Entrepreneurial Wisdom from Lovesac's Founder and CEO, Shawn Nelson

[00:00:00] What's going on everybody? Ryan Leary from WRKdefined. Before we kick off today's episode,

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[00:00:54] Sean, would you do us a favor and the audience a favor? Introduce yourself.

[00:00:59] Yeah, great to be on the show. Appreciate it. I am the probably most well known as the founder

[00:01:05] and CEO of Lovesac. If you're not familiar with Lovesac, if you've ever seen like an

[00:01:10] eight foot beanbag, not a beanbag full of chocolate foam, but that's a Lovesac in celebrity

[00:01:17] homes and like probably half the NBA, NFL, it's wild. But we actually sell mostly couches

[00:01:23] these days. We have 300 Lovesac showrooms around the country and like the best malls and locations

[00:01:31] all over the place, little showrooms that sell just a few really cool things, especially

[00:01:36] these couches that could be with you the rest of your life. You can add to them, grow

[00:01:40] them, change them. You might have seen the ads on TV for like a kid proof life proof

[00:01:45] couch. And so this is a company that started in my parents' basement. Let's see, 26

[00:01:52] years ago now. And it's just been a crazy ride.

[00:01:58] Where did this idea come from? So 26 years ago, you're in your parents' basement and

[00:02:03] you're just like, this couch is awful.

[00:02:05] Well, first of all, yeah, we're in Texas. In Texas, we don't have basements. So I

[00:02:10] automatically think that you're above the Mason Dixon line. So whereabouts was

[00:02:13] this basement for my edification?

[00:02:17] Yeah, so Salt Lake City, Utah, 1995. I'm 18 years old. I'm 10 days out of high

[00:02:25] school. Just bored summer day, watching the prices right, eating a bowl of

[00:02:32] Captain Crunch. And I had this dumb idea, like how funny would that be to make

[00:02:38] a beanbag like this big, like meat of the TV, the whole floor? And I got off

[00:02:43] the couch, drove down to Joann's fabrics and bought some vinyl that was on sale,

[00:02:50] brought it home, cut it out like a baseball, two figure eights.

[00:02:54] Began sewing it up with my seventh grade home X skills. And it was my

[00:02:58] friend's mom who finished sewing it up, put a zipper in it. And then it took

[00:03:01] me three weeks to find enough stuff to put inside this thing. And it was,

[00:03:06] it was, I couldn't have possibly found enough beanbag beads. So I found

[00:03:10] like my parents' camping mattresses, you know, like a yellow piece of foam with

[00:03:14] a bungee cord around it. Chopped those up on a paper cutter. And that was the

[00:03:20] first sack and everywhere we took it, everybody wants one. So unbeknownst to

[00:03:23] me at the time, this is my market research. This is my prototype. Yeah.

[00:03:27] That was just being an impulsive person as I am. And it served me well.

[00:03:34] My goodness. So was there any pressure to go to college?

[00:03:39] Yeah. So I started college that fall in the University of Utah.

[00:03:45] Yeah. I began as a music major. I had taken piano and sang my whole life.

[00:03:52] And it was, you know, kind of heading down like the piano man route and big

[00:03:55] into music and jazz and live music. And then put the sack away in the

[00:04:01] garage, forgot about it because I served a two year mission for my church.

[00:04:04] I'm Mormon, right? And often we go volunteer for a couple of years

[00:04:08] and I was called to go to Taiwan and speak Mandarin Chinese and, you know,

[00:04:13] share my religion there and as well as do service. And it was an amazing,

[00:04:19] you know, reflecting on it. You talk about, I mean, I hope my kids get

[00:04:25] the opportunity to go because to be rejected for two years,

[00:04:30] you know, from nine in the morning until nine at night in a foreign language

[00:04:33] as well as, of course, build relationships, make friends, live in a,

[00:04:38] you know, place all your, it's just nothing like it. And there's a

[00:04:41] tech account that I'm following that's dedicated to these stories.

[00:04:46] And I mean, it's amazing. In fact, I watched a girl talk about Mexico City.

[00:04:51] They the way that they do it, the way she's talking about the experience

[00:04:55] super positive. They drop you in with a group of people.

[00:04:58] You've got a territory. You're not really talking to your parents.

[00:05:01] You know, this isn't a, oh, I'm at summer camp. No, you're there to do a bit

[00:05:06] and to spread the word and that two year thing,

[00:05:12] you get bonded with the other people that you're there with

[00:05:15] and you learn a lot about yourself. That's what she was saying. She goes,

[00:05:18] listen, if I wouldn't have done it, I wouldn't have known half of what I'm capable of.

[00:05:23] Yeah. And so like her bid, they're all positive.

[00:05:27] And it's just really cool because I'm like, you know what? People don't know that part.

[00:05:32] Of the Mormon church, they don't understand. They just don't know it.

[00:05:35] You know, it's just one of those things. But I like the stories because the way she was talking

[00:05:42] about it is we would go out every day and every day we would go and rejection.

[00:05:49] Not all rejected, but a lot of rejection. And it set her up. It set her up for success

[00:05:56] because like I'm never going to be rejected that much in that much dense of a time period.

[00:06:02] Like I can handle what, oh, you said no to me. Oh, okay. Yeah. Not a big deal, but that's fantastic.

