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Speaker 6: Another week, another episode of The Well Principles Thursday time
Speaker 6: diving into special topics every week. Special guests PDFs available
Speaker 6: for download. You already know how it is, man. This
Speaker 6: week we got some heat cooking. This week we are
Speaker 6: going to talk about the mandy. Can you fix my
Speaker 6: light and put it more more head on?
Speaker 4: Please?
Speaker 6: This week we're gonna be talking about startup secrets. We
Speaker 6: made a little pivot. We made a pivot. We did
Speaker 6: a pivot. Initially, I was thinking we would talk about
Speaker 6: real estate, but I figured, man, a lot of people
Speaker 6: could talk about real estate. But based on the feedback
Speaker 6: from last week, I thought, what are some of the
Speaker 6: things that we could talk about that I feel like
Speaker 6: are unique to my experience, and so we came up
Speaker 6: with the startup Secrets. I'm gonna share my screen. Well,
Speaker 6: but before I do it, before I do it, before
Speaker 6: I do Right now, I'm in the middle of you know,
Speaker 6: I started a company. I raised venture capital. It's called Loop.
Speaker 6: And in this company, you know, when you're a startup,
Speaker 6: like Eyl, like Loop, like many startup founders out there,
Speaker 6: you have every reason why you're going to fail working
Speaker 6: against you. You have the weight of the market, you
Speaker 6: have downward pressure, you have timing. You may break up
Speaker 6: with your co founder, your team may get unmotivated and quit.
Speaker 6: You may not catch your shride in time. You may
Speaker 6: run out of money, you may have to take a job.
Speaker 6: You may split up with your girl and then have
Speaker 6: all types of shit going on. There's so many going on,
Speaker 6: but I guarantee you when Jeff Bezos split up with
Speaker 6: Mackenzie Bezos, nothing happened to Amazon. I still was able
Speaker 6: to get my packaged next day. And that's because that
Speaker 6: business hit maturity. But before you hit maturity, you have
Speaker 6: to navigate through the seemingly shark the endless, endlessly sharkish waters.
Speaker 6: That is navigating a startup. So I am very excited
Speaker 6: to share with the audience here. By the way, I
Speaker 6: announced today that I am making angel investments. I'm making
Speaker 6: angel investments, not the major but I'm throwing ten k
Speaker 6: checks out to the different founders out there who are
Speaker 6: working on some special shit. So if you hear this
Speaker 6: and you think you got what it takes or whatever
Speaker 6: the fact may whatever the case may be, hit me up.
Speaker 6: I might be an angel investor in your company.
Speaker 3: Might be.
Speaker 6: I made two investments over the last few days.
Speaker 7: Boys, backups.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, let's not. Let's not breeze over that real
Speaker 3: quick for anybody on YouTube. So you are, you're getting
Speaker 3: back into angel investing world, and you have allocated ten
Speaker 3: thousand dollars for different businesses that you will personally be
Speaker 3: invested in.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir, ten thousand dollars a pop. I hope to
Speaker 6: make maybe five seven angel investments this year. And yeah,
Speaker 6: I guess the difference between what I was doing before
Speaker 6: was I was a venture capitalist, so I was investing
Speaker 6: in other people's money professionally. Now I made a little
Speaker 6: bit of my own cash, and I'm going to be
Speaker 6: put on my own cash in these companies Now, look,
Speaker 6: tenk K is not going to make it rain for
Speaker 6: any startup. However, you are also going to get a
Speaker 6: little bit of chops that I do have some of
Speaker 6: my knowledge, some of my marketing chops, and I am
Speaker 6: going to put that to work. So that tenk K
Speaker 6: is probably more like one hundred k investment and could
Speaker 6: potentially help some of you founders out there. So get
Speaker 6: at me.
Speaker 8: How did they get in contact with you if they
Speaker 8: got a business that potentially you know they want you
Speaker 8: to take a look at.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir, the best way is the Loop waitlist. So
Speaker 6: head over to loopinshare dot com, slash eyl loop and
Speaker 6: shirt dot coat slash you well and joining the Loop
Speaker 6: wait list. But secondly, you can hit me on on Honestly,
Speaker 6: you can hit me at but maybe I shouldn't have
Speaker 6: to make an email called pitch JH. Pitch j I'm
Speaker 6: gonna buy PITCHJH dot com and then you'll be able
Speaker 6: to hit me. But in the meanwhile you could just
Speaker 6: hit me direct man Jhi co found Harlem dot com.
Speaker 6: Jhi co found Harlem dot com And yeah, man, the
Speaker 6: the the people have been hitting me all day and
Speaker 6: I wanted to open the show with that. So let me,
Speaker 6: let me let's get into some concepts. We've been popularizing
Speaker 6: the word framework. Let's get some framework action. This is
Speaker 6: the well principles, and we are on episode three of four,
Speaker 6: three of four. This is it, seventy five percent of
Speaker 6: the way through the series. Get it here why you
Speaker 6: can otherwise and these nuggets may not be around for you.
Speaker 6: But today, if you go to lupa sher dot co
Speaker 6: slash ey l, you can download this framework and use
Speaker 6: it at your leisure, right, So okay, cool man. So look,
Speaker 6: there's a few lessons here. Riches in this which is
Speaker 6: riches in niches. This is by far the most prevalent
Speaker 6: theme that we'll be discussing. I'm going to keep this
Speaker 6: particular presentation on the shorter side because we have my boy,
Speaker 6: none other than song Lo Wrong, who's going to be
Speaker 6: chopping up with us. By the way, his company Squires
Speaker 6: were two hundred and fifty million dollars. I know because
Speaker 6: it was reported on tech crunch. You ra ay seventy
Speaker 6: eighty ninety million dollars something crazy like that. It is
Speaker 6: now the de facto barbershop booking platform that's out there.
Speaker 6: And I know I know my shit. I'm not gonna
Speaker 6: hold you. I know my shit. But Song knows his
Speaker 6: fucking shit like brouh. You guys know me because I
Speaker 6: talk a lot. Song don't talk. He just does. And
Speaker 6: I'm excited to learn from him. Now. Look, I've been
Speaker 6: talking about this all season long with like over love, man,
Speaker 6: But some of you guys, some of you guys out
Speaker 6: there are do you can't resist the temptation. You're thirsty.
Speaker 6: You're thirsty for likes, you're thirsty for shares, your thirty,
Speaker 6: you're just thirsty in general. Man. And when you're thirsty
Speaker 6: and you don't resist the temptation to grow quickly for
Speaker 6: growing quickly's sake, then you build luke warm products, experiences,
Speaker 6: and services. And that is a losing strategy that will
Speaker 6: get you all the way to bankruptcy. So now how
Speaker 6: do we how do we keep competitors at Bay? You
Speaker 6: got to build a.
Speaker 3: Moat all right?
Speaker 6: Now, this is something that's often discussed, but we're going
Speaker 6: to break down also what a moat is specifically, because
Speaker 6: I hear a lot of people say the frame, the phrase,
Speaker 6: but they don't really talk about it. Okay, So now
Speaker 6: let's explore what most people try to do in my
Speaker 6: experience that I've potentially I definitely have made this mistake before.
Speaker 6: I'm potentially remaking the mistake, but to a lesser extent,
Speaker 6: and that is most startups try to boil the ocean. Okay,
Speaker 6: you try to boil the ocean. The market is a
Speaker 6: lot bigger than you ideally. If you're going for it
Speaker 6: for two to two niche of a market, then it's a
Speaker 6: no go. But for the most part, any market out there,
Speaker 6: the total addressable market is going to be much much,
Speaker 6: much bigger than you can afford to take on. You
Speaker 6: don't have enough dollars, you don't have enough resources, you
Speaker 6: don't have enough time, enough people, enough talent, human talent
Speaker 6: that is to come at it. And so when you
Speaker 6: try to boil the ocean, you're gonna dilute your your proposition,
Speaker 6: and your resources to no end. You are not going
Speaker 6: to heat up the ocean even one degree. So instead,
Speaker 6: what I like to do is head into the market
Speaker 6: and find a segment of the market that is more
Speaker 6: comparably sized to the size of your startup. Right, So,
Speaker 6: for example, to put it into context, eyl Media is
Speaker 6: a large, large, large business and the vision is to
Speaker 6: take the world by storm. However, you first focused on
Speaker 6: a very urban audience, and you do that and you're delivered.
Speaker 6: Whether or not it was you know, of course it
Speaker 6: was intentional. But there are so many things that came
Speaker 6: about as a result of authenticity. For example, the guests
Speaker 6: that you would attract on the platform and so on,
Speaker 6: you know from Wall Street Trappa, man is the trap,
Speaker 6: you know, you know, like all all the guests, all
Speaker 6: the brand, the swag, the collective ethos that is E
Speaker 6: Y L. You you went and found a segment of
Speaker 6: the market that leads to this right here, This is
Speaker 6: where you want to be when you're a startup. Okay,
Speaker 6: you had the minimum viable product right which which has
Speaker 6: been discussed often, but what is discussed less often is
Speaker 6: the minimum viable audience. And then the space and that
Speaker 6: overlap in the middle is much much small. All they're
Speaker 6: easier to cover territory.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 6: So, for example, Loop is an insurance. If we try
Speaker 6: to tackle all of private passenger auto, that's a two
Speaker 6: hundred and fifty six billion dollar a year market. Man,
Speaker 6: we only raise a few million dollars. Progressive spends that
Speaker 6: in a day, probably more than that so we would
Speaker 6: never win if we were going toe to toe. However,
Speaker 6: what we did do is find a very very specific
Speaker 6: audience within the large field that is insurance, and what
Speaker 6: we're doing is resonating real, real, real, real, real deeply
Speaker 6: with them. And it seems like we're covered, we're making grounds,
Speaker 6: we're making our way, and our dollar can stretch a
Speaker 6: lot further here in this particular arrangement, this graphic is
Speaker 6: a this shout out to y Combinator song from Squire
Speaker 6: is a y Combinator alum that is the world's most
Speaker 6: successful startup accelera They created Airbnb, Dropbox, not created, but funded,
Speaker 6: and one of them is Squire. But this I learned
Speaker 6: from them, and that is this is fascinating. Here on
Speaker 6: the left hand side of this graph, this is the
Speaker 6: amount of that people like you. The light blue is
Speaker 6: like the red is love. So here's here's the fascinating thing.
