Overcoming Limited Thinking to Build a $750 Million Company

In this clip from EYL, Rashad Bilal, Troy Millings, and Dave Salvant have a candid conversation about the realities of launching, scaling, and valuing SQUIRE—the revolutionary platform transforming the barbershop industry. Dave Salvant breaks down the challenges and successes of marketing SQUIRE to both Black and non-Black barbershops, revealing how preconceived notions and internal biases initially influenced their outreach strategies. He shares insightful lessons about how he and his team discovered their approach resonated widely, and how direct, authentic engagement can break stereotypes. The discussion delves deep into the nuts and bolts of business growth. Dave details the journey from personally pitching barbershops to building a repeatable, scalable business model and an executive team capable of taking SQUIRE to new heights. He emphasizes the importance of doing the unscalable things at first—rolling up their sleeves and knocking on doors—before building the processes for true scale. For entrepreneurs and anyone fascinated by startups, Dave explains the meaning behind SQUIRE’s incredible $750 million valuation in clear, understandable terms. Listeners get an inside look at how investors determine value, the formulas behind equity stakes, and the significance of creating a diverse team with ownership in the company. Dave and Rashad discuss the evolution of the company’s ownership table, the benefits and drawbacks of equity dilution, and why keeping control is just as vital as raising capital. With over 32,000 barbershops and millions of clients in their ecosystem, this conversation is packed with honest advice, motivation, and the real business insights you won’t get elsewhere. *Key Highlights:*

• How Dave Salvant and SQUIRE confronted and overcame biases in marketing to different communities
• The evolution from direct sales to scalable processes in the barbershop industry
• Real talk about company valuation, investor relationships, and how much a startup is really worth
• Strategies for building wealth in diverse communities through equity and ownership
• The unique challenges and wins in the journey from hands-on founder to scaling a business with a multi-million dollar market cap

If you want motivation and insider knowledge on what it really takes to launch, scale, and retain control of a high-growth tech company, this is the clip for you! *#SQUIRE #BarbershopBusiness #Startups #BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #Valuation #EYL #WealthBuilding #DiversityInTech*

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (00:43):
So marketing to barbershops, right are you marketing? At the
beginning you were to face you were going in hand
in hand, So were you doing that?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
What white barbershops? Also? Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, how did that work out?

Speaker 4 (01:00):
So funny enough, when we were first kind of thinking
through how we're gonna do this, we had a bias
against ourselves.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
We thought we probably couldn't.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
Go in there and like you know, resonate with with
with with these like non black barber shops. So we
ended up hiring a friend of ours who's actually still
the company, who who's white, and and like his job
was going to be kind of biz dev like going
to the shops, so he was doing that, we were
still doing it. And over time this on experience, we

(01:28):
started finding out that like, actually we were better even
at the white shops selling them than he was. And
some of the bias that we had, you know, the
preconceived notion that we had these shop owners because we
didn't look like them, weren't going to want to hear
us out. Actually it was just totally not true. And
and then you know, and it turns out, you know,

(01:49):
the white guy who we hied wasn't good at that,
He ended up being really good at other things, so
he moved into like product on the product side. So
you just never you never know. And sometimes there's a
tendency to sell yourself short because you know, you think
somebody's going to think something about you. But if you
have a great product and you go there and you
meet them, I I. You know, we found that for
the most part, customers are willing to hear you out,

(02:11):
you know, regardless of what you look like.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
Yeah, are you solving the hair on fire problem, you know,
and if you're solving that problem, I don't care whatever
you are. I think they're gonna listen to you because
it's you're addressing a real pain point in their lives.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
All right, correct me if I'm wrong in these numbers.
Thirty two thousand barbershops, thirty two thousand barber shops.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yet barber's barbers ten million clients last time I checked
that somewhere in that right?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
How are we like?

Speaker 1 (02:38):
This is because like you're talking from twenty sixteen to
this point, how are we scaling year to year?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Like? Are you like what trends are you watching? To say?

