Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Ecommerce ft. Sean Whalen

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

The first episode on The Future of Digital Commerce features Lions not Sheep founder, Sean Whalen. In this episode, Ryan and Sean discuss: How Sean used his purpose to create a brand that is driving tremendous e-commerce growth Insights on scaling a massive e-commerce business How to leverage your personal brand Click on Sean Whalen and Lions not Sheep for more information. Follow Ryan and The Radcast on Instagram to stay updated on all things radical.#TheFutureofDigitalCommerce  If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? This is Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We're here in the middle of our e-commerce series and excited to have our guest today. Again, Sean and I were just talking.

We can go a lot of avenues, but want to really talk about Sean Whalen and his growth with lions, not sheep. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Cool. Well, you know, again, I know we could go a lot of down, a lot of rabbit trails, a lot of things, you know. But maybe, and let's just start there, you know, I don't want to cap us too much.

But as we build towards where you've taken lions, not sheep and all the e-commerce growth there, maybe let's just back up. Let's give our audience, you know, I know you've got a huge following, but it may not be, the following of our our podcast that have heard of you and know about you let's just start there like you know the recap of sean and history and what got you there i know that loaded question brother but i'll keep it super simple i mean i i was really successful at a young age um grew up in a single parent home built a couple of companies and made a lot of money in my 20s and um i talk about in my book how i felt like i was juggling bowling balls you know the success looks like this and it needs

to be this. And so I'm working 20-hour days, building, growing the whole thing. And, you know, and I was at work. I needed to be home. And it was home. I need to be at work. And kind of the whole, I mean, really what a lot of men are going through not just today, years ago, but, you know, where we're at as a culture and a society is like, this is what success looks like if you're on Instagram. It's like, you got to be here. You got to be ball. And if you're not working 29 hours a day, like you're a fuck up. It's just, I was that guy. And I, uh, I sense you quit juggling all the bowling balls. And I don't know what a midlife crisis is, but I love. left my marriage. I left my business. I stuck my head up my ass for over a year trying to figure out

not how to make money, how to how to build business, but like, why was I even here? Like, what's the purpose of all this? Like, why am I doing any of this? You know what I mean? I've got the cars and the Rolex is it, but what am I even doing with any of this? And so I went on an interesting journey. I got really depressed, suicidal and found myself in a really, really, really dark place and ended up hiring a coach trying to figure out how do I get out of this mindset. How do I shift things around? And one of the things that he had challenged me to do was to start sharing my thoughts and what was going on on social media.

And at the time, I was like, believe it or not, my ex-wife had Facebook and a year before I did. And I was like, that's the stupidest thing. You know, why would I do that? I didn't believe in it, right? which is ironic now having almost a video views in my videos and stuff. And the 37 stories I've watched of yours just today.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, it's phenomenal. We talk about that from a marketing perspective in a minute, but, you know, I went through a really nasty divorce and to make a really long story short, I ended up sharing one night some real dark shit, some stuff that I was, you know, ashamed of and had been hiding and really just told the truth for a lack of

better words I just fucking told the truth for once which was like instead of doing the alpha thing it was like no dude like I said a lot of dumb shit I was angry I didn't have all you know all of the answers and that post ended up going viral um millions and millions and millions people thought um I went from having like 200 friends on Facebook to almost 40,000 followers in a matter of 10 days and people were hitting up going dude teach me more. What classes do you have? I'm like, yo, pump the fucking brakes, man. I'm just, I'm just telling you my shit, right? Like, I'm not Dr. Phil, call somebody else. And in that process, you know, I, I left the company, I left everything and I kind of still dabbled in real estate,

but one day the phrase, lines and not sheet came into my mind. I was looking at this catalog, and there was another company, it was something kind of similar, and it just popped into my head, and it just resonated. And it just, it wouldn't go away. And for days, it just lines on the sheep and I kept thinking to myself like looking at everything in life like like I have a choice right to follow and to do what everybody else is doing and to buy this because he bought this or build this because he built this or this is what this needs to be and it was like no dude fuck that like what do I want to do like who do I want to be like what life do I want to build you know when you when you tear everything down and essentially burn it to the ground you're pretty