Speaker 6: You start out here in the middle with no one
Speaker 6: liking or loving you. Now here's the thing. A lot
Speaker 6: of people that scale a lukewarm brand, service product podcast
Speaker 6: where people only kind of.
Speaker 3: Sort of fuck with you.
Speaker 6: It's misleading because when a lot of people like you,
Speaker 6: you think, oh well, all I gotta do is convert
Speaker 6: them to love me. But you're actually much much further away.
Speaker 6: Like and love move in the opposite directions. So when
Speaker 6: you get a lot of people with a like you,
Speaker 6: that lukewarmness, you now have a lot more masks that
Speaker 6: you have to heat up to convert it into a deep, deep, deep,
Speaker 6: deep deep affinity. So when you're a startup, you're actually
Speaker 6: much much better off focusing on a small amount of people, users,
Speaker 6: listeners that really fuck with your shit heavy, and then
Speaker 6: you can ensure that you grow in the right direction.
Speaker 6: And this here is what I believe is the perfect
Speaker 6: startup storm. Now, we talked a lot about a moat earlier.
Speaker 6: We mentioned a little bit about a moat emote being
Speaker 6: something that can keep your competitors at bay. But people
Speaker 6: say that, but then they never say what the fuck
Speaker 6: it is? But what is it? And so then people
Speaker 6: have like they talk about IP a lot of patents,
Speaker 6: but patents are I personally believe patents are to a
Speaker 6: large degree bullshit. People say, oh, you need some IP,
Speaker 6: I guess, but I was going to invest in a
Speaker 6: startup that needed the needed IP. But guess what, you
Speaker 6: know what large companies do is they They will surround
Speaker 6: your patent with a portfolio of patents. Patents are very
Speaker 6: expensive to make, and they'll fucking bury you in legal
Speaker 6: costs and outdo your competitive edge. So patents are hardly
Speaker 6: ever the answer. The answer more commonly is technology. But
Speaker 6: that's only one part of the the equation. A novel
Speaker 6: segment and a unique business model. All three of these,
Speaker 6: or two of these, or just one. Sometimes it is
Speaker 6: enough to be a disruptor. And so for example, a
Speaker 6: great a great example is, in my opinion, is zip Car.
Speaker 6: Zip Car, you know, didn't really innovate on a whole lot,
Speaker 6: but the business model, so they you know, you were
Speaker 6: able to subscribe to a monthly you know, arrangement with them,
Speaker 6: and and and that was enough for Loop. We have
Speaker 6: unique technology. We do not have a unique business model.
Speaker 6: We have unique technology, and we're servicing a very particular segment.
Speaker 6: So that's been enough for us. So for anyone watching listening,
Speaker 6: we'll watch, will listen. Consider these three elements here, these
Speaker 6: are the buckets within which you can innovate. So you
Speaker 6: do not need all three. You do not need all three,
Speaker 6: but having one or two work in your favor gives
Speaker 6: you a reason to have the market, you know, have
Speaker 6: it work in your favor a little bit, because it's
Speaker 6: hard to break through. So a lot of depth there,
Speaker 6: and I walked through the quickly. These are available for
Speaker 6: download as usual at loopinsure dot Co slash eyl. But
Speaker 6: look those that's the frameworks, man, that's the frameworks that
Speaker 6: those are the things that I have thought about consistently
Speaker 6: over the last ten years, easy as I built my
Speaker 6: my respective businesses. I see a number of you guys
Speaker 6: raising your hands. I'm happy to take questions. Although first
Speaker 6: I definitely want to chop with my brother's song wrong,
Speaker 6: someone asked, Loop Eyl. Yes, oh uh, not looping. Well,
Speaker 6: we'll get to that. Well, we're gonna link it up.
Speaker 6: We're gonna link it up, link it up in the
Speaker 6: in the YouTube. But first you got my boys song
Speaker 6: What's good?
Speaker 4: Bro?
Speaker 6: How you on the wrong?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: Was great?
Speaker 7: A living legend.
Speaker 3: What's going on brother?
Speaker 4: Watching man? How are you feeling everything?
Speaker 9: Good?
Speaker 4: Bro?
Speaker 6: I like that new squire swag. Did you guys do
Speaker 6: a brand refresh or is that just like a limited.
Speaker 4: Day we got some new merhout shop like last month?
Speaker 4: I can I can get you on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, send me one for real, real real. Also shout
Speaker 6: out Debut Capital, whom as a mutual investor in US,
Speaker 6: I just invested in their fund at today.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: And so that maybe the fact that makes me an
Speaker 6: investor of Squire. We'll see it does work out.
Speaker 7: It's not always working.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: So, EYL community, I'm really pleased to bring Song in
Speaker 6: uh into the EYL orbit Song. If you don't know
Speaker 6: these brothers man Rashot and Troy co founders at Earn
Speaker 6: Your Leisure building something real, real, real, real special. Two
Speaker 6: cats came out of fucking nowhere and somehow be Dave Rancy,
Speaker 6: Tim Ferris and all these other whack motherfuckers who have
Speaker 6: ripped and we got to bring charge.
Speaker 10: Bro.
Speaker 6: I'm stopped everywhere constantly for being on the Earner Leasure
Speaker 6: Show like real talk so so so it's great to
Speaker 6: make the introduction, and I would love for Song to
Speaker 6: jump on the Earn Your Leasure Show proper. I think
Speaker 6: that having an in depth discussion would be really, really,
Speaker 6: really rich for the community. Now, just as a cliff
Speaker 6: no intro to song and Song and I've been connected
Speaker 6: for a minute in the streets of Hulla, we were bumping
Speaker 6: to each other so many times at random different cafes
Speaker 6: and shit. And he was working on the early early
Speaker 6: days of Squire, and at that time I was working
Speaker 6: at Kofund Harlem. Squire is a platform, I'll put I
Speaker 6: let you put in your own word song, but as
Speaker 6: best I understand it, you know, it's a platform that
Speaker 6: at this point has grown to be the end to
Speaker 6: end solutions that barbers need to power their barber shops.
Speaker 6: But talk about those frameworks. You might've glossed over them,
Speaker 6: but I was talking about, you know, the MVP meets
Speaker 6: minimum Bible audience. Squire started at first as a scheduling
Speaker 6: tool and then eventually rolled out additional micro services. Once
Speaker 6: they got their foot in the market, rolled out additional
Speaker 6: micro services, and now it's capturing the full value chain
Speaker 6: in the barber in the barbershop industry. And man, you've
Speaker 6: Squire has broken out. It was a tough fight. It
Speaker 6: was a tough battle.
Speaker 3: Saw.
Speaker 6: I'm sure it seemed many times like I don't know
Speaker 6: if it was gonna shake out in your way or whatever.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm in my head sometimes about the shit
Speaker 6: too with Loop. But you know, in the last year,
Speaker 6: you definitely have broken through tech Crunch reported, you guys
Speaker 6: have soared to a two hundred and fifty million dollar valuation.
Speaker 6: I hate to focus on evaluation or dollars raise. I
Speaker 6: actually love to focus more on the fact that your
Speaker 6: product is used. People use your shit. I'm here in Austin.
Speaker 6: I went to go book my barber and he was like,
Speaker 6: yeah you Squire, Like that's it. You have become the ubiquitous.
Speaker 6: Like you broke through, you cross the chasm.
Speaker 8: So John, the crazy part is that when when you
Speaker 8: sent the information, I didn't realize it. But I've been
Speaker 8: using Squire for the past two to three years to
Speaker 8: schedule my son's barbershop.
Speaker 7: Well, I want to thank you because what you have
Speaker 7: done is saved us a.
Speaker 8: Lot of time of sitting in the barbershop waiting for
Speaker 8: hours for appointments that people walk in and say, I
Speaker 8: was there before you, So I appreciate you.
Speaker 6: Yo, let's zoom in for a moment the people could
Speaker 6: go and find all the info on like the early
Speaker 6: early days of you know, Squire, But let's zoom into
Speaker 6: a moment on the days maybe that it was actually
Speaker 6: that maybe it might have been hardest because now you're
Speaker 6: you know, the you've hit escape velocity and you have
Speaker 6: the market dynamics working in your favor, I might say,
Speaker 6: but I'm curious, when was the time that it was
Speaker 6: most difficult for Squire and you know, just kind of
Speaker 6: double click on into that, zoom into that, and walk
Speaker 6: us through, like what the what were some of the
Speaker 6: challenges that could have been existential to the success of
Speaker 6: the business, And what were some of the things that
Speaker 6: you felt you did well that that you maybe others didn't.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like you said, it's it's it
Speaker 11: is hard. It's hard building companies, and even at this
Speaker 11: level that we're right now, it's still difficult, but it's
Speaker 11: just different problems. But earlier on those problems, you know,
Speaker 11: they were existential, you know, like if we didn't figure
Speaker 11: out how to raise money in a certain time period,
Speaker 11: you know, there's that risk of running out of money,
Speaker 11: or if we didn't figure out, you know, how to
Speaker 11: find somebody that could actually build the product for us.
Speaker 11: So both my co founder or not, neither one of
Speaker 11: us our programmers are technical. So when you're when you're
Speaker 11: early on, you don't have the money to pay for,
Speaker 11: you know, a good engineer to work for you. So
Speaker 11: it can be really hard just getting started and actually
Speaker 11: getting your idea out into the real world to start
Speaker 11: trying it and testing.
Speaker 4: And selling it.
Speaker 11: So those were some of like the really you know,
Speaker 11: the really tough times, I'll say, like the first the
Speaker 11: first year. You know, it took us almost a year
Speaker 11: to just get an empty f out, you know, that
Speaker 11: minimum viable product that actually we could have people start
Speaker 11: testing and using. You know, we went through about three, uh,
Speaker 11: you know, engineers that we tried to work with and
Speaker 11: didn't work out, and you know, it took months for
Speaker 11: us to figure out that, Wow, you know, we should
Speaker 11: have had something that we could actually see and play
Speaker 11: with as we build it. We thought, okay, you're just
Speaker 11: gonna send me the app when it's ready, like when
Speaker 11: it's finished, send it to me, and I'll start selling it.
