Hello! My name is Ryan, the owner and founder of Handyman's Beard Care! The best way for me to tell you about my business is to first tell you a little bit about myself and then what my goal for this company is.
I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and for the first 11 years of my life I would say I had a typical childhood. We had a decent house in a nice neighborhood, my father worked full time as a hot shot General Manager for a company that sold fiberoptic cables while my mother was a stay at home mom. I had two sisters that lived with me at the time, and two that were older and lived elsewhere. Sounds great right?
One night while I was in the 3rd grade I remember having some type of dream but the only thing I can remember is a lot of red flashing lights. The next morning my mom woke me up with tears in her eyes to tell me that my dad had passed away that night. He had a massive heart attack sometime during the night and didn't make it up to bed. He was 45 years old. This changed my life forever. Some of the most vivid memories I have comes from my dads funeral, first was being a pallbearer. We'll just say my father was a portly man, and even with 7 other of my uncles and family friends helping I remember how heavy and uncomfortable it was to carry the casket. I was so much smaller than everyone else I had to try and carry the handle at my shoulder height while everyone else had there arms straight. It felt like an honor though, like I was helping and I was part of the adults, not just some child.
Then after the ceremony my Uncle came up to me and said the one sentence that still rings around in my head to this day. "You are the man of the house now, you have to take care of you mom and sisters." That shook me, I was 11! How am I supposed to do that?! I wanted to succeed and provide for them but I had no idea where to even start. Fast forward a couple years I was able to get my first job at 14 as a dishwasher. I don't quite remember the timeframe but shortly after starting there the owner like me and had me start at his other restaurant as well. I worked after school some days and worked 12 hour shifts on the weekends. Highly illegal for a 14 year old. I thought if I work myself and make my own money then my mom won't have to take care of me.
She had to go back to her old job as a customer service representative for a pump company but had worked her way up to become the Service Manager of her location. It was inspiring to watch. During high school I worked at a grocery store roughly 35-40 hours a week. Some summers I worked under the table with one of my uncles doing carpentry. At this time in my life I started to learn how to fix things by myself instead of paying someone to do it. Whether it was replacing the brakes on the car, building a book self, cooking a good meal, or even building a computer I loved understanding how things worked and felt the pride in a project after it was done.
I decided to go to college which looking back may have not been the best path for me. I was semi-smart but I had no direction. I choose Health Science as my major mainly because I liked science and had more of an interest in it. This in turn lead to a fairly easy college experience but I still didn't know what I was going to do after. During the summers I was still working at the grocery store, but I also got a job at a Ford dealership and a liquor store that was across the street. Working 3 jobs for roughly 70-80 hours a week. I graduated with a Bachelors of Health Science but did not want to work in the healthcare field. I got what I though was going to be a temp job at a large retail department store that turned into 5 years, and it was here that I learned about business.
The Store Manager became my mentor and he must have saw something because he spent so much 1 on 1 time with me which I am forever thankful for. I worked my way up through the ranks and became a prominent leader within the store on a fast track to become a Store Manager for this company. During Covid I decided to test myself to see if I could grow a beard, I mean if it looked bad no one was going see it and I could shave it off when life went back to normal. I started to fall in love with the beard because it gave me a sense of character I felt like I was missing. The only problem was that it was starting to become super itchy. This is when I started using oils and then transitioned to balms when my beard got longer to keep it tame. I started making my own balms trying to create something that I liked and would use.
A short while later I started to see the problem with big corporate companies. We had a new District Manager that came in that had his own way of doing things, which were wrong and my boss would call him out. He ended up firing my mentor and I left the company shortly after. The icing on the cake is that the new District manager was fired for using charity money solely on his daughters basketball team instead of team(s) that needed it. It was at that point I knew I needed to create my own business and that this is where my path has lead to. I would like to share my beard care products with the world and help men take care of their beards so they can in turn focus of taking care of their families. All balms and oils are made with 100% All-Natural ingredients. All oils are cold pressed and pure and butters are raw and unrefined.
Though we sell beard products my goal for Handyman's Beard Care is to become bigger than just a beard care company, but one that gives back to the community and helps the next generation of Handymen find their path. In the future we plan to donate a portion of our proceeds to charities that help trade schools get the supplies that they need in order to properly teach up and coming students the skills they require to be able to fix things or start businesses. I come from a family of carpenters and regret not going to trade school myself. These jobs are important and will not go away and we hope that you will support us in our mission to create more Handymen.
Thank you!
Ryan, Founder and Owner
Handyman's Beard Care
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