much starting from scratch I knew what my skill sets where I knew what I was good at but like I just decided to do the things that I was really passionate about. Like, what do I really want to do? And when Lions Not Sheep came to me, I called my buddy who owned a clothing company one day. And I said, Hey, man, can you, can you make me a T-shirt? He said, sure. So I went online, literally went to like, fonts.com and found this cool font and did this. And I was like, yeah, can you do this? And he got it to his designer. And I spent 40 bucks to make a screen and made a T-shirt. Our original, you know, original Lions Not Sheep, Black and Black and Black. a t-shirt. And I was wearing it one day and I had a picture and I posted it on Facebook and all

these comments started coming in. Dude, that's badass. Where'd you get that? Can I get that shirt? And I called my buddy. I was like, I don't know how to sell t-shirts. Like how the fuck they he's like, I'll set you up Shopify store and whatever. And so that kind of started the whole, for me, it was just my mantra. It just became my way of thinking, my way of being. It was very personal to me. And I saw a lot of people gravitate towards it. A lot of people connect with it. And we started selling the t-shirts and then you know i formed the company and then i formed multiple companies inside of that and and uh it it became and what is now a huge movement um where you know millions of people engaged with the content and know about it and uh just recently we've had some

people that have um vending me and smith who's in uh new jersey who the governor was trying to shut his gym down when i woke up one morning this is probably a month ago a month and a half ago and i had been tagged like over a hundred times in this post. I'm like, what the fuck? And I, you know, I opened up Instagram and there's this guy who's like super defiant, like screw the governor or whatever, whatever. And he's got a lot of how she had on. Well, I'm not connected to him.

He's not connected to me. It was just like, oh, dope. So I followed him and said, hey, man, love the hat, you know, whatever, whatever. He's like, oh, dude, I've been following you. Like, just started like, knew the brand. He ended up just seeing one of our ads and bought the hat. And his, uh, his, um, post went viral. and it was really interesting over the course of the next couple of days he was on CNN Fox

Tucker Carlson all these big big shows and he was wearing the lines not sheet gear and our free man t-shirt and it was just really cool to see that he hadn't he wasn't really he didn't know me per se but he vibed with the brand he recognized it resonated with it and decided to buy a shirt and a hat and it just kind of brought me full circle like yeah man like this was me my kind of rebirth coming back into the marketplace kind of getting my balls back and building some business and and now knowing that it resonates literally with millions of people around the world it's it's pretty freaking amazing so that's that's about a 20 year story in three minutes yes a couple things to unpack there I mean how enlightening was it

I can only imagine, like you said, you felt like you lived not necessarily a lie, but you never felt comfortable being transparent and maybe vulnerable, if I can use that word. Sure. How enlightening was that moment when, holy shit, I can be, I'm being myself and I'm garnering the attention. Not that maybe you were seeking before when you were copying everyone else, but just the irony in that had to be just fucking amazing.

It was. And what's interesting is, you know, we're all, and this is kind of some of the stuff that I teach, like, we're all programmed to lie. Okay. I don't care who's watching this, black, white, gay, stray, rich, poor. All of us were programmed the exact same way to lie. And don't believe me. And we'd go back to when you were a kid, sit down, quiet down, slow down, you were a little child, you go to church, this is right, this is wrong, don't say this, don't do that. And when you really stop and think about it, like we've been indoctrinated since we were children to do as we're told to speak words that will be pleasing to everyone. Don't wrestle anybody's feathers. And that's literally what we do from when we're little children, elementary school, middle school, high school, you know, you got to raise your hand and go to the bathroom. I mean, nowadays you can't say shit. I say anything and I'm called a neo-Nazi online and this and that and the other. I piss everybody off, right?

But when you think about it, like we've been programs since we were little children to not speak our truth, to not share what's inside. We're told, tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. but the ramifications for telling the truth are dark. They're bad. You know, slap on the hand, put them in a principal's office, parents are mad at you, so we just lie. And as you get older, you become, man, it's like, we don't talk about emotions.

