From Basement Beanbag to $700M: The 27-Year Playbook Nobody Teaches

we can be a little easier on ourselves and again, try to— look, I try to remind myself every day, the past is gone, the future does not exist. The only thing we have is now. And if we can do now well, then we're probably doing okay.

Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level. The decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello, everybody, from Big Hitter Podcast. We have an amazing big hitter on today. Hello, Sean Nelson. Hi.

Great to be here.

Yeah. Where are you, Sean?

I am in southern Utah. St. George.

St. George. Okay. Well, glad to have you here. We're not too far apart then. I'm out here in Aspen. So anyway, the beautiful part of the country and much calmer than New York City. Parsons School of Design. I saw that you're I said I see that you teach up there. Is that Zoom teaching or do you actually— are you on site a certain part of the year?

No, I've just left Parsons. I taught there for a few years in their master's program, Strategic Design and Management. It's a lot of fun. Spent a decade out near New York, living in Connecticut, actually, where all my children were born and where Love Sacks headquarters is. We have a HQ2 here in St. George.

Okay, well, let's get into it. Sean is launched. Lovesac. Now, somebody who has not bought a lot of furniture in the last zillion years and actually didn't get involved in buying the furniture much over my lifetime, it was news to me. But as soon as I started mentioning that, I mean, we had a couple of times earlier where we tried to get together, but I saw I would mention it around in the office and everything. Lovesac. It's amazing, uh, all the ladies that knew all about it and, uh, educated me on it. But, you know, the thing is, you launched this furniture— unique furniture company. I'll let you kind of briefly tell the story, uh, uh, but the, uh— or, you know, we'll spend the whole time talking about if you want. But the, uh, the thing is, you got a lot of experience early on in being an entrepreneur in about 400 different skill sets by coming up with this idea and having the drive to be able to go ahead and build the first product yourself in your parents' basement. And then you scale it into a NASDAQ-listed company. They just sent us a picture yesterday, an anniversary thing, Sean, from when our company went public April 1st, 2010, my son and I were up with about 10 other people up there on the platform at the New York Stock Exchange. But it's a, it's a big deal when you launch a company and you get listed on these exchanges and very few people do it in their life. And so, you know, but you also very few people get there after launching something from their basement and also getting on television and getting on there where you meet and and you're endorsed by Richard Branson, and then he's so impressed with you, he hires you for a while to run his operation. Wow, you must have some magic coming out when you talk to these people. You've been able to make magic happen in a lot of different ways. I want to thank you. Thank you for taking the time to be with us, but also thank you for what you've done into bringing a positive impact to the world in terms of creating employment and creating a quality product. And, you know, that's what the thing behind everything I do, Sean, is big hitters. And my premise is the world needs more big hitters, needs more winners, needs more people out there making a positive impact and counteract all the negativity out there in the world. We need more winners. And, you know, you're a champion of doing something big with your life. So thank you. And thanks for being on and sharing. And I know there's gonna be some light bulbs going in people's minds about how they can move forward, how they can make adjustments today. As you talk. So let's get into it. So tell us about LoveSac and the launch and what went through your mind early on, you know, because that's, that's quite an event.

LoveSac was my side hustle in college. It was just a funny thing to do. I had made a big beanbag, um, in 1995. I was 18 years old and, uh, just bored, you know, just out of high school watching TV. Waiting for the fall university to start. And, um, I had this dumb idea, like, how funny would it be to have a beanbag like this big, you know, the whole floor, the TV to the couch? Uh, and I'm, you know, fairly impulsive and a doer. So turn off the TV, drive down to the fabric store, buy some fabric, roll it out on the floor, cut out two figure eights, start sewing them together, jam my mom's sewing machine. Neighbor lady, uh, finishes sewing it for me, puts a zipper in. I start stuffing it with, you know, uh, old blankets, packing peanuts. I mean, beanbag beads, but couldn't buy enough of those. And so ended up finding my parents' camping mattresses, you know, like a piece of foam rolled up in the basement, bungee cord around it. Chop those up on a paper cutter into little, little, you know, squares and 3 weeks of putting stuff inside this thing, and it was full and squishy, not like a beanbag at all. It was like a giant pillow. And everywhere I take it, everybody's freaking out like, oh my gosh, where'd you get that? We just used it. And eventually, this is actually 3 years later, I took a break to serve a mission for my church. I came back to university. I'm 21 years old now and, and my neighbors had, and, and had seen this thing go up and down the street. I'm back to living my life, dating, drive-in movies, the beach. We'd take this thing everywhere and they'd see it go up and down. They said, hey, make us one for Christmas. I said, no, you know, it was too hard. But, uh, they convinced me to make them one. And, uh, I needed a, I need, if I'm going to make it, I'm going to sell it. I need a name for this business. Love, peace, hate, war, hippie bag, love bag, love sack. Okay. Paid $25 at the Utah State Tax Commission at the day to register Love Sack, the business, in 1998, and made that sack for my neighbor. Their friends want one now, you know, their friends want one. And it just became this little side business while I was in college, actually waiting tables to pay my way through school because, you know, this little business I started didn't make any money. We wouldn't make money for years to come. And it was kind of a pain in my butt, but everyone loved it and kind of just kept it going all the way through school.

