Insider producer Kevin Reilly trims his own
beard with the help of Matty Conrad, owner and founder of Victory Barber & Brand in Victoria, British Columbia.Materials needed for a beard trim include a towel, a wide-tooth comb, clippers, a trimmer, beard wash, and beard oil.
Matty recommends practicing freehand shaving in sections over using clipper guards for longer
beards .
[clippers buzzing]
Kevin Reilly: I gotta say, figuring this angle out is tough. All right, so how am I looking right here? How's that?
Matty Conrad: Well, a little lopsided at this point, but, man, does that ever look good.
Kevin: Hey, Matty, how's it going? Welcome to the show. Thanks for helping us out here. I definitely have been needing a bit of a trim here. Before we get going here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Matty: Hi, everybody, my name's Matty Conrad. I'm the owner and founder of Victory Barber & Brand from Victoria, British Columbia, and I was the 2018 Canadian barber of the year.
Kevin: Wow, man. How long have you had a beard for, man?
Matty: I think I'm going on nine years now since I've seen my bare face. So I don't even know if I would recognize myself without it anymore, to be honest. Step No. 1 is gonna be washing your beard and making sure we have it thoroughly cleansed. I like to use a softening beard wash that's going to be moisturizing, and it's gonna tend to the skin underneath the beard. 'Cause the thing about beards is they wick moisture away from the skin, and the hair and the skin together can become quite dry.
Kevin: What am I looking for if I am walking down the aisle, you know, the
Matty: So, what you've essentially found is some moisturizing beard wash, and that's really what you wanna find. You wanna find something that is going to address the moisture content. I really, really recommend avoiding things like bar soaps or anything that has a really hard detergent in it because that can be very, very drying. Here's the two things you're gonna need to create a nice beard shape. Your cutting tools are gonna be your clipper and your trimmer. OK, and the difference between those two is that a clipper has nice, wide teeth on it, OK, and what they're meant to do is cut a large volume of hair. And then the trimmer has very fine teeth on it, and what that's meant to do is create strong outlines.
Kevin: So, I've got my one here. And now, this one's adjustable. Is that typical?
Matty: That's perfect. I think the biggest mistake people make when they're trying to keep their beard longer is they go to guards. They're tremendous tools to use for shorter beards. But as soon as you wanna get something longer that has any kind of shape to it, you wanna leave those and you wanna start working more freehand and sculpting. But what we're gonna use this for today is actually cutting the interior of the beard. We're gonna use this for shaping. We're gonna think of it kinda like a hedge. Before we get into that, what you really wanna make sure you have with you as well is a pick or a wide-tooth comb. The reason you don't wanna use a fine-tooth comb is because it puts a lot of tension on beards. Beards like yours and mine are a little tangly, they're very curly hair. And so we don't wanna put too much pressure on it, 'cause the more pressure we do, the more hair we're gonna remove when we're trying to comb through it. But what you wanna do is you wanna comb it into the nicest shape that you can make. Can you kind of describe the beard that you're trying to achieve?
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. So, I kinda like, you know, one of the things I like about a beard is it really shapes my face, and usually what I go for is something that kind of, like, works in from my haircut down, so it doesn't look like there's a big difference between the two of them, and then it can come in a little bit more here. And I like to leave it just a little bit longer in the front so that, not for nothing, if it's pointing down a little bit and I haven't been going to the gym that much, it does make me look a little bit narrower, which is kind of nice.
Matty: So, the way we start in the interior is with our clipper. And I'm actually gonna set the clipper all the way forward. I want it to be shortest cutting position, and I wanna have the largest amount of cutting surface on the blade.
Kevin: Is it always gonna be going down, or are we gonna go up?
Matty: I'm really glad you asked that, because going down is probably gonna create the smoothest results. I found that when you work upwards with the clipper, what happens is it starts to grab chunks of hair and pulls out more of a bumpy, rough finish. When we're working straight downwards, you get a smoother finish. And I'm gonna create a straight line from my corner of my sideburn, and I'm gonna push straight down. Just like this.
Kevin: Ooh! All right.
Matty: Now, this is where the freehand starts to become really important, 'cause I wanna make sure that what I'm not doing is pushing really hard inwards. I'm just trying to go straight down and remove the bulk on the sides.
Kevin: How close am I gonna go?
Matty: I would say go to where it's about a half an inch away. There you go. And push straight down. Nice straight line. There you go. Now, the great thing is that you can always add more. Now, when you're doing this, you're gonna notice that just that one patch back there, you wanna kinda move forward in panels. Really slowly. So you wanna take that back panel once you figure out your length, that's the length you wanna do, you wanna then move forward and you wanna take another pass again and make, kind of, panels moving forward and make it like a nice flat wall. Nice and clean. You'll notice that one hand gets a little more wobbly than the other, doesn't it?
