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Each episode, we sit down with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers shaping growth across the lower middle market, and together, we explore how vision, capital, and collaboration drive progress—and what it takes to build lasting success.
Welcome to the Growth Seat presented by Granite Creek Capital Partners. I'm your host, Dahani Jones. Each episode, we'll sit down with the leaders, innovators, and change makers shaping growth across the lower middle market. And together, we'll explore how Vision Capital and collaboration drive progress and what it takes to build lasting success. Today, I'm talking with Sal Calvino, serial entrepreneur and founder of Equiview Capital.
Dhani Jones:Sal, welcome to The Growth Seat. You know, I'm just really excited to be able to talk to you. I've I've seen you in so many different places, and I don't think we've ever really had an opportunity to really sit down and kinda chat about, you know, your origin story and how you've gotten to be where you are today. I mean, a lot of people really look up to you and the consummate entrepreneur that you are several times over, but I think our audience really wants to know how did you get to where you are. So if I'm thinking about the title of our our podcast called the growth seat, you know, what does that phrase mean to you?
Sal Calvino:Well, first of all, great seeing you again, Dhani. Growth is an interesting word. It comes from a lot of different way angles. It comes from growth inside inside of a company. It comes from growth of a management team.
Sal Calvino:It comes from growth of personal experiences. And for me, growth in business is one where you always have to continue to evolve. The world changes every day, and we're seeing a lot of that when we turn on the news nightly. Right? One one example is we own a manufacturing business.
Sal Calvino:And with the tariffs that are being put in place and changed on, you know, kind of a routine basis to to get it right, we're constantly having to grow and evolve and understand what those tariffs mean. We're constantly having to look at our customer base and figure out how to present to them an option to buy equipment that may be more expensive and how, you know, they will still continue to benefit from that. So I think growth is a word that has a lot of different meanings in a in a business environment. It's one that is necessary to to use on a day to day basis. And it's not generally that comfortable.
Sal Calvino:Otherwise, it wouldn't be growth. Right? Right. Right.
Dhani Jones:Right. I I'd I'd imagine when you present these these numbers to some of your clients and all of your all of your businesses, they they might be pushing back with a little bit of pain. And how how do you deal with that in in sort of those situations where as an operator, you have to make these big decisions and they can make or break the the way that your business grows over time?
Sal Calvino:You know, one the the key, I think, to any relationship is communication. And I like to talk about overcommunication and overcommunicating. And and the reason why is, you know, things like tariffs are changing, and and people be as you just said, they become hugely concerned about them. And when they do that, we have to kinda find comfort for them. We have to kinda explain to them what's going on and how it how it affects the business and how it affects manufacturing and what the long terms of effects are gonna be on that.
Sal Calvino:Somebody's buying a piece of equipment for a million dollars and there's a $100,000 tariff. It's not really gonna matter ten years from now. Right? That equipment is still gonna produce the way it produces, but there's this short term fear that gets put into place, and we need to be able to communicate to customers in order to have them become comfortable with addressing that concern or fear.
Dhani Jones:Oftentimes as a leader in a business, you also become the therapist in charge. And so, you know, what what's the step by step process you take you take people through? Because you've been through it several different times, I'm sure, you know, with with the different businesses that you have.
Sal Calvino:So so they're actually, it's on a case case by case basis. But one personal tool that I use is I like to put myself in another person's shoes. And in the case of a customer or an employee that's having an issue, I like to look at the perspective as to how I would feel in that particular circumstance. What would make me feel better about whatever I'm going through, whether I'm a customer or I'm an employee or a vendor or a manager or another business leader? And when when you take time to do that, you start to figure out how to check the boxes in your mind as to the things that you would need to hear to make you feel more comfortable in that particular situation.
Sal Calvino:If you think about what they what they need to accomplish that, then the message starts to form in your mind, and you're able to deal with it better in my opinion.
Dhani Jones:So because you've had to be the therapist in these these companies, you've also endured a lot as an operator. Just taking yourself back to even your own personal origin story, how did you sort of even find your way into that position of being that therapist and into that position of being an operator? So and the story
Sal Calvino:starts quite a while ago. My dad was a mechanic in the air force. And when he retired, he came out into the private sector and started working at Logan Airport. And this was in the early to mid sixties. And, you know, it was the beginning of when airlines decide began to outsource services.