And so the thing is that, what were you studying while you were in there? I mean, what— where did you think you were headed?

I was originally a music major, then an engineering major, then a business major, and I ended up graduating in Mandarin Chinese. Which is what I spoke on my mission. It was a— ended up being a fast route out year 4, and it worked out pretty good.

Yeah. And so when do you— how do you kick back and get involved with LoveSac at more of a high energy level? How did that— how did you go back to that?

So I'm doing this all through school and it came time to graduate. I have, I have a number of job interviews. I'm putting on suits, flying around the country, taking interviews. Meanwhile, you know, everyone I told I was closing down LoveSac to go take a real job was like, no, you can't close LoveSac. I love my LoveSac. And so I said, okay, we'll give it one last shot. And we took it to this trade show in Chicago, um, where, uh, big businesses look for new product ideas and tons of people jumped on it and loved it. You know, I had to credit card my way there. Act like we were a real company. I was still not graduated. And, um, lots of people liked it. No one bought anything. So I come back home ready to shut this thing down. I'm stuffing the last few Love Sacks at the factory and my phone rings and it's an out-of-state number. So I think maybe it's a, you know, from the show. So I turn off the foam shredder, brush the foam out of my hair and Answer it, you know, LoveSac Corporation. And, uh, it was the Limited too. So at the time, this is one of the biggest retailers in the United States, Limited Corporation, you know, Limited, Victoria's Secret, Express, all of it. And their little girl stores wanted 12,000 little LoveSacs for Christmas. And if, you know, this is April and they want it for this fall. And they FedEx me this piece of blue fuzzy fabric with little silver specks in it. He said, it's gotta be this fabric. It's gotta be by this date. We'll pay you this price for each one. Super low, super tight. And I said, no problem. We're the best not beanbag company in the world. And they had no idea it was me and a buddy and like this wood chipper thing that we used to shred foam with in the back of this old factory that let us operate out of there. So, um, I fly to North Carolina on credit cards. I find the fabric. It's way too expensive. The guy says, look, I'm a direct importer. You're not gonna. Find it for any cheaper. I'm about to give up again, but I'm looking around this guy's fabric booth and he's got all these sample boxes of fabrics and there's all this Chinese writing on the boxes and I can read it. That's what I've done in school.

Oh, okay.

And I can read the address of the fabric mill that makes this fabric. And so I credit card my way to Shanghai, China. I go downtown to their sales office of this fabric mill. I said, hi, I'm Sean. I'm in English. Yeah. I said, hi, I'm Sean. I'm here for the Limited 2. I need 12, I need 30,000 yards of this fabric you make. And they said, yeah, no problem. We make that. It's $5 a yard. I said, no, no, no, I need it for like half that. Their salespeople, as they will in China, just start talking in front of me in Mandarin about how much it costs to make this fabric. And I knew that they could hit my price. So I just sat there for like 3 days and negotiated and negotiated and negotiated. And finally they, you know, they come down and they're okay, we'll do the deal. You know, uh, we'll cut them, we'll sew them, we'll ship them to you for this low price. You've got to stuff them in America, obviously. I said, great, no problem. And they said, we just need a $65,000 deposit to get started. This is 2001. It's a lot of money for me. I'm a waiter.

I'm still a waiter.

