Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawn and Polina Saparamadu.
Hi Shawn and Polina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
We are a husband and wife team who spent well over a decade working in investment banking and private equity across New York and Hong Kong. After welcoming our third child, we decided to leave our desk jobs to pursue investing in and operating Main Street businesses. We moved down to Miami and settled down with our family in Coconut Grove, and shortly thereafter found The Well Groomed Gentleman, a barbershop & spa that has been serving the Coral Gables community for over a decade. Since taking over the business, we’ve had a lot of fun further investing to create an environment inspired by our travels and the barbershops that we have visited around the world. Ultimately, our goal is to make The Well Groomed Gentleman into a place that men come to not only to get a haircut, shave or a facial, but also to take a break from their busy lives to have a drink, read a paper and have a conversation with the team and other customers.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This is our first experience owning a barbershop, so the learning curve has been steep. To make the barbershop more welcoming, we have juggled several contractors, vendors and our three children in parallel to ensure a expeditious renovation for our team and customers. In an effort to elevate our customers’ experience, we have done a lot of research into men’s products and treatments and made quite a few changes to the shop itself. It has been a humbling and exciting process that has really challenged our creativity and stretched us beyond our comfort zone. We are grateful to our team for their support and encouragement on this journey and we look forward to the next chapter for the Well Groomed Gentleman.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Before becoming business owners, we spent 10 and 15 years respectively working in investment banking and private equity across the US and Asia. Throughout our professional careers, we have learned the ins-and-outs of the M&A and have had the opportunity to work with professionals and businesses all over the world. Now that we have embarked on the next chapter in our professional careers, we pivoted from advising and investing other people’s capital to investing our own into wonderful small businesses that power our communities. It is incredibly rewarding to have a direct impact on our team, customers and community, and we love that it is giving our young children an understanding of the impact they can make in their own professional endeavors one day.
How do you think about happiness?
Spending time with our kids, being outdoors, traveling and building businesses that positively impact our community are the things that make us happy and keep us going.
Contact Info:
- Website: TheWellGroomedGentleman.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellgroomedgentleman/?hl=en
Image Credits
DSC02574 (outdoor image) – photo by Nicholaus Booth DSC02575 (indoor interior) – photo by Nicholaus Booth DSC02727 (barber cutting hair) – photo by Nicholaus Booth IMG_0923 (lounge area) – photo by the Well Groomed Gentleman DSC_4797 (barber chairs) – photo by the Well Groomed Gentleman
