# Overcoming Limited Thinking to Build a $750 Million Company

An episode of [Earn Your Leisure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1450211392), 26 Dec 2025, 8:50.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8dbc4f54-a337-4481-9ef2-b355012b0a3d/3b98e266-b124-4826-b071-b3bf01312fb0/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=eac4c628-29cb-469a-b5c8-b355012b0a48

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* See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
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[0:43] Speaker 2: So marketing to barbershops, right are you marketing? At the
[0:49] Speaker 2: beginning you were to face you were going in hand
[0:51] Speaker 2: in hand, So were you doing that?
[0:54] Speaker 3: What white barbershops? Also? Absolutely?
[0:58] Speaker 2: Well, how did that work out?
[1:00] Speaker 4: So funny enough, when we were first kind of thinking
[1:03] Speaker 4: through how we're gonna do this, we had a bias
[1:06] Speaker 4: against ourselves.
[1:07] Speaker 3: We thought we probably couldn't.
[1:08] Speaker 4: Go in there and like you know, resonate with with
[1:11] Speaker 4: with with these like non black barber shops. So we
[1:14] Speaker 4: ended up hiring a friend of ours who's actually still
[1:18] Speaker 4: the company, who who's white, and and like his job
[1:21] Speaker 4: was going to be kind of biz dev like going
[1:23] Speaker 4: to the shops, so he was doing that, we were
[1:25] Speaker 4: still doing it. And over time this on experience, we
[1:28] Speaker 4: started finding out that like, actually we were better even
[1:32] Speaker 4: at the white shops selling them than he was. And
[1:35] Speaker 4: some of the bias that we had, you know, the
[1:38] Speaker 4: preconceived notion that we had these shop owners because we
[1:41] Speaker 4: didn't look like them, weren't going to want to hear
[1:43] Speaker 4: us out. Actually it was just totally not true. And
[1:47] Speaker 4: and then you know, and it turns out, you know,
[1:49] Speaker 4: the white guy who we hied wasn't good at that,
[1:50] Speaker 4: He ended up being really good at other things, so
[1:52] Speaker 4: he moved into like product on the product side. So
[1:55] Speaker 4: you just never you never know. And sometimes there's a
[1:58] Speaker 4: tendency to sell yourself short because you know, you think
[2:01] Speaker 4: somebody's going to think something about you. But if you
[2:03] Speaker 4: have a great product and you go there and you
[2:04] Speaker 4: meet them, I I. You know, we found that for
[2:07] Speaker 4: the most part, customers are willing to hear you out,
[2:11] Speaker 4: you know, regardless of what you look like.
[2:13] Speaker 5: Yeah, are you solving the hair on fire problem, you know,
[2:17] Speaker 5: and if you're solving that problem, I don't care whatever
[2:19] Speaker 5: you are. I think they're gonna listen to you because
[2:21] Speaker 5: it's you're addressing a real pain point in their lives.
[2:25] Speaker 1: All right, correct me if I'm wrong in these numbers.
[2:27] Speaker 1: Thirty two thousand barbershops, thirty two thousand barber shops.
[2:31] Speaker 4: Yet barber's barbers ten million clients last time I checked
[2:36] Speaker 4: that somewhere in that right?
[2:37] Speaker 3: How are we like?
[2:38] Speaker 1: This is because like you're talking from twenty sixteen to
[2:41] Speaker 1: this point, how are we scaling year to year?
[2:45] Speaker 3: Like? Are you like what trends are you watching? To say?
[2:47] Speaker 1: All right, here's an opportunity, his opportunity. This is a
[2:50] Speaker 1: potemographic this is we haven't touched this place. How are
[2:52] Speaker 1: y'all going about that? That's a lot. Congrats, Thank you,
[2:56] Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. It's never enough, though, you lord
[3:00] Speaker 1: it to the next.
[3:02] Speaker 4: So what we learned is a super what's super important
[3:04] Speaker 4: to scales that you really have to scale your team.
[3:08] Speaker 4: So you know, in the early stages, you know it
[3:10] Speaker 4: us and then a few other early employees, but as
[3:13] Speaker 4: you get bigger, you really have to bring on folks
[3:16] Speaker 4: who have the experience of kind of getting to the
[3:20] Speaker 4: next level where you're trying to get. And over time,
[3:23] Speaker 4: we've built up a really incredible kind of bench of
[3:27] Speaker 4: our executives, uh and that that has helped, you know,
[3:31] Speaker 4: helped tremendously. And in the early days, you do you know,
[3:34] Speaker 4: it's called doing things that don't scale, like walking into
[3:36] Speaker 4: the barbershop yourself and pitching them like that's great, but
[3:39] Speaker 4: like you can't that's not going to get you to
[3:41] Speaker 4: where we are now. So over time you have to
[3:43] Speaker 4: figure out how do you build like repeatable motions, repeatable
[3:47] Speaker 4: processes that's like scalable and you know, that's essentially essentially
[3:52] Speaker 4: what we've been able to do.
[3:54] Speaker 2: So so as far as this number of seven hundred
[3:57] Speaker 2: fifty million dollar evaluation, what can you break that down
[4:02] Speaker 2: as far as like what does that actually mean in
[4:04] Speaker 2: layman terms for somebody that just they hear that.
[4:07] Speaker 5: But it's like that is the enterprise value or the
[4:11] Speaker 5: kind of like market cap of your business. So if
[4:15] Speaker 5: somebody were to purchase the building business, they would have
[4:19] Speaker 5: to pay seven hundred and fifty million dollars for entire business.
[4:22] Speaker 5: And if somebody is investing, you know, based on a
[4:26] Speaker 5: dollar a mount they invests. That's percentage amount of the
[4:30] Speaker 5: seven hundred and fifty million, and.