Kevin: Oh, absolutely.
Matty: Yeah, it's weird. It's like learning to write with your left hand. That takes a little bit of practice, so you really wanna concentrate when you're working on your weaker hand. There you go, just comb through. You can see a couple of those guys pop out there. You see the stuff that's sticking out? And that's what we really wanna try and address. You wanna try and address all the little guys that were tangled inside the beard. We wanna make that nice and smooth.
Kevin: So, this side needs to be brought in a little bit more to balance it out, but I'd actually like to bring this side in a bit more too, is that possible?
Matty: Absolutely, yeah. Start with the side that you wanna establish, and then try and recreate it on the other side. Now, the area that you wanna protect the most amount of hair, that's the area that you wanna be really light with the clippers, you wanna make sure we're not diving in there and removing too much, 'cause this is where the length of the beard lives. So really all you're trying to do in this area is just clean up some of the flyaways. So, what you wanna do is you wanna comb that down again. You're gonna turn your clipper again, inverted, and you're just very lightly gonna go over the outside, making sure that you're not cutting it through a bunch of bulk. We're looking really good, but when you turn your beard to the side like that, I see a problem for the type of beard that you're trying to have. And that's what a lot of guys have a problem with, which is when they grow too much hair in the back area here and it stays very flat on the bottom. What happens when it's flat on the bottom is it ends up increasing the bulk right at the back of the neck there, so it almost makes you look like you have another chin that you don't have. And so the beard line on the bottom should descend slightly, just like the jaw line does. If these are the walls, this is the shelf, which is the area underneath. And same idea, we're gonna use our clipper inverted and we're gonna punch a line nice and clean. And if we elevate our chin like this and punch a line towards the Adam's apple, what's gonna happen when we tilt our head down is we're gonna have a nice, descending line. Much like I was working on the side, just creating nice, flat panels in there.
Kevin: Here's the thing, is this because my clippers aren't that great? That was getting caught a little bit. Should I just keep going at it?
Matty: Is your lever set all the way forward?
Kevin: It is.
Matty: All right. Maybe just take it a little slower and just work your way through really, really calmly. There we go. [clippers buzzing] It's kinda fun, isn't it?
Kevin: It is kinda fun.
Matty: I think once you start thinking about a beard as just a bunch of components, it makes it a lot easier to not get overwhelmed by trying to do the whole thing at once.
Kevin: Should I keep going all the way to the back here?
Matty: Absolutely, keep going all the way back. I don't think this is the most difficult part, but I find this to be the most important part. This part seems to have the most transformative appearance to the beard. If you notice, all of the sudden, now that he has a slightly cleaner baseline, it really looks like a much stronger beard. Does it feel leaner? Does it feel a little lighter now?
Kevin: Actually I gotta say, I can... one of the weird things is that I can't feel my beard on my neck as much as I did earlier, just before. Definitive proof of what's going on here now.
Matty: Yeah, I've got a good pile going myself here. One of the reasons why people would pick a square beard over a rounded beard is because it gives the face a leaner look. So, guys that have a slightly fuller face shape, they're gonna benefit from having something that's a little more linear and square, where guys that have a very narrow face shape are gonna benefit from having something that is a little fuller and rounder.
Kevin: I'm gonna go ahead and keep this part of my sharper edges here, 'cause I think I like that.
Matty: I think it looks great.
Kevin: I've also been in lockdown for a little bit here in New York. I've been in here for almost three months. I have not gone to the gym, so maybe I can use a square.
Matty: The outline is broken down into three components. The top line, the base line, and the lip line. So we're gonna start with the top line. And the shape that the top line takes is going to be determined by your face shape. So somebody that has a narrower face shape benefits from having something that is slightly softer or rounder, whereas somebody that has a fuller face shape benefits from a line that is much straighter and more angular. I'm gonna take my trimmer, and when we're using a trimmer, we're not using it kinda like a pencil. What we're doing is we're using it more to, like, punch lines into things. So we wanna make sure we put that trimmer right against the skin, like this. All right, and that's what it does. It creates a straight line. Creating a straight line is easy because you can use the straight edge of the blade to just punch a nice clean line in. But creating a curved line is slightly more tricky. So what we're gonna do to create a curved line is I'm gonna stretch the skin upwards. I'm gonna pinch it up, and I'm gonna press the line in underneath so that when I let the skin go, it creates the curve of the line. So all I want you to do is take your trimmer, pick something from both the lower part of that earlobe, this corner of the sideburn, and I'm gonna get you to just punch a straight line towards about the middle point of your mustache or the corner of your mouth. Yours grows up pretty high. What you really wanna have is you wanna have a nice and clean uninterrupted line. Nice job, pal. Looking much better. Now, that area there is something you can easily maintain with your own razor, or you can maintain just with your trimmer every couple of days or so. Let's see if we can get it even on the other side. This is the tricky part.
