Study Hall: Starting a $250 Million Company with John Henry & Songe LaRon

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My graduates from my school being forced bad drop.

Drop my drop, bad drop.

Shout to everybody that's been checking out the Wealth Principles, Man, everybody has been giving great feedback on so far. Everybody has thoroughly enjoyed what we have going on. John, what's going.

On some boys in l A.

Somebody's gotta do it.

Flight work the same kriva from last time. Nah No, damn, you guys are real good. It's a good look on you. But you guys need to have you guys need to make some summer swag. Then that's a.

Fact that's in the works. That chilly out here. It's still a little chilly.

Out here, but it can be tank tops. Man, that's cost of entry. I need some fly.

No, no, we got it.

We got it.

Man. You know Who's line?

I like? Who?

Summer line? I like, uh, honestly not. I'm a big nos fan just in general. But history, that history really smooth. It's not as popular, but it's real smooth.

Shout out to nods man.

I got a few history views.

On Ziah Jones. All right, boys, let's get into it.

Let's do it.

Another week, another episode of The Well Principles Thursday time diving into special topics every week. Special guests PDFs available for download. You already know how it is, man. This week we got some heat cooking. This week we are going to talk about the mandy. Can you fix my light and put it more more head on?

Please?

This week we're gonna be talking about startup secrets. We made a little pivot. We made a pivot. We did a pivot. Initially, I was thinking we would talk about real estate, but I figured, man, a lot of people could talk about real estate. But based on the feedback from last week, I thought, what are some of the things that we could talk about that I feel like are unique to my experience, and so we came up

Might be.

I made two investments over the last few days.

Boys, backups.

Oh yeah, let's not. Let's not breeze over that real quick for anybody on YouTube. So you are, you're getting back into angel investing world, and you have allocated ten thousand dollars for different businesses that you will personally be invested in.

Yes, sir, ten thousand dollars a pop. I hope to make maybe five seven angel investments this year. And yeah, I guess the difference between what I was doing before was I was a venture capitalist, so I was investing in other people's money professionally. Now I made a little bit of my own cash, and I'm going to be put on my own cash in these companies Now, look, tenk K is not going to make it rain for

How did they get in contact with you if they got a business that potentially you know they want you to take a look at.

Yes, sir, the best way is the Loop waitlist. So head over to loopinshare dot com, slash eyl loop and shirt dot coat slash you well and joining the Loop wait list. But secondly, you can hit me on on Honestly, you can hit me at but maybe I shouldn't have to make an email called pitch JH. Pitch j I'm gonna buy PITCHJH dot com and then you'll be able to hit me. But in the meanwhile you could just hit me direct man Jhi co found Harlem dot com.

Moat all right?

Now, this is something that's often discussed, but we're going to break down also what a moat is specifically, because I hear a lot of people say the frame, the phrase, but they don't really talk about it. Okay, So now let's explore what most people try to do in my experience that I've potentially I definitely have made this mistake before. I'm potentially remaking the mistake, but to a lesser extent, and that is most startups try to boil the ocean. Okay,

Okay.

So, for example, Loop is an insurance. If we try to tackle all of private passenger auto, that's a two hundred and fifty six billion dollar a year market. Man, we only raise a few million dollars. Progressive spends that in a day, probably more than that so we would never win if we were going toe to toe. However, what we did do is find a very very specific audience within the large field that is insurance, and what we're doing is resonating real, real, real, real, real deeply

Sort of fuck with you.

It's misleading because when a lot of people like you, you think, oh well, all I gotta do is convert them to love me. But you're actually much much further away. Like and love move in the opposite directions. So when you get a lot of people with a like you, that lukewarmness, you now have a lot more masks that you have to heat up to convert it into a deep, deep, deep,

Bro?

How you on the wrong?

Man?

Was great?

A living legend.

What's going on brother?

Watching man? How are you feeling everything?

Good?

Bro?

I like that new squire swag. Did you guys do a brand refresh or is that just like a limited.

Day we got some new merhout shop like last month? I can I can get you on.

Yeah, send me one for real, real real. Also shout out Debut Capital, whom as a mutual investor in US, I just invested in their fund at today.

Uh.

And so that maybe the fact that makes me an investor of Squire. We'll see it does work out.

It's not always working.

Uh.

So, EYL community, I'm really pleased to bring Song in uh into the EYL orbit Song. If you don't know these brothers man Rashot and Troy co founders at Earn Your Leisure building something real, real, real, real special. Two cats came out of fucking nowhere and somehow be Dave Rancy, Tim Ferris and all these other whack motherfuckers who have ripped and we got to bring charge.