Sal Calvino:And so companies were popping up in in order to service the airline's needs. And that by services, I mean, fueling, loading and unloading your aircraft, the baggage, and and cargo. So we'd be at the airport most weekends with my dad as he worked, and I grew up around airplanes, and I just fell in love with aviation. And started working on airplanes when I was 16 years old, old enough to drive a car and ultimately a piece of equipment on the field. And I kinda never looked back.
Sal Calvino:I I learned everything I could about the aviation services business from from actually doing the work and for for years and then growing my career as a, you know, a lead, then a supervisor, then a manager. We didn't grow up wealthy. We didn't have a lot of money, but early on, I put together a group of folks, and we I started my first company, which I think I was at 26 years old. And as I said, nobody had any money, but we did okay with that and ended up selling it to Signature Flight Support, which is a large FBO chain. I kind of worked in the Signature world for five years, but I found I was more of an entrepreneur.
Sal Calvino:I did some inner soul searching during that period of time. I really wasn't. To me, businesses are about our employees, our customers, and our company. Right? And it's not always like that in the big company.
Sal Calvino:You know? Sometimes there are outside influences that get in the way. And so I left, and I did some consulting for a New York investment bank. Made a little bit of money and decided to take that money and try to try to build my own business. So I bought my first company in 1999.
Sal Calvino:We had 40 people working for us in '99. It was a company that low handled cargo going on and off of aircraft and just focused on building that company and diversifying it and growing it back to our earlier discussion. Right? Growing this business. And when I I sold the company in 2015, which was sixteen years later, we had 5,500 people working for us throughout the world.
Sal Calvino:And at that point in time, I thought I was going to retire and but I was still pretty young. I was in my fifties, and I I couldn't do it. So I decided to start EquiView Capital. And, really, the idea behind Equity View Capital is to take our money, my our family's money, and invest it in businesses and help them grow. Help them see what's coming down the road as they grow.
Sal Calvino:So now Equiview is a company that co invests with other private lenders and other equity groups that buys businesses and helps the management figure out what path to get on to grow their businesses. And we've done pretty good at it. And you know, Dahani, you can look in any book. You can look at any college course. The things that we bring to businesses don't exist.
Sal Calvino:The only way you get to understand what these things do and how they work inside of businesses to help the businesses grow and prosper is because you've actually done it before. When you get the formula together and you get the ability to be able to bring those those tools to a business and you know what's coming down the path as you grow and scale this business, then fundamentally, you're gonna be a lot more aware of what's going on than somebody that's never been through it before. And I'll give you an the latest example. We had three partners that own the an electrical contracting business in Bangalore, Maine. They started the business, but they really weren't sure how to grow the business.
Sal Calvino:When we got involved with them, they were they're they were in had a negative net worth. Each of them a million and a half dollars a piece. They didn't know what to do, so we invested in the business, and we worked with them as a management team on the business instead of in the business on a day to day basis. We put all of the tools that we normally use in a business in place. Twenty months later, we sold that business, and they went from negative 1 and a half million dollars apiece to walking away with $5,500,000 apiece in twenty months.
Sal Calvino:And that was because we made a real business, sustainable business, presentable business to the market out of a business that probably wouldn't have been able to get there with just the three guys working on it together. As you build these businesses, you have to scale them, but you can't climb the side of a mile because what happens when you do when things go wrong, you slip and fall to the bottom. So what you have to do is you have to plateau these business. You build it, you backfill systems, people, accounting, banking, branding, whatever the case may be, then you build it again. So as you do that, if the building is gonna slip, there's a very good chance it's gonna slip to a plateau.
Sal Calvino:You regather, you regroup, and then you start to track again. So that's that's kinda our approach in running and growing these businesses and certainly some of the history that got me to the point where I can understand those things to be able to present the business.
Dhani Jones:Yeah. And I I love how you're talking about the plateau and and growing and backfilling because inevitably any business in its pathway to its scale is gonna have setbacks along the way. And if you put those right tools in in place, then it only has so much, you know, room to essentially fall, right, because you've created that new structural integrity. I mean, that backfill is also sort of a risk plateau, right? But a lot of people, they don't move past that risk plateau because they are comfortable with where they are.
Dhani Jones:So how did you decide at that point with EquiView to kind of say, Well, you know what? I'm comfortable with taking that risk in order to move on to help other people as I've been able to help myself.