We don't talk about where we're really at. You just man the fuck up, you know, put on your big boy pants and get after it. And the truth of the matter is that, you know, more men killed themselves in 2018 than during the Great Depression. Why? It's not because there's a lack of money or a lack of opportunity or lack of opportunity or lack of chicks or, you know, ass running around. It's because dudes are, like, trapped in this box like I was 10 years ago. I'm like, dude, I'm not happy with where I'm at, but I don't know how to talk about it.

And my boys are like, hey, man, how are you doing? I'm like, I'm good, right? You hear that I'm good. Well, then I'll say, oh, shit, Bob killed himself. We didn't even know Bob was sad. Bob looks like he's got the ideal life. Well, you know what I mean? And so when I talk to people about this and I coach on this, it's like, no one thinks

that they're lying. But the truth, the reality is if you're not. speaking the truth and what is it. And if you're not sharing what's really inside of you, how you really feel, what's really going on, it's not an issue of political correctness or I don't want to piss anybody off. It's like, what are you doing? Are you speaking your truth? Yes or no? Well, I can't because my mom follows me on Instagram or my church people are over here and this and the other. And so we literally live, living lies. A vast majority of our culture, our society is just fucking lying.

And so the challenge from my coach was share what you're really thinking and feeling. And when I shared that post, it was wrong, scary as shit. Because I talked about anger. I talked about frustration. I talked about not knowing what the hell was going on, right? But what was really interesting is this. And this is a huge lesson for people understand. I noticed two things that happened.

Number one, people resonated with my message. Millions of people resonated with it. No one, there's all these people like, I'll teach you how to go viral. Nobody has a fucking recipe to go viral. Anybody tries to sell you a course of how to make viral videos. Tell them to fuck off because it doesn't exist, right? Yep. I didn't wake up one day going, you know what?

I'm kind of tired of making money in real estate. I'm going to be a social influencer. I just shared my shit, but I shared darkness. It wasn't the filtered, rosy, look at my wind, look at my accolades, look at my cool crap. It was like, dude, I was depressed. I almost blew my freaking brains out. I made a lot of mistakes. And I realized that millions of people resonated with that because we're all experiencing

that in one way, shape, of form, right? Sex, money, politics, religion, divorce, depression, bankruptcy, suicide. Those are topics we don't talk about. They're not politically correct, not socially acceptable. Yet everyone on this planet is somehow intertwined with sex, money, politics, religion, divorce, depression, bank, all of these fucking things. So what do we talk about all day long? So I realized the first thing was how many people resonate.

with my darkness. And I, you know, I coined and, and the phrase, your mess is your message, and bought the domain. And it'll probably be the title of one of my books coming down the pipe here. But my mess literally became my message. And the second thing that I saw after I shared this was that I felt better. It was almost like, okay, I got that out. You know what I mean?

And so when I talked to entrepreneurs, a business owners of people, I'm like, dude, you're a better father when you feel better. You're a better mother when you feel better. You're a better everything when you feel better. Lying doesn't feel good. Lying is scary. It's do they know, do they know, do they know? Where you just fucking tell the truth and you got nothing to worry about.

So it's like, if this is the recipe for me connecting with people and me feeling better, then I'm just going to keep doing it. And at the time, you know, five years ago, and not that I was the only guy sharing shit on social media, but very few people are talking about real raw shit. You know, it's just airy-fairy, political things, reshairs of this. And so I just went on a mission like I'm going to share me. And since then I've literally have almost a billion views of my videos, millions of followers.

I mean, literally hundreds of millions of engagements on my post from Instagram to Facebook. I mean, some of my videos have reached 150, 160 million views of one video, which is just mind bending to me, right? But that's what I found is my own little kind of recipe. And I felt better. The marketplace resonated with. it and I just kept fucking running it. I love it.

I want to get into some nuts and bolts on the back half here on the e-commerce, but I do have one follow-up because I feel like no matter how a loss you may have felt, you know, kind of being what you categorized is a man that everybody wanted you to be and not the real maybe you. Something has shaped Sean Whalen at some point in life. Well before you got lost or you got found or anything like that. I feel like there has to be these opinions and these beliefs that kind of formed all of this.

Something shaped that either early whenever, I would think. I don't know. Nobody's ever asked you that. Thinking back on life, like my parents split up when I was an early teenager. I was actually a really quiet kid. I was really reserved. I was a chubby little kid. I was a pretty good baseball player, but like I wasn't popular.