I'm still not graduated. I'm like 2 weeks from graduation. And, uh, I said, no problem. I go back to my hotel room. I call the Limited Corporation. I said, hi, I'm here over in China at my factory. I'm ready to build your stuff. I need a $65,000 deposit to start. They said, well, you know, we're the Limited. We don't give deposits. I said, well, we're Lovesac. We've never done a deal without a deposit. What's wrong with you? And, uh, they end up wiring me $65,000 to my University of Utah credit union account. Because that's all I had for LoveSac. And I wire that to China. I fly back home. I, I send every credit card offer out on the same day, get 10 of them back. I max out every credit card building a factory to stuff LoveSacs when they arrive. And I'm trying to find more of these wood chipper things that were converted to foam grinders. And I'm out in farm country, you know, putting this thing together in this old warehouse. And these were dangerous and slow. And I said, do you have anything bigger? And this farmer guy's like, oh yeah. And he shows me this Haybuster hay grinder that's meant to shred those 2,000-pound bales of hay. I got a farm and drive back, get a big bag of foam. We take it up there and huck it into this thing. It's powered by a tractor. The first bag of foam I throw up into this thing, it just jams the machine and, and, and it kills the tractor. This farmer's like, what? You know, because he's seen this thing shred 2x4s and tables and barn wood. And, but foam is, you know, tricky. It stretches and it wraps and it binds. So we had to make some alterations to the machine. Anyway, fast forward, I get an agricultural loan from the United States government for farm equipment. I bring it downtown Salt Lake. I put the Haybuster in this, you know, dock-high-level factory door. I, the tractor has to stay outside 'cause it blows diesel smoke. And every morning I'm connecting these with this driveline, power takeoff off the back of a tractor, dumping, you know, 15 gallons of diesel fuel into this tractor, standing on the tire, get the thing cranked up. My, my, you know, 30 temp laborers show up and me and 30 of my best friends start stuffing lovesacks shredded by farm equipment every morning. And, you know, we, we're running behind, so we've got to run double shifts. And anyway, we get through this first order. We make no money. 9/11 happens in the middle of this order. Price of fuel goes up, price of foam goes up, everything goes up, and we break even. And so now I'm 24 years old. I have credit card debt, $55,000 in debt. I own a tractor and a hay buster and a bunch of people we keep working. So we hadn't been out selling. So I scramble, I go to the big furniture stores, Colorado, I go to Furniture Warehouse and the big guys. And I said, look how cool, we make these giant beanbags, we can suck all the air out, we ship them in these duffel bags, we invented this. Covers come off, you can wash them now. And they just look at us like, you're a bunch of kids. We don't know. Nobody's going to pay $500 or $1,000 for a beanbag. Your name is stupid. You know, no thanks. And I mean, this happened to us multiple times in different states. So we, we open our own store. My cousin says, let's open our own store. He had been in retail. And, uh, we go to the malls and they laugh at us and said, look, we got Abercrombie and Pottery Barn, like, what's LoveSac? So, uh, we got rejected everywhere. Finally, one mall calls me back and says, okay, look, we'll let you in for Christmas. We've got the Winter Olympics coming to Salt Lake City. We need to fill these spaces. We'll let you in, and then after Christmas and the Olympics, we'll, we'll get a real tenant. And they put us on a temp lease, and, and we maxed out my cousin's credit cards this time to do the carpet and the paint and the neon sign and look good, and it looked amazing. And we opened our doors just hoping to sell something and start paying off our debts. And it just exploded. You know, the brand just resonated with people. We were selling hoodies, we were selling sacks. People were asking about the couch in the corner. Wasn't for sale. Obviously led us to later on invent Sactionals, which, you know, fast forward all the way to today with a lot of stuff in the middle we can come back to. LoveSac's doing $700 million with most of that being sectionals. You know, these sectional sofas we've invented, you might've seen on TV. You can change and rearrange and wash them endlessly. It's the best-selling sectional in the United States of America. And we still sell sacks and we, and we still sell other comfy stuff, but that's our core business today. Um, 2,000 employees, 300 stores, public on NASDAQ. Profitable, cash flow positive, and with big things coming. So that's 2,000.

So now today, 2,000 employees, you have 300 stores. We don't necessarily need to race through that. I mean, it's like kind of like a big deal. How, how many countries are you in?

Only the United States. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, it's, um, so it's amazing.

You got a huge, you know, your future looks bright.

We, you know, it's funny, uh, I tell people all the time, it's just as challenging at 70,000, 7 million, 70 million. I remember at 70 million, you know, standing in front of my class at Parsons teaching. Sustainable business models, feeling like a total fraud because if we didn't get this bridge funding, this is back in 2018, 2017, we, we wouldn't make it to an IPO, which even that of course is never a sure thing. And I thought my business could be done in 90 days at $70 million and now $700 million and you're still fighting, you're still in competition. They're still trying to eat you. You know, your tariffs hit.