[00:06:09] We've got a friend in the industry, Scott Sessions, whose Mormon and his kids went on,

[00:06:17] they, his three, they went three different places in the world.

[00:06:21] Cool.

[00:06:21] And he had said, and they had all the same, you know, it's a similar experience,

[00:06:25] loved it. That's cool. So yeah, you were at Utah. Yeah, go ahead. No, sorry.

[00:06:31] Just it was a huge opportunity and, and you know, I don't think at the time I could have

[00:06:36] possibly appreciated all of the parallels to leadership, you know, because you do

[00:06:44] have to step up and take leadership roles. You are essentially selling, you know,

[00:06:52] you're, you're, and you're, you're perhaps selling the hardest thing. You're trying to

[00:06:57] challenge someone's core beliefs and, and, and it's really challenging in, on every level.

[00:07:04] And so the mission was formative and, and I came back from the mission and started, you know,

[00:07:09] going to college again, University of Utah and, and dating and just being a normal person again

[00:07:16] two years later, you know, and these are, these are two years that when you're 20 years

[00:07:20] old is a 10th of your life. Legit, legit. And you're in, it's Taiwan.

[00:07:27] It's not like you're in Milwaukee or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and back then

[00:07:33] now, now, you know, there's a lot more communication. People are online and there's

[00:07:36] Facebook and, you know, just in general, there's a lot more contact back then. I mean,

[00:07:41] we wrote letters and, yeah. Yeah. It was just red emails, ready, ready emails.

[00:07:47] Yeah. Yeah. Barely. Barely. Email was like, you know, it was late 90s. Email was like,

[00:07:53] maybe some people had it. Maybe some people didn't. But, but anyway, came back and, and began

[00:08:00] back in school in engineering and actually took mechanical engineering for a year.

[00:08:05] And you leave a music major, you come back a mechanical engineer?

[00:08:09] Well, this is a peek into my, you know, ADD psyche. And you know, it's weird. I'm

[00:08:17] every, every story is different. In my case, I'm a founder that I'm not one that's telling you

[00:08:21] like ditch college and, you know, I was a terrible student. I was a straight A student.

[00:08:26] I was an achiever. I was, and I got my first B in engineering physics and it really shook

[00:08:34] my world because like I had done everything that I could. I had hired a tutor and it really

[00:08:40] made me realize that, you know, there are engineers and then there are people who are

[00:08:45] inventive and I think I am inventive but, you know, and by the way, we hire a ton of

[00:08:53] engineers and I take great pleasure in working with them. But that was a,

[00:08:58] so I'm trying to find my way, right? I'm trying to, I'm good at a lot of things

[00:09:01] and, but I'm not great at any one thing. And ultimately end up graduating from the University

[00:09:08] of Utah in Chinese because it became the fast way out and business which was kind of a minor.

[00:09:14] Dude, I love this so much.

[00:09:17] Well, for me, I learned...

[00:09:18] Like I just graduated with Chinese.

[00:09:20] Well, I learned Chinese right on my mission. I was free.

[00:09:24] Yeah, sure.

[00:09:24] And so I could graduate ultimately in a couple years and Love Sack was my side

[00:09:29] hustle all through that because I had pulled the sack back out to go to the drive-in movie

[00:09:33] one day with my friends. I was like, oh, I have this thing. And once again,

[00:09:36] everywhere we take it, everyone's like, oh my gosh, where'd you get that thing?

[00:09:39] It fills the bed of a truck. I want one.

[00:09:41] And before you know it, I'm making for friends and family and friends and friends.

[00:09:45] And I'm, you know, and, but I never paid the bills because the van would break,

[00:09:50] the shredder would break. I was using the shredder in the back of this furniture

[00:09:52] factory. They kind of let me do it after school because it was funny.

[00:09:56] And it was kind of a one man and a two man, three man show. Me and my friends.

[00:10:01] I want to take a break real quick just to let you know about a new show we've just added to the

[00:10:06] network up next at work hosted by Gene and Kate A'Keele of the Devin Group.

[00:10:13] Fantastic show. If you're looking for something that pushes the norm,

[00:10:17] pushes the boundaries, has some really spirited conversations.

[00:10:22] Google up next at work. Gene and Kate A'Keele from the Devin Group.

[00:10:29] And I had to be a waiter at night to pay my way through school because, you know,

[00:10:33] I didn't come for money. Love Sack just sucked on my money.

[00:10:37] And I learned a lot of these lessons very early. And it was in hindsight,

[00:10:41] of course, a huge blessing to learn so many lessons so young and get a start.

[00:10:46] And by the time I graduated, it was kind of like either take a job.

[00:10:52] I had a ton of jobs waiting for me. I was doing interviews. I was flying.

[00:10:56] Meanwhile, we had gone to a trade show as a last ditch effort for Love Sack and had

[00:11:02] one of the biggest retailers in the United States trying to order 12,000 little sacks from

[00:11:07] us based on this trade show. And I had to decide, am I going to try and do this order?

[00:11:13] This is when you say, yes, we can have that done and we can have that to you in September.