Kevin: Switch to this left hand. I'm gonna live dangerously here. I gotta say, figuring this angle out is tough.
Matty: It's all right, take a second. How you feeling?
Kevin: Feels all right. What do you think?
Matty: You're looking good. I think you look great. Now, that's the top line. All right? We've got two more lines we gotta take care of.
Kevin: OK.
Matty: The next one we're gonna conquer is the base line, and that's very similar to what we were doing with the shelf, but what we're gonna do is we're gonna outline to make sure that's nice and clean and then remove all the hair on the neck underneath.
Kevin: Got it, OK.
Matty: So I'll start here from the center, and I like to work, again, from about the Adam's apple. Usually I cut something that goes up towards the corner, right, towards the corner of the jaw. You're gonna notice that you'll get less irritation removing the hair on your neck if you turn your clipper and not rake it using this motion, but turn it to the flat, smooth portion and clean up to that line. You're gonna get less irritation on your neck.
Kevin: Ah. So I should have been going this way.
Matty: There we go. Doesn't that feel better?
Kevin: It does. That feels much better, and I've always done it the other way. In fact, every time I've ever tried to trim my beard, or if I'm just cleaning up here and up here, it's always been this way, and it has been with a raking motion, but thanks for the tip.
Matty: My pleasure. That's what I'm here for. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to take my trimmer here, and I'm gonna set a nice clean line in front of the ear, and I'm gonna just curve it slightly back, making sure I get rid of all that extra hair. And then I'm gonna clean that line up with my trimmer in the nice kinda natural cutting position. Hey, Kevin, I'll get you to stop for one sec. What I want you to do first is I want you to brush some of the hair back. Because what you're getting is a whole bunch of puffy hair here, and if you brush it back and then trim that line, you're gonna notice that the puffiness starts to go away. There we go. I've always found the most important part of a mustache is that it remains functional. And so I always like to make sure that that mustache doesn't press over top of where the mouth splits open. All right? So it should peak slightly in the center. You don't wanna have it necessarily flat straight across. You do want it to peak just a little bit over the middle. So I find the best way to do that if you wanna keep a longer mustache is by combing all the hair straight down, and we're gonna start in the center with our trimmer on its side. And we're gonna start at the highest point, and we're just gonna rotate the clipper outwards so that it kinda creates a soft arcing shape. And what I'm gonna do last is I'm gonna add just a couple of drops of beard oil. Now, the reason why we use a beard oil is to protect the skin and to soften the beard hair and make sure everything stays conditioned and moisturized. You don't need very much, like, three drops of this, maybe five drops maximum. You wanna use something like maybe jojoba, or you wanna use something with argon oil or grape-seed oil. These are very, very fine oils, and they penetrate into the beard, so if the beard stays shiny for longer than five minutes, the beard oil is too heavy. I always like to finish off with a brush. And the reason I like to use a brush is because it gets all of the natural oils and it gets all of the oils from the beard oil that I've added all the way through the beard, and it allows me to just kinda sculpt everything nicely into shape and look a lot more polished. And once you've done that, it allows you to see if there's any further little flyaways that you might wanna just have to tame.
Kevin: How's that? See, I was thinking, like, right here -
Matty: Yeah, just that back corner there is pretty much the only area I can see. Wasn't so hard once you started to kinda get the hang of it, eh?
Kevin: I feel like with few more times, I could -
Matty: That's looking much better.
Kevin: Start my own business right in here.
Matty: There you go.
Kevin: And the only person I'll be servicing is myself, so I'll be nice and easy, no complaints.
Matty: The techniques that we used today are great for guys like you and me that have very coarse and somewhat curly beard hair. Freehand techniques work really, really good for those, but not everybody has the same type of beard hair. So always seek the advice of your barber, asking him about how you should be able to take care of your own beard at home, 'cause he'll be able to give you some better tips that are gonna be more applicable to your beard.
Kevin: Matty, thanks so much for joining us tonight. I gotta say, with your help, I think I did a fantastic job. I am gonna have to go ask my girlfriend about this and see what her actual opinion is, but -
Matty: Positive reinforcement usually goes a really long way.
Kevin: So much. [both laugh]
Matty: Yeah, hey, thanks a lot. It was a lot of fun hanging out with you guys today. I really appreciate it.
Kevin: And the aftermath of all this.