Speaker 11: But that's not how pod development works. So you know,
Speaker 11: we learned that the hard way. But there were many, many,
Speaker 11: many challenging, challenging times in the early days, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And and what what were something So when when
Speaker 6: the MVP was when you finally they learned that lesson
Speaker 6: and got it out there. I'm sure there's a lot
Speaker 6: of people listening and me myself, I'm in this phase
Speaker 6: now where I'm like, I'm trying to get people to
Speaker 6: use the damn thing. What were some of the things
Speaker 6: that you guys did in those early days to get
Speaker 6: people to use squad?
Speaker 11: Those days, those days were fun yc calls that doing
Speaker 11: things that don't scale. And in the early days it
Speaker 11: should really be the founders doing as much as humanly
Speaker 11: possible to get to know their customers to get people
Speaker 11: to try to test it. So we were literally walking
Speaker 11: to barbershops, you know, spend the whole day in the
Speaker 11: barbershop talking to customers, talking to barbers. And this is
Speaker 11: in New York and New Yorkers are known most friendly,
Speaker 11: you know people.
Speaker 4: So sometimes were walking in the barber were like, yo,
Speaker 4: what fuck? What do you want? Like you're getting a
Speaker 4: haircut and not sound like what's good?
Speaker 11: We have to like we were like, I'll book a
Speaker 11: haircut or a beer trip or something like just to
Speaker 11: get his seat to talk for fifteen minutes, so half
Speaker 11: an hour, like I'll pay for your time.
Speaker 4: And it was, it was.
Speaker 11: It was tough, but fortunately eventually we were able to
Speaker 11: get some people that were interested in trying it and
Speaker 11: using the app.
Speaker 4: And on the consumer side. Right now, we're much more
Speaker 4: of a B to B company.
Speaker 11: We focus on selling to barbershops. We don't really focus
Speaker 11: on building a consumer brand. Maybe in the future will
Speaker 11: do that, but right now everything is super focused on
Speaker 11: driving more new barbershops and barbers to the platform. But
Speaker 11: at first we didn't know that, so we were trying
Speaker 11: to do like this kind of consumer marketing thing and
Speaker 11: trying to get barbers at the same time, and we
Speaker 11: were just all over the place. And consumer marketing, as
Speaker 11: you probably know this, I'm sure it's shit is hard.
Speaker 11: We have a big budgets. Unfortunately, you're great, you know,
Speaker 11: you're really great at marketing, so you'll be able to
Speaker 11: do it.
Speaker 4: But like we didn't.
Speaker 11: We didn't have, you know, that kind of platform to
Speaker 11: get the word out to the masses. So we used
Speaker 11: to do just random In New York City, I don't
Speaker 11: know if you remember, we used to do like a
Speaker 11: chalk signs on the sidewalk Downholtst.
Speaker 4: Wire app It was actually pretty good, like it was
Speaker 4: free marketing.
Speaker 11: We would do it all over the city and people
Speaker 11: would be like, yeah, I heard about I saw that
Speaker 11: Union Square.
Speaker 4: So you know, whatever you can think of you have
Speaker 4: to be creative in the early day.
Speaker 7: How did you know? How did you know? How?
Speaker 12: Like when was that moment that you learned like, Yo, okay,
Speaker 12: we're going to cut our losses on the consumer thing
Speaker 12: and focus on like ongoing barbershop because that sounds like
Speaker 12: a pivotal decision in a Squire trajectory.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Well, a good thing about being early safe is
Speaker 11: that you can get so much information so fast and
Speaker 11: iterate based on the data that you're getting. And it
Speaker 11: was very clear that these individual barbers and consumers was
Speaker 11: not fucking with our app.
Speaker 4: Frank like, we just weren't getting usage.
Speaker 11: You know, they would they would downloaded and just not
Speaker 11: use it because they didn't need it to run their business.
Speaker 4: And when we were talking to the owners, the owners would.
Speaker 11: Be like, yeah, the app look's cool, but is it
Speaker 11: going to integrate with my point of sale system?
Speaker 4: Can I track inventory on here? Can I pay out?
Speaker 4: I've got six barbers to work for my shop? Like
Speaker 4: are they going to use it?
Speaker 11: So we were like, wow, you know, we need to
Speaker 11: build something that the owner can use for everything, to
Speaker 11: manage everything.
Speaker 4: And it was pretty clear.
Speaker 11: Like based on the feedback from from our customers like
Speaker 11: that's what the market really was needing and would respond
Speaker 11: well to. Uh So we actually ran a barbershop around
Speaker 11: that same time. One of our customers was going to
Speaker 11: close the shop down down to Chelsea Market downtown, and
Speaker 11: we actually took it over for about eight months and
Speaker 11: put ourselves in the shoes of our customers because since
Speaker 11: we couldn't get anybody else to use it, we use it.
Speaker 11: We use it ourselves as shop owners. And during that
Speaker 11: time we were like running the shop and also building
Speaker 11: building the platform, kind of like the B two.
Speaker 7: Of square Sean.
Speaker 8: The beginning stage. Where did the innovation come from? Was
Speaker 8: there a series of experiences that you've been through at
Speaker 8: you know, going into barbershops and saying this is always
Speaker 8: time like what sparked the innovation?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was exactly that.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 11: It was solving my own pain points that I think
Speaker 11: are very universal that I experienced my co found experience,
Speaker 11: like like most people, you know, I started going to
Speaker 11: the barbershop six or seven if my dad as a kid,
Speaker 11: and here it was two decades later and it hadn't changed.
Speaker 4: It was the one.
Speaker 11: Area of life that innovation and technology was just totally
Speaker 11: overlooking and it didn't make sense.
Speaker 4: To me that you have to just walk in and
Speaker 4: wait for an unknown amount of time every couple.
Speaker 11: Of weeks to get a haircut, that these shops didn't
Speaker 11: take cats, that didn't take card, I had to pay
Speaker 11: cash or go.
Speaker 4: To the ATM and pay that ATM fee.
Speaker 11: So there was just all these little, you know, minor
Speaker 11: annoyances that just seemed like they should be able to
Speaker 11: be improved with technology. And that was the impetus was
Speaker 11: just like solving our own problem.
Speaker 3: At what point did you scale to the point where
Speaker 3: you started to take outside money for people that starting businesses?
Speaker 3: And you know, at what point did you think you
Speaker 3: needed it? And when did you realize, Okay, this is
Speaker 3: this is how we're going to go about doing that.
Speaker 11: Yeah. So I we needed it very early on in
Speaker 11: order to be able to build a product and to
Speaker 11: kind of get that initial attraction.
Speaker 4: But it was it was difficult.
Speaker 11: Yeah, at first I quit my job to work on Squire,
Speaker 11: as did my co founder, and it was about a
Speaker 11: good eight months to a year after that before we
Speaker 11: actually were able to raise some money, which you know,
Speaker 11: going eight months with no paycheck just real really quickly,
Speaker 11: and the personal you know, financial risk. You know, you
Speaker 11: start to really feel it as your bank account is
Speaker 11: going down every month and you're not getting anything.
Speaker 4: In so many of us.
Speaker 11: Meaning like black people, you know, people of color, we
Speaker 11: generally don't have the wealth position in our families to
Speaker 11: kind of go to the rich uncle for friends and
Speaker 11: family around to get a few hundred thousand dollars. So
Speaker 11: we weren't in that position. But fortunately, being in New
Speaker 11: York being professionals, we knew some people from like finance,
Speaker 11: you know, tech, mostly black professionals who did believe in
Speaker 11: us and who kind of like gave us those early
Speaker 11: angel checks that enabled us to get the next level
Speaker 11: so we could raise a bigger amount later on.
Speaker 7: What's that process like.
Speaker 8: Ahead, Yeah, what's the process like of creating how much
Speaker 8: your company is going to need as far as series
Speaker 8: rounds of funding? Like what do you how do you
Speaker 8: think the evaluation in the early stages because you're just starting.
Speaker 11: Yeah, in the early stages, it's very it's much more
Speaker 11: art and science.
Speaker 4: It's it's a balance of.
Speaker 11: You know, coming over with terms that are that are
Speaker 11: reasonable and kind of kind of fair. Like everybody knows
Speaker 11: that there's not a lot of data to really come
Speaker 11: up with a precise valuation very early on, so the
Speaker 11: investors are really just placing a bed on the founders
Speaker 11: and the vision and then they'll be able to execute
Speaker 11: on it. So from when we got that initial check,
Speaker 11: which I think was like twenty fifteen ish till now,
Speaker 11: evaluations have skyrocketed. So like what was normal then for
Speaker 11: like our first money in, you know, precede round. Now
Speaker 11: you know it's like probably three or four x that
Speaker 11: John would know better than me. But you know, at
Speaker 11: the time, when you don't have a lot of options,
Speaker 11: you take whatever you can get. So it was kind
Speaker 11: of the terms that people would agree on and you
Speaker 11: just kind of take it and move on and just
Speaker 11: get back to business.
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 6: What's fascinating to me is the problem that you chose.
Speaker 6: It's like it's a common problem, which means it's an
Speaker 6: enormous problem. But you must have faced undoubtedly and probably
Speaker 6: to a lesser extent now, but maybe you even face
Speaker 6: this qualm at the A round, which is like, yo,
Speaker 6: it's a big market, you know, like it's a me
Speaker 6: too business, like everyone could do it, you know, blah
Speaker 6: blah blah. And I think that similar thing could be
Speaker 6: said of like the industry that I'm in insurance, in beauty,
Speaker 6: in cosmetics and e comm So you happen to pick
Speaker 6: a business or or the business pick you, whichever way.
Speaker 6: But you were in a space where it was it
Speaker 6: was law charge, there was no clear winner. So I
Speaker 6: guess you had that to your advantage. But what were
Speaker 6: some of the ways that you were able to verbalize
Speaker 6: to those initial initial believers that you needed to get
Speaker 6: on board to survive about like why you felt like
Speaker 6: you could you could do this?