[00:11:18] That's right. That's exactly what it was. Exactly like that. And they had no idea it was me and a

[00:11:23] buddy and a wood chipper. And I had actually turned them down in the beginning. I told my

[00:11:31] friend, I'm like, man, I have this job waiting for me in China. It's like my dream job. I get

[00:11:36] to travel all over Asia. I get to speak Chinese. I get to work with Fortune 500 companies.

[00:11:40] I'd already done an internship there. It's a whole other story somewhere in the middle.

[00:11:47] Or I could try to build a factory as it turns out using farm equipment with an agricultural loan

[00:11:54] from the US government to afford a hay buster. This is a hay grinder because we couldn't

[00:11:59] afford like a German shredding machine. So we got like a 1970s hay grinder powered by a tractor.

[00:12:06] We put the tractor outside the factory. I chose, you know, path two. I chose the, I chose Love Sack

[00:12:12] and we built this factory on credit cards and agricultural loans from the US government

[00:12:18] and farm equipment. And me and my 20 best temp laborer friends completed a 12,000 sack order in

[00:12:26] the next four months on fumes and broke even didn't even make any money because 9-11 happened.

[00:12:32] There's your timestamp. You know, the price of foam went up. The price of our shipping went up.

[00:12:37] The whole order kind of blew up and we broke even. And so now I'm 20, I don't know, 23 years old.

[00:12:45] I have $55,000 in credit card debt. I mean, built this factory and then I hadn't been

[00:12:50] outselling. And so then we had to go try and sell these giant beanbags to, you know,

[00:12:56] the biggest furniture stores in the United States of America. None of them wanted them.

[00:12:59] None of them. They thought our name was stupid. They thought the idea was stupid. No one's going

[00:13:04] to pay $500 for a beanbag. Now they're a thousand. And so we opened our own store

[00:13:10] because we had no other option. The name was Love Sack, right? You started Love Sack as Love Sack.

[00:13:17] Yes. In fact, I just needed a name. This is all the way back, right? In, in,

[00:13:22] I guess, 1999 and 1998 when I came back from the mission, I just needed a name that was, you know,

[00:13:30] hippie love, peace, hate war, beanbag, 70s bag, love bag, love sack. Oh, that's cool.

[00:13:36] Payed 25 bucks to the Utah State tax. Not knowing it was already trademark, by the way.

[00:13:41] And it's one of the miracles. So my, so I wrote this book, right? With this whole

[00:13:44] story in it because it's a wild story, right? It's called Let Me Save You 25 Years.

[00:13:51] And it's packed with the entire story in great detail as well as a bunch of lessons, right? Mistakes,

[00:13:56] miracles and lessons. And one of the miracles was that this name that was trademarked because it's

[00:14:01] such a sticky name. Like you can like it or hate it doesn't matter. You hear it one time,

[00:14:07] you know, you might be cracking jokes, you might, whatever. And it was trademarked. And

[00:14:12] when I went to fast forward, we opened that first store. People wanted to franchise it,

[00:14:16] you know, so I said, sure, no problem. And, and I needed to get the national trademark for it and

[00:14:23] found out it had been taken since 1978, which I already knew. And I had to change the name of

[00:14:30] the company that I was trying to franchise. It was a big debacle. And the year had just rolled

[00:14:35] over. It was that we were only in business in retail for like two months. And I said, well,

[00:14:41] why don't you check one more time, right? After the new year, we had a bomb,

[00:14:44] bomber Christmas. It was amazing. We made more money than we'd ever seen in our first six weeks

[00:14:49] in business at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, 2001. And we couldn't believe it,

[00:14:54] like retail worked. People wanted to franchise, check the trademark one more time.

[00:15:00] And they had failed to renew it after, after like 20 years of renewals.

[00:15:06] It had fallen off with the new year. We bought it for 250 bucks from the USPTO.gov,

[00:15:10] right? And now we're a public company traded on Nasdaq with the best ticker ever. It's L-O-V-E,

[00:15:20] another miracle, a whole other story like that behind that. And, you know, it's been a very

[00:15:27] useful name for the last 25, 26 years. Well, I remember, I remember when,

[00:15:34] when, when Love Sack first hit the scene and you could imagine it. So at that time,

[00:15:39] in college, right? I'm graduating college. Just the thoughts coming to like, what is this thing?

[00:15:46] And I remember it. I remember, I just, I vividly remember it. And it's just ironic that we're here

[00:15:52] talking now and it's still Love Sack and I still don't have one. And I, oh, let's fix that.

[00:15:58] And we do have a store not too far from us. And when it opened, that was really excited.

[00:16:04] It was very nice. Where were you in college?

[00:16:07] Thought off here. So I went to Temple. So strangely, King of Prussia Mall,

[00:16:15] which is, I'm sure where you thought, was one of our earliest, one of those franchises

[00:16:20] that we sold like right out of the gate. And by the way, we don't, we don't do

[00:16:23] franchising anymore. We eventually reorganized the company. We bought them all back,

[00:16:28] took them all back, you know, restarted. But we've been in King of Prussia for ever.

[00:16:33] And yeah, since 2003. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. King of Prussia is one of those places, William,

[00:16:41] that I don't like to go. It is way too big. And the moment I get into the parking lot, I sweat.