Bro.

I'm stopped everywhere constantly for being on the Earner Leasure Show like real talk so so so it's great to make the introduction, and I would love for Song to jump on the Earn Your Leasure Show proper. I think that having an in depth discussion would be really, really, really rich for the community. Now, just as a cliff no intro to song and Song and I've been connected for a minute in the streets of Hulla, we were bumping to each other so many times at random different cafes

Saw.

I'm sure it seemed many times like I don't know if it was gonna shake out in your way or whatever. You know, I'm in my head sometimes about the shit too with Loop. But you know, in the last year, you definitely have broken through tech Crunch reported, you guys have soared to a two hundred and fifty million dollar valuation. I hate to focus on evaluation or dollars raise. I actually love to focus more on the fact that your product is used. People use your shit. I'm here in Austin.

So John, the crazy part is that when when you sent the information, I didn't realize it. But I've been using Squire for the past two to three years to schedule my son's barbershop.

Well, I want to thank you because what you have done is saved us a.

Lot of time of sitting in the barbershop waiting for hours for appointments that people walk in and say, I was there before you, So I appreciate you.

Yo, let's zoom in for a moment the people could go and find all the info on like the early early days of you know, Squire, But let's zoom into a moment on the days maybe that it was actually that maybe it might have been hardest because now you're you know, the you've hit escape velocity and you have the market dynamics working in your favor, I might say, but I'm curious, when was the time that it was most difficult for Squire and you know, just kind of

Yeah, yeah, I mean, like you said, it's it's it is hard. It's hard building companies, and even at this level that we're right now, it's still difficult, but it's just different problems. But earlier on those problems, you know, they were existential, you know, like if we didn't figure out how to raise money in a certain time period, you know, there's that risk of running out of money, or if we didn't figure out, you know, how to find somebody that could actually build the product for us.

And selling it.

So those were some of like the really you know, the really tough times, I'll say, like the first the first year. You know, it took us almost a year to just get an empty f out, you know, that minimum viable product that actually we could have people start

Yeah.

Yeah, And and what what were something So when when the MVP was when you finally they learned that lesson and got it out there. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening and me myself, I'm in this phase now where I'm like, I'm trying to get people to use the damn thing. What were some of the things that you guys did in those early days to get people to use squad?

Those days, those days were fun yc calls that doing things that don't scale. And in the early days it should really be the founders doing as much as humanly possible to get to know their customers to get people to try to test it. So we were literally walking to barbershops, you know, spend the whole day in the barbershop talking to customers, talking to barbers. And this is in New York and New Yorkers are known most friendly, you know people.

So sometimes were walking in the barber were like, yo, what fuck? What do you want? Like you're getting a haircut and not sound like what's good?

We have to like we were like, I'll book a haircut or a beer trip or something like just to get his seat to talk for fifteen minutes, so half an hour, like I'll pay for your time.

And it was, it was.

It was tough, but fortunately eventually we were able to get some people that were interested in trying it and using the app.

And on the consumer side. Right now, we're much more of a B to B company.

We focus on selling to barbershops. We don't really focus on building a consumer brand. Maybe in the future will do that, but right now everything is super focused on driving more new barbershops and barbers to the platform. But at first we didn't know that, so we were trying to do like this kind of consumer marketing thing and trying to get barbers at the same time, and we were just all over the place. And consumer marketing, as you probably know this, I'm sure it's shit is hard.

But like we didn't.

We didn't have, you know, that kind of platform to get the word out to the masses. So we used to do just random In New York City, I don't know if you remember, we used to do like a chalk signs on the sidewalk Downholtst.

Wire app It was actually pretty good, like it was free marketing.

We would do it all over the city and people would be like, yeah, I heard about I saw that Union Square.

So you know, whatever you can think of you have to be creative in the early day.

How did you know? How did you know? How?

Like when was that moment that you learned like, Yo, okay, we're going to cut our losses on the consumer thing and focus on like ongoing barbershop because that sounds like a pivotal decision in a Squire trajectory.

Yeah, Well, a good thing about being early safe is that you can get so much information so fast and iterate based on the data that you're getting. And it was very clear that these individual barbers and consumers was not fucking with our app.

Frank like, we just weren't getting usage.

You know, they would they would downloaded and just not use it because they didn't need it to run their business.

And when we were talking to the owners, the owners would.