Speaker 11: Yeah, earlier on the Marcus host question was was something
Speaker 11: that we had to grapple with, and I think more
Speaker 11: than anything, it was a factor of one this blind
Speaker 11: spots form vcs, Like a lot of these guys are like.
Speaker 4: You know, sixty year old, fifty year old super.
Speaker 11: Wealthy dudes, Like they probably don't go to They probably
Speaker 11: go to some highend salon or something like. They weren't
Speaker 11: very familiar with barbershop, with the barbershop culture and community
Speaker 11: and how important it is. So just convincing them that look,
Speaker 11: this is actually like a big opportunity getting past the
Speaker 11: bias that some people would have. Not everybody, but a
Speaker 11: lot of people would assume oh, this is black barbershop business,
Speaker 11: since my co found and I are both black, so
Speaker 11: we would have to be really proactive saying without saying it. Then, look,
Speaker 11: this is for a general audience, like this is for
Speaker 11: all types of barbershops, which is annoying that it's just
Speaker 11: you know, it's just reality that you face. And another
Speaker 11: thing is just because it is an underserved market. There's
Speaker 11: not a lot of publicly available data out there on
Speaker 11: the number of barbershops in the US. So if you
Speaker 11: like Google search it, you'll see like some department and
Speaker 11: labor number that will say something stupid like there's eight
Speaker 11: thousand barbershops in the US. So like lazy investors would
Speaker 11: just like Google and see that, and they'd be like, well,
Speaker 11: here they say eight thousand barbershops, So how do you
Speaker 11: think this time is I'm like, there's one hundred and
Speaker 11: fifty million men I know that voice, Yeah, one hundred
Speaker 11: and fifty million men in this country. At least you
Speaker 11: think that eight thousand barbershops, like really like it's just
Speaker 11: not as nonsensical. So we would have to really like
Speaker 11: do our homework to say, look, you know, we scraped
Speaker 11: all of your's data and you know, we can show
Speaker 11: that there's at least two hundred thousand conservatively, and then
Speaker 11: if there's two hundred thousand, shops can make this much
Speaker 11: per shot life. Here's how you show, you know, one
Speaker 11: hundred million plus revenue, you know, business, and you have
Speaker 11: to really break it down kind of spoon feed man
Speaker 11: sometimes to get past their vices.
Speaker 3: Let me let me, let me ask you this, because
Speaker 3: I've heard someone the other day, somebodyself out said it.
Speaker 3: But there was like a lot of startups, you know,
Speaker 3: in the A round, that's when they're most vulnerable because
Speaker 3: they need the money the most and they don't have
Speaker 3: any real leverage. So you know, the angel investors in
Speaker 3: the vcs will come and they'll get you know, bad terms,
Speaker 3: so they'll get like seventy percent of the company for
Speaker 3: a couple hundred thousand, and then by the time they
Speaker 3: get to the later rounds, they've diluted their share so
Speaker 3: much and it really hurts them because they took so
Speaker 3: much money. They took a little bit of money at
Speaker 3: the beginning, but now the company is worth a million
Speaker 3: times more. But they're screwed. So what's your what's your
Speaker 3: what's your perspective on that?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think regardless of the round of this, the
Speaker 11: founders that do advantage if they don't have competition amongst
Speaker 11: the investors.
Speaker 4: So whether it's the A round or the.
Speaker 11: C round, if you need money to fund a company
Speaker 11: and you're not profitable, which most startups aren't, and you
Speaker 11: don't have competing interest amongst investors, then that investor has
Speaker 11: a leverage. They can say, look, here's the terms, take
Speaker 11: it to leave it, and this is what I'm going
Speaker 11: to do. But if you if you have at least
Speaker 11: more than one interested investor, automatically evaluations is going to
Speaker 11: go up significantly because now they're in competition with each
Speaker 11: other and they both want to win the deal. I mean,
Speaker 11: it's basic market market dynamics, like you know, supplying demand,
Speaker 11: Like the more the demand there is for your share
Speaker 11: is the higher the value it's going to be. But
Speaker 11: the way I look at dilution though, is that it's
Speaker 11: really it's if you're going the VC you know, funded route,
Speaker 11: you know, trying to create a gross scale company, like
Speaker 11: you're going to get diluted. But the bigger way to
Speaker 11: look at is like what is the total pod you're
Speaker 11: having a slice of, Like you know, if you only own,
Speaker 11: you know, ten percent or eight percent, you know, of
Speaker 11: a five billion dollar company, Like you're still very rich
Speaker 11: and wealthy, you know, versus you can own one hundred
Speaker 11: percent or ninety percent of a small business and not
Speaker 11: have as much wealth relative to you know, a bigger company.
Speaker 4: So you know that, That's how I look at it.
Speaker 11: But the main thing that you want to do is
Speaker 11: get multiple investors interested.
Speaker 4: That's the best way to not get to looted.
Speaker 8: So can can you take me through the range of
Speaker 8: emotions that you've had over the past year, especially here
Speaker 8: in New York barbershops were closed and so that hurts
Speaker 8: the business. But knowing that you have a product that
Speaker 8: can thrive in that type of environment because you have
Speaker 8: contactless payments, right, you have scheduled appointments which allows people
Speaker 8: the flow of people in and out to be minimized
Speaker 8: so that it can meet restrictions.
Speaker 7: What are your range of emotions over the past twelve
Speaker 7: must Man?
Speaker 4: Yeah, twenty twenty was wild.
Speaker 11: It was a wild year like nothing I've ever seen
Speaker 11: or predicted.
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 6: Also, one thing real quick is song We when we
Speaker 6: hosted so we did a Cadillac, We did a dinner
Speaker 6: for Cadillac called the Driven Ones twenty nineteen at the
Speaker 6: close of the year, and Song was invited and there
Speaker 6: was a moment we was having conversation and Song. I
Speaker 6: don't know if you look back on that, but I
Speaker 6: do sometimes, and I think, Yo, that was at the
Speaker 6: close of the decade, and I remember at one point
Speaker 6: we was all like, yo, twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: Cheers and everyone was just toasting.
Speaker 6: It was, you know, the market was just just kept
Speaker 6: going up. It was so frothy. There was just so
Speaker 6: much money around and even at that point, Song, you
Speaker 6: had just announced your eight million dollar series a round
Speaker 6: and so you know, of course the market had all
Speaker 6: different types of things in store for you all. But
Speaker 6: I wanted to slip that in there for the listeners
Speaker 6: for contexts, like, you know, twenty nineteen was a hell
Speaker 6: a fucking year and we thought that, you know, twenty
Speaker 6: twenty that would continue. But I think to Troy's point,
Speaker 6: your business had all different kinds of interesting dynamics play
Speaker 6: out in twenty twenty. So yeah, we'd love to hear it.
Speaker 11: Yeah, And at that dinner, I don't know if I
Speaker 11: told you before, but like I was already raising to
Speaker 11: be you know, it wasn't public, but we were raising
Speaker 11: to be at that time, and you know, we had
Speaker 11: competitive term sheets and the whole thing was in danger
Speaker 11: of collapsing. Like I was so stressed. You know, you
Speaker 11: know how deals goways go, they're always in danger, and
Speaker 11: like it looked like it wasn't going to happen, and
Speaker 11: it was like very significant. So I was like, man,
Speaker 11: I said, I was going to go to this dinner,
Speaker 11: so I gotta go.
Speaker 4: But in terms, I was stressed that night.
Speaker 11: But it ended up working out, and we were fortunate
Speaker 11: because we closed on the be the second close, like
Speaker 11: in March twenty twenty, right before, so so when all
Speaker 11: the barbershops shut down, we had you know, forty to
Speaker 11: fifty whatever the amount, we had a lot of money
Speaker 11: on the balance sheet. So that relieved the stress because
Speaker 11: we weren't going to be in danger of like running
Speaker 11: out of going out of business, but also allowed us
Speaker 11: to focus on how can we help our customers to
Speaker 11: your point, like, you know, our platform really has been
Speaker 11: preaching a lot of these things, but the pandemic was
Speaker 11: an accelerator and forced a lot of businesses to kind
Speaker 11: of level up and embrace technology.
Speaker 4: So twenty twenty was crazy.
Speaker 11: I mean it was very scary, very uncertain in March April.
Speaker 4: But when the.
Speaker 11: Shops started reopening in like May, June, going into the summer,
Speaker 11: we started doing more numbers than ever, which was like unexpected,
Speaker 11: and that propelled us.
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Speaker 11: Apply Dave, what's the kind of the momentum to then
Speaker 11: raise the c later in the fall of that year.
Speaker 11: So all in all, I mean it was probably our
Speaker 11: best year just in terms of growth and revenue, and
Speaker 11: you know, we went from about thirty employees to one hundred.
Speaker 8: In point that is during this time is this is
Speaker 8: where you're becoming more innovative with the micro services.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean we it was always our vision to
Speaker 11: expand on our offering and build what I call like
Speaker 11: the Squire ecosystem, and you know, to do pretty much
Speaker 11: everything that these businesses need. But the pandemic forced us
Speaker 11: to think of other things that we wouldn't have otherwise
Speaker 11: thought of to help them while they were closed down
Speaker 11: and as.
Speaker 4: They were as they were reopening.
Speaker 11: But yeah, we did launch a few of like uh
Speaker 11: you know, the these these types of businesses during that time.
Speaker 11: One of them, for example, is the Squire Supply, which
Speaker 11: enabled the barbershop owners to like buy everything they need
Speaker 11: to run their business, like the alcohol the next trips.
Speaker 11: We were included like ppe so they could buy like
Speaker 11: the masks and you know, uh disinfecting all that stuff
Speaker 11: on our system and get a direct ship right to
Speaker 11: their shop so they don't have to physically go to
Speaker 11: the beauty supplies Stir or wherever to pick it up.
Speaker 11: So those kind of futures and things we rolled out
Speaker 11: like in the midst of all this chaos.
Speaker 6: So how did you how'd you execute that?
Speaker 4: Was that?
Speaker 6: Like did you buy did you find like a common
Speaker 6: denominator of goods that were needed at scale, Uh, ship
Speaker 6: them to a facility and ship them out or did
Speaker 6: you use a vendor partner in a marginal way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's the first raise that originally we're thinking of.