[4:32] Speaker 2: That seven hundred and fifty million would come from investors
[4:35] Speaker 2: valuing the company at that as far as Okay, I'm
[4:37] Speaker 2: gonna point this amount of money in per percentage and
[4:40] Speaker 2: then that equals to seven fifty or does that come
[4:42] Speaker 2: from revenue that is projected to be like okay, ten
[4:46] Speaker 2: ex revenue?
[4:46] Speaker 3: Like what it?
[4:47] Speaker 5: I mean, there's some formula that they create, but that's
[4:51] Speaker 5: essentially the former is like, hey, look, you know, for
[4:55] Speaker 5: one percent, it's seven point five million, so the times
[4:59] Speaker 5: that by ten. If you want ten percent, you got
[5:01] Speaker 5: to put up seventy five million. So that's kind of
[5:04] Speaker 5: how the math works. And it's just supply and demand. Uh,
[5:09] Speaker 5: you know, if you have a great product, if you
[5:12] Speaker 5: have some proprietary technology that they think might you know,
[5:16] Speaker 5: transform the world, they're gonna they're gonna pay whatever they're.
[5:19] Speaker 3: Gonna pay for.
[5:20] Speaker 5: It's just like, you know, what the company, what people
[5:23] Speaker 5: think the company is worth.
[5:25] Speaker 3: How does the ownership table look right?
[5:27] Speaker 1: Because a lot of times startups, you know, we don't
[5:30] Speaker 1: have money, right, we haven't goten venture capitals, and so
[5:34] Speaker 1: a lot of times people will offer equity right like
[5:37] Speaker 1: as an exchange or collateral to say hey, I need
[5:40] Speaker 1: you a part of the team.
[5:41] Speaker 3: How does ownership look then? How does it.
[5:43] Speaker 1: Look now obviously you've got a board, you've got investors,
[5:46] Speaker 1: are you.
[5:46] Speaker 3: Guys majority owners? Still? Like, how does this work? Yeah?
[5:51] Speaker 4: So as far as the equity, like all of our
[5:53] Speaker 4: employees have some degree of equity.
[5:55] Speaker 3: We think that's important.
[5:57] Speaker 4: We think it's important want to align incentives, and it's
[6:00] Speaker 4: also important as a wealth building mechanism. Our company is
[6:05] Speaker 4: I don't know for sure, but I would say it's
[6:07] Speaker 4: probably maybe the most diverse and one of the most
[6:10] Speaker 4: diverse of a company like at our scale in terms
[6:12] Speaker 4: of like the breakground of our employees. So we think
[6:15] Speaker 4: it's you know, it's really important for them to have
[6:16] Speaker 4: skin in the game. And like when we do have
[6:18] Speaker 4: the big exit, you know, hopefully we'll be creating a
[6:20] Speaker 4: lot of millionaires and creating a lot of wealth in
[6:22] Speaker 4: the community. So so that so that's important. The second
[6:27] Speaker 4: was the second part of the question ownership. I think, oh, yeah, yeah,
[6:30] Speaker 4: you get diluted. I mean it's natural, you know, it's
[6:34] Speaker 4: the pie gets gets bigger. But you're you know, year
[6:37] Speaker 4: a percentage of the pie goes down over over time.
[6:40] Speaker 4: So you know, unfortunately I wouldn't say we have we
[6:43] Speaker 4: have majority, but you know that's just kind of the
[6:46] Speaker 4: name of the game.
[6:47] Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, control, I think is also super important.
[6:51] Speaker 5: Like you know, you know, when you go through this fundraising,
[6:55] Speaker 5: take on more more investors, you know, you lose control.
[6:59] Speaker 5: But we still, like a board can't get rid of
[7:02] Speaker 5: us if they if they wanted to, because of the
[7:06] Speaker 5: structure we have in place, and that's equally important control earners.
[7:12] Speaker 3: What's up?
[7:12] Speaker 1: You ever walk into a small business and everything just
[7:15] Speaker 1: works like the checkout is fast, their seats are digital,
[7:18] Speaker 1: tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before
[7:21] Speaker 1: the line even builds odds are they're using Square. We
[7:26] Speaker 1: love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just
[7:28] Speaker 1: feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor
[7:32] Speaker 1: at a pop up market, or even one of.
[7:34] Speaker 3: Our merch partners.
[7:35] Speaker 1: Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory,
[7:39] Speaker 1: and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system.
[7:43] Speaker 1: One of the things we love most is seeing neighborhood
[7:46] Speaker 1: businesses level up business West Indian spot righting our community
[7:49] Speaker 1: that started with a small takeout counter. Now with Square,
[7:53] Speaker 1: they've been able to expand into a full sit down
[7:55] Speaker 1: restaurant and even started catering events across the city. That's
[8:00] Speaker 1: the kind of growth that inspires us, and it's powered
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[8:06] Speaker 1: from the corner bagel shop that turn into a local chain,
[8:09] Speaker 1: to the specialty market with thousands of unique items, to
[8:13] Speaker 1: the stylist who's been holding you down for years. If
[8:16] Speaker 1: you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching
[8:18] Speaker 1: something soon, Square is hands down one of the best
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[8:25] Speaker 1: It's not just about payments, it's about giving you time
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[8:30] Speaker 3: What matters most ready.
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[8:34] Speaker 1: dot com backslash, go backslash eyl to learn more that
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[8:45] Speaker 1: Let Square handle the back end so you can keep
[8:47] Speaker 1: pushing your vision forward.

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