Be like, yeah, the app look's cool, but is it going to integrate with my point of sale system?

Can I track inventory on here? Can I pay out? I've got six barbers to work for my shop? Like are they going to use it?

So we were like, wow, you know, we need to build something that the owner can use for everything, to manage everything.

And it was pretty clear.

Like based on the feedback from from our customers like that's what the market really was needing and would respond well to. Uh So we actually ran a barbershop around that same time. One of our customers was going to close the shop down down to Chelsea Market downtown, and we actually took it over for about eight months and put ourselves in the shoes of our customers because since we couldn't get anybody else to use it, we use it.

Of square Sean.

The beginning stage. Where did the innovation come from? Was there a series of experiences that you've been through at you know, going into barbershops and saying this is always time like what sparked the innovation?

Yeah, it was exactly that.

It was.

It was solving my own pain points that I think are very universal that I experienced my co found experience, like like most people, you know, I started going to the barbershop six or seven if my dad as a kid, and here it was two decades later and it hadn't changed.

It was the one.

Area of life that innovation and technology was just totally overlooking and it didn't make sense.

To me that you have to just walk in and wait for an unknown amount of time every couple.

Of weeks to get a haircut, that these shops didn't take cats, that didn't take card, I had to pay cash or go.

To the ATM and pay that ATM fee.

So there was just all these little, you know, minor annoyances that just seemed like they should be able to be improved with technology. And that was the impetus was just like solving our own problem.

At what point did you scale to the point where you started to take outside money for people that starting businesses? And you know, at what point did you think you needed it? And when did you realize, Okay, this is this is how we're going to go about doing that.

Yeah. So I we needed it very early on in order to be able to build a product and to kind of get that initial attraction.

But it was it was difficult.

Yeah, at first I quit my job to work on Squire, as did my co founder, and it was about a good eight months to a year after that before we actually were able to raise some money, which you know, going eight months with no paycheck just real really quickly, and the personal you know, financial risk. You know, you start to really feel it as your bank account is going down every month and you're not getting anything.

In so many of us.

Meaning like black people, you know, people of color, we generally don't have the wealth position in our families to kind of go to the rich uncle for friends and family around to get a few hundred thousand dollars. So

What's that process like.

Ahead, Yeah, what's the process like of creating how much your company is going to need as far as series rounds of funding? Like what do you how do you think the evaluation in the early stages because you're just starting.

Yeah, in the early stages, it's very it's much more art and science.

It's it's a balance of.

You know, coming over with terms that are that are reasonable and kind of kind of fair. Like everybody knows that there's not a lot of data to really come up with a precise valuation very early on, so the investors are really just placing a bed on the founders and the vision and then they'll be able to execute on it. So from when we got that initial check, which I think was like twenty fifteen ish till now, evaluations have skyrocketed. So like what was normal then for

Yo.

What's fascinating to me is the problem that you chose. It's like it's a common problem, which means it's an enormous problem. But you must have faced undoubtedly and probably to a lesser extent now, but maybe you even face this qualm at the A round, which is like, yo, it's a big market, you know, like it's a me too business, like everyone could do it, you know, blah

Yeah, earlier on the Marcus host question was was something that we had to grapple with, and I think more than anything, it was a factor of one this blind spots form vcs, Like a lot of these guys are like.

You know, sixty year old, fifty year old super.

Wealthy dudes, Like they probably don't go to They probably go to some highend salon or something like. They weren't very familiar with barbershop, with the barbershop culture and community and how important it is. So just convincing them that look, this is actually like a big opportunity getting past the bias that some people would have. Not everybody, but a lot of people would assume oh, this is black barbershop business, since my co found and I are both black, so

Let me let me, let me ask you this, because I've heard someone the other day, somebodyself out said it. But there was like a lot of startups, you know, in the A round, that's when they're most vulnerable because they need the money the most and they don't have

Yeah, I think regardless of the round of this, the founders that do advantage if they don't have competition amongst the investors.

So whether it's the A round or the.

C round, if you need money to fund a company and you're not profitable, which most startups aren't, and you don't have competing interest amongst investors, then that investor has a leverage. They can say, look, here's the terms, take it to leave it, and this is what I'm going to do. But if you if you have at least more than one interested investor, automatically evaluations is going to go up significantly because now they're in competition with each

So you know that, That's how I look at it.

But the main thing that you want to do is get multiple investors interested.

That's the best way to not get to looted.