Speaker 11: And then we were like, you know what, we don't
Speaker 11: want to be holding all this inventory and you know,
Speaker 11: taking on that risk, So we partner with like one
Speaker 11: of the biggest distributors, and then we do we do
Speaker 11: like a reps split, but our customer only is interfacing
Speaker 11: with Square, so everything that they do, they're for filling
Speaker 11: on the back end, and then we have access to
Speaker 11: every sku imaginable that they would need.
Speaker 6: So you pretty much like you did a loss Leader,
Speaker 6: where it was like the scheduling to build your brain
Speaker 6: in the industry and the space, and then you you
Speaker 6: kept kind of introducing more and more services and now
Speaker 6: you're you're at the place where you know, where we
Speaker 6: kind of all want to be as a business, where
Speaker 6: it's like it's the platform play. Now people go to
Speaker 6: Square for anything and you can kind of introduce additional
Speaker 6: services as needed and just continue growing the business. That's
Speaker 6: just that's hot, bro, Like that's why we get into
Speaker 6: the ship for but like, damn hat's up.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 11: Hey, look, we've got a long way to go, but
Speaker 11: that's the vision. That's what we're trying to execute on.
Speaker 11: But we have so much room to grow, man, and
Speaker 11: so many more barbershops to get it on squire. But yeah,
Speaker 11: that's that's that's the vision.
Speaker 4: O heah.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you this because I know we
Speaker 3: don't want to harp on the numbers, but it's not
Speaker 3: every day that we get to speak to somebody that
Speaker 3: is companies valued at two hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 3: And I think that that's an inspiring story for anybody
Speaker 3: that's listening. But more so than being inspiring, we have
Speaker 3: to provide information. So how does that how do you
Speaker 3: how do they determine that level of like, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is what your company is valued at. I know John
Speaker 3: has spoken about that, so maybe he wants to add
Speaker 3: it too as far as like valuations for companies. But
Speaker 3: we hear these numbers all the time and this companies
Speaker 3: value that, this company's value at this what is what
Speaker 3: does that mean? And how do they actually determine that?
Speaker 11: Yeah, John is as an investor probably speak more from
Speaker 11: like investors perspective perspective.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 11: At this at this stage, what they're doing is they're
Speaker 11: they're they're looking at the company's dynamics, the uni economics,
Speaker 11: and they're looking at the revenue and like the growth,
Speaker 11: like how fast you're growing, and they're applying a multiple
Speaker 11: on that because what they're trying to do is project
Speaker 11: how big this company can get and what it could
Speaker 11: potentially like I po for and what kind of you know,
Speaker 11: returns they can get. So if you can show a
Speaker 11: plain and clear story like this is where we are now,
Speaker 11: this is how we're going to get to you know,
Speaker 11: a billion plus you know valuation, and it makes sense
Speaker 11: because the numbers are defending it, then investors are okay
Speaker 11: giving you multiples that are like, uh, you know, software
Speaker 11: type multiples, meaning that this is bigger than you would
Speaker 11: get if you were just like.
Speaker 4: A regular brick brick and mortar business.
Speaker 11: The way they value is companies is very much like
Speaker 11: projecting future earnings and future growth. So that's that's kind
Speaker 11: of I know, that's that's the kind of vague answer,
Speaker 11: but that's really what it's based on. It's still not
Speaker 11: one hundred percent sign aiences of the art and a science,
Speaker 11: but from my perspective, they look at like how much
Speaker 11: revenue you're doing, how fast you're growing, and they compare
Speaker 11: you to other companies in your industry or in your space,
Speaker 11: and they look at what they've done, and then they
Speaker 11: base evaluation on that.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's John, What do you think I mean?
Speaker 6: You said eloquently, man, I think I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 6: And I think that from One of the things that
Speaker 6: has surprised me is really how much of it comes
Speaker 6: down to storytelling. And I know you've used that word
Speaker 6: a number of times, something that we think a lot
Speaker 6: about in the venture industry. But people I believe mistakenly
Speaker 6: over index on the metrics. But you can never have
Speaker 6: enough sales growth or any hard metric for any VC.
Speaker 6: And I bet you you can take let's say we
Speaker 6: could live in a world we can clone a situation.
Speaker 6: Let's take the same exact business with the same exact metrics,
Speaker 6: the same everything, and then put two founders with the
Speaker 6: same business to go and sell it, and you will
Speaker 6: have different valuation results based on who told the story
Speaker 6: the most confidently, but also who told the grander story.
Speaker 6: And in VC, there's a paradix that I've noticed that
Speaker 6: has adversely affected our communities as a whole, and that
Speaker 6: is that you know, going smaller is safer because it's
Speaker 6: more familiar, but going bigger works better in venture because
Speaker 6: it's harder. And there's something about a bigger vision that
Speaker 6: is grant. It just puts that it puts, It gives
Speaker 6: you that face, it makes it go oh, you know,
Speaker 6: and it makes other people say, yo, dam this shit
Speaker 6: could work potentially, And if you think big enough and
Speaker 6: it's the vision is just crazy enough, then it just
Speaker 6: might work. So this is really a game where it's
Speaker 6: a home run theory, you know, and you go into
Speaker 6: it for you know, to to slam it out of
Speaker 6: the park. Man. So that's that's kind of so I
Speaker 6: agree with you, man, and I guess I want to
Speaker 6: say offishly ask you know. Of course a lot of
Speaker 6: the audience will be in the earlier stages, but man,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of talk on early stage shit like
Speaker 6: I'm curious, like, you know, before we get to audience
Speaker 6: questions like what's what type of shit that you're thinking
Speaker 6: through now? Like you know, there's probably mad decisions that
Speaker 6: like today Thursday, April twenty second, twenty twenty one is
Speaker 6: mad shit that you're thinking, working through put me in
Speaker 6: in your shoes for today, and all the types stuff
Speaker 6: you think too.
Speaker 11: Yeah, man, I mean what I love about this game
Speaker 11: is that you're constantly having to like level up. And
Speaker 11: the company that you're running when you're one to ten
Speaker 11: employees is like fundamentally a different company than ten to twenty,
Speaker 11: you know, fifty to one hundred, one hundred fifty like
Speaker 11: where we are now. So like, if you're going to
Speaker 11: be successful, you have to you have to be learning,
Speaker 11: you have to be I have a very like what
Speaker 11: I call like a flexible mind. Like you can't be
Speaker 11: rigid in your thinking, because the ship that you learned
Speaker 11: that worked, you know six you know, a year ago,
Speaker 11: it stops working, you know, So you have to you
Speaker 11: have to be thinking of like how can I almost
Speaker 11: like reinvent reinvent myself to continue running this company successfully.
Speaker 11: So it's a challenge, but it's also keeps it interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I've been working on Square longer than I've done anything
Speaker 11: else now six years professionally. But it never gets at
Speaker 11: least it hasn't gotten stale because it's so dynamic. But
Speaker 11: to answer your question, now, at this level, it's it's
Speaker 11: very much about like recruiting executives, you know, keeping them motivated,
Speaker 11: inspiring them, setting out the vision of the company. There's
Speaker 11: issues that you have to think of that just weren't
Speaker 11: on my radar, Like how important like people is and
Speaker 11: hr like that's that's not something that you think.
Speaker 4: About earlier on.
Speaker 11: I didn't, but you see how important it is and
Speaker 11: how important the culture is. So those are the kind
Speaker 11: of things that that you know are on my mind now.
Speaker 11: It's it's different when you haven't met personally majority of
Speaker 11: employees that work for your company, not because there's so
Speaker 11: many now, but also because they're hired in the pandemic,
Speaker 11: right and we've all been working remotely. So it's like
Speaker 11: thinking about ways to kind of solve of that and
Speaker 11: to keep the culture and to keep a sense of
Speaker 11: community amongst everybody working a squire. It's yeah, there's a lot,
Speaker 11: a lot of challenges, but it's exciting.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 6: So how do you run teams? Right? Because like at
Speaker 6: this point at Loop the teams are small enough that
Speaker 6: you know, I could pretty much have my hands on
Speaker 6: in in a lot of the product teams, but like
Speaker 6: at this point, there's no way you're interfacing with with
Speaker 6: all the you know, employees, so like do you kind
Speaker 6: of have like a suite of like captains around you
Speaker 6: that and then you trust that they're da da da da.
Speaker 6: But do you ever start thinking, like, yo, fuck, someone's slack.
Speaker 6: You know, someone's not doing their ship somewhere down the
Speaker 6: line or like you know, it would give me nerves
Speaker 6: and like not be as involved.
Speaker 11: Pretty much kind of give up that level of control
Speaker 11: at some point. And you have your executive team, so
Speaker 11: those are usually like your direct reports, and then they
Speaker 11: each have you know, they're people that report to them,
Speaker 11: and it's very like hierarchical, which we never work. We're
Speaker 11: always very flat. But like you almost can't. It's impossible
Speaker 11: to scale to this level like without having some kind
Speaker 11: of systems in hierarchy, uh in place. But I think
Speaker 11: it's okay to still get your hands dirty, but you
Speaker 11: got you have to optimize for like what you're actually
Speaker 11: really the best at.
Speaker 4: Like like I've heard that that.
Speaker 11: Uh you know, I must like still like working like design,
Speaker 11: like like for for like you know, his products and
Speaker 11: space an incredible designer and engineer, so like that that
Speaker 11: makes sense, but like you can't do that for every group,
Speaker 11: like you have. Maybe there's like one or two areas
Speaker 11: that you're still like down to, like get get your
Speaker 11: hands dirty in, but it's not plausible.
Speaker 6: The last question I have for you real quick. Sorry,
Speaker 6: so well, so a lot of people know me, but
Speaker 6: that's because I'm just talking all the fucking time, right,
Speaker 6: But it creates this false perception that in order to
Speaker 6: be a startup CEO that you have to over index
Speaker 6: on the media and be on all the panels and
Speaker 6: things like that. So to me is very fascinating because
Speaker 6: it's almost more rooted in pure skill and execution when
Speaker 6: you're not out there. So what's your thoughts around Like,
Speaker 6: you haven't been a more private CEO, but you've hit
Speaker 6: you know, scale, So what's your your thoughts on that?