[00:16:48] I just, I get the sweats. I can't go in there. My kids love it. They love going in and

[00:16:53] spending, but I can't do it. We've got a couple of malls in Dallas that are like that.

[00:16:57] They're so overwhelming. They got great brands. It's actually good people watching. So

[00:17:03] I want to ask you about, Sean, I want to ask you about your first hire outside of kind of your

[00:17:08] network. So somebody that you didn't know or something like that. What was that? What was

[00:17:14] what was that like for you hiring your first person again? And already have a relationship with?

[00:17:20] Oh man. The first person I hired was, you know, to stuff sacks back in those first days of

[00:17:27] like that wood shipper in the back room, this furniture factory, because I had been doing it

[00:17:33] myself and he cut the tip of his finger off. And I very quickly. I didn't have a choice at least

[00:17:41] workplace. This is how I talk about this in the book, right? So Sean is a number one,

[00:17:46] chapter one, just do something, which I did. I got off the couch, build a second.

[00:17:51] Sean is a number two, just do the next thing. So one of the next things

[00:17:55] was, Oh, I didn't know about workers, comp insurance. Oh, it had never crossed my mind. Oh,

[00:18:00] I'm getting very letters from the state of Utah trying to and I'm like, what? You know,

[00:18:07] at this 21 years old, like, what do I know about any of this stuff? But and my point of

[00:18:13] that little Sean is, I'm like, do the next thing is bit. Look, now I'm the CEO of a public

[00:18:18] company. We have 2000 employees. We are, you know, over 700 million sales last year, we're

[00:18:24] we're growing toward a billion. We're going to grow it into the billions. I'm feel very confident.

[00:18:31] You can learn and become anything if you're if you're willing to constantly be learning. And

[00:18:38] some of these lessons come hard and are expensive and embarrassing. And others you can,

[00:18:43] you know, obviously hire him. But but as unglamorous as that sounds, that was my first hire. And I

[00:18:49] learned a lot of fundamental lessons just from this one employee. Is he still with you today? No.

[00:18:59] No, I actually people asked of the many friends who kind of helped out in the beginning, I have

[00:19:04] one friend who ended up kind of sticking all the way through is our head of product development

[00:19:08] today. And we work very closely on product, but all the rest of, you know, at different moments.

[00:19:15] And, and, you know, I talk about some of this in the book.

[00:19:20] I don't hire your friends like I had to. Yeah. And often we have to, I mean, we have no one

[00:19:26] else to support us. At the same time, though, my first Sean is in for season two of my podcast,

[00:19:32] which is also called Let Me Save You 25 years. I unpack actually with Gary Vee.

[00:19:37] And he and I talk about this, you know, next Sean is in which is business is a contact sport.

[00:19:44] This is not table tennis. And ultimately in football or pick your contact sport, people get hurt.

[00:19:52] And you can't skate through without bumps and bruises and relationships and everything else.

[00:19:58] And that, you know, I've learned all of those kinds of lessons.

[00:20:04] So okay. So the retailers that said no to you, but we don't need names or anything. I don't

[00:20:10] know what makes them matter or that type stuff. But how rewarding was it for you to get a yes

[00:20:18] from them years later? Because you got rejected. You're like, no one's going to buy a $500 beanbag.

[00:20:28] Okay, great. Thanks. It's such a funny situation. So love sack. Fast forward to today.

[00:20:36] We are in the top 20 of furniture retailers. I remember when we cracked 100, the list of

[00:20:43] 100 it was like a miracle is crazy to think like this little beanbag company, right?

[00:20:47] And and that means, you know, there are a lot of names that you would think were

[00:20:51] are much bigger than us that are that we've flown by. And by the way, we don't sell

[00:20:55] furniture. We sell like two things. We sell sacks and sectionals and a bunch of stuff that goes with

[00:21:00] them. Right? You know, we don't sell trash cans for your bathroom. We don't sell dining sets.

[00:21:08] And so it's amazing that this little company has grown like it has. And I think it's because

[00:21:12] look, we have great products with great culture, all these things. But every one of those companies

[00:21:17] that, you know, were bigger than me and the few that still are all rejected us. Like we

[00:21:23] we knocked on all the doors and we were kind of retail for us. Opening our own stores was like a

[00:21:29] last ditch effort, but therein lies the brilliance, right? In the sense that

[00:21:35] it had never even occurred to us to do it that way, to be honest. But we were kind of forced

[00:21:41] into that. And this is look, we were bootstrapping before that word was ever I think used.

[00:21:47] We were raising money in the earliest days of venture capital. We didn't know that.

[00:21:52] Right? This was a very different time. There were no podcasts like this.

[00:21:57] There was zero resource for someone like me. Now, how many, you know, entrepreneurial business

[00:22:03] podcasts are out there and yours is fantastic, one of the top. But we had none of this resource.

[00:22:10] And yeah, it's become I think super satisfying at the same time. I hold no, I take no

[00:22:18] like perverse pride in it. We were just trying to survive and I don't blame them. Like we were

[00:22:23] just a bunch of kids. You know, I remember we drove through the night to present to our one of

[00:22:29] the early retailers we're trying to get in and we had this. We just invented shrinking sacks down

[00:22:34] because we can shrink a love sack down to one eighth its original size is how we ship them.