So can can you take me through the range of emotions that you've had over the past year, especially here in New York barbershops were closed and so that hurts the business. But knowing that you have a product that can thrive in that type of environment because you have contactless payments, right, you have scheduled appointments which allows people the flow of people in and out to be minimized so that it can meet restrictions.

What are your range of emotions over the past twelve must Man?

Yeah, twenty twenty was wild.

It was a wild year like nothing I've ever seen or predicted.

Yo.

Also, one thing real quick is song We when we hosted so we did a Cadillac, We did a dinner for Cadillac called the Driven Ones twenty nineteen at the close of the year, and Song was invited and there was a moment we was having conversation and Song. I don't know if you look back on that, but I do sometimes, and I think, Yo, that was at the close of the decade, and I remember at one point we was all like, yo, twenty twenty.

Cheers and everyone was just toasting.

It was, you know, the market was just just kept going up. It was so frothy. There was just so much money around and even at that point, Song, you had just announced your eight million dollar series a round and so you know, of course the market had all different types of things in store for you all. But I wanted to slip that in there for the listeners for contexts, like, you know, twenty nineteen was a hell a fucking year and we thought that, you know, twenty

Yeah, And at that dinner, I don't know if I told you before, but like I was already raising to be you know, it wasn't public, but we were raising to be at that time, and you know, we had competitive term sheets and the whole thing was in danger of collapsing. Like I was so stressed. You know, you know how deals goways go, they're always in danger, and like it looked like it wasn't going to happen, and

But in terms, I was stressed that night.

But it ended up working out, and we were fortunate because we closed on the be the second close, like in March twenty twenty, right before, so so when all the barbershops shut down, we had you know, forty to fifty whatever the amount, we had a lot of money

So twenty twenty was crazy.

I mean it was very scary, very uncertain in March April.

But when the.

Shops started reopening in like May, June, going into the summer, we started doing more numbers than ever, which was like unexpected, and that propelled us.

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Apply Dave, what's the kind of the momentum to then raise the c later in the fall of that year. So all in all, I mean it was probably our best year just in terms of growth and revenue, and you know, we went from about thirty employees to one hundred.

In point that is during this time is this is where you're becoming more innovative with the micro services.

Yeah, I mean we it was always our vision to expand on our offering and build what I call like the Squire ecosystem, and you know, to do pretty much everything that these businesses need. But the pandemic forced us to think of other things that we wouldn't have otherwise thought of to help them while they were closed down and as.

They were as they were reopening.

But yeah, we did launch a few of like uh you know, the these these types of businesses during that time. One of them, for example, is the Squire Supply, which enabled the barbershop owners to like buy everything they need to run their business, like the alcohol the next trips.

So how did you how'd you execute that?

Was that?

Like did you buy did you find like a common denominator of goods that were needed at scale, Uh, ship them to a facility and ship them out or did you use a vendor partner in a marginal way.

Yeah, so that's the first raise that originally we're thinking of.

And then we were like, you know what, we don't want to be holding all this inventory and you know, taking on that risk, So we partner with like one of the biggest distributors, and then we do we do like a reps split, but our customer only is interfacing with Square, so everything that they do, they're for filling on the back end, and then we have access to every sku imaginable that they would need.

So you pretty much like you did a loss Leader, where it was like the scheduling to build your brain in the industry and the space, and then you you kept kind of introducing more and more services and now you're you're at the place where you know, where we kind of all want to be as a business, where it's like it's the platform play. Now people go to Square for anything and you can kind of introduce additional

Man.

Hey, look, we've got a long way to go, but that's the vision. That's what we're trying to execute on. But we have so much room to grow, man, and so many more barbershops to get it on squire. But yeah, that's that's that's the vision.

O heah.

So let me ask you this because I know we don't want to harp on the numbers, but it's not every day that we get to speak to somebody that is companies valued at two hundred and fifty million dollars And I think that that's an inspiring story for anybody that's listening. But more so than being inspiring, we have to provide information. So how does that how do you how do they determine that level of like, Okay, this

Yeah, John is as an investor probably speak more from like investors perspective perspective.

But.

At this at this stage, what they're doing is they're they're they're looking at the company's dynamics, the uni economics, and they're looking at the revenue and like the growth, like how fast you're growing, and they're applying a multiple on that because what they're trying to do is project how big this company can get and what it could potentially like I po for and what kind of you know,

A regular brick brick and mortar business.

The way they value is companies is very much like projecting future earnings and future growth. So that's that's kind of I know, that's that's the kind of vague answer,

I mean, that's John, What do you think I mean?