Speaker 6: And tips for people that don't see themselves as inherently
Speaker 6: extroverted or whatever.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean my thoughts are you should you only
Speaker 11: have so many hours in the day, right, so you
Speaker 11: should optimize your time on doing things that are going
Speaker 11: to move the need of the most for your company,
Speaker 11: and that very very may well be media and that stuff.
Speaker 11: You know, if that's the nature you know your business,
Speaker 11: if you're creating a consumer brand, like you are like
Speaker 11: the return on your time is there. A lot of
Speaker 11: people do it for the wrong reason. They do it
Speaker 11: for the ego and like to feel successful. But my
Speaker 11: thoughts is always like if you build a big company,
Speaker 11: and you build and and you build a successful company,
Speaker 11: like you can always be famous later, like if you're
Speaker 11: rich enough, especially if you're black, like there's so few
Speaker 11: of us, like you can always you can always play
Speaker 11: that card if that's important to you.
Speaker 4: But for me, it's like not.
Speaker 11: Not not really point that I don't mind doing it,
Speaker 11: Like people asking me to speak on things, and generally
Speaker 11: you know, you know, I'll do it, but like I
Speaker 11: don't go looking for it because it just doesn't move
Speaker 11: the needle for for for our business, Like barbers are
Speaker 11: not reading Tech Crunch barbershop owners or not or not,
Speaker 11: they don't care about that. But when it comes time
Speaker 11: to fundraise, you know, I will strategically utilize, utilize, you know,
Speaker 11: these resources and these channels, because, like you do, it
Speaker 11: is important on the investors side to have your name
Speaker 11: bubbling a little bit. But also I'm of the mind that,
Speaker 11: like you don't want to be too accessible. It's good
Speaker 11: to have a little mystery.
Speaker 8: I want to talk really quickly because and what we'll
Speaker 8: open the floor for all our earners to ask questions
Speaker 8: because one of the things I know you're you're very
Speaker 8: proud about it is global expansion, and so I want
Speaker 8: to know if you could just share maybe some strategies
Speaker 8: and some testniques that you're going to use to make
Speaker 8: that vision come to fruition.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: One of the things I love about our business, and
Speaker 11: I love about just the nature of startups, you know,
Speaker 11: technology companies now is that the world is just so
Speaker 11: much smaller and it's a lot easier to launch in
Speaker 11: other countries, uh successfully, much easier than than it used
Speaker 11: to be. So for us, like I have global ambitions
Speaker 11: for Squire, and I want nearly every barbershop in the
Speaker 11: world to default to using square Fire is, you know,
Speaker 11: is where we would like to go. And we already
Speaker 11: are in Canada, in the in the UK, and you know,
Speaker 11: we have to launch in some other countries. We're starting
Speaker 11: off with, like English speaking, just because it's easier culturally,
Speaker 11: it's easier. We don't have to change the product. But
Speaker 11: there's no reason that eventually we can't have Squire you
Speaker 11: know on different continents, in different languages because everybody gets
Speaker 11: a haircut in the world. It's a universal thing. Just
Speaker 11: barbershops in every country and every city in the world, So.
Speaker 7: Why not is it limited to just barbershops or SALONSA
Speaker 7: is that.
Speaker 4: Next using it?
Speaker 11: But we are very focused on barbershops because uh, you know,
Speaker 11: I think I was talking about this earlier, but like
Speaker 11: that focus is like we look at it as an advantage.
Speaker 4: It allows us to.
Speaker 11: Build a better product, to build with specificity, and there's
Speaker 11: a lot of other salon systems out there, but barbershops
Speaker 11: we could be like the dominant, the dominant player.
Speaker 3: So you guys spoke previously about going public. Is that
Speaker 3: in your plans to go public? And if so, what's
Speaker 3: the blueprint that you are putting forward to take the
Speaker 3: company public?
Speaker 11: I mean, you know, and it's it's it's an option
Speaker 11: at this stage when you've raised as much capital as
Speaker 11: we have after vibrations that we have raised on it's
Speaker 11: always going to be something that's considered. But if so,
Speaker 11: it's probably a ways off. So I always think really
Speaker 11: focus on like the next you know, twelve and twenty
Speaker 11: four months, but ultimately, if we build a big business
Speaker 11: that's doing you know, it's doing type of revenue that
Speaker 11: we want to do. They'll be uh, there'll be options,
Speaker 11: and an IPO would definitely be one of those options
Speaker 11: in terms of exist.
Speaker 6: Yeah here, that's interesting here. But yeah, hats off to
Speaker 6: some man and Dave Salvaon and the whole team. I
Speaker 6: know it's a team effort and we have the chance
Speaker 6: to chop it up with your to it early and
Speaker 6: you guys gave his guidance that loop, and it's just
Speaker 6: I'll forever be appreciative. Of course. Also a song is
Speaker 6: instrumental for the loop Raise introduces to mad investors. Got
Speaker 6: invested himself. And I appreciate you, man, because it's founders
Speaker 6: helping founders, and it's black founders specifically helping black founders
Speaker 6: because we understand, we kind of understand the path. So
Speaker 6: I always see you as a fan of that's around
Speaker 6: the band for me, and you can see further year round.
Speaker 6: And I appreciate you just extending the handback to help
Speaker 6: another founder out as we grow together.
Speaker 4: Man, I love it. We've got to do that. We
Speaker 4: got to do that.
Speaker 6: One hundred percent. Let's get some questions, Troy.
Speaker 8: Well, let's see ern is what you got a question.
Speaker 8: You can raise your hand while they're doing it. I'm
Speaker 8: another one in there. So you briefly talked over you start,
Speaker 8: you had thirty employees during the pandemic, you scale to
Speaker 8: over one hundred.
Speaker 7: I think you said you had one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 8: Now, can you talk about the complexities of doing that,
Speaker 8: because I mean, do you guys you don't have a
Speaker 8: central location. So I'm assuming everybody is spread out throughout
Speaker 8: the country. What what are some of the dynamics and
Speaker 8: difficulties as you've grown.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody spread out over the country.
Speaker 11: It's not because of the technological kind of innovations on
Speaker 11: that side, people management stuff.
Speaker 4: It's not as difficult as you might be.
Speaker 11: Like you might think logistically, there's just like so many
Speaker 11: uh uh. You know, there's slack, the zoom, there's there's
Speaker 11: a bunch of you know, cr M tools and different things.
Speaker 11: But for me, this struggles more like just like culturally
Speaker 11: and and and you know, it's hard to get it
Speaker 11: like a pull somewhere around when you're not seeing people physically.
Speaker 11: So those are the things that we're thinking of. Like,
Speaker 11: as as we're reopening, how are we going to incorporate
Speaker 11: some type of in person team events. Are we going
Speaker 11: to open like clubs in different cities have kind of
Speaker 11: reopen some of the offices we had before. So those
Speaker 11: are other things we're thinking through now. There's a lot
Speaker 11: of uncertainty COVID though, because we don't know. It could
Speaker 11: be a new wave or whatever new trained. Hopefully they
Speaker 11: won't be so things go well, we plan on having
Speaker 11: some more in person you know, interactions soon.
Speaker 7: I got I got another one. That's another one.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking.
Speaker 7: This is like so brilliant man, Like I said, you
Speaker 7: saved me a lot of time.
Speaker 8: But so when when you're pitching the app to barbershop owners,
Speaker 8: obviously you're going to have the barbers preferably become part
Speaker 8: of that. Is there any type of brand like ambassador,
Speaker 8: Like I could see you having a like a celebrity
Speaker 8: barber in this space and really taking off.
Speaker 7: Is that something that you guys are have a vision?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: So in the barber subculture, which is really subculture. You know,
Speaker 11: if you go on Instagram, they live on Instagram. Uh,
Speaker 11: they have barbers who are like celebrities, and some of
Speaker 11: them are celebrities. They cut celebrities here and some of
Speaker 11: them are just celebrities in their own right in the space,
Speaker 11: and they have like a million followers and they're very
Speaker 11: influential for other barbers. So we're working with what I
Speaker 11: would call like some of the most wunch of ones.
Speaker 11: We call them our champions, their squad champions, and they
Speaker 11: represent us when we go back to having advanced. They
Speaker 11: go to the events for us, and they're kind of
Speaker 11: like our our you know, our barber representatives, and they're
Speaker 11: like just some of the dopest, well known barbers. And
Speaker 11: they're all shop owners too, so that's one of the requirements.
Speaker 11: They have to actually own own a shop as well.
Speaker 11: So yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty cool to work
Speaker 11: with them.
Speaker 8: Yeah, e y, y'all has earners, Buff has his rock Boys,
Speaker 8: squad guys is champions.
Speaker 3: That's that's a fact. So all right, do we have
Speaker 3: any questions from uy University? If you guys have any questions.
Speaker 3: This is the time. Once again, like I said, it's
Speaker 3: not every day that you get to speak to somebody
Speaker 3: that has, you know, future billion dollar business very soon
Speaker 3: on their hands.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I saw Jamie had a question in the chat.
Speaker 6: Billion used to be the main vision and now it
Speaker 6: feels like it feels doable. I used to be scared.
Speaker 6: I used to be scared of Bill, so I don't
Speaker 6: you know, And now it's like, okay, Billy, but.
Speaker 7: Like I think, you know, we can hit that.
Speaker 11: You know, really there's this pressure externally and then internally
Speaker 11: as well. It's always be thinking bigger, especially like you said,
Speaker 11: for black black.
Speaker 4: Founders, founders of color.
Speaker 11: But yeah, when I first started, I was, you know,
Speaker 11: I was thinking maybe twenty thirty million, that'd be huge,
Speaker 11: like that, just sell it through something else.
Speaker 4: And then if you raise a little more and you're like.
Speaker 11: Okay, it's big, like one hundred million, I could And
Speaker 11: now honestly I'm thinking like billion, Yeah, we definitely want
Speaker 11: to do that.
Speaker 4: But I'm like, how do we get the ten billion exactly?
Speaker 4: Yeah that's good.
Speaker 11: Maybe it's bad, you know, maybe that's just evil capitalism whatever,
Speaker 11: but that's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 7: All Right, we got a question. Ao og, my god,
Speaker 7: what's going on?