World Wars.

I mean, everything's trying to kill you in the jungle. So we fight on.

There's no limit to the meteors that are falling out of the sky at all times, looking, looking for you to fall on your head. You know, and one thing I'd like to point out to everybody right now is also you had an idea. Obviously you have an idea that's a hit and, you know, that people love. But in the beginning, it's a lot like, Sean, in the music business. My brother was with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for 40 years, you know, until the day he died. You know, he was his right-hand man. You know, he, you know, Tom would get up in the morning and call Alan, what are we going to do today?

You know?

And so the thing is that when they got started, a lot of their original hits that got played for 40-something years in the beginning is like, nah, You know, we're not interested, you know. And then eventually they did. The story is that one of them, like Breakdown or one of their original songs, a DJ in Boston liked it one night at 10:00 at night and started playing it over and over and over. And then people started saying, hey, I like that, you know, play that again, you know. And then it kind of like took off, went to number one in Boston, then went all over the country. But the thing is, like striking the match when you have a, you know, like You know, you take all of these great acts, like the Rolling Stones couldn't get a hit, you know, when they got started over there, they're blues band and, you know, they're in London, a blues band. And it was the, they went to lunch one day and their manager ran into, 'cause it's a very small area, London, and they ran into McCartney and Lennon going to lunch. And the manager, Andrew Oldham, whatever his name is, said, "Hey, we gotta break through these guys. You know, you've had several number ones up now." And they're like, "You got a song for us? You know, you got any songs you're not—" They said, "Now that you mention it, we've got this song that we just can't make work. It doesn't fit for us." And that was the Rolling Stones' number one hit. And so the thing is, obviously they were, you know, ready. They were together, but they couldn't find the breakthrough. And finding that breakthrough, and then you're off to the races. But when you have this idea, Lovesac, you went through— I wonder if you, you talk about this stuff when you're in Parsons School of Design, which is, for people who don't know, one of— I don't know the ranking, but certainly at the top of the ranking of the elite design schools in the world, uh, Parsons in New York. And I've got friends that have sent their kids there. But the thing is that they've got you as an instructor there. And so I think that's one thing to tell these kids. If you're trying to make a breakthrough, you might have these— you might have the essentially the equivalent cure for cancer, but it's going to take you a long time to get people to believe it actually does, you know, to take you serious. And that marketing breakthrough thing, when When y'all took off, that had to be amazingly satisfying to you when you opened that store, even though you still got the trash and everything. Amazingly satisfying to say, yes, you know, I can trust my instincts.

No doubt. The trick is, at least in my experience, you're just never done. You know, there's not— there's not— even though those moments are Amazing and satisfying, and I've learned to try to appreciate them. I, I tried to appreciate going public and standing on NASDAQ and ringing the bell, all these things. You just keep going and there's more meteors and there's more challenges. And even though I would rather be at $700 million than $70 or, or $7,000 or $70,000, it's, uh, No easier. You might argue it's even harder. Um, but, uh, but it's fun. And I think we, we have to learn to embrace the, as they say, embrace the journey. Because if you don't, you blink. In my case, 27 years go by. And, uh, if you're not careful, you'll miss it or you'll wish it away.

By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively actively looking for an edge. And that's who I built the Big Hitter community for— not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum. Not theory, proximity. Proximity to operators who are actually in the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have in the podcast, direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single week. This isn't a It's not a hype group. It's not networking for the sake of networking. It's where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening and you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to joinbighitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside. Well, that's one of the things that I, you know, we teach inside of the, you know, our organization is that you, one of the skills you gotta develop is to appreciate what's happening to you while you're going. So like things are happening to me that very few people get a chance to experience in life. And it's a lot, you really need to enjoy the ride in terms of celebrating and being grateful for the kind of things you're able to experience that very few people, 'cause you could always go back and be average. It's only a challenge for you, Shawn, because you're continuing to fight and you're continuing to face up to these opportunities. It's hard to say it, but Sean, you're facing happy problems. Okay. At this point, you know what I'm saying? And the thing that I would say to you, okay, this is not a coaching session for Sean, but what I would say to you is you must realize the insane skill set that you've developed. You need combination of skills and situations where, you know, you would be able to go into situations that I wouldn't be able to go into. And you're going to come out and you're going to come out pretty well because you're going to know what they're looking for, what they want to hear, how to present it in a certain kind of way. When you're going to run into a certain kind of problem in terms of retail or financing or manufacturing and this, that, the other, you're going to kind of know, you know, you're going to have a heads up on anybody coming behind you and/or a competitor because you've been there before. You've been building up a priceless set of skill sets and experiences and contacts. And the fact that you can't relax now is I think basically God telling you, I've got bigger things for you, Sean. And you know what I'm saying? You're not off. You know, you've done well so far, young man, but I've got bigger things for you. And so, you know, because the thing is, Sean, no matter how big this stuff is, it's not bigger than what you can handle. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, you know, you know, and of course, we need to learn how to, you know, take a break, take a breather. Space it out. But that's a skill set too, you know, to where you can kind of recover your breath. You're recovering from running a marathon, you know. Yeah, you know, there's, there's a science to that if you're going to continue to run marathons, because there are people that will go out and run 52 marathons in a year, you know, have that kind of fitness level. But they, you know, you have to learn the skill set. Like if you run the marathon the first time, you're not going to, you know, recovering from it is the last thing in your mind. I just want to get to the finish line. And so the thing is, you've learned priceless things. You have no idea, Sean, the things you know that like I don't know.