Sal Calvino:There's a great saying that I like to quote, and it's Wayne Rescue that says, you miss a 100% of the shots you don't take. Right? And so if you never took it, you're never gonna know. But it's gotta be a calculated risk too if there is such a thing. Right?
Sal Calvino:Because there are things that come come at you in business that you never expect. Nine eleven, COVID, things that just changed the world on and and and many tariffs now. And so you're forced to take risk when situations occur in business whether you want to or not. It's just the way it is. And if you're an employee in a business that's got risk associated with it, you probably have less of an influence on what can happen in that business rather than if you were a business owner or a senior manager inside that business.
Sal Calvino:I got asked today by one of the one of the guys that that's doing some work around our house. You know, a lot of the young folks do this now. They say, how did you get here? What's the story? Could you give me one piece of advice?
Sal Calvino:And the piece of advice I gave him is that if you really wanna progress in your life and have a certain standard of living, you need to take take a chance, and you need to have some calculated risk. And you need to understand that that's probably not gonna happen with you working for somebody else. Right? You have to find that entrepreneurial spirit inside of your soul, and then you have to take a calculated risk. Now I'm not saying that the farm on it and lose everything.
Sal Calvino:I'm saying figure out what you can do, what you can live with, what you're comfortable with, and then move towards that goal every single day. And if you move towards that goal, before you know it, you're thirty days into it, you're two years into it, you're three years into it, and now you're starting to get there. Right? And if it all goes astray and you don't make it, you can go exactly back to what you're doing right now. Your life is not gonna end.
Sal Calvino:Right? But you wouldn't know unless you took the shot.
Dhani Jones:I love the metaphor of the plateau as as you pointed out. What are these philosophies rooted in, and who kind of gave you some of these ideas during the years where you didn't necessarily have as much as you have today, but now you've got great insights and information to give to other people.
Sal Calvino:An amazing thing happens when you're coming up in a career and you spend ten hours loading and unloading airplanes in the snow at 30 degrees. Your mind starts to think about things like, if I ever own a business, I probably would have bought the employees lunch and maybe had them have hot chocolate this afternoon to warm them up. Right?
Dhani Jones:Are saying that you wanted some hot chocolate? Would have been nice.
Sal Calvino:It would have been nice. But as you think about, you know, you go through things, you see people work hard, and, you know, it's amazing how far a thank you goes or a a pat on the back because sometimes some management styles that that word doesn't exist. And for us, we're always in the services business. We're always in businesses that are involve heavy machinery and people and manufacturing. We do that.
Sal Calvino:In our our service businesses that we have right now, we have fuel transportation business, people and equipment. We have a ground handling business, people and equipment, deicing business, people and equipment. So we're in the people business. You have to recognize the people. You have to train them.
Sal Calvino:You have to appreciate them. You have to motivate them. You have to pay them. You have to lead them. And by the way, you have to do it by example.
Sal Calvino:You have to do it in a way that is different than everything else. I don't know if you noticed it or not, but since COVID, service as a word, acceptable service has declined significantly. And so if you're exceptional, then you stand out. You have that competitive edge. Your employees are gonna stay longer.
Sal Calvino:Your customers are gonna be happy. And you know what? It may be that you're a little more a little more expensive than everybody else, but people are craving some solution to what they're experiencing right now, whether it be a restaurant, whether it be equipment, whether it be what whatever it is that involves people and equipment. So we are very employee centered and very customer focused. Yeah.
Sal Calvino:I mean, it's it's truly all about the people. So as an operator and an
Dhani Jones:investor, you know, when you're thinking about putting money into the company like you're putting money into into into people, what makes, you know, capital or a capital partner, you know, that more valuable than just the overall check?
Sal Calvino:A capital partner that understands that. Right? So they're
Dhani Jones:The capital partner that says Sal's gonna invest money into his people. Yeah. That's the most important thing.
Sal Calvino:Understand that because there were a lot there were a lot of capital partners that run their portfolios from the bottom up. Right? Yeah. They don't care much what goes on in between the profits and the revenue. Right?
Sal Calvino:They just want the management team to deal with it. And if there's something out of the ordinary going on and as a line item, they may or may not be comfortable with the fact that you're spending $50,000 a year in employee recognition programs. Right? Mhmm. So they're they're thinking that that 50 could do you know, get a better return on their investment.
Sal Calvino:And I'm only using 50 as an example. Sometimes the numbers are larger, sometimes they're smaller, but but they're not every capital. It's one of the reasons I like the relationship with Granite Creek because they tend to see the whole picture and not just a portion of it.