I wasn't the class valedictory. I was really, really quiet, really reserved. And I think for me, when looking back at it, when I went on a Mormon mission, I went on a two-year Mormon mission, that was where I really started to kind of find my voice. I mean, you're out basically selling God and you're going door to door pitching God to people. And it was something I was really passionate about. It was something that like I didn't grow up in the Mormon church. I grew up Catholic. And so it was kind of a recent convert to the church.

And I just started realizing that people love to connect. people love to talk and I was really good at it. I was good at just talking to people. And I know that sounds really weird, but like there really is an art form of communication. There's an art form of being able to not just talk, oh, so, hey, how's your water? Like, why do you like that water? Okay, great. You know, whatever, like really fucking listening to people and hearing them and knowing what's driving them.

And something that I've always been fascinated about and with is what's behind it. You know, this is why headlines and shit, I'm not like. bouncing around like every other freaking bozo or like oh my god oh my god i'm like yeah you know let's talk about for a second i like to critically think and for me being able to be in a place where i can ask deeper questions it's fun for me yeah and i found you know on my mission as i was talking about god i mean god's such a crazy topic for so many people because you have people that are way over here and then people are way over here and people have no clue and so it kind of forced me to really number one find my foundation like what I really believed and how I really felt about life and who I was and purpose and the entire thing.

But I found out like people just love to connect. And so it's just become almost a skill set and art form that I've just gotten better and better at as communicating with human beings. But it definitely doesn't come from my youth. I mean, I was a quiet freaking kid, man. Well, I've shared some of your stuff with people and they go, oh man, he's pretty. hard core on this, that, and the other. And, you know, they care. He's a great community. I said it. I thought you're a great communicator, period. I mean, that's, I love talking. I mean, when you, when you really give a shit about people, like, when you really care,

like, I think it's, it's something that, I mean, we're not, we're, we're just so busy trying to get, believe me, hear me, this is me. And it's like, I really, it sounds funny, but if it can't be explained on a whiteboard or like with crayons it's too complicated we should not have a tax policy in america that can't be explained on a fucking whiteboard right we should not have foreign policies and that take 30 000 page freaking manuals to fucking explain right no one's interested in that really and so we can tie this into the marketing and the business and the whole thing like copy is really important you know what i mean like what are you telling me everybody knows they're being sold something. So we've already got that out of the way. What are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to

communicate with me? Yeah, yay, nay, nay. Like, if the answer is a simple no, then just fucking say no, right? But I love being able to look at complex things and I break it down in my brain to just like coloring book kind of conversations. Like, yeah, this is what this really is. And it's just more, to me, it's more fun that way. I have more connection to stuff that way. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And so let's talk about lions, not sheep.com. I mean, you know, we work, you know, we're an digital agency here and we work a lot of brands. And, you know, they come to us and they have great products, but they have no story. Right.

And I will take a company that has a purpose and a story all day because that's, it's organic, you know. Again, it just becomes about blocking and tackling. It's real hard to figure out the hell Mary, you know, the message, you know, the blocking and tackling you can do. But let's get to some of that blocking and tackling. What have been some of those mechanics of, you know, because I've heard you talk about it. You're like, you know, you started the company. You were selling T-shirts. You had a message.

You had a plan. But something poured gas on the fire, you know, for the tactics and some of the ways with which you've seen growth. You talk about some of that? Yeah, for sure. First of all, you know, there's two philosophies, in my opinion. Like anybody who's a really, really, really good ad guy or copy guy or whatever, I mean, you can take any problem. and figure out a way to sell it, right? And there's a lot of people that do that.