You said eloquently, man, I think I think that's exactly right. And I think that from One of the things that has surprised me is really how much of it comes down to storytelling. And I know you've used that word a number of times, something that we think a lot about in the venture industry. But people I believe mistakenly over index on the metrics. But you can never have enough sales growth or any hard metric for any VC.

Yeah, man, I mean what I love about this game is that you're constantly having to like level up. And the company that you're running when you're one to ten employees is like fundamentally a different company than ten to twenty, you know, fifty to one hundred, one hundred fifty like where we are now. So like, if you're going to be successful, you have to you have to be learning, you have to be I have a very like what

Yeah.

I've been working on Square longer than I've done anything else now six years professionally. But it never gets at least it hasn't gotten stale because it's so dynamic. But to answer your question, now, at this level, it's it's very much about like recruiting executives, you know, keeping them motivated,

About earlier on.

I didn't, but you see how important it is and how important the culture is. So those are the kind of things that that you know are on my mind now. It's it's different when you haven't met personally majority of employees that work for your company, not because there's so many now, but also because they're hired in the pandemic, right and we've all been working remotely. So it's like thinking about ways to kind of solve of that and to keep the culture and to keep a sense of

Yea.

So how do you run teams? Right? Because like at this point at Loop the teams are small enough that you know, I could pretty much have my hands on in in a lot of the product teams, but like at this point, there's no way you're interfacing with with all the you know, employees, so like do you kind of have like a suite of like captains around you that and then you trust that they're da da da da. But do you ever start thinking, like, yo, fuck, someone's slack.

Pretty much kind of give up that level of control at some point. And you have your executive team, so those are usually like your direct reports, and then they each have you know, they're people that report to them, and it's very like hierarchical, which we never work. We're always very flat. But like you almost can't. It's impossible to scale to this level like without having some kind

Like like I've heard that that.

Uh you know, I must like still like working like design, like like for for like you know, his products and space an incredible designer and engineer, so like that that makes sense, but like you can't do that for every group, like you have. Maybe there's like one or two areas that you're still like down to, like get get your hands dirty in, but it's not plausible.

The last question I have for you real quick. Sorry, so well, so a lot of people know me, but that's because I'm just talking all the fucking time, right, But it creates this false perception that in order to be a startup CEO that you have to over index on the media and be on all the panels and things like that. So to me is very fascinating because it's almost more rooted in pure skill and execution when

Yeah, I mean my thoughts are you should you only have so many hours in the day, right, so you should optimize your time on doing things that are going to move the need of the most for your company, and that very very may well be media and that stuff. You know, if that's the nature you know your business, if you're creating a consumer brand, like you are like the return on your time is there. A lot of people do it for the wrong reason. They do it

But for me, it's like not.

Not not really point that I don't mind doing it, Like people asking me to speak on things, and generally you know, you know, I'll do it, but like I don't go looking for it because it just doesn't move the needle for for for our business, Like barbers are not reading Tech Crunch barbershop owners or not or not,

I want to talk really quickly because and what we'll open the floor for all our earners to ask questions because one of the things I know you're you're very proud about it is global expansion, and so I want to know if you could just share maybe some strategies and some testniques that you're going to use to make that vision come to fruition.

Yeah.

One of the things I love about our business, and I love about just the nature of startups, you know, technology companies now is that the world is just so much smaller and it's a lot easier to launch in other countries, uh successfully, much easier than than it used to be. So for us, like I have global ambitions for Squire, and I want nearly every barbershop in the world to default to using square Fire is, you know,

Why not is it limited to just barbershops or SALONSA is that.

Next using it?

But we are very focused on barbershops because uh, you know, I think I was talking about this earlier, but like that focus is like we look at it as an advantage.

It allows us to.

Build a better product, to build with specificity, and there's a lot of other salon systems out there, but barbershops we could be like the dominant, the dominant player.

So you guys spoke previously about going public. Is that in your plans to go public? And if so, what's the blueprint that you are putting forward to take the company public?

I mean, you know, and it's it's it's an option at this stage when you've raised as much capital as we have after vibrations that we have raised on it's always going to be something that's considered. But if so, it's probably a ways off. So I always think really focus on like the next you know, twelve and twenty four months, but ultimately, if we build a big business that's doing you know, it's doing type of revenue that

Yeah here, that's interesting here. But yeah, hats off to some man and Dave Salvaon and the whole team. I know it's a team effort and we have the chance to chop it up with your to it early and you guys gave his guidance that loop, and it's just I'll forever be appreciative. Of course. Also a song is instrumental for the loop Raise introduces to mad investors. Got

Man, I love it. We've got to do that. We got to do that.