I hope so. I mean, and I, and I, and I cherish that. Like for me learning, you know, the other side of this room is nothing but books, your books on the shelf. Um, I try to read every book, you know, that's relevant. Books have been a big mentor to me and I believe in learning and I, and I believe, like you said, all of these experiences have value. Yeah. And when you go—

let me ask you this. How do you— let's— we should— it's such a huge thing. You get on a TV competition and you meet Richard Branson. Now, this is a guy who stared down the challenges many times in his life. What was that like to get around him? And what were some of the first and continuing lessons you learned from being around a Richard Branson?

I mean, look, Branson is an icon. Um, I got to spend 7 or 8 weeks with him traveling around the world filming this reality TV show when I was 27 years old. And of course, I'm sure didn't appreciate that enough, but tried to. And, uh, yeah, I've, I, I learned a lot just by being around him, observing, you know, he's, he's a unique person on the earth. He, uh, still writes handwritten notes to people, which I admire. He, um, is very kind. He's a lot more shy and soft-spoken than a lot of people would imagine because he's so, you know, PR-worthy. Um, but, you know, I think he's mostly what he appears to be is when he, when he shows up. Um, And I think in general, you know, I think also as a foil, one thing, in other words, like when I won that reality TV show Rebel Billionaire in 2005, I sort of then expected to go on and have a career like his and build 250 companies and, you know, whatever. And here I am now, 27 years later, still running Lovesac as CEO. Doing something I'm very proud of. Um, in a lot of ways, I think Lovesac will grow to be even a bigger and more sticky brand than Virgin. And I say that with a lot of respect. And what I mean is our ambition is to, is not to sell a bunch of couches and, you know, retire with a bunch of money. I'm trying to build a Nike. I'm trying to build an Apple. I'm trying to build the most loved brand in America. And it, may take another 2 decades, but I'm okay with that. And my point is, that wasn't always my ambition. I kind of thought we'd grow LoveSac, sell LoveSac, move on to the next thing. And over time, my ambitions changed, and I realized, like, as much as I respect and admire Branson, I am not Branson. I have a different drumbeat inside of me. I have a different ambition that's evolved over time. I want different things. For the world through business. And so I learned a lot both from him and about me by being in his orbit.

And the thing is that obviously you learned that, you know, that's important to know. You know, you can't— you know, you're not intimidated by the fact that you're not Richard Branson. You're yourself.

You know, we can't second-guess our story. You know, it's a— this is kind of dark, but it's a bit like when you have friends who, you know, get divorced after 3 or 4 kids, and you can't even necessarily regret that marriage because to do so would be to regret those children, and they're amazing children. And so we have to embrace our story and not lose sight of the bigger, um, story at play. By the way, like, I, I'm super proud of what we're building. I'm still super ambitious. The LoveSac has got to grow into the billions from the hundreds of millions, and we're on our way. But if I do that and fail to live up to my kids' expectations of me as a dad, I would feel like a total failure. And so there are multiple, um, stories playing out simultaneously for all of us, not just for me. And I just think it's important that we figure out— there's nothing more satisfying. You know, you talked about how satisfying it must have felt to open that first store. Totally go public, all these big milestones. But honestly, I think the most, uh, durable satisfaction for me comes as I better understand who I am, what I really want, and align my life to achieve those things. And it has nothing to do honestly with how much money. I, I know a lot of people that have managed their money better, far wealthier than I am. I would have made decisions differently, but because I know what I want, I feel very satisfied when I'm aligning to that. And I think a lot of people somehow either don't take the time or, or just can't find even who they are, what they really want. And so they keep chasing things perhaps that they just think they should be chasing, like more money or like another hit or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah.

