds of euro for watching someone else cut hair once a week, something you could get by simply going into a specific barber or shop, pay for a haircut yourself and just watch the barber.
Careers were and still continue to be damaged quietly while students blame themselves. These schools hide behind ‘accreditation’ language, and that has never sat right with me.
How I Built Conviction in my Work
What changed everything for me was building systems.
For years I wrote down everything I saw the best barbers in the industry actually do. I tested everything I didn’t fully understand on my own clients, I removed what clearly didn’t work and I kept what clearly did work. Over time I built a way of working that meant no matter who sat in my chair, I knew exactly what to do next.
This is where my consistency came from, not from any ‘certificates’ but from repetition under pressure.
Back in the Waldorf, Liam would settle technique arguments by telling someone to go “get the bible”. What he referred to as the bible was A.B. Moler’s barbering manual. Moler had identified the same problem in the late 1800s: people trying to learn the thing without actually doing the thing. His answer wasn’t theory or mannequin work, it was a school built around cutting hair on paying clients every single day.
This led to Moler founding the first “Barber College” in Chicago in 1893.
Towards the end of my time working in barbershops, just before I founded IBC, I went back to the Waldorf shortly after Liam had passed away. Being there again I spent most of my free time out the back going through his old books, tools and barbering antiques. Seeing how seriously he treated the craft reinforced something I already truly believed: that barbering needs to be respected as a trade and passed on properly, without shortcuts.
Why I Built Irish Barber College
Irish Barber College exists because there was nowhere for new barbers to be trained with real paid clients everyday.
IBC is built around a few non-negotiables:
Barbering is a trade
Trades are learned by doing
Repetition without correction creates bad habits
Small groups matter
Discomfort is part of learning
A student is usually ready when they’ve done at least 120–150 haircuts on paid clients and can stay consistent under pressure.
‘Certificates’ in Ireland don’t create anything close to that. Real paid client cutting experience does.
How We Actually Train Barbers
We train inside a working barbershop because that’s where barbering happens.
We provide paid clients everyday because “work” experience isn’t good enough.
We cap class sizes because large groups kill consistent correction and real connection.
We work in phases because progress should be seen clearly and not assumed.
Students come to us to make mistakes in a controlled environment, so they don’t make them later as it’ll cost them jobs, confidence or career reputation.
Accreditation, Standards, and What Sits Above the Acronyms
If you’re new to barber training it’s easy to get lost in acronyms.
VTCT. ITEC. NVQ. Certificates.
They sound official and are often presented as the deciding factor.
What’s rarely explained is this:
In Ireland, QQI (Quality and Qualifications Ireland) is the national authority that defines vocational standards. Other awarding bodies position themselves as aligned with or mapped to those standards.
That alignment language is often used to sell courses that provide no valid experience for students.
There’s a big difference between advertising ‘alignment’ and being trusted to help oversee the framework itself.
In 2025 I was asked to sit on the QQI validation panel as a subject matter expert for the national barbering apprenticeship program that’s currently in development.
Selection for a panel like this is rare and representation from independent training providers is uncommon. The role exists to pressure test standards and make sure what’s written on paper reflects what’s actually necessary in Irish barber training.
My role isn’t to promote a qualification or defend acronyms. It’s to make sure real competence isn’t diluted as new frameworks are being formalised nationally. That sits far above course-level ‘accreditation’ and it exists to question it, not to sell it.
My Role as an Educator
I’m present in every class, for every model and every student.
I don’t run IBC as a factory and I don’t disappear behind branding. I see myself as a personal mentor first.
I’m also a father which sharpens my sense of responsibility. When someone commits time and money at IBC I’m aware that it affects more than just the student, it affects families, confidence and long-term life direction.
My job is simple: to push students when they need it, support them when they struggle and keep standards that truly matter.
Why Empathy Matters in Barber Training
Empathy is often overlooked in barber training. Many people drawn to this trade didn’t do well in traditional education. They’re hands-on learners. Some have ADHD, are neurodivergent or were just simply written off as non-academic early in life. If you ignore that and you don’t build resilience then you shut people down.
My approach is connection first, correction second. Students are pushed hard here at IBC. I pay close attention to how each individual learns, where they freeze, what makes them anxious and what they respond well to.
That mix of empathy and high standards is why students who have struggled in other ‘academies’ or ‘schools’ thrive at Irish Barber College.
Who This Is and Isn’t For
Irish Barber College is for people who want to become working barbers with a wealth of real paid client experience.
This isn’t for anyone looking for an easy route of quick empty ‘certification’ or theory without practice or pressure.
The standards exist to protect students, their families, the shops that hire them and the Irish barbering trade itself.
A Final Word
If this way of thinking makes sense to you then you’ll love what we do.
If it doesn’t, then that matters too i suppose.
Learning barbering properly is very demanding, and your training should reflect that.