[00:22:37] That's the reason love sex been successful. We do the same thing with our couches actually

[00:22:41] the way that we pack and ship. And we just invented this and we arrived and we

[00:22:45] early meeting this guy's, you know, he's snobbies like, you know, I buy a million dollars of furniture

[00:22:50] a day and you know, he's a buyer. Then you can afford this $500 one.

[00:22:56] Yeah. Well, buyers, that's how buyers talk though. And next thing you know, he's on his hands

[00:23:02] and knees trying to unpack this thing because it had been freezing in the back of the truck

[00:23:06] we hadn't thought it had, you know, they didn't recover as like a shrunken raisin on the

[00:23:12] ground. We had to cut the duffelog. The whole presentation was just it was like a joke is like

[00:23:17] if I could have recorded it, it would have looked like something from, you know, impractical

[00:23:23] jokers or something. And so I don't blame them. Right. Right. But I'm grateful.

[00:23:30] I'm grateful that, you know, the path led us this way.

[00:23:35] Yeah. So where did you find motivation for some of this? I mean, you're giving us a lot

[00:23:41] of really funny stories. But at the time, I'm assuming they weren't funny. They were like,

[00:23:47] okay, another wall, another wall, like you have bloody noses, black eyes.

[00:23:51] Where's the motivation come from the key key pushing?

[00:23:56] You know, another topic I spend some time on in the book, entrepreneurs, and I think leaders

[00:24:03] of any kind have instincts and are instinctive people, whether they came up that way or not.

[00:24:13] I think you have to be to be a good leader. You have to have some level of instinctiveness.

[00:24:20] And people ask me this question all the time or some form of it. And I can tell you that,

[00:24:25] I mean, I've thought about jettisoning, quitting, leaving, doing something else

[00:24:29] a thousand times, maybe more. Even, you know, I reflect on this one moment in the book about

[00:24:38] I'm standing in front of a college class. I'm teaching a university. So I fast forward

[00:24:43] in my late 30s. I'd gone back to get a master's degree at the top design school in the United

[00:24:49] States just because I'm an ambitious person. I wanted to keep learning. Right. Love Sacks

[00:24:53] already heading toward being a public company. We're raising a bridge round to kind of get us there.

[00:24:59] This is around 2016, 17. And I'm standing in front of my college class because I had graduated

[00:25:06] the master's. I'm now teaching in this master's program at Parsons, new school for design in New

[00:25:11] York City. Yeah. Great. Love Sacks headquarters to Connecticut. I'm commuting in every night.

[00:25:16] And I'm feeling like a total fraud because here I am teaching them all these business

[00:25:20] principles classes. I'm basically like a business instructor inside of a design school master's

[00:25:25] program. Right. And I'm like, how can this business, because we weren't closing on this

[00:25:33] necessary bridge round to get us to this IPO? And if I can't close on this money,

[00:25:39] we might be shuttered in like two, three, four weeks. Done. Just because of cashflow.

[00:25:46] And that's how the bigger businesses get, the more critical cashflow becomes.

[00:25:51] And we were right on the brink. And I'm like, why does a ghost? And I'm not feeling well.

[00:25:58] And I'm like, how could the business feel just as wobbly at 70 million as it did at

[00:26:04] 7 million as it did at 70,000 when I was in college or something. And now I'm at 700.

[00:26:11] And it's, you know, we're doing better. We're profitable. We're, you know, we're,

[00:26:15] it's a fantastic business, but I'm constantly in a barrage of world crises, economic melee,

[00:26:23] biggest hangover post COVID for the home industry that's ever existed worse than

[00:26:27] 2008, 9, 10, right? Lawsuits out of California for everything that I could,

[00:26:34] you know, if I fart, you know, by the California. That's California.

[00:26:38] And this is, this is business man. It just never ends. And that's okay. And what, you know,

[00:26:46] but my point is you asked me, how do you find the motivation to keep going

[00:26:50] at every one of those moments? If you feel like you could, you could, you should keep

[00:26:59] going than you do. And I always felt that way even though I haven't wanted to.

[00:27:05] I've wanted to take an easier path. I wanted to do something, you know,

[00:27:08] if you feel like you can, then you should. And as long as you can do that,

[00:27:14] you know, you quit or you keep going. It's one of the Shaughnessons in the book

[00:27:20] almost every day is like that. You quit or you keep going. And there is no,

[00:27:23] there's nothing else in between.

[00:27:26] You mentioned, Sean, you mentioned faith. And if you don't mind, I'd like to ask

[00:27:33] a question around how your faith has helped you because Ryan's question is,

[00:27:37] is wonderful. And I just want to see, you know, at different points,

[00:27:43] did she, how did you, how did you interact with your faith through these, I guess,

[00:27:49] challenging time? Maybe even some of the successful time.

[00:27:51] Oh, thank great question. Thank you.

[00:27:56] I'm a person of faith and I believe in God. I also believe in myself.

[00:28:06] I also, my faith has increased both in God and in myself

[00:28:11] over all these many years, right? As you continually face into challenges

[00:28:17] and get beaten down and somehow overcome or skate through or survive all of the above,

[00:28:23] your faith grows. And thankfully I had a combination of faith, confidence, good luck.