Dhani Jones:Yeah. Was was there a moment along the way with our partnership that we helped or that you really felt this unlocking of the growth and the potential of the business?
Sal Calvino:Yeah. You know, honestly, definitely. You know, the plan was a a longer term plan. The plan was continue to buy FBOs and and kinda add to the network. What happened between the time we started, the time we exited, and you guys were involved in this, we did one acquisition.
Sal Calvino:But the multiples for buying the acquisitions were raising pretty significantly. There's some pretty heavy duty money in rolling up FBOs right now. And so we were watching companies that we can buy for eight or 10 times their earnings shift to to, you know, fourteen, fifteen times their earnings. Right? And so we quickly became sellers instead of buyers because those numbers just the arbitrage of those numbers to us meant meant a lot of money.
Sal Calvino:So Granite Creek was hugely supportive in that and got the message right away. How do you
Dhani Jones:think about timing and being knowledgeable about the industry and where ultimately the the puck is going, but making sure that you convert at the appropriate moment?
Sal Calvino:So so there's a bunch of indices that we look at. Right? I'm really I was really excited about the the power company because when you look at the infrastructure of power in The United States, you look at how much needs to be invested in the next ten years in that sector. And then you look at all the server servers, buildings being built to to house AI. And, you know, you look at the whole conversion of, you know, equipment and and cars to electric.
Sal Calvino:The the electric grid grid is short short. It needs to grow by a lot, like, almost 200% in the next ten years. And while they're doing that and upgrading it, they're also pushing the utilities on the ground. So I really like that sector of the business. Everything made sense to me.
Sal Calvino:I really like aviation because aviation is cited to grow double in the next fifteen to twenty years. So there we like to be on in businesses that the industry shows kind of a path to grow grow a long term sustainable path. We also like to be in industries that are off the grid and businesses that are off the grid of grid of not electric grid, but the business the focus grid of investors. Right? Because we like the little niches that you can get into that everybody isn't looking at.
Sal Calvino:You know, there are high barriers to entry. There there's, you know, intellectual property. There's a certain expertise associated with it. Those businesses all are things that we like to get our heads in and work on. Yeah.
Sal Calvino:But because they're because they're niche and because maybe in some respects, they're
Dhani Jones:not as well understood, you know, some people are a little bit more reluctant to get into those, right? So how do you build confidence with your partners in order to make sure that they are comfortable with the leadership and the ability that you have in order to kinda see where things are going?
Sal Calvino:So there's two ways. Number one, I think that you can exit a business and have a successful exit, but it's all in the buy. Right? You can't buy a business for crazy numbers and then expect expect to grow it and get bigger numbers. You you have to kinda manage the buy cycle of it, and then it's gotta fit.
Sal Calvino:In aviation services, there are eight or 10 different things that go on inside of an airport that the general public doesn't know about that are are things that are outsourced. So you can bolt on businesses like that that independently of one another would make a lot lot of sense, but bolted together and having the diversity of services on the belt. Now optically, it looks so much different than it did on a stand alone. But to be able to understand the market that you're getting into, understand how to meet the market needs, understand how to brand it, understand how to present it, and how to understand how to create a solution for operators is a great, great position to be in. You know?
Sal Calvino:You're servicing the need of a customer. And if we don't figure it out, somebody else will. I'll give you a great example. That particular company during COVID had a lot of equipment coming back to it from from the airlines because nobody was flying. Right?
Sal Calvino:They didn't know when they were gonna fly. Mhmm. And but we had a pretty significant credit line at the bank. Now there's two ways to handle a crisis like COVID as a business leader. You could put your head down and hope it gets better soon, or you could pick your head up and take a look around and see what opportunities are there because there will be opportunity.
Sal Calvino:Right. Every everybody needed cash on their balance sheet. They were sucking their cash reserves right off of their balance sheet in order to survive. So we brought a product to market that was a sale leaseback. If you if customer a had $10,000,000 worth of equipment that they bought in the last five years, and they need that equipment when the company comes back up and the industry comes back.
Sal Calvino:But we would buy that equipment from them for $10,000,000, give them the precious cash on the balance sheet, and they would sign a lease for that equip it would never leave them. They would sign a lease for that equipment for the next five years, and we get a return on that $10,000,000 investment. It worked great. Their payments were a smidgen of the the amount of cash that they got for a year. Mhmm.