They take, you know, products from China, they're really good. They figured out the game, the algorithms, they can do that. And then there's people that have passion behind something. They live it, they breathe it, they sleep it. It's big to them because their kid has cancer and they want this product out there and they want this thing or that thing. And there's a story and a connection behind it. And either one of those is phenomenal, right?

but I think the people that struggle the most are the ones that they feel like they have that passion and they feel like everybody's supposed to have that passion. I had to do, this shirt is so badass and this saying and everybody's going to buy the saying and this entire thing. But like I found for me that I embodied lions, not sheep. It literally was for me. You know what I mean? Like when I wrote my book, which is sold over half a million copies completely organically, I mean, I didn't even put page numbers in there. We forgot it. It was so basic and just put out there.

the marketplace, I wrote a book that I wanted to read, like that I would want to read. And I think a lot of people need to realize, like, what do you want to wear, right? It's easy to come up with slick marketing and slick products and whatever, whatever. But if there's no marketplace for it, it doesn't fucking matter how great your landing page is, how this, that the other. So when you're trying to tie in that story, you know, like, why is this relevant to you? Like, why do you believe in this? And I've literally, for the last couple of years, I've been talking about lions, not sheep, and it's become me. And people have watched my journey as a thought. And it's become me. And people have watched my journey as a father as a business owner,

as a man, as a divorced guy, as a dating guy, like all of these things have been really transparent. And I think people vibe with that. They resonate with it, right? And so for me,

lion's not sheep. Everybody's been telling me, dude, you're in the perfect storm now with the whole political climate and Trump because it's like we're all, you're one or the other, right? You're picking up.

I do it's a lion or you're the sheep, which is great, you know, but yeah, there's 175 million people on your side. right down the millions. Here's what's cool is everybody now wants to jump on that, right? And they want to plug into that emotion.

They want to plug into the political climate and whatever, whatever. And you really don't have a track record. You don't have a tribe. You don't have any of that. I didn't set out to do that. And I think that's what really makes Lions and Not Sheep unique. And I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this. And it's really difficult to do is having the consistency of delivering content and messaging for the long game.

because now we're in the perfect fucking storm. Now we're crushing because so much content has been put out there over the last couple of years. And it wasn't with the objective of selling T-shirts or selling hats or selling any of that shit. My mom literally, she retired last year and she was bored of shit. I said, Mom, help me make T-shirts. And so we had one heat transfer.

She's in the office. And we'd sell 20 shirts a month, just people stumbling it on the website. And she'd run down and she'd get the shirts and she'd make them and she'd write a little note, package them all out. and that was really what the apparel brand was until the beginning of this year. But being able to like sit in a story and deliver that to people that they believe without trying to sell them anything is massive. And that's a huge tactic that I don't think very many people understand is I believe

that the very best salespeople on planet Earth are never selling anything. Like you go to my, you go to my Instagram or my Facebook, you will never see me selling anything. Yet I'm literally able to make millions of dollars through coaching and consulting and other companies that I have. But I'm not selling anything. So how does that work? I'm living it.

I'm breathing it. I'm exuding it, right? And that's, if you're a Jeep guy, you want to start a brand around jeeps, right? If you're driving a fucking Honda core, good luck, right? You better know the clicks in the algorithms.

But it's like some of those dudes are like hardcore Jeep guys. They get it. They know what Jeep. guys talk about. They know what Jeep guys want. And they're able to exude that message, right? And people instantly resonate with it. So I really do believe that it's, you're in a day and age where we're completely bombarded and flooded with products and things and ads and messages. And if you want the short game, you better freaking figure out how to become a really good market or a really good copy or buy ads better than anybody else. But if you want to build a real brand like something that has

legs that will be around for a long fucking time that resonate with people like why is it important to you and you better be fucking living it if you're in you're living it and talking about it everybody's like my personal page or my this page I got I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of followers on my personal page I've way less than my business page because I just I'm always living this talking about it breathing it eating it and you'd be surprised how many people could plug into that and now that we're turning on ads and running ads and running are doing shit like that where I have almost a billion views of my videos. I can now target some of those videos and act.

You know what I'm saying? So, but I've been playing the long game and consistently doing the content, consistently talking about it. And people just know, like some people will see the shirts. I get messages where they're like, dude,

that's the bearded guy. Like, that's the bearded guy. They don't know my name because they recognize my video or a post. And I know that guy. That's his thing, right? And it's really cool. What's the vision?

I mean, where are we going? I know you're your knee deep in a lot of things. I know this is open doors and you've got, you know, your coaching, how to make shit happen is the book, everyone listening, go check it out on Amazon. Is it Amazon or just your personal site? Yeah.