One hundred percent. Let's get some questions, Troy.

Well, let's see ern is what you got a question. You can raise your hand while they're doing it. I'm another one in there. So you briefly talked over you start, you had thirty employees during the pandemic, you scale to over one hundred.

I think you said you had one hundred and fifty.

Now, can you talk about the complexities of doing that, because I mean, do you guys you don't have a central location. So I'm assuming everybody is spread out throughout the country. What what are some of the dynamics and difficulties as you've grown.

Yeah, everybody spread out over the country.

It's not because of the technological kind of innovations on that side, people management stuff.

It's not as difficult as you might be.

Like you might think logistically, there's just like so many uh uh. You know, there's slack, the zoom, there's there's a bunch of you know, cr M tools and different things. But for me, this struggles more like just like culturally and and and you know, it's hard to get it like a pull somewhere around when you're not seeing people physically. So those are the things that we're thinking of. Like, as as we're reopening, how are we going to incorporate

I got I got another one. That's another one.

I'm thinking.

This is like so brilliant man, Like I said, you saved me a lot of time.

But so when when you're pitching the app to barbershop owners, obviously you're going to have the barbers preferably become part of that. Is there any type of brand like ambassador, Like I could see you having a like a celebrity barber in this space and really taking off.

Is that something that you guys are have a vision?

Yeah.

So in the barber subculture, which is really subculture. You know, if you go on Instagram, they live on Instagram. Uh, they have barbers who are like celebrities, and some of them are celebrities. They cut celebrities here and some of them are just celebrities in their own right in the space, and they have like a million followers and they're very influential for other barbers. So we're working with what I would call like some of the most wunch of ones.

Yeah, e y, y'all has earners, Buff has his rock Boys, squad guys is champions.

That's that's a fact. So all right, do we have any questions from uy University? If you guys have any questions. This is the time. Once again, like I said, it's not every day that you get to speak to somebody that has, you know, future billion dollar business very soon on their hands.

So yeah, I saw Jamie had a question in the chat.

Billion used to be the main vision and now it feels like it feels doable. I used to be scared. I used to be scared of Bill, so I don't you know, And now it's like, okay, Billy, but.

Like I think, you know, we can hit that.

You know, really there's this pressure externally and then internally as well. It's always be thinking bigger, especially like you said, for black black.

Founders, founders of color.

But yeah, when I first started, I was, you know, I was thinking maybe twenty thirty million, that'd be huge, like that, just sell it through something else.

And then if you raise a little more and you're like.

Okay, it's big, like one hundred million, I could And now honestly I'm thinking like billion, Yeah, we definitely want to do that.

But I'm like, how do we get the ten billion exactly? Yeah that's good.

Maybe it's bad, you know, maybe that's just evil capitalism whatever, but that's what I'm thinking.

All Right, we got a question. Ao og, my god, what's going on?

You've been hey, I'm doing well. Thank you. Thank you guys again for just sharing, always sharing knowledge and just be being true to the community. Really appreciate you both. I was approached by a business to develop an app, and I was we just want some guidance on how I can structure that deal in a way that it protects my code and also secures me for the revenue that the business predicts to receive after building the code for them.

John, you got any suggestions about that?

Uh?

Yeah, I mean some would love your t I have some thoughts, but would love your take as as someone who had to like myself, non technical founders. You got to bring a dev in. So how do you approach it?

So if you believe in the company and you think that they can actually you know they're going after something big as equity, i'd be my my my suggestion. If you need the cash, then you can do a split where you say, you know this, this would be the cash payment, and then I want some portion of the payment equity. That way they protect and your upside if they go on to create that next billion or ten billion dollar company, you're you're going to do very well that That's the first thing.

That comes to mind. Okay, what's a fair amount? What's the industry standard?

Because I was approached with fifteen percent equity stake in the business, I don't know if that's u This is my first project, so I don't know if this is that's the industry standard, or if I could ask demand for more.

I say that's I mean, that's a good amount. I mean, I'm not sure how how you know how much traction the business has already. I'm assuming it's like it's just an idea, right, It's like PowerPoint.

It's just an idea for now.

I think you have leverage to ask for more. This is a PowerPoint and there really needs you, and development talent is expensive. You know, I'm not sure if in New York, but if you are, you know, engineers are getting a buck eighty and you know you're you're getting stock options at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, any of these companies. So they got golden handcuffs. They don't want to leave because they're making a lot of money at their cushing

Thank you very much for that. Appreciate you aog my guy.