Speaker 10: You've been hey, I'm doing well. Thank you. Thank you
Speaker 10: guys again for just sharing, always sharing knowledge and just
Speaker 10: be being true to the community. Really appreciate you both.
Speaker 10: I was approached by a business to develop an app,
Speaker 10: and I was we just want some guidance on how
Speaker 10: I can structure that deal in a way that it
Speaker 10: protects my code and also secures me for the revenue
Speaker 10: that the business predicts to receive after building the code
Speaker 10: for them.
Speaker 3: John, you got any suggestions about that?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean some would love your t I have
Speaker 6: some thoughts, but would love your take as as someone
Speaker 6: who had to like myself, non technical founders. You got
Speaker 6: to bring a dev in. So how do you approach it?
Speaker 11: So if you believe in the company and you think
Speaker 11: that they can actually you know they're going after something
Speaker 11: big as equity, i'd be my my my suggestion. If
Speaker 11: you need the cash, then you can do a split
Speaker 11: where you say, you know this, this would be the
Speaker 11: cash payment, and then I want some portion of the
Speaker 11: payment equity. That way they protect and your upside if
Speaker 11: they go on to create that next billion or ten
Speaker 11: billion dollar company, you're you're going to do very well
Speaker 11: that That's the first thing.
Speaker 4: That comes to mind. Okay, what's a fair amount? What's
Speaker 4: the industry standard?
Speaker 10: Because I was approached with fifteen percent equity stake in
Speaker 10: the business, I don't know if that's u This is
Speaker 10: my first project, so I don't know if this is
Speaker 10: that's the industry standard, or if I could ask demand
Speaker 10: for more.
Speaker 6: I say that's I mean, that's a good amount. I mean,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure how how you know how much traction
Speaker 6: the business has already. I'm assuming it's like it's just
Speaker 6: an idea, right, It's like PowerPoint.
Speaker 4: It's just an idea for now.
Speaker 6: I think you have leverage to ask for more. This
Speaker 6: is a PowerPoint and there really needs you, and development
Speaker 6: talent is expensive. You know, I'm not sure if in
Speaker 6: New York, but if you are, you know, engineers are
Speaker 6: getting a buck eighty and you know you're you're getting
Speaker 6: stock options at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, any of these companies.
Speaker 6: So they got golden handcuffs. They don't want to leave
Speaker 6: because they're making a lot of money at their cushing
Speaker 6: engineering job. And oh, by the way, there's fucking always
Speaker 6: granola and lunch and dinner at the office, So you're
Speaker 6: luck competing with that as a startup. So I think
Speaker 6: you're if you are technical and you are full stack
Speaker 6: or front or back end, whatever your stack might be,
Speaker 6: I think you're at a position of advantage now. But
Speaker 6: here's the thing though, if you are already thinking about
Speaker 6: how you can exploit the business then keep a pushing
Speaker 6: and save yourself the time and save them the time.
Speaker 6: But I think that your mindset should be and probably is,
Speaker 6: but just spelling it out, it should be. Yo. You know,
Speaker 6: I want to be part of this business and I
Speaker 6: want you guys to see yourselves as a unit. And
Speaker 6: the best thing with the deal is there's no such
Speaker 6: thing as a good deal if you feel good at
Speaker 6: their expense or vice versa, because then it's all that
Speaker 6: friction is always going to come up. So the best
Speaker 6: thing is to cut a fair deal, which means that
Speaker 6: you're going to get a little bit less than you
Speaker 6: want and they're going to give a wagh a little
Speaker 6: bit more than they want. But if you can find
Speaker 6: that middle ground, then you cut the deal and then
Speaker 6: you forget the deal and you can focus on the
Speaker 6: work perfect.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for that. Appreciate you aog my guy.
Speaker 6: Be well, bro, thank you for the question for yo.
Speaker 6: For those of you guys asking in the chat, if
Speaker 6: you guys, head over to loopinsure dot co slash e
Speaker 6: y l loop insure dot co slash e y l
Speaker 6: that entire PDF framework along with all the other ones
Speaker 6: from the past weeks is available for download, so head
Speaker 6: over to loop insure dot co slash e y l
Speaker 6: to get your pdf. Hot off the press. Let's get
Speaker 6: maybe two more. I want to respect songs time. A
Speaker 6: couple of hands raised.
Speaker 8: Yeah, earners. The link is in the chat in too.
Speaker 8: It's in the chat as well, so you can find
Speaker 8: a day.
Speaker 6: I'm watching the wait list, folks, I'm watching the list.
Speaker 6: I'm watching the downloads, so go ahead and download it downloaded.
Speaker 7: Tough Mountain, Chris, what's going on me yourself? You've been unmuted?
Speaker 7: He yeah, yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 10: Bro? Man?
Speaker 3: Lesson to Kings. I just had a question for Sanja.
Speaker 14: You spoke briefly about having to expand your team from
Speaker 14: the thirty two one hundred and twenty. This was kind
Speaker 14: of a piggybacking off of Troy's question. Was what were
Speaker 14: some of the hiccups for failure, successes, tips or tricks
Speaker 14: that you had about or had with your human resources?
Speaker 11: Yeah? This song, yeah, by the way, just this song,
Speaker 11: just like the word. But uh yeah, man. The first
Speaker 11: thing that I that I I would say is I
Speaker 11: learned how important it is to have an HR leader
Speaker 11: on the on the team, Like, we didn't have that
Speaker 11: for till recently. And I think I under underestimated like
Speaker 11: the importance of that, you know, I just think hr whatever,
Speaker 11: you know, compliance, you know, but it's actually very important.
Speaker 11: So making that higher was a key utilizing good recruiting
Speaker 11: firms because actually recruiting people is a job in and
Speaker 11: of itself.
Speaker 4: It takes a lot of time and energy.
Speaker 11: And at first, the founders we were doing it, but
Speaker 11: it can become a time dream if you're out there
Speaker 11: trying to do it yourself all the time. So eventually
Speaker 11: we started bringing on recruiting firms and their job is
Speaker 11: to go find the candidates for us, bet them, and
Speaker 11: then you know, send them to us to be interviewed.
Speaker 11: So I think those two things really allowed us to
Speaker 11: expedite the number of people were bringing on and hire
Speaker 11: and scale up pretty fast during twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: And what were you paying those recruit those head hunters?
Speaker 6: Song like twenty percent of the salary? Twenty five percent?
Speaker 4: Like twenty twenty five percent? Yeah, too much expensive?
Speaker 6: You have to do it, yes, sir, appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Chris, all right.
Speaker 6: Last one, let's get it in here.
Speaker 8: Uh, Jimmy, we're coming to you. I mute yourself. You've
Speaker 8: been immune. What's going on?
Speaker 4: Good team? Goodness?
Speaker 3: Well Jimmy the matrix you choppy? Yeah type type of
Speaker 3: type Jimmy Again.
Speaker 2: I'm tapping in based on the idea my company. Oh
Speaker 2: my bad give me two seconds?
Speaker 8: All right, yeah you got they got you on the
Speaker 8: Optimus Prime.
Speaker 3: I'm here.
Speaker 6: Can you hear me?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Here we go?
Speaker 6: Okay, great, thank you.
Speaker 15: Okay, So my mom, I talked to you about this
Speaker 15: on market Mondays, got my brandy.
Speaker 3: Jimmy Jimmy type Jimmy type in the chat. Yeah, your
Speaker 3: WiFi is crazy right now. They unfortunately we can't. We
Speaker 3: can't actually hear around.
Speaker 4: But I'm trying to do that.
Speaker 6: We have to think towards text.
Speaker 2: We have to think towards you know, in that teams
Speaker 2: being in the market right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can't. We can't hear what you We can't
Speaker 3: hear what you said.
Speaker 8: That was Johnny five talk use Yeah, Jimmy, just type
Speaker 8: in the chat so we can ask the questions.
Speaker 3: Fi. Man, it's a bad time to have bad Wi fi.
Speaker 8: Yeah, somebody actually put in chat, So I'm gonna ask.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna ask you the one that Uh that is
Speaker 8: in the chat it says, in the case of your business,
Speaker 8: could you say, in maybe just a sentence, what your
Speaker 8: mote is in terms of segment, technology, business model, what
Speaker 8: separates you from from everybody else?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so I think it's kind of all it's so
Speaker 11: it's it's the demographic were going after being very specific.
Speaker 11: We're the only ones that are really like so focused
Speaker 11: on barbershops in particular, and that that gives us an advantage.
Speaker 11: It's a product mix, uh, like the ecosystem that that
Speaker 11: that I mentioned. The more things that they're using a Squire,
Speaker 11: the harder it is for them to just leave and
Speaker 11: use something else. And you can't use Squire and you
Speaker 11: know another company, like we're really all all encompassing. Uh
Speaker 11: So as a result, the business operations really just depend
Speaker 11: on being on the platform when they're on.
Speaker 4: It, and it's very integrated.
Speaker 11: For example, we handle their payroll for the shop, so
Speaker 11: when they're paying out the barbers, like that goes to
Speaker 11: the squire, the barbers get their money, you know, directly
Speaker 11: positive into their accounts. So just we just end up
Speaker 11: having a lot of tentacles that's providing.
Speaker 4: A lot of value.
Speaker 11: We think making their lives easier, making their operations smoother.
Speaker 11: But at the same time, it's a product mode. Uh,
Speaker 11: and it provides the defensibility because not many other companies
Speaker 11: can do everything that we do.
Speaker 7: Good old product mode. John Jimmy said he has his.
Speaker 3: Uh, let's just before let's try to get this shot.
Speaker 6: M say, by the Jimmy Jimmy, what's up?
Speaker 3: I appreciate you.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Are we back?
Speaker 4: Are we good?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 6: Let me try to make this snappy?
Speaker 4: Okay? Great.
Speaker 2: So my my idea is I'm trying to change in
Speaker 2: the light of everything we've been talking about n ft S,
Speaker 2: about innovation and spaces and about of course what Gary
Speaker 2: v is talking about. I'm changing the hangtags on my
Speaker 2: garments into limited edition collectible art pieces.
Speaker 4: From artists that are around.