Amazon. But where we headed? Where are you going? Well, right now we're trying to put the wheels back on the bus. We got our asses kicked in production. We grew so fast. I turned everything on back in March. What I mean by that is I hired a team.

We come in. we started running ads. I'd never run an ad before. I'd never put ads out there. And we went from that to, you know, we were doing two to three thousand dollars a month of just apparel sales. And we did $463,000 last month of apparel sales in basically 90 days.

A lot of them in the shirts. And it fucked some things up. And I learned some very valuable, expensive lessons on production and being able to keep up. And it's kind of a funny story. I mean, everybody thinks it's just sunshine and roses. But all my kids,

my kids and their friends worked for me. And they were all part of our production team. And so we were doing the heat transfers and the whole thing. And I'd run all the numbers and I got all the production companies and all the big promotional companies. They were hitting me up. Let us do your shit. Let us do your shit.

Long story short, we had 10 of them employed as we were just crushing. We went from literally like picking up one box of shirts and screen prints to get pallets delivered. One of the kids apparently got COVID. And because they're all like my daughter's friends, nine out of the 10 kids. kids, their parents made them quit. Their parents made them literally self-quarantine. And so we were doing 350 orders a day, which represents about six to 700 shirts. And so we were like, oh, no problem.

Get a, you know, a temp agency and bring all these people. Well, they fucking takes forever for them to learn and speed. And well, they, anyways, we got really far behind. We got about 6,000 shirts behind. Wow. And the team came in and they're like, bro, we got a problem. and I'm over here like go go go go let's pro let's go and they're like hang on bro we got a fucking problem because even if we work 24 hours a day we can't get the numbers that we need it so if that wheel on the bike isn't working you can't pedal because I've got some guys some dear friends of mine that are big in the e-com space they do millions of dollars a month and I've told them this and they all laugh and chuckle because they're like yeah dude like you know what I'm saying like every single person has this happen to him I have everybody who was bringing in hub the boards and he bought like 20,000 hoverboards from China

and they had already sold a bunch of them and then they all got hung up in customs and he's like, it cost me almost a million dollars and I'm like, yeah, this is a fucking pain in the ass and he's like, well, now that you're learning it, you know, the vision for me is obviously getting that part of the business straightened out, which we do now.

But, you know, I really do, I'm passionate about this man. I'm passionate about the ability of, especially with men, to really fucking step into who they are and not in some hippie-dippy way, but like I'm 41 years old. And there's a lot of 41-year-olds that are like,

okay, I got the house and the car and the kids and the thing, like, why do I fucking hate my life? Why am I not doing anything I want to do? I mean, my wife and I would eat at the same place. We fucking vacation at Disneyland once a year. Like, what am I doing with my life? And line's not sheep in me specifically is, you know, I'm coaching a lot.

I've got multiple facets to the business, but I really want to show people that it's possible. You know what I mean? Like building a really badass, life is possible. It's not whimsical. It's not because I got a silver spoon. In fact, it's anything but with me. I've worked my ass off for this. And I want to be able to show people and show kids and teenagers like, we have one shot at this reality. We have one shot at this life. Like, go build the shit you want to build. I mean, I've never, I've never built an apparel company

and I'm building a multi-million dollar apparel company. It's like I'm showing people literally, like I'm posting on Instagram my numbers every single day. Say it. and all this other shit because it's like I'm showing people how this is done right to literally be able to build from scratch a huge brand um but to me like I want my my end game is I want lions not sheep to be a global company and to have a majority of our people not have any clue who I am that's my end game is I want to leverage what I've got now through social media and the following and connections whatever but I want somebody to be able to see this hat see this message you see this t-shirt, resonate with it,

and have the same feeling of empowerment and power that I do, and that, you know, thousands of other customers and people do. So that's my endgame, but we've got, you know, six different companies inside of Lions, not Sheep, they're all doing different things.