[00:28:34] I believe in luck. I believe we make our own luck. This is a concept taught to me by Richard Branson.

[00:28:40] So somewhere along the way, I won a million dollars on TV. I won Richard Branson's

[00:28:43] reality TV show. I was made president of Virgin Worldwide. That's a whole other rabbit hole.

[00:28:49] This is in the middle, right? It was a show for entrepreneurs. It was kind of like Richard

[00:28:54] Branson wanting to have an apprentice type show, but this is not for apprentices.

[00:28:59] So by the way, my runner up in this show is Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx.

[00:29:04] Really cool opportunity. Well, you know, I joke like

[00:29:08] I won the show she won in real life. But, and we're great friends, but

[00:29:14] we're laying on the roof of Necker Island. I'm talking about God with Richard Branson,

[00:29:20] just me and Richard looking at the stars and he's asking me what I believe, etc.

[00:29:25] And I said, what do you believe? And he said, oh, I believe we make our own luck.

[00:29:29] And that bothered me like, I was like, ah, just at the time as a person of faith,

[00:29:33] it felt really dismissive. Right. Fast forward. What gave me that call it testimony of luck

[00:29:41] is when you have enough bad luck, I'm talking like things go wrong and

[00:29:48] you know, someone dies, bad things happen. Terrible, you know, it's like this and that

[00:29:54] and that and that happened. And you realize like there's no one, there's nothing to blame other

[00:29:59] than just terrible bad luck. Well, if you're going to believe in bad luck,

[00:30:02] you have to believe then in good luck. It's the other side of the coin.

[00:30:06] And I do believe we make our own luck by persevering, by powering through, by educating

[00:30:13] ourselves, by being an insatiable learner, by networking, by bumping into people, by

[00:30:19] doing all of the things that you've covered on this podcast a thousand times. And then somehow

[00:30:25] the trademark becomes available. And then somehow the ticker, L O V E becomes available.

[00:30:32] And then somehow, you know, we survive another round and that's how we make our own luck. And if

[00:30:39] you're unwilling to do that, if you're unwilling to go to the mat, maintain even a shred of faith,

[00:30:46] a belief that somehow some way in a way like it looks like the end,

[00:30:51] but it's just like it did when I was standing in front of that college class.

[00:30:55] And here I am. And as long as you have, you know, a little bit of enough energy, soul, faith,

[00:31:06] gumption to just survive it, somehow it's going to work out. It's amazing. And you could call it

[00:31:14] the secret. You could, you know, we could talk about manifestation. One of my favorite books is

[00:31:17] Psycho Cybernetics. I believe in this stuff. You know, I believe in the mind. I believe

[00:31:22] everything was created in word. And I'm talking now fundamentally about the earth, if you want to go

[00:31:29] there. I mean, if you read, if you do your reading, it was created in word before it was created,

[00:31:39] if you even believe in that. So these are the things that I believe. And thankfully,

[00:31:45] I feel really grateful to be a person of faith. I feel really grateful for my beliefs.

[00:31:49] I don't know how someone can live in this crazy world with everything happening without

[00:31:56] faith, but that's my point of view.

[00:31:59] Now, Sean, I've got a question around mentorship. We talk about this a lot.

[00:32:05] A lot of people have different views on what a good mentor is or how to build a network,

[00:32:11] how to seek out a mentor, all of that stuff. I want to get your take on this because you've

[00:32:16] been up and down. You've started at the age of college, right? 2023 and built it all the way up.

[00:32:25] How have you built your inner circle, your mentorship, your network? How do you build

[00:32:32] that circle there? What do you look for? Yeah, great question.

[00:32:40] One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur or just a leader and executive is you have to have

[00:32:50] a lot of drive, self-confidence, somewhat say ego. At the same time, if you want to be successful over

[00:33:03] the long term, you have to be teachable and humble. How do you reconcile that? That's my belief.

[00:33:09] You can get really far on drive and self-confidence, ego, all of it, but ultimately,

[00:33:17] you will also create a lot of problems. One of my personal challenges is I think I was too cocky

[00:33:28] and too, whatever, foundry to really seek out true mentors, to really be teachable in most ways.

[00:33:44] Therefore, I made books, my mentor because I could do that on my own. I think if I'm being

[00:33:51] really honest and vulnerable, that's what I believe. I didn't, and I wish that I was wired

[00:33:56] differently. I wish that I was smart enough, and I do a little bit of this now. I become more

[00:34:02] humble, but at the same time, I think my fundamental wiring is not one to air my dirty laundry,

[00:34:08] share my problems, find people that give me good advice when I should. I do a little bit,

[00:34:13] and I push myself, but that's a weakness of mine. Thankfully, books have been a great mentor to me.

[00:34:22] People that I hire now, that I let them really lead and really own it. That's one of the, again,

[00:34:30] lessons in the book, right? Hire better than you and let them own it. I hired better than me,

[00:34:38] even when I was very young, but if I'm honest in those early years, I didn't really let them

[00:34:42] own it. I feel like I had to be on every decision. I had to put my stamp on things.

[00:34:45] I was very foundry, and as I've gotten older and I hope a little wiser,

[00:34:51] I now push myself to make as few decisions as possible. I now push myself to stay as far out of

[00:34:59] things as possible. Now don't misunderstand me. I'll work on the front lines of my showrooms.