Speaker 2: My brand is associated with street art, and I want
Speaker 2: to exemplify street art into living life and you know,
Speaker 2: doing what we do. So I've commissioned a few artists,
Speaker 2: but I want to see how we can create a
Speaker 2: space that's like a a more you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: A more innovative space for the garment things. So part
Speaker 2: of the issue was getting rid of waste because we're
Speaker 2: buying hangtags. The first thing you throw away, So I said,
Speaker 2: letstead of it making a hangtag, did you throw away,
Speaker 2: let's make it.
Speaker 7: A collector's item.
Speaker 2: Is in the n FT space and the collectors in
Speaker 2: the collector's card space.
Speaker 7: That's huge, Like, especially if.
Speaker 2: You have an artist over there, like a cryptic or
Speaker 2: a Retina or somebody really dope, you know, Ruben Rojas.
Speaker 2: These cats have ways to move the market in that
Speaker 2: Internet regard. I just wanted to see if we could
Speaker 2: talk about innovation in the space that hasn't really been
Speaker 2: Like we talked about the barbershop being left alone for decades,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, Garments have been doing things
Speaker 2: in the same way and it's very very difficulty the
Speaker 2: physical thing into a digital space.
Speaker 3: Just want to talk about that some more, Okay, so
Speaker 3: content request, Yeah, we can cover that. I mean, we
Speaker 3: always cover new different topics, and there's different industries that
Speaker 3: you know need light over other industries as well. So
Speaker 3: I'm assuming that, yeah, you would like us to have
Speaker 3: more of an in depth conversation on the garment industry
Speaker 3: and fusing you know, it's interesting as far as fusing
Speaker 3: fashion with new age technology. NFTs and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: We've been talking a lot about NFTs lately, so yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll put it on the gin that, we'll put it
Speaker 3: on the do list, talk about fashion and technology and
Speaker 3: how they are coming together and how they can possibly
Speaker 3: come together.
Speaker 8: I think we spoke about it in the early crypto
Speaker 8: days when we were investing. There was a few coins
Speaker 8: that were trying to do that to help counterfeit production
Speaker 8: of merchandise, and so they had technology inside of the
Speaker 8: clothing that you couldn't replicate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was thinking the NFT is gonna be big
Speaker 3: for know that that's actually really big for sneaker world
Speaker 3: because the sneaker counterfeit industry is a billion dollar industry
Speaker 3: and it's hard to really tell if you're getting a
Speaker 3: real sneaker or not. So if they can somehow put
Speaker 3: the NFT in with the sneakers, now you know that
Speaker 3: you have the real Jordans because you have a receipt
Speaker 3: on a blockchain and you know for a fact, so
Speaker 3: that in my brain that will work well with sneakers,
Speaker 3: luxury bags, anything that has counterfeit attached to it. The
Speaker 3: NFT thing, or just any kind of blockchain technology where
Speaker 3: you can certify that. So yeah, it's interesting. We could
Speaker 3: definitely have a more in depth conversation about that. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Stock Acts actually became a billion dollar business doing precisely that.
Speaker 6: They did annual authentication. When I went to Detroit, they
Speaker 6: tore me around the facility. I try to blog it.
Speaker 6: They had a shit lot down and actually have people
Speaker 6: specifically trained to identify counterfeit babes and shit and it's
Speaker 6: real cool. They school you, and there was like, Yo,
Speaker 6: if you look on the third panel underneath the sweater
Speaker 6: on the inside, then there's always an upside down monkey,
Speaker 6: and that's how you know that the ship is real.
Speaker 6: So so I do find it fascinating, but it's fascinating
Speaker 6: to me how capitalists will do that shit manually to
Speaker 6: create the value and then build brand around having that authentication,
Speaker 6: and it just it kind of reminds me of in
Speaker 6: a similar way, Squire and ey L and any other
Speaker 6: business out there building brain equity. E y L is
Speaker 6: now known as that platform where you get the real
Speaker 6: the real business ship. Squire, same thing on on the
Speaker 6: barbershop side, and Loop hopefully same thing on fair transparent
Speaker 6: inclusive insurance. But Yo, this has been a great episode. Man,
Speaker 6: Thank you song. I appreciate you coming on for the
Speaker 6: folks listening. Man, It's just these are these are rich conversations.
Speaker 6: You will get out of them what you so please.
Speaker 6: The depth is there and oftentimes, you know when I
Speaker 6: was kind of getting started and still today, sometimes like
Speaker 6: a line will breeze by, but if you rewind it
Speaker 6: and just listen to it and unpack it absorb it,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of depth and a lot of these lines, like,
Speaker 6: for example, one that stuck out with me. It's like
Speaker 6: a product mode and they got me thinking, mmm, that
Speaker 6: makes sense, which is why, like an insurance, for example,
Speaker 6: they bundle. You know, they'll they'll give you the loss
Speaker 6: leader and then bundle. So it creates an entire ecosystem
Speaker 6: that's difficult for you to leave, and then it increases
Speaker 6: your lifetime value, your customer and so on. But so
Speaker 6: always a pleasure, man, Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3: Bro.
Speaker 6: I appreciate you. We're all rooting for you. We are
Speaker 6: rooting for you, and yeah, man, we can't wait to
Speaker 6: see your success to the whole EYL community. If your
Speaker 6: barber is not on Squire, ask them to get on Squire.
Speaker 6: Let's show them what the EYL community could do for
Speaker 6: each other. And when you go public, man, we'll be
Speaker 6: right there waiting to buy some shares. So so loot man,
Speaker 6: good luck to you. Of course you and I will
Speaker 6: be in touch, but it was great to have you
Speaker 6: on man, and I hope that you and e y
Speaker 6: L will do we'll do more things in the future
Speaker 6: because they got a crazy barber community for real.
Speaker 3: Sure, thank you, brother, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 4: You for having me.
Speaker 3: For sure, for sure I got shout out to the
Speaker 3: good brother man that does it for this. Yeah, John,
Speaker 3: here it goes there. There was another one man, we
Speaker 3: only got.
Speaker 6: One got so yeah, it's been real man. I appreciate
Speaker 6: you guys. This this uh, this experiment has been has
Speaker 6: been great fun. And for those listening like sometimes you
Speaker 6: gotta experiment. Sometimes you gotta, you know, come together with
Speaker 6: people that you think are doing interesting things and see
Speaker 6: if there's magic to be made and if you could
Speaker 6: strike but one magic moment, then for me, the experience
Speaker 6: is typically have been well worth it. You deep in
Speaker 6: with a collaborator in the space, you bring value to
Speaker 6: the community at large, and you create some magic moments
Speaker 6: and I'm told that when one shoty is is writ
Speaker 6: and he's writing down moments.
Speaker 4: Ship out.
Speaker 6: So you already know, man, I respect you guys, have
Speaker 6: a ton of respect for you know that. Honestly, you
Speaker 6: guys work that think it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking that today. You know, it's so
Speaker 3: crazy that you say that. And by the way, Jim
Speaker 3: Jones shout out to Jimmy, he told me to turn
Speaker 3: this pad into an NFC.
Speaker 6: That's a good idea.
Speaker 7: That's a good idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I was just thinking that today. Man, I'm like, Yo,
Speaker 3: it's crazy. You know, just we we did a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff today and we still got to do some
Speaker 3: more stuff, and I was just thinking about that. Like
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of times people they don't understand,
Speaker 3: like what goes into being any level of you know,
Speaker 3: success is you know, the consistency and the work you
Speaker 3: can give somebody. You can give somebody the blueprint. Even
Speaker 3: this is a message like we for three weeks, We've
Speaker 3: given you a lot of tools and resources, but the
Speaker 3: ones that's really gonna win are the ones that I
Speaker 3: only apply it, but apply it every single day, day
Speaker 3: in day out. No, there's no breaks, there's no, you know,
Speaker 3: you got to just do the work, and that can
Speaker 3: never be discounted. Whenever we have these conversations, you cannot
Speaker 3: skip over work. Work has to be done one percent.
Speaker 6: And that shit is inconvenient too, right, because you guys
Speaker 6: are in LA and the sun is shining out, there.
Speaker 8: Be a lot smooth to be by the pool that right,
Speaker 8: come alive at night, John, We come alive at night.
Speaker 3: You come alive.
Speaker 6: I got you, got you, but you got to stay
Speaker 6: putting in the hours.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 6: The community takes note. I'm doing the same thing over
Speaker 6: here on this side, and we are excited to close
Speaker 6: out the series strong next week Thursday, six pm Eastern time. Man, people,
Speaker 6: I don't care what anyone says. Man, people will not
Speaker 6: be able to say that we didn't deliver value and
Speaker 6: drop jewels and left the fucking blueprint right there and
Speaker 6: plain sight for people to follow. So if you don't
Speaker 6: follow it, honestly, it's on you, So thank you.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 6: Head over to Loopinshure dot co slash ey L. Guys. Listen,
Speaker 6: those frameworks are not gonna be there forever we are.
Speaker 6: The moment this series is done is fucking going away,
Speaker 6: all right. These are ship that I've learned, like I've
Speaker 6: wasted a lot of my own money. Fuck producing it.
Speaker 6: Producing it is easy. It's just designing it. Learning this shit,
Speaker 6: internalizing it, putting it to the test, and then packaging
Speaker 6: it in a way that is consumable for you all.
Speaker 6: I wish I would have had these frameworks when I
Speaker 6: was getting started. There's tremendous depth to them. I hope
Speaker 6: that you guys can apply them to your game, and
Speaker 6: if you're finding value in them, let me know. Hit
Speaker 6: me up Jhi Loopinshure dot co. That's my actual email,
Speaker 6: by the way, this one that I use every day,
Speaker 6: so don't fucking spam me. But if you have questions
Speaker 6: Jhi Loopingshure dot co. I would love to uh. I
Speaker 6: would love to chop with you all, and I guess
Speaker 6: to sign it off until next week.
Speaker 3: You have it, brother, Appreciate you all right, y'all?
Speaker 7: Love is love. Listen.
Speaker 6: That's week p that's week it is.
Speaker 5: Brad do it from my school being forced bad drop
Speaker 5: bag drop drop drop drops.
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