And the thing is that you've talked about in realizing your story, when did you know you settle into that? Is my— like, my life is going to be my life. And, you know, there's a certain amount of maturity that and perspective that you've got to have to where you can kind of settle into that, where you stop You know, you stop comparing yourself to other people because we're all unique. But, you know, you don't apologize for the things that you're not good at, you know, because if I can sit down with myself and I could be, you know, I have tried to get myself to write these personal notes my entire life. I came up underneath a guy who wrote the personal notes. Ronald Reagan wrote personal notes. You know, you see, like, this is a key to greatness. And every now and then, you know, I I have gone through periods of time where I have to sign my signature 900 times at the end of every month to the organization and got to where I can't hardly move my hand now. But the deal is, in terms of writing, making that a part of your life, that's just how they are, how they think. This is something I can't do, but I can do other things. You know what I'm saying? It's like you could make an impact where you could make an impact. And, but that's to me, the personal notes is always a funny thing because I'm always beating myself up that I don't do more of them.

Well, and frankly, even the, we all beat ourselves up or feel guilt or feel like we're coming short when we're not doing anything, you know, working out every day, writing personal notes, you know, meditating, fitness, health, personal outreach, networking, reading. I would go on and on for all the guilt that we carry, for all the ways that we're falling short. But, um, you know, I think as long as we're, as long as we're being honest with ourselves and as long as we're not just subject purely to inertia, laziness, uh, you know, um, or other people's expectations, then I think we, we can be a little easier on ourselves, you know, and, and, and again, try to look, I try to remind myself every day, the past is gone. The future does not exist. The only thing we have is now. And if we, if we can do now well, then we're probably doing okay.

Well, you know, the, uh, it's interesting, you know, we'll touch on this one more time, but like Jensen Huang, who's, uh, of NVIDIA, you know, what biggest companies in the world. He's on a podcast recently with Les, whatever his name is, one of the biggest podcast guys. And they're both talking about, you know, the most important value for a CEO is humanity. And, you know, it's, you know, obviously you have to deliver on the growth side and the real-world side. You know, they don't want a CEO out there talking about love and humanity and the stock price is cratering and they're missing all of their deadlines. You know, you've got to have all of those But on the other side of it is like, why are we doing this stuff? You know, what is the impact to the world? You know, the positive impact. And so you hear this guy who's right inside the robot world and making all these chips and all these things. And he's talking about the human side of things and making sure that, you know, our values are aligned and all. And I'll wrap up with this side of it, but I get your take on it. I was telling our team yesterday, it's like inside of our community, I said, you know what we do, which is basically We have precision training and we have a self-development environment. And training and environment are the things that plug the gap, allow people to plug the gap between— they go to a conference and they hear a bunch of ideas firehosed into their mind. Then they go home and nothing ever changes much. You know what I'm saying? You got to go back to an environment. You've got to have somebody come in and precisely— you know, they can't say like, okay, what you do is you go to China All right. Now, what you need to do is you're going to go over there and you're going to go over there and get a contract. Yeah. How about great? Thank you. Now, where in China? Who do I talk to? What subject do I bring? You know, that's the precision training where you can implement that stuff. But the— but even billionaires, you know what I was making the point to the team is that even billionaires need this stuff, you know, because none of us, you know, if we grow up, we're super successful on one side of our life. That doesn't mean the other sides of life our family, our health, our spiritual values, all of those things. That doesn't mean we've done anything over there because we devoted everything to being one-sided. You're like a lollipop. You look good, but then it's real easy to knock you over. And so this is something we all deal with, and we don't know what we don't know. But getting out there in this world, you have been forced to learn a lot of the things that you didn't know And would you speak to the fact that of all the things you've had to learn, they're not that— it's kind of like coding. It's not impossible, but you got to learn it. And, you know, it's all a series of sequences and processes and people. And, you know, there's some skills you've got to develop. But this is— these are things out there. The unknown are things you can learn if you get someone to show you and you'll take the time to walk through it step by step. Would you say that's a fairly accurate statement?