Be well, bro, thank you for the question for yo. For those of you guys asking in the chat, if you guys, head over to loopinsure dot co slash e y l loop insure dot co slash e y l that entire PDF framework along with all the other ones from the past weeks is available for download, so head over to loop insure dot co slash e y l to get your pdf. Hot off the press. Let's get maybe two more. I want to respect songs time. A couple of hands raised.

Yeah, earners. The link is in the chat in too. It's in the chat as well, so you can find a day.

I'm watching the wait list, folks, I'm watching the list. I'm watching the downloads, so go ahead and download it downloaded.

Tough Mountain, Chris, what's going on me yourself? You've been unmuted? He yeah, yeah, what's going on?

Bro? Man?

Lesson to Kings. I just had a question for Sanja.

You spoke briefly about having to expand your team from the thirty two one hundred and twenty. This was kind of a piggybacking off of Troy's question. Was what were some of the hiccups for failure, successes, tips or tricks that you had about or had with your human resources?

Yeah? This song, yeah, by the way, just this song, just like the word. But uh yeah, man. The first thing that I that I I would say is I learned how important it is to have an HR leader on the on the team, Like, we didn't have that for till recently. And I think I under underestimated like the importance of that, you know, I just think hr whatever, you know, compliance, you know, but it's actually very important.

It takes a lot of time and energy.

And at first, the founders we were doing it, but it can become a time dream if you're out there trying to do it yourself all the time. So eventually we started bringing on recruiting firms and their job is to go find the candidates for us, bet them, and then you know, send them to us to be interviewed. So I think those two things really allowed us to expedite the number of people were bringing on and hire and scale up pretty fast during twenty twenty.

And what were you paying those recruit those head hunters? Song like twenty percent of the salary? Twenty five percent?

Like twenty twenty five percent? Yeah, too much expensive?

You have to do it, yes, sir, appreciate you.

Chris, all right.

Last one, let's get it in here.

Uh, Jimmy, we're coming to you. I mute yourself. You've been immune. What's going on?

Good team? Goodness?

Well Jimmy the matrix you choppy? Yeah type type of type Jimmy Again.

I'm tapping in based on the idea my company. Oh my bad give me two seconds?

All right, yeah you got they got you on the Optimus Prime.

I'm here.

Can you hear me?

Yeah?

Here we go?

Okay, great, thank you.

Okay, So my mom, I talked to you about this on market Mondays, got my brandy.

Jimmy Jimmy type Jimmy type in the chat. Yeah, your WiFi is crazy right now. They unfortunately we can't. We can't actually hear around.

But I'm trying to do that.

We have to think towards text.

We have to think towards you know, in that teams being in the market right now.

Yeah, we can't. We can't hear what you We can't hear what you said.

That was Johnny five talk use Yeah, Jimmy, just type in the chat so we can ask the questions.

Fi. Man, it's a bad time to have bad Wi fi.

Yeah, somebody actually put in chat, So I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna ask you the one that Uh that is in the chat it says, in the case of your business, could you say, in maybe just a sentence, what your mote is in terms of segment, technology, business model, what separates you from from everybody else?

Yeah, so I think it's kind of all it's so it's it's the demographic were going after being very specific. We're the only ones that are really like so focused on barbershops in particular, and that that gives us an advantage. It's a product mix, uh, like the ecosystem that that that I mentioned. The more things that they're using a Squire, the harder it is for them to just leave and use something else. And you can't use Squire and you

It, and it's very integrated.

For example, we handle their payroll for the shop, so when they're paying out the barbers, like that goes to the squire, the barbers get their money, you know, directly positive into their accounts. So just we just end up having a lot of tentacles that's providing.

A lot of value.

We think making their lives easier, making their operations smoother. But at the same time, it's a product mode. Uh, and it provides the defensibility because not many other companies can do everything that we do.

Good old product mode. John Jimmy said he has his.

Uh, let's just before let's try to get this shot.

M say, by the Jimmy Jimmy, what's up?

I appreciate you.

I appreciate you.

Are we back?

Are we good?

Okay?

Let me try to make this snappy?

Okay? Great.

So my my idea is I'm trying to change in the light of everything we've been talking about n ft S, about innovation and spaces and about of course what Gary v is talking about. I'm changing the hangtags on my garments into limited edition collectible art pieces.

From artists that are around.