[00:35:04] I will stay in touch with the customer. I am not too good to fluff a sack. I don't want

[00:35:15] the business or on the business. Now I'm a CEO of a public company. I've tried to focus my energies

[00:35:19] on the business, not in the business. And I let my fantastic executive team, who by the way,

[00:35:27] went to not just the best schools, but the best corporations to learn their craft.

[00:35:33] I was raised by wolves. I never was taught how to be an executive. And I say this to them.

[00:35:41] I'm like Tarzan, man. I know nothing about civilized business culture. I get to be CEO still because

[00:35:50] I've done, I think, a good job navigating my own career. But being a CEO of a public company is a

[00:35:55] completely different animal than what it was, again, what pick a number. 70 million,

[00:36:05] 7 million, 700 million. And I've had to evolve. And so these people to me, the people that work for

[00:36:12] me are my mentors. I have a chief supply chain officer. And by the way, remember I speak Mandarin,

[00:36:18] I've sourced all our products from the beginning, all this. But I learned from him

[00:36:23] how to do it at this scale. I learned from my chief people officer. I learned from

[00:36:27] my chief operating officer. And I watch and I learn and I stay out of their business,

[00:36:33] unless in the rare occasion I have that really strong instinct on something and it has to be

[00:36:41] really strong. Otherwise, I let these pros be pros. And man, that took me my whole career to learn.

[00:36:52] I love your take on mentorship because we haven't heard people say that. And they might think

[00:37:00] that they haven't said it. It's interesting because I have some of the same firing that you do.

[00:37:10] It's hard for me to be really vulnerable, get the benefit, actually get the benefit. I know

[00:37:18] it's there. I see other people do it. So I understand it's important. At the same time,

[00:37:25] people will ask me, who's your mentor? I'm like, I work for Sam Walton in the 80s.

[00:37:30] And he got to actually work with Sam. I don't need anything else. I'm good.

[00:37:39] Like I work with the best. I was around him day to day. So like, I'm good. But that holds

[00:37:46] me back. I know that that holds me back. I love your take on books and having an outlet to

[00:37:53] then say, okay, there's something in here that I can learn about myself and learn that I didn't know,

[00:37:59] et cetera. So thank you for that. No one's expressed that like that. I think they've

[00:38:05] expressed kind of forced mentorships and things like that. How mentorships get twisted or get

[00:38:11] wrong because timing. The mentor mentee didn't know we're on the right time.

[00:38:17] And by the way, I think that idea of formal mentorship is an example of these executive

[00:38:25] to true executives, unlike me. Right. Right here.

[00:38:29] That learn some of these tactics and... That's humility there, by the way, Shawn. That was

[00:38:36] actually a moment of humility. You're like these other executives. I don't know what they're doing.

[00:38:40] Well, listen, but they learn things like mentorship programs. And we have people in our

[00:38:45] organization that are spinning those up and it'll be great. But I never... This is an example of what

[00:38:50] I'm expressing. When I say I was raised by wolves, I don't know any of that. And I can read about it

[00:38:55] in a book, but anyway. So, and by the way, I don't bristle to it. I think it's of tremendous value

[00:39:01] at the same time to your point. It comes back to execution. So will the people in my organization

[00:39:07] execute a mentorship program well and not have it be twisted or mistimed or misaligned?

[00:39:13] I sure hope so. And we'll push for that. But listen, it's a battle. But being an executive is a craft

[00:39:21] that you can learn and there are great schools for it. And I can't believe what I see...

[00:39:27] What these people are capable of in terms of building process, in terms of management,

[00:39:31] in terms of... And you can say, well, like, I'm an entrepreneur and I blow all that up.

[00:39:38] If you really want to scale and really... It's one thing, by the way, you could have

[00:39:42] tremendous success for even a five-year block, a 10-year block. But I'm talking if you... Listen,

[00:39:47] let me make this clear. Love Sack will be a Nike. You've got to understand what our ambition is.

[00:39:53] Like we're not dinking around. Right? We will be one of the biggest, most impactful brands

[00:39:59] that ever existed. It may take another decade or two. I don't care. I've already gone 25.

[00:40:06] I'll go 25 more if they'll let me. Right? I'm a public CEO. I'm always on the chopping block.

[00:40:11] So what do I have to be? I have to be open good. I have to be Michael Jordan. If I'm not,

[00:40:15] I'll be taken out. Okay? At what I do. And my job as a founder and as like the visionary for this

[00:40:21] company, et cetera. On the other hand, I have to have an executive team that can do all of

[00:40:27] the things that I don't... I was never trained to do and do them at scale. And if I'm

[00:40:32] unwilling to accept that and really embrace it, I don't mean like, oh, I heard some great people,

[00:40:36] but we're going to do it my way. If I'm unwilling to really accept it and balance it with a little bit

[00:40:42] of my intuition as sparingly as necessary on the things that I deem most important and that you

[00:40:48] can do that. And if I can do that right for another, let's say 25, 20, 15, whatever,

[00:40:57] we'll have a Nike here. And it will be unlikely. And we'll start with big bean bags,

[00:41:01] but you just wait and see what we do already. We make, in my humble opinion, the best surround

[00:41:06] sound system on planet earth built into our couches and stealth tech. It's amazing. It's no sound

[00:41:11] quality loss audio. It's invisible to the site. It really is an amazing experience.

