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Detavio Samuels, the CEO of Revolt, made headlines this week when he announced that Sean Combs had sold his majority stake in the company.
“Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi spoke with Detavio about the change in the company without Combs, who co-founded it in 2013 and has recently been embroiled in legal issues.
As for navigating the situation, Detavio said, “From my perspective, I believe that what’s called for in this moment, in any moment, are leaders who are empathetic, leaders who are sympathetic, leaders who can be people first. And so, while the noise outside has been loud, the headlines, the allegations, myself and the management team, our focus has just been simply on the people and ensuring that we could do whatever we could do to get this brand to a place where it could continue to be the impressive, masterful brand that we’ve been building.”
The new business model is giving Revolt employees ownership as the shareholder group.
Detavio opened up on the company morale, saying, “Well, let me tell you, after this week, morale is popping. But in general, what I would say is it is it is such an incredible team. It’s like you don’t understand the power of something until you really have to go through it.”
He went on, “They have just proven in front of the world that they are battle tested and can handle everything and anything that comes their way. And so, I’m very excited to see what they’re getting ready to show the world. As we move forward in this new era. And we’ve all just celebrated its 10th-year anniversary.”
At one point, Combs was the public face of the company, but he hasn’t been part of the day-to-day over the past few years.
Samuels commented, “So since I got there in 2020, Sean Combs has not been involved in the day-to-day operations of the business at all. He did serve as chairman, but as people know, he stepped down as chairman of the board off the board in November and now completely disassociated from the company. And so, myself nor my team have had much interaction or frequent interaction with him since I’ve been there in 2020.”
He stressed that Combs “One hundred percent [has] no involvement in Revolt.”
Diddy is currently facing several civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault. Combs has denied wrongdoing on social media and his team has publicly responded to some, but not all, of the civil suits.
Has Diddy’s PR nightmare affected the company? He answered, “So what this crisis taught me is that this brand is stronger than ever before, stronger than I even imagined… We are strong financially. Advertisers, affiliate partners, everyone is standing by us… So we’ve lost no employees. We’ve lost no customers. We’ve lost no clients.”
While they don’t cover gossip at Revolt, the company did offer services for anyone, who may have seen the recently released video of Combs assaulting Cassie.
He noted, “The first thing we wanted to do was kind of touch in with our with our employees and see how they felt. Everybody, you know, this this company, everyone has gone into action to support one another… I’m not even saying it was because of the video specifically. But a lot of times when you see these things, you may have people in your company that it may awaken ghosts or other traumas… And so what we were really big on was making sure that we provided therapy. We did individual therapy. We did group therapy.”
There was no need to distance the company from Combs. Samuels explained, “So, on the inside, because Sean Combs has never been a part of our day to day, there is no like feel or need to distance where the association really lives is more so on the outside with the culture. And we believe that we’ve done all of the things that we’ve needed to do in order to create that disassociation.”
He stressed, “Again, with him stepping down off of the board. We issued a statement right after the Cassie scenario. All love to her and her family. And then with this last move where he is no longer on the cap table. So, from our perspective, there’s nothing else to be done. We are fully focused on the future, marching into this future and the future for revolt couldn’t be more bright.”
Now, Revolt is looking toward the future. Detavio said, “Giving our employees the people who have put their blood, sweat and tears, their heart, their effort, who have stood by us through all of this, giving them the opportunity to connect, the opportunity to build wealth to the success that they bring to the company is enormous. Also, philosophically, I believe that these types of wealth building opportunities or wealth is a key catalyst or a tool to creating equity within this country