My brand is associated with street art, and I want to exemplify street art into living life and you know, doing what we do. So I've commissioned a few artists, but I want to see how we can create a space that's like a a more you know what I'm saying, A more innovative space for the garment things. So part of the issue was getting rid of waste because we're buying hangtags. The first thing you throw away, So I said, letstead of it making a hangtag, did you throw away, let's make it.

A collector's item.

Is in the n FT space and the collectors in the collector's card space.

That's huge, Like, especially if.

You have an artist over there, like a cryptic or a Retina or somebody really dope, you know, Ruben Rojas. These cats have ways to move the market in that Internet regard. I just wanted to see if we could talk about innovation in the space that hasn't really been Like we talked about the barbershop being left alone for decades, you know what I'm saying, Garments have been doing things in the same way and it's very very difficulty the physical thing into a digital space.

Just want to talk about that some more, Okay, so content request, Yeah, we can cover that. I mean, we always cover new different topics, and there's different industries that you know need light over other industries as well. So I'm assuming that, yeah, you would like us to have more of an in depth conversation on the garment industry and fusing you know, it's interesting as far as fusing fashion with new age technology. NFTs and all that stuff.

I think we spoke about it in the early crypto days when we were investing. There was a few coins that were trying to do that to help counterfeit production of merchandise, and so they had technology inside of the clothing that you couldn't replicate it.

Yeah, I was thinking the NFT is gonna be big for know that that's actually really big for sneaker world because the sneaker counterfeit industry is a billion dollar industry and it's hard to really tell if you're getting a real sneaker or not. So if they can somehow put the NFT in with the sneakers, now you know that you have the real Jordans because you have a receipt on a blockchain and you know for a fact, so that in my brain that will work well with sneakers,

Stock Acts actually became a billion dollar business doing precisely that. They did annual authentication. When I went to Detroit, they tore me around the facility. I try to blog it. They had a shit lot down and actually have people specifically trained to identify counterfeit babes and shit and it's

Bro.

I appreciate you. We're all rooting for you. We are rooting for you, and yeah, man, we can't wait to see your success to the whole EYL community. If your barber is not on Squire, ask them to get on Squire. Let's show them what the EYL community could do for each other. And when you go public, man, we'll be right there waiting to buy some shares. So so loot man,

Sure, thank you, brother, I appreciate your time.

You for having me.

For sure, for sure I got shout out to the good brother man that does it for this. Yeah, John, here it goes there. There was another one man, we only got.

One got so yeah, it's been real man. I appreciate you guys. This this uh, this experiment has been has been great fun. And for those listening like sometimes you gotta experiment. Sometimes you gotta, you know, come together with people that you think are doing interesting things and see if there's magic to be made and if you could strike but one magic moment, then for me, the experience

Ship out.

So you already know, man, I respect you guys, have a ton of respect for you know that. Honestly, you guys work that think it's ridiculous.

I was just thinking that today. You know, it's so crazy that you say that. And by the way, Jim Jones shout out to Jimmy, he told me to turn this pad into an NFC.

That's a good idea.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, But I was just thinking that today. Man, I'm like, Yo, it's crazy. You know, just we we did a lot of stuff today and we still got to do some more stuff, and I was just thinking about that. Like you know, a lot of times people they don't understand, like what goes into being any level of you know, success is you know, the consistency and the work you

And that shit is inconvenient too, right, because you guys are in LA and the sun is shining out, there.

Be a lot smooth to be by the pool that right, come alive at night, John, We come alive at night.

You come alive.

I got you, got you, but you got to stay putting in the hours.

Man.

The community takes note. I'm doing the same thing over here on this side, and we are excited to close out the series strong next week Thursday, six pm Eastern time. Man, people, I don't care what anyone says. Man, people will not be able to say that we didn't deliver value and drop jewels and left the fucking blueprint right there and plain sight for people to follow. So if you don't follow it, honestly, it's on you, So thank you.

Guys.

Head over to Loopinshure dot co slash ey L. Guys. Listen, those frameworks are not gonna be there forever we are. The moment this series is done is fucking going away, all right. These are ship that I've learned, like I've wasted a lot of my own money. Fuck producing it. Producing it is easy. It's just designing it. Learning this shit, internalizing it, putting it to the test, and then packaging it in a way that is consumable for you all. I wish I would have had these frameworks when I

You have it, brother, Appreciate you all right, y'all?

Love is love. Listen.

That's week p that's week it is.

Brad do it from my school being forced bad drop bag drop drop drop drops.

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