[00:41:16] That came from Love Sack. And by the way, it's a multi-hundred million dollar business.

[00:41:20] That's pretty cool. And there's more to come. So we're on our way, but like

[00:41:26] it's my job to do all of that if I really want it to scale and not let my ego

[00:41:35] turn it to a hamburger.

[00:41:37] Now what's the, so Sean, this is, I think this is just a question more for me because I'm interested.

[00:41:45] Being a founder CEO at, you know, zero to 10 million. And then obviously you scaled from

[00:41:52] there, but in that zero, the first million, two million dollar range versus as you start at the

[00:41:59] scale and to now as a public publicly traded CEO. What's the big difference there? Is there a big

[00:42:06] difference in your mentality? How you bring yourself to work or is it just, is it just

[00:42:11] you're still you and you're just doing it at a different scale? It's a completely different job.

[00:42:15] Like the, the J-O-B is different. Like I have to spend time interfacing with investors. That's

[00:42:22] totally new. I mean, I always had not always, but somewhere along the line, you know, we raise

[00:42:26] venture capital, we raise private equity. I've always, you know, along the way learned to

[00:42:30] deal with a board and, but a private board is just a completely different animal than a public

[00:42:34] board. A public company and the nuance that goes into managing the optics as well as managing

[00:42:40] the company, completely different animal. I've had to, I basically, when we came public in 2018,

[00:42:48] I've had to learn how to do that on the job and I've been a careful student.

[00:42:53] I've both read books, but I've also just, I mean, I, I ask questions. I, you know,

[00:42:59] in every elevator ride and every car ride and every black SUV as we're doing the roadshow,

[00:43:04] I am constantly pumping everyone from the driver to, you know, the Wrangler on the roadshow to

[00:43:11] obviously the bankers to the investors. You know, they're asking, they're grilling me on

[00:43:14] questions on the company, your EBITDA, your growth path, blah, blah, blah, you know, future

[00:43:18] innovation and I flip the meetings to them and I start asking them about what they want to see

[00:43:22] and so I'm a student. I'm a constant student. It's one of our, what we call table stakes

[00:43:27] values at Love Sack being an insatiable learner and that's this table stakes value for my

[00:43:33] whole executive team for everyone in the company, ideally. And so I may not have a lot of overt

[00:43:40] mentors. I have people that I think of as mentors like Richard Branson, et cetera,

[00:43:45] but I am a sponge and thankfully it is, yes, it's just a completely different job

[00:43:52] and I've had to learn my job as CEO. I would say it goes with these financing rounds for me.

[00:43:58] If I were to divide it into chunks like being VC led, okay, being a bootstrap is one thing,

[00:44:04] you know, through angels and that sort of wiry phase VC private equity as we're, you know,

[00:44:13] let's say from 10 to about 100 million. And then now we're a public company, which we came

[00:44:19] public pretty early at 100 million in sales, but every one of those chunks I had to operate

[00:44:27] differently. And I tried to put a lot of that in the book and make it clear at the same time,

[00:44:32] I've also hung on to some tactics to keep myself grounded like working in the showrooms.

[00:44:40] Like I DM with customers every day, like customers will hit me up about, you know,

[00:44:45] my cover is doing this or like whatever. And I take the time to DM with them and then of course

[00:44:50] turn them over to our best people to solve the problem. But like, I'm not too good to

[00:44:55] do that. And now I'm playing the social media game. That's a whole other aspect. I have my own

[00:44:58] podcast and I don't have to do that either. I've chosen to make that part of my bailiwick

[00:45:05] for, I think the right reasons we'll see, you know, like if as history plays out,

[00:45:10] but I just think it's, I'm not doing it because I want fame. I don't take a dime from

[00:45:14] this book. Like this book, I donate all the proceeds to the future business leaders of

[00:45:17] America. I just am doing it because I believe one, it's the right thing to, it's my instinct

[00:45:23] three. This is where the puck is going. And I can put my head in the sand and be like,

[00:45:28] oh, it's too hard and it's hard to build. It's hard to do, you know, post another video and

[00:45:32] be a CEO of a public company. But if I really want to build a Nike in this day and age,

[00:45:38] Nike didn't have to do this. It was, it was the 80s and 90s when they were coming up.

[00:45:43] But I believe I actually need to do this. If I really would have that ambition. Now I

[00:45:48] could be wrong. It might be time it'll spend, but that's my judgment.

[00:45:51] I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I think

[00:45:54] Phil Knight would have done this back in the day if he, if he was there, he would have

[00:46:00] he would have done this. And I think the most innovative people would have jumped on it,

[00:46:03] done as well. Sean, this, we could talk to you forever. And it turns out you like have a job

[00:46:09] and responsibilities and stuff like that. So, so thank you so much for coming on the

[00:46:15] podcast. This has been absolutely wonderful. There's so many things that people can learn

[00:46:19] from this podcast, but also from your book. So just thank you.

[00:46:23] Thanks for having me. It's a lot of fun. Absolutely. Thanks to the audience. See you next time.