Sal Calvino:Right? But it gave them the precious fuel they needed to keep their companies afloat. And we did a lot of that, and that's one of the things that helped that particular leasing company survive during COVID. We brought something to market that's that was never there before. Did you ever look up and try
Dhani Jones:to do something that went horribly wrong? Because sometimes
Sal Calvino:Everybody has. Sometimes in those situations,
Dhani Jones:you might be looking around, and you just might wander straight into a blizzard and just get completely frozen.
Sal Calvino:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it all business leaders try try out different ideas, and not every idea works. And some of them could be a worse situation than others. But I promise you, the ones that you try that don't work are the ones that you remember, and you'll never do it again and or anything like it.
Sal Calvino:The best lesson in life is an experience that you have that was a failure, I think, because you're just gonna learn from it. You're forced to.
Dhani Jones:So as we kind of explore your your business world, I'm I'm just curious. What's the best business advice that you've ever received?
Sal Calvino:The best business advice I've ever received is don't ever quit. No matter how bad things seem to be around you, don't ever quit. Another story back in the day when I was building aviation businesses, we had deicing, and it was during during a mortgage crisis in 2008 and citizen bank was financing. We had a revolving line of credit because, again, the deicing business is one way you deice your points until April, then you have cash burn through the following October, and then you generate enough cash and profit to get through the summer. It was our first summer.
Sal Calvino:We had a $8,000,000 revolving line of credit that disappeared in the day from the bank because $8,000,000 went away? Yeah. We didn't have access to it anymore. And we still had people to pay, equipment to pay, facilities to pay. Yeah.
Sal Calvino:So what happens? You go into crisis mode, and you learn from it. And and what we did is as a business leader, led by communicated to everybody, worked worked some structure out with our lend lenders to for a temporary resolve, called every single station we had, talked to employees that were making over a $100 a year, asked them if they could help, and we we you know, they took a 10% deferral. Our senior managers took took a bigger deferral, and I went off to payroll a 100% mortgage. My house did everything I could to get cash into that business.
Sal Calvino:Good news is it forced us to look in places that we would not normally look for every single penny that went out of that business during that period so that people could be paid. And then it started snowing the next year. And by January the following year, we paid everybody all their salary back plus deferred salary back plus interest, and we never looked back. But you know what that taught me? That taught me never to look at six months of forward looking cash flow.
Sal Calvino:And one of the tools we have in our businesses now is we have twenty four month forward looking cash flow plan that shows exactly the amount of cash access or credit lines we have available in each of our businesses on a monthly basis. So if we're gonna be tight on cash in November '26, I know about it today. I have a whole year to figure it out before it actually comes. Right? Never going back to where we were before.
Sal Calvino:I mean, that was but it was a life lesson for me.
Dhani Jones:You know? It was one of those rather uncomfortable moments where you Yeah. Where you definitely grew from it and it sort of added to that same playbook that you're working on today. So, you know, and as you've as you've accelerated in your career with multiple businesses, what's a daily ritual or habit that ultimately keeps you grounded as you continue to grow?
Sal Calvino:Well, I'd like to continue to work on myself because I believe a healthy business leader of mind and body is going to be a better business leader. So, you know, spend some time at the gym, spend some time just me time to to kinda balance. Because when you're on as a business leader, more times than not, you have to be on spot on. And if you're having dinner with prospective sellers and, you know, lenders and your management team, you don't have time to kinda be off. And so I think it's important to to kind of balance all that out with a with a lifestyle that helps complement that.
Sal Calvino:Yeah.
Dhani Jones:It's it's the harmony of it all. And being able to physically and mentally assure yourself that you can remain calm and confident through all of the different, you know, peaks and valleys, so to speak. So Right. And so, you know, there's only one way that you're going, and that's straight ahead, and that's towards growth. So thank you so much for joining us.
Sal Calvino:Tahani, so good seeing you, and let's have lunch together soon, my friend.
Dhani Jones:Thanks for joining us on The Growth Seat. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe and share the show. A special thanks to our guest, Sal Calvino, a longtime friend and trusted partner to Granite Creek. Sal's entrepreneurial drive leadership and partnership have played a key role in several of our shared successes, and we're honored to have him amongst the first guest to help launch this series. To learn more about Granite Creek Capital Partners and our work supporting growth across the lower middle market, please visit granitecreek.com.
Dhani Jones:Until next time. Keep growing.