And, you know, it's fun, man. It's fun. It's sweet. Well, I love the way you bring your kids in and talk about it. I've got four boys under the age of 11. We're knee-deep in it,

but I love the way you bring them in. You talk about that. transparent about it and yeah well i know like work here it's like they got to see me get my ass kicked and like i'm talking to my son and we literally have a pile of shirts that um are sitting on the the warehouse floor that we ended up trying to solve part of our problem as they outsourced to another company to be able to help us expedite these these shirts and uh we sent them uh 5 000 shirts and almost every single one of them came back completely fucked up like the logos were all crooked and this and that the other so we literally have a pile and

I'm like looking at my son. I was like, that's $25,000 sitting on the floor right there that I can't do anything with, you know, and teaching them these things and showing them. Yeah.

It's so freaking fun for me. That's awesome. I mean, is that, I mean, I don't want to ask you, what do you want to, you've said it. I've interpreted where you see your legacy,

but I do want to kind of ask it because like, what do you, you know, when they go Sean Whalen in 50 years, you know, What do you want people to think? My legacy is my kids.

And it's not wealth. It's not assets that can be distributed. It's not, you know, 4-1Ks and IRAs. My kids are splitting up. If I play this game right, I've empowered my children to become their own entrepreneurial, independent creatures. My legacy, if you will,

is that is if I can help these three kids break the chains that I came from and having dysfunction and having, you know, a divorce at a young age and having a dad that was never around, you know, if I can be that man to where I'm laying on my deathbed knowing, I don't give a fuck about the money, but my kids know that they literally live the fullest life with me. That's my game. I mean, to me, I quote unquote, won. I mean, my son is, he's 14 years old and he's raised raced the Baja 1,000 with me twice. He's raised the Baja 500. And that's something I'm super proud of because it's like,

that's our thing. You know what I mean? Like there's 50 year olds that that's been on their bucket list for 30 fucking years and my son's already done it twice, you know? And so to me it's like I want to be able to lay on my deathbed knowing, chances are I'm never going to be on my death bed. I'm going to blow myself up or driving a race truck off some stupid shit like that.

But I want to be able to sit back and not have any fucking regrets, know that I played the game. I was all in. I was all in every single day, like with my, with my lover, with my kids, with my business, with my message. Like you can go back and watch thousands of videos and you know that whether you like me or not, whether you agree politically with me or not, you know that I'm spitting my truth and you know that it's coming from my soul.

And for me, that's the game. I win if I accomplish that. And I feel like I'm on a pretty good track for that because that's how I feel literally sitting here, you know, this is the last podcast I do. It's like, we're all in. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, man.

I think you're living it. And as someone that doesn't agree with every single principle of yours, I respect the hell out of you and wanted you on the podcast because I see that is as clear as day. Yeah, well, we're smart. You know, you and I, everybody, we think, we all think we're smart, right? I mean, we should. You shouldn't think you're dumb, but like, if you're smart, I love to study and I love to read. And if you think about all of these great men that have come before us, the Carnegie's, the Rockefellers,

the Steve Jobs, the Steve Coveys, these literal like industry creators and they just have changed the face of the earth. They all say the same thing at the end of their book, all of them, without question. They all literally say at the end of their books, their biographies, like, if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have spent more time doing the things that I wanted to do. I would have spent more time with my family. And I consider myself a pretty smart So if, you know, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Steve Jobs is saying, if I could go back and trade places with Sean at 41 and I'd spend more time playing and doing the things that I want to do, then I get what Instagram's trying to tell me. I get that I'm supposed to be bawling and Lambo's and jets and the whole thing. But at the end of the day, I'm enjoying my life. I'm living the life and I'm taking the counsel from those guys. You know, and it seems to be working. It works really, really well for me. And I've literally never been this happy before. man. I got a great business. I got a phenomenal family. Like, I literally wake up every day. I'm like, I'm fucking doing it, you know.

I love it, brother. Well, I'm going to let you go. I really appreciate your time. Sean. Been really enlightening and love what you're doing. So if you're looking, follow Sean Waylon on all the social media channels. If you just Google, Sean Waylon, W-H-A-L-E-N, you'll find him. Sean Waylon.com. Lions not Sheet.com. go find them then and uh my heart's all over i know find your truth as well sean really appreciate it hey guys this has been the latest episode of the radcast follow along at the radcast dot com and at the dot rad dot cast on instagram and we'll see you next time to listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web at the radcast dot com or follow our host at ryan alford on instagram thanks for tuning in