Speaker 1 (02:47):
All right, here's an opportunity, his opportunity. This is a
potemographic this is we haven't touched this place. How are
y'all going about that? That's a lot. Congrats, Thank you,
thank you, thank you. It's never enough, though, you lord
it to the next.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
So what we learned is a super what's super important
to scales that you really have to scale your team.
So you know, in the early stages, you know it
us and then a few other early employees, but as
you get bigger, you really have to bring on folks
who have the experience of kind of getting to the
next level where you're trying to get. And over time,

(03:23):
we've built up a really incredible kind of bench of
our executives, uh and that that has helped, you know,
helped tremendously. And in the early days, you do you know,
it's called doing things that don't scale, like walking into
the barbershop yourself and pitching them like that's great, but
like you can't that's not going to get you to
where we are now. So over time you have to

(03:43):
figure out how do you build like repeatable motions, repeatable
processes that's like scalable and you know, that's essentially essentially
what we've been able to do.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
So so as far as this number of seven hundred
fifty million dollar evaluation, what can you break that down
as far as like what does that actually mean in
layman terms for somebody that just they hear that.

Speaker 5 (04:07):
But it's like that is the enterprise value or the
kind of like market cap of your business. So if
somebody were to purchase the building business, they would have
to pay seven hundred and fifty million dollars for entire business.
And if somebody is investing, you know, based on a
dollar a mount they invests. That's percentage amount of the

(04:30):
seven hundred and fifty million, and.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
That seven hundred and fifty million would come from investors
valuing the company at that as far as Okay, I'm
gonna point this amount of money in per percentage and
then that equals to seven fifty or does that come
from revenue that is projected to be like okay, ten
ex revenue?

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Like what it?

Speaker 5 (04:47):
I mean, there's some formula that they create, but that's
essentially the former is like, hey, look, you know, for
one percent, it's seven point five million, so the times
that by ten. If you want ten percent, you got
to put up seventy five million. So that's kind of
how the math works. And it's just supply and demand. Uh,

(05:09):
you know, if you have a great product, if you
have some proprietary technology that they think might you know,
transform the world, they're gonna they're gonna pay whatever they're.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Gonna pay for.

Speaker 5 (05:20):
It's just like, you know, what the company, what people
think the company is worth.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
How does the ownership table look right?

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Because a lot of times startups, you know, we don't
have money, right, we haven't goten venture capitals, and so
a lot of times people will offer equity right like
as an exchange or collateral to say hey, I need
you a part of the team.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
How does ownership look then? How does it.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Look now obviously you've got a board, you've got investors,
are you.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Guys majority owners? Still? Like, how does this work? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (05:51):
So as far as the equity, like all of our
employees have some degree of equity.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
We think that's important.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
We think it's important want to align incentives, and it's
also important as a wealth building mechanism. Our company is
I don't know for sure, but I would say it's
probably maybe the most diverse and one of the most
diverse of a company like at our scale in terms
of like the breakground of our employees. So we think
it's you know, it's really important for them to have
skin in the game. And like when we do have

(06:18):
the big exit, you know, hopefully we'll be creating a
lot of millionaires and creating a lot of wealth in
the community. So so that so that's important. The second
was the second part of the question ownership. I think, oh, yeah, yeah,
you get diluted. I mean it's natural, you know, it's
the pie gets gets bigger. But you're you know, year
a percentage of the pie goes down over over time.

(06:40):
So you know, unfortunately I wouldn't say we have we
have majority, but you know that's just kind of the
name of the game.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
Yeah, but you know, control, I think is also super important.
Like you know, you know, when you go through this fundraising,
take on more more investors, you know, you lose control.
But we still, like a board can't get rid of
us if they if they wanted to, because of the
structure we have in place, and that's equally important control earners.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
What's up?

Speaker 1 (07:12):
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