Yeah, look, I wrote this book, um, Let Me Save You 25 Years. It's, um, I really wrote it for myself, you know, back when I was, uh, I don't know, you know, 18, 21, pick a year. Um, it's the name of my podcast, Let Me Save You 25 Years, and, and it's 25 lessons that I learned from the mistakes, miracles, uh, and these lessons from the Love Sack story. It opens with this lesson, just do something. As I described, LoveSac wouldn't exist if I had just thought about the giant beanbag. I had to get off the couch, drive down, buy some fabric, cut it out. And I had no intention of it being a company. Zero. 3 years into it, I had no intention of it being like a real business. I was just kind of doing it because it kept going. But the second Shaunism in the book is just do the next thing. And you wake up at some point. 5, 10, 15 years in, you know quite a bit about contracts and leases and insurance and, uh, you know, human resources and, uh, accounting, finance, product development, design, engineering. You know, that's what's so beautiful about the opportunity of business is that it is so multifaceted in the end, almost any business, you know, ones like mine, especially you're dealing with real products, real people at scale, you know, real dollars, you know, so it covers so much ground. And if you're just willing to keep doing the next thing, you're going to wake up incredibly capable and intelligent, especially if you're willing to like you said, be humble enough to learn from others, listen, read, and embrace the idea that you're just never baked. You never know too much. You can never know enough. Well, the thing is, what you—

you know, I'm glad you wrote this down because the deal is we always know the next step. Like, if we look like way down the road, no, it's confusing, cloudy there. Yeah. But even in vertigo, I mean, I've been up in the mountains when the clouds come in skiing, you get off the lift, but you always can basically see where your skis are. Okay? Your skis are on ground. Oh, I can move one step forward. You know what I'm saying? You always pretty much know the next step. We had Tom Hunt, the founder and CEO of FAME Podcasting, on Monday, and he was talking about he's starting a new thing. And he said for the last 100 days, he said, Every day I do one more thing. And he says, it's amazing in 100 days how far down the road I am. And, you know, that's basically the pattern for doing anything great. It pretty much does.

Well, it's amazing if, you know, you talk about comparison. We all struggle at times. We all get tired, depressed. Who knows what? But if you're able to just keep doing things, as dumb as that sounds, you're already ahead of at least half the crowd. Because a lot of people, whether you knew it or not, can't even really drag themselves out of bed, can't even really, you know, pick up the phone and make the call, whatever it is, whatever the next thing is. And so you just have to have a little bit of faith that if I do that next thing, as measly as it sounds, Somehow, some way, you know, I'll be able to advance. And I found that even in my darkest times to be incredibly useful.

And the thing is, you know, I'm going to show people I bought your book right before we started. Here's your table of contents. So I appreciate you writing these things down because, you know, folks, it's valuable. I mean, you can do it. You know, the deal is you're listening to this thing is If this is a doable thing, I don't know what's in your heart to do, and it's going to be work, but it's going to be more fun than being average. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be more fun than being sitting there and this eating at you the rest of your life that you didn't go pursue it. And so the thing is basically just do something or sit on the couch and be miserable is the other side of it, you know? Well, it's amazing.

Like, the key is is time. So we all hear about setting goals and writing them down and, you know, manifestation and all these things. It's all real. Like, what I sometimes do, this exercise in our annual big annual meetings at LoveSac, where I, I'll go back a decade and I'll show them a slide that was our, you know, goals from that year. Like, pick a year, 2016 or something. And what's amazing is At the time, I remember those goals were out of reach, seemed, seemed difficult. You know, they were really stretched things for us. Every one of them came true. All of them. Like, if you're able to write it down, exercise a bit of belief, and, but here's the key, be willing to go as long as it takes. And, and by the way, it may not take that long. You may get bought out, you may get this opportunity, you may merge with something else and, and the goals change. But what's amazing is, so, so the last Seanism in my book, you know, if, if you can maintain top ambition, whatever that is for you. So for me, I've told you on this call already, we're trying to build not, not the most loved couch brand, not the most you know, the greatest home brand. We're trying to build the most loved brand in America, full stop. Which, that's a tall order. I mean, what, what even is that? Is that Apple? Is that, uh, uh, I'm— I don't even know what would it be, you know, like Microsoft, Nike. I don't even know. But, but it's on that board. It's on that level. And I know people listen to this, be like, oh, love, like love sack. I didn't even hear of it before this, or giant beanbags, whatever. I'm not joking though. And what's crazy is, as bonkers as that sounds to be at that level, if I'm willing to go long enough, I actually know it can happen. The question is, do I have the willpower to just let it go and go and just, and just decide I'm going to go as long as it takes? When you combine any ambition with infinite patience, It can all be achieved. And so I, you know, my goal is not to be a billionaire personally, and that could happen. My goal is not to start 250 companies, you know, who knows, that could happen. But when you're willing to set a goal, and I know what mine is, and pair it with infinite patience, it's incredibly powerful because it then frees you and it frees you from feeling like, ah, you know, I didn't get as far as I wanted this year. I'm a failure. Just let it go. Just decide, I will go as long as it takes. And of course, we have goals for this year and next year and whatever, and usually we kind of make them. Sometimes we fall a little bit short. But when you're able to look back over a decade— so work in decades. I challenge you to work in decades. And not a lot of people are willing to do that.

Play the long game, folks. And you know, the phrase for that, Sean, is You know, don't— you can't hold back from putting a massive effort in to get the thing going, but give time for your efforts to compound and multiply. You know, you're not going to get multiplication overnight. You know, it gives— so it's going to take some time for your, your efforts to multiply. But if you stay in the game, all of that early effort has a chance to kind of stay engaged and contribute to your forward progress. And so what a wrap up here to the public part of this. What I didn't tell you is I like to wrap up the public part of the podcast early and after about 45 minutes, you know, 40, 30, 45 minutes. And I'm going to ask you to hang around and I'm going to take you back in our green room for about 10 minutes where I record a session for my pro-level people inside our community, you know, the people that are the, the cold-blooded killers, you know, the ones, the ones who are not afraid to work and they're hungry for growth, you know. So I like to save them some really backroom type stuff. So anyway, what I want people to know is that in your book, you know, I want to wrap this part up and get the darn book. You only put it— did you put it out last year? You said you wrote it a couple years ago.

I'm really proud of it. It's a strange book. Like, you could read it in an hour. And I tried to make these, you know, lessons I call Shawnisms, really dumb and simple and but applicable to everything, you know, in life. These are, these are things that I wish that I had really embraced when I was younger. And it took me, sadly, 25 years to, to learn most of these things.

Well, what's so brilliant about that is I tried to take the same approach in my book. But the thing is that high achievers are usually short attention span. You know what I'm saying? It's like you got to get to the point and get on. They've got a lot of things spinning in their head. And so you got to be able to say it simply. And also, if you— let me just tell you this. You want to make a presentation to Warren Buffett or that caliber person? Keep it simple. It's not because they're stupid. It's they got a lot going on in their mind. And you need to get to the point because they're, they're like, not going to give you 45. They're going to give you a crack in their attention span. And if you can't say something worth hearing, that crack closes and they're on to the next thing. You know, they got a lot to do. But it's the same thing with new people on the way up. But what you've done so well, you know, just do something. Just do the next thing. Be willing to sweep floors. You never know until, you know, you try, until you move, you know, you be, you know, anyway, be an insatiable learner, you know, push yourself. Anyway, on and on and on, all the way thing. And if you're looking, folks, you know, you got to be specific to be dynamic. If you're going to move, you got to have things you're working on. Issues have got to be clearly established. If you want to fix a Ferrari and it's not running, you can't just go in there, lift the hood up and say, abracadabra, be healed, Ferrari. You know what I'm saying? If the Ferrari's not running, It doesn't matter how much potential, there's something wrong. Spark plug, a wire pulled loose, something. And so you got to go find that specific thing. But then when you plug it, all of the rest of the machinery can go to work and everything. So if you're not functioning at full capacity right now, and only you know that, get in there and fix it. Get your head under the hood. And Shawn has got a great checklist for you to go through. And so Thanks for writing the book, John. Thanks for being on. Thanks for what you're doing. And it's going to be fun to see the growth of LoveSac. And, you know, they, you know, wish you the best with the book. So thanks so much. Do you have a parting takeaway for people who stayed with us this point that you'd like them to take away from listening today? That would mean something to them, that would be a difference maker.

I've been reflecting lately on even just my own behavior sometimes when, again, I get worn down by all the things. And I think one of the habits that makes it possible for me to continue to have success is the ability to just do it now, you know, do something right now, you know. And I keep a— I keep this ongoing list that I just— for my personal life or for my business life, just stuff that— just individual things that have to get done. And it's incredibly powerful to be able to just wipe one of those off once a day, 5 times a day, as much as you can. But just do things now and stop putting anything off. And it builds momentