Digital Social Hour - Shawn Nelson On Humble Beginnings & Future of Lovesac | DSH #222
Episode Date: January 8, 2024On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, Founder of Lovesac Shawn Nelson comes on the show to talk about the origin story of Lovesac, how the company has grown and what were some of the pivotal mome...nts in the company's growth. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: Jenna@DigitalSocialHour.com SPONSORS: RocketMoney : https://www.rocketmoney.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hey, Billy, why don't we tell them what we're about, man?
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no i think you've done a great job with that and one of the things you take serious is customer
feedback customer service right yeah yeah so you kind of follow jeff bezos approach with that model
we're trying to build a relationship with you so that when we invent the next thing,
we know you, you like us, and your experience with that first thing was so good that you're in.
Like, holy crap, I just bought this couch because I couldn't fit another one up the staircase.
Welcome back to the show, guys.
Digital Social Hour.
I'm your host, as always, Sean Kelly.
Got with me another Sean today.
I got Sean Nelson with me today. Love that. How's it going? Good, man. Good to be with you. Yeah. One
of my favorite brands ever, man. Thank you so much. That's really flattering. Yeah. I mean,
you got to tell me how you made them so comfortable because I've never seen that.
Yeah. Well, you know, I just made one. I wish I had a better story. I was sitting on my parents'
couch and thought it'd be funny to make the biggest beanbag in the world.
I got off the couch, drove down to the fabric store,
bought some fabric, brought it home, laid it on the floor,
looked at a baseball, cut it out, two figure eights, started sewing it up.
Wait, you cut up a baseball?
No, no, no.
I looked at the pattern of a baseball and just started cutting up the fabric.
I only got a foot or two
into sewing and jam my mom's sewing machine on like this heavy you know beanbag vinyl and
my girlfriend's mom finished sewing it up and then it was two or three years of just using it
out about college you know on the on the on the ground everyone's like where'd you get that
everywhere we took it wow and uh it was a side hustle in college for a few years. Yeah. Which college were you at? University of Utah.
Nice. Yeah. So you've been in Utah for a while? Yeah. I was, I was born and raised in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Okay. Currently reside in Southern Utah, St. George. And, but I've lived, I mean,
California, Mexico, China, Taiwan. I've been all over the place. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I went to Utah
a few years ago. The culture there really was a game changer for me because I never, I grew up in
Jersey. There's no Mormons over there. So I didn't, I didn't even know what it was. So then when I
went to Utah and I was the odd man out, I was like, Whoa, this is pretty interesting. But I respect
the culture, you know? Yeah, no, it's a, it's actually, Utah's weird. It, as you've probably
observed, you know, interviewing so many people,
there's like a real hustle culture out of Utah.
There's a lot of entrepreneurship, a lot of small businesses.
I mean, just one after another after another.
I think there's something to the culture for sure.
Yeah, I did notice that.
There's some people grinding out there in Salt Lake,
but you're in a different part, right?
I am.
I mean, I came up in Salt Lake,
but now I'm with my family in southern Utah, St. George.
It's actually only about a couple hours from Vegas.
It's awesome.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah, you drove over here, right?
Yeah, it's like red rocks, low elevation, palm trees.
It's totally different.
Nice.
I mean, you make it sound easy, but I've been on some beanbags where I literally get back
pain from them.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Well, first of all, in our first love sack store we had
a poster like we had all these crazy posters that we shouldn't even have we had like elvis's image
and uh you know james dean and anyway we had l and bob marley we had these different posters we
just like you know uh superimposed a love sack in there and the elvis poster said it's it's not a damn bean bag uh because it's it's not it's filled with filled with chopped foam you know it's it's a bean bags
filled with those little white beads yeah they're actually kind of hard right just move around but
the but the foam was like what was magic and and we had to put like we had to engineer it so the
air could get out because they're because they're kind of like a big vault like a big beach ball
right when uh you first sit on it.
And so you have to engineer it so the air can get out.
But then when it escapes, you just sink into a pillow.
So it's essentially like a giant pillow bigger than your body.
And that's what always made us famous, got us started.
And now we sell more couches than anything.
We invented this really cool couch.
You can have the rest of your life called Saxionals.
And I mean, that's 90% of our sales now. sales now whoa okay so you've pivoted the business majorly to
the couch industry then oh yeah big time i mean love sack i mean at this point you know we started
as a side hustle in college we start you know we eventually opened a store in a mall in salt lake
i came here to henderson yeah to open our second store and then off to California to open more and move the factory from Salt Lake to Mexico.
It's just this long story arc.
I mean, it's such a wild story.
I'm actually, it's our 25th anniversary this year.
Wow, congrats.
Thank you.
I'm publishing a book called Let Me Save You 25 Years
that, you know, it should have never taken this long.
But now, you know,
Lovesac's pushing three quarters of a billion in sales.
Damn.
As a public company on NASDAQ.
That's insane.
And fastest growing furniture company many, many years in a row over the last decade.
Wow.
Yeah.
So what makes the couch or the sofa, you said, right?
Yeah, it's called Sactionals.
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slash dsh link will be in the description below actionals what makes that different from like
just going to bob's furniture or something oh yeah no this is uh first of all it's a couch you
could have the rest of your life in fact we just moved house back from san die. Utah, it's a long story. And I'm packing some of our Sactionals pieces in the move.
I've had some of these pieces longer than my children.
They're 15, 16 years old.
So it's essentially a couch you can add to, grow, change, rearrange,
kind of like Legos for couches.
They're very expensive.
They'll last you your whole life.
They're really well built.
We call them designed for life, built to last a lifetime,
designed to evolve as your life changes.
You can move, you can relocate, you can wash them, change them.
I've been through eight or nine different cover sets,
fur covers, stripe covers, patterns, any fabric.
And these attributes actually have made them
the most sustainable solution to furniture.
And so that's really a hallmark of what we do as well.
So this design for life approach, making things that are built to last a lifetime, designed
to evolve, is really our mantra now.
And we'll extend it throughout the whole home.
And that's how we're growing toward a billion in sales and not such a side hustle anymore.
Yeah, that's incredible, man, because I've gone through so many couches.
It's not even funny.
Even when you pay like $5,000, $10,000, they only last a few years.
Oh, yeah, no, no, not these.
This will change your life.
We'll have to get you into one, man.
Yeah, how much are they?
Yeah, so you're going to pay $5,000, $10,000, $15,000.
I mean, it's not uncommon for people to put $15,000, $20,000 setups.
Let me tell you why.
Because our perfect spot is not necessarily like your proper living room.
We can do that too.
It's beautiful.
But we're for where you watch TV, hang out, play video games.
We now have a surround sound system built in, completely invisible.
It's our patent.
It's our invention.
It's called Stealth Tech. It's in the couch? Yeah, we partnered with Harman Kardon to develop it. But patent it's our invention it's called stealth tech it's in the couch yeah we partnered with harman kardon to develop it but it's actually our invention we
took it to them they helped us uh manufacture and it is it'll blow your mind because you have like
4d immersive surround sound inside of your couch you can't see anything yeah it's completely
invisible it doesn't you don't see any speaker or anything really and yeah you see nothing wow and that's why it's called you know
stealth tech yeah and it's and you know it's other it's other technology as well you can set your
phone on the arm it'll charge your phone you know it's just invisible but um when you experience
this i mean you know you you've been in a lot of big homes you know fancy home theaters whatever
yeah this is different because it's a little bit like more
like watching a movie like in your car because you're you're inside of it you can feel it you
know you're dodging bullets because it's so close like the the surround speakers are 12 inches from
your skull so it's just a very and it's really tasteful you know it's not necessarily blaring
it's really yeah so even even like sports you know you'll hear like the sneaker squeaking on
the court you'll hear like the chat wow yeah and you'll hear the chatter in the stands behind you
really yeah because it's all there in the feed but in most even in most home theaters you don't
hear that i never hear that the fans no i'm telling you it is really weird so we're really
proud of it it's got us blowing up you know and i mean that's 3 000 alone to add the stealth tech
yeah so these are expensive couches but you're going to have them your whole life.
How do you know they'll last someone's whole life
if they're only 15 years old?
Well, I don't know.
So far, mine are 15, 16 years old since we invented them.
That's already way past average.
Oh, yeah.
These are just really well-built.
They've evolved a long way.
Actually, some of these ones that are older
that I was talking about,
they're not even good compared to the stuff we sell today.
They still work the same.
You can hook them together,
and when you put covers on, you'd never know.
My pieces that are old,
they look exactly the same to you
until I peel the covers off and show you the differences,
but from a construction standpoint.
So look, not to bore you with couch construction,
but we really, inventing this, really forced us to become really passionate about product design
about quality because we because we wanted to make a couch that could ship in a box make it
internetable make it you know all the reasons that you would do this including just like
moving or relocating you can move this thing in a honda on your own. Really? Yeah. I mean, my kids can move this thing.
Like, because it's all in pieces, right?
And there's only two pieces.
That's it?
Yeah, you buy a bunch of seats and a bunch of sides.
Wow, that sounds pretty good.
Because sometimes setting up a couch is like super hard, honestly.
No, it's, I mean, you know, it's some work
because you've got to put the covers on each piece
and stuff like that.
And, you know, we're working toward a scenario
where we'll even come do that for you.
But no, it's really cool stuff. even come do that for you. Right. But, um,
but now it's really cool stuff and,
and,
uh,
it's kind of magical.
Yes.
If you ever get a chance to go to a love sack showroom.
Yeah,
definitely got to try one out.
Yeah.
Blow your mind.
It's very different,
man.
So 25 years.
So if you were to look at that on a chart and the revenue was there,
was it just straight up the whole time or were there peaks and valleys?
No,
man.
I mean,
love sack.
I mean,
that's part of the reason for publishing the book this year,
Let Me Save You 25 Years, is the story is crazy.
I mean, in the early days, we were shredding foam using farm equipment.
Like I got an agricultural loan from the United States government to buy a tractor and a 1970s
hay buster because I couldn't afford like some half a million dollar German shredding
machine.
Yeah. 70s hay buster because i couldn't afford like some you know half a million dollar german shredding machine yeah this is like me and my buddies right in like some old warehouse trying to make these things and so we got this big order we had to make like 12 000 units really fast for like a holiday
kind of thing and so i i bought a tractor i got a loan from the government to do that and and it was
you know it's that kind of gritty bootstrapping story before i
think people were even using the word bootstrap you know we were just kids in college trying to
survive and then that led us to one thing and another we opened the store people tried to buy
our couch in the corner that was just there to look pretty next to the sacks and um and so look
we blew up out of the gate in the store and we actually started selling franchises even because
we just like who knew it took off i mean we were just hoping people wouldn't laugh at us right and then you know we were selling six
figures out of the gate approaching a million sales our first year nice came down to henderson
open another store started franchising and then a couple years into that raised i have crazier i i
won a million dollars on tv with richard branson What? Yeah, I won his reality TV show.
Wow, congrats.
He just sponsored the podcast, actually.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, yeah.
So there you go.
So tell him we're buddies. But yeah, I won his answer to Trump's Apprentice.
He did one season.
It's called The Rebel Billionaires on Fox, 2005.
That's how old I am.
And that led to Venture Capital.
Venture Capital came in.
Their first move was like, hey, let's bankrupt this company.
Let's get out of franchising.
Let's buy back all the stores.
You're at like 40 stores.
We're going to pare it down to just 12 really good ones
and then grow it again.
And it was right on the heels of being Branson's protege,
winning a million on tv it was just like
embarrassing to take a moralizing oh yeah man so i've been through a full chapter 11 rework
wow there in 2006 rebirth the company we probably at the time of the rear i don't know we were doing
20 or 30 million then we started over at you know 10 10 let's say 10 10 ish and
then um actually it's about seven ish so we we 10x the company from about that start over from 2006
to 16 we essentially 10x the company and then we did it again wow and so you know now like i said
last year's was was like six 650 million and it's still growing very rapidly that's crazy yeah so but
selling mostly couches now so so i mean every kind of up and down the worst kinds of ups and downs
and and some really great times as well good for us like it was for you right e-commerce was popping
during that yeah e-commerce the home category yeah you know now not so much for home but but
even through this this tougher time post home Love Sack's been growing really fast.
We continue to beat the market, beat the category,
and it just comes down to, I think, good product.
We've got a great team, really sharp marketing.
Yeah, your marketing, I definitely want to dive into that.
You've worked with some of the biggest influencers and creators.
What kind of approach do you take on the marketing side?
Yeah, so one of the funny things about marketing at Lovesac.
Let me step back all the way.
We were born at retail in 2001, our first store.
We were told malls are dead.
What are you doing signing a lease in a mall?
This was in 01?
Yeah. All these headlines. This is dead,s are dead. Malls are dead. Like, what are you doing signing a lease in a mall? This was in 01? Yeah.
Oh, wow.
You know what I mean?
Like, all these headlines.
Like, this is dead.
That is dead.
E-commerce is dead.
Digital is dead.
You know, whatever.
All these dead headlines.
Malls are dead.
2001.
That's early.
Yeah, man.
Here we are in 2023, whatever.
And I've got 250 locations, most of them in malls and crushing.
Marketing's constantly evolving,
but it's not as always dramatic as people say.
There's peaks and valleys.
My point being, whether it be the mall game,
the retail game, and then we pivoted into internet,
obviously, through these shrinkable sacks, because we
suck all the air out of those sacks.
Because we can, because it's not a beanbag.
The foam shrinks, so we can ship it at
one-eighth its original volume. That was the idea.
Well, how could we do that for a couch? People kept
asking about this couch. How could I shrink the couch
down? That was all we were trying to do.
But then along the way, we made it washable and
changeable and all these other attributes, designed
for life. Yes, they ship in boxes. That waschangeable, and all these other attributes designed for life.
Yes, they ship in boxes.
That was good for the internet.
So then digital marketing kicks in.
And then by 2016, we finally grew the stones to test into TV,
which who watches TV anymore?
Not me.
I'll tell you what, man.
Someone does.
Yeah.
Because TV is more than half our ad spend. Really just crushes what now so our our row ass in digital now is insane it's insanely high on social media uh yeah
i mean across all digital because though you got a blend in tv where you can't measure it the same
way as digital so my point is the two working together for us,
that's been the unlock.
Got it.
And then you marry that up, of course,
with a physical presence,
because we sell a remarkable product.
When you hear about it, you're kind of like, what?
And to your point,
even if you're just talking about a sack,
when you go sit in one.
It's game changer.
Right.
But you have to sit in it.
So for us, the combination of physical,
TV, believe it or not, still to this day, and digital has been the trifecta.
And look, I think the evidence is,
like if you look at us as a retailer, we're not a retailer.
We don't carry inventory.
We're not really a retailer.
You don't go into a-
Oh, you can't walk in and buy one?
No.
Wow.
I mean, you can, but it'll ship to you.
Okay.
No matter where you buy from us.
We even do pop-up shops occasionally in Costco. We have shop in shops in best buy because we do the stealth tech yeah so
that's our that's our shop that's our person it's our point of sale it's our customer it's our
record data you own it we own it all we we do zero wholesale oh really we are 100 direct even
in those channels you don't want to ever go wholesale
not right now like we're really i mean think about it i got you know full retail margin
i'm in full control the customer they're a friend you know we we are able to reach back out and say
the next thing and you can add like stealth tech you bought your saxonels eight years ago guess
what that was nice of you to give us money then we just made it better because
you can add it to what you already have everything we invent is reverse compatible wow like the
stealth tech is reverse compatible with the satchels you bought eight years ago really yeah
that's crazy that's designed for life yeah and so we have a very different point of view look it's
easy to look at love's i can dismiss it like ah it's like this beanbag company that's a silly name
whatever but i think we've got a lot going on.
And I guess the evidence was,
this is where I was getting around to,
is we have, I think,
some of the highest sales per square foot
of any retailer on the planet.
The only retailer, forget furniture,
the only retailers that beat us that I'm aware of
is Apple and Tiffany's.
You're in good competition there.
Right?
Well, think about it.
You leave an Apple store.
How much did you spend?
You're spending at least $1,000.
You leave a Love Sex store.
How much did you spend?
$5, $7, $10, $15.
I got five employees on the staff in total.
Maybe one of them there at that time.
And it's smaller than this room we're sitting in.
So you keep a lean operation at each place,
no inventory costs,
no inventory.
So it's a very unique business and we're very proud of it.
And,
uh,
I think tragically underestimated on,
you know, even on the public markets and that's okay.
You know,
I mean,
we'll just keep doing our thing for another 25.
Yeah.
I mean,
I think everything's down right now because of the recession.
Right.
Oh yeah.
Well,
and,
and I just think think you know love sack's an easy one to dismiss because we you know it's this
beanbag company and like where do they come from you know but um yeah we're really proud of the
business we're building you know we've been profitable for a long time nice you know and uh
still growing at a very rapid pace so that's awesome yeah so did you
embrace e-commerce at first or was that a pushback because a lot of retailers kind of
don't really take it serious even to this day almost like walmart doesn't really yeah we we
had lovesack.com cranking in 2002 wow so you were early we were really early and we were trying to
figure it out i mean you know it's it's crazy like how scrappy it was and we were trying to figure it out. I mean, it's crazy how scrappy it was and we were
and how clumsy that whole thing was.
But we didn't even, I don't think, realize what we had at the time.
Like I said, we were sucking seven-eighths of the volume
out of these sacks and shipping them.
I mean, that was a cool combination.
It worked, obviously.
But I don't think we realized how special that was.
So think about it.
That's like, I don't know, 15 years before all the mattress companies started doing what
they were doing.
Right.
And we were doing it with sacks.
And then we did it with a couch.
But it really took us a long time to, I mean, we were having early success.
But because we took a traditional retail approach in the beginning, we were essentially
like a furniture company.
Once we had couches, we started doing rugs and lamps and bowls and baskets
and decorative accessories.
That's what you do.
And it was actually in 2015 when we got rid of all that stuff.
We saw what was going on with direct-to-consumer, Warby Parker,
even Casper, Tesla, even with their showrooms.
We said, why are we trying to out pottery barn, pottery barn?
We'll never get there.
So let's get rid of all that stuff.
Let's focus on our really cool internetable products
and let's go heavy digital and let's figure out this TV thing.
I'm still blown away by this TV thing.
Isn't that wild?
Because I always see this stuff on social media
like Super Bowl ads are 10 mil
people actually make money off that you think?
Look
for us it's more of a performance game
but at the same time
we're actually gravitating
listen
the holy grail of
if you want to make a million bucks
10 million bucks
50 million bucks
you can do it by hawking stuff on the internet,
whatever that stuff is.
And I don't disparage it.
If you want to be around for 25 years
and you want to build something that can grow past a billion
or two or 10, it ultimately comes down to a brand.
At the end of the day, there's lots of places
my wife can buy black yoga pants.
Why should Lululemon be able to charge what they charge?
Brand.
In the end, that's the holy grail.
Nike.
A lot of places buy shoes, man.
And they essentially, at this point, there's so much.
It's crazy.
You walk into Walmart.
I don't mean to pick on Walmart
but Walmart is what Walmart is
and you start
walk through their clothing
and stuff and if you really look at it
it's no longer garbage
quality like the
world supply chain where you're talking about Asia
where you're talking about even South America
where you're talking about Eastern Europe
it's all out there like the ability to make quality whether you're talking about Asia, whether you're talking about even South America, whether you're talking about Eastern Europe,
it's all out there. Like the ability to make quality shoes,
quality pants, quality jerseys,
it's out there.
If you have the ability to market,
that's the harder part.
And you've obviously cracked that code.
But what's my point?
My point is that at this point,
even quality at some base level
is no longer the separate,
the real differentiator
wow it's brand yeah and so even for us like we have patents that that's why you don't see anything
like sectionals yeah like when you when you see what they do on video and when you go into a
showroom and play with the blocks you'll understand you patented it yeah it's very
we have like 40 patents it's very special got it. We've defended it very aggressively.
That's why there's nothing quite like it.
The truth is the patents will eventually run out
and there's always different ways to do things.
The real defense is to build a brand.
The evidence of that is
in the great brands around us.
The great brands you're wearing.
That's an audacious thing I know for a company called Lovesac. is in the great brands around us, the great brands you're wearing, the great brand, you know, like that's where the re like,
and that's,
that's an,
that's an audacious thing.
I know for like a company called love sack to say,
but that's our goal.
You know,
we're not here to just talk stuff on the internet.
We really believe we can build a brand that people love. Yeah.
And that's our ticker,
even on wall street.
No,
I think you've done a great job with that.
And one of the things you take serious is customer feedback,
customer service,
right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you kind of follow Jeffzos' approach with that model.
Just like we DMed, I DM with our customers every day.
When's the last time you DMed with a public company?
Not you, but the CEO of a company that you bought something from. I'm proud of that because that, and my point is not me,
my point is the attitude in our company is that way.
Right.
From me to the showroom associates to our, you know, customer love team.
Like we're just there because ultimately that's our goal.
Like we're not just trying to sell you something.
We're trying to build a relationship with you so that when we invent the next
thing, we know you, you like us.
And your experience with that first thing was so good
that you're in like holy crap i just bought this couch because i couldn't fit another one up my
staircase or something like that whatever reason you bought you know i i i've got dogs that chew
i wanted to have something dog proof kid proof my kids spill washable that's cool we'll sell it to you for that reason but but really
what you bought was a truly sustained hyphenable couch to be with you the rest of your life and
frankly after life happens to you for four or five years and your kids mess it up and your dog
chews one corner of it and all you had to do was turn it around and hide it or change the cover
and it's brand new again whatever now you start you start to realize, oh, that's what I bought.
And then we invent stealth tech.
You can add it to what you already have
and you feel a little smarter.
That's the relationship I want with our customers.
I love that.
I'm so impressed with your motivation.
After 25 years at the same company,
you still seem to have that fire in you, Matt.
Oh, man.
You know what's funny is I've been through those moments.
I mean, I've been through those moments like, hey.
I mean, because the way for me to become a bazillionaire
is to sell my stock, move on to the next thing,
build a company that I own 100% of.
You know what I'm saying?
We're already a public company.
We've been through VC, private equity, all that kind of stuff.
And I've thought about that.
But I love what we've become you know i began as like i told
you man i wish i had a better story i just made a beanbag to be funny yeah wasn't even a beanbag
but people loved it and then we just kind of hung on we survived we hustled ups and downs the worst
kinds of ups and downs and then uh you know somewhere on this end of it we've become this super sustainable solution that's
that's not just like let me give you a funny example we recycle already more plastic bottles
than any company i'm aware of wow into fabric why because couches are huge and i sell a lot of them
right you know bigger than shoes bigger than hoodies t-shirts whatever that's cool like we're
you know we're going on hundreds of millions of plastic bottles
recycled into our fabric.
We barely talk about it.
Dang.
Because our path to sustainability is not that.
It's making stuff that actually sustains.
Who's talking about that?
Like nobody.
And not just because it was built well,
but because it was built to last a lifetime
and designed to evolve with you as your life changes,
which means you have to design it with some attributes
that will allow it to be reverse compatible
with things in the future.
And we got lucky on a few of its attributes
that I won't bother explaining to you.
But as you see us design other products in the future,
that's our brief.
So whatever we do next, it will follow that mantra it's harder to design things that way costs a lot takes a long
time patents all that but i but anyway i think i think that's that's our that's what we will become
and that's what we'll be known for and and so my point is, that's why I'm still here.
I actually think what we're doing is pretty cool and I'm proud of it.
And now I'm like, man, you know what?
I'll just do it for another 25.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's build something that's here in 50.
Legacy.
Why not?
I didn't mean for that to happen.
And I certainly never thought it would
when I was just selling beanbags out of a mall
or even couches.
But now I'm certain we can do that.
Wow.
What keeps you going?
Is this company the main thing of your life?
It's everything.
For my business life, the truth is,
in my book, Let Me Save You 25 Years,
coming out later this year, I have these 25 little chapters. It's only like, you can read the
whole thing in 60 minutes. It's a short book. Yeah. It's a long story, but I've tried to
compress it really short. It's got a hundred pictures in it. It's like, it's like a coffee
table. It's pretty cool. I think it'll be a neat book, but, um, one of my little 25 chapters.
So it's,
it's like a bit of story.
And then the thing I learned,
like,
you know,
the bit about the bankruptcy,
what I learned from that,
the bit about the,
you know,
all that.
And I have this story,
this one chapter where I share these Sean isms.
And the,
and the,
and the thing I learned in this one was,
and it's,
in fact,
it's engraved on this ring I'm wearing.
Everything else is dust.
So you ask me, you know, is this everything for you?
The truth is, my family is everything.
I've got four kids.
They're amazing.
We're really tight.
I've got an awesome wife.
She's amazing.
She's here with me now to celebrate our 20th anniversary.
I'm not making this up.
This weekend.
Wow.
Yeah, so it was fun to be in vegas but um you know that's that's the main thing so i think like that keeps
me going that keeps me grounded that gives me so much satisfaction you know like i like to surf i
like to dirt bike but there's nothing that compares with like watching your kids figure out how to
surf and how to dirt bike.
That's like,
that makes,
that makes it just seem silly.
Yeah.
Like doing it yourself.
Like,
Oh,
I'm going to go really fast.
I'm going to ski really good when you watch your kids do it,
man.
So my point is just,
uh,
that keeps me going.
But then the challenge of building something like forget the money I'll make
or whatever,
you know,
like the challenge of building something that's, that I'll make or whatever, you know, like the challenge of building something that's,
that's good,
you know,
that's beautiful,
that,
that people like building all these relationships,
even,
you know,
whether it's,
whether it's you,
whether it's my employees,
whether it's our customers,
um,
our,
our,
our suppliers,
you know,
overseas even,
I know some of our sewers in China.
Wow.
By no, I'm serious by name. I speak Mandarin. I lived a whole other story. I lived know some of our sewers in China. Wow. No,
I'm serious by name.
I speak Mandarin.
I lived a whole other story.
I lived over there a few years of my life.
Yeah.
And they've been sewing for us for 13,
14 years.
Dang.
And they have a career here.
And it's awesome.
And it's sent their kids to college.
I'm proud of that.
Yeah.
It's all part of this hashtag lovesack family.
So I know this is not your typical
interview yeah i know that there's a lot of hustlers that are in it then they then they you
know they exit and then they do this but that's our story no i'm fascinated man i really am it's
been great to get into your mindset a little bit is there anything you want to close off with
uh you know uh keep an eye out let me save you 25 years it's going to be a fun book
it's a podcast
to go with it
okay
and you know
we might have to
we might have to get you on there
oh I'm down
talk about one of these
it's a different take
talk about one of these ideas
but you know
you can find me
Sean of Lovesack
I'm everywhere
YouTube
the company obviously
Lovesack
and you know
just really grateful
to hang out with you
learn from you.
Thanks for coming on, man.
Go get yourself a SAC Shull, guys, if you're watching this.
I'll see you guys next time.