Overcoming Limited Thinking to Build a $750 Million Company

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:32I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us anymore. Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry.

1:13Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up. It's basically like Dora's Day. No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:58I just, damn, that f***ing got swag. Listen to the Questlove Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroach on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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3:28Are you marketing? At the beginning, you were the face. You were going in hand in hand. So were you doing that with white barbershops also? Absolutely. How did that work out? So funny enough, when we were first kind of thinking through how we're going to do this, we had a bias against ourselves. We thought we probably couldn't go in there and resonate with these non-black barbershops. So we ended up hiring a friend of ours who's actually still with the company who's white. And like his job was going to be kind of biz dev, like going to the shops. So he was doing that. We were still doing it. And over time, this experience, we started finding out that like, actually, we were better even at the white shops selling them than he was.

4:15And some of the bias that we had, you know, the preconceived notion that we had that these shop owners, because we didn't look like them, weren't going to want to hear us out. actually was just totally not true. And then, you know, and it turns out, you know, the white guy who we hired wasn't good at that. He ended up being really good at other things. So he moved into like product on the product side. So you just never, you never know. And sometimes there's a tendency to sell yourself short because, you know, you think somebody's going to think something about you. But if you have a great product and you go there and you meet them eye to eye, you know, we found that for the most part, customers are willing to hear you out, you know, regardless of what you look like.

4:53Yeah, are you solving the hair on fire problem? And if you're solving that problem, whatever you are, I think they're going to listen to you because you're addressing a real pain point in their lives. All right, correct me if I'm wrong on these numbers. 32 ,000 barbershops? 32 ,000 barbershops, yeah. Barbers. Barbers. 10 million clients? Last time I checked, yeah, somewhere in that range. How are we, this is because you're talking from 2016 to this point. How are we scaling year to year? Like, what trends are you watching to say, all right, here's an opportunity, here's an opportunity. This is a demographic.

5:31We haven't touched this place. How are y 'all going about that? That's a lot. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's never enough, though. It's always more. Let's get to the next. So what we learned is what's super important to scale is that you really have to scale your team. So, you know, in the early stages, you know. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

6:06Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?

6:43NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up, y 'all?

7:26This is Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with A$AP Rocky ahead of his album release, Don't Be Dumb. He reflects on his journey from his Harlem roots to global icon status, discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the bucket hat Kangol join on Pops was like that's Rakim that's who you named after I just was like damn that was I swear Rocky offers a window into not only a boundary breaking artist but as a man committed to fusing creative ideas community and remaining unapologetically himself have you ever gotten roasted for any of your outfits?

8:02for sure some people don't be getting the vision look they can roast me they can cook me they can deep fry me they can saute whatever they want there's nobody who can f*** with my fashion sense and my taste is impeccable. I'm just like, I impress myself a lot. It's an amazing conversation. One you definitely don't want to miss. So listen to the Questlove show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

8:32Every January, we're encouraged to start over. But what if this year is about slowing down and learning how to understand ourselves more deeply? What if this year is about giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help? I'm Mike De La Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This is a podcast for men navigating stress, emotional health, fatherhood, identity, and the unspoken pressures we're taught to carry alone. We talk honestly about mental health, about healing generational wounds and about learning how to show up with more presence and care. If you want a healthier relationship with yourself and the people you love, then Sacred Lessons is the podcast for you.

9:21Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRocha on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRocha and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.

9:59In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. it was us and then a few other early employees but as you get bigger you really have to bring on folks who have the experience of kind of getting to the next level where you're trying to get and over time we've built up a really incredible kind of bench of our executives and that that has helped you know help tremendously and in the early days you do you know it's called doing things that don't scale, like walking into the barbershop yourself and pitching them.

11:00Like, that's great. And, but like, you can't, that's not going to get you to where we are now. So over time you have to figure out how do you build like repeatable motions, repeatable processes that's like scalable. Um, and you know, that's essentially, essentially what we've been able to do. So, so as far as this number of$750 million valuation, um, what can you break that down as far as like, what does that actually mean in layman terms for somebody that just they hear they hear that but it's like that is the enterprise value or the kind of like market cap of your business so if somebody were to purchase the building business they would have to pay 750 million dollars for an entire business and if somebody's investing you know based on the dollar amount they invest that's percentage amount of the 750 million and And that$750 million would come from investors valuing the company at that as far as, okay, I'm going to put this amount of money in per percentage and then that equals the$750.

12:04Or does that come from revenue that is projected to be like, okay, 10x revenue? I mean, there's some formula that they create, but that's essentially the formula. It's like, hey, look, for 1%, it's$7.5 million. So you times that by 10. If you want 10%, you got to put up 75 million. So that's kind of how the math works. And it's just supply and demand. You know, if you have a great product, if you have some proprietary technology that they think might, you know, transform the world, they're going to pay whatever they're going to pay for. It's just like, you know, what the company, what people think the company is worth.

12:47How does the ownership table look, right? because a lot of times startups, you know, we don't have money, right? We haven't gotten venture capital. And so a lot of times people will offer equity, right? Like as an exchange or a collateral to say, hey, I need you part of the team. How does ownership look then? How does it look now? Obviously you've got a board, you've got investors. Are you guys majority owners still? Like how does this work? Yeah. So as far as the equity, like all of our employees have some degree of equity. We think that's important. we think it's important one to align incentives and it's also important as a wealth building mechanism our company is is i don't know for sure but i would say it's probably maybe the most diverse or one of the most diverse of a company like at our scale in terms of like the background of our employees so we think it's you know it's really important for them to have skin in the game and like when we do have the big exit you know hopefully we'll be creating a lot of millionaires and creating a lot of wealth in the community um so so uh so that's important um the second was the second part of your question ownership i think oh yeah yeah the ownership you get diluted i mean it's natural um you know it's the the pie uh gets gets bigger um but you're you know your percentage of the pie goes down over over time so um you know unfortunately you know i wouldn't say we have we have majority but um you know that's just kind of the name of Yeah, but, you know, control, I think, is also super important.

14:14Like, you know, when you go through this fundraising, take on more investors, you know, you lose control. But we still, like, a board can't get rid of us if they wanted to because of the structure we have in place. And that's equally important is control. Ernest, what's up? You ever walk into a small business and everything just works? like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square. We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just feels seamless, whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop-up market, or even one of our merch partners.

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16:17Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove.

16:55Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only ASAP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the bucket hat Kangol join on. I'm possibly like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after. I just, damn the f***ing f***ing swag. Listen to The Questlove Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler. we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she?

17:35She is not with us anymore. Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike De La Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal.

18:14This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroach on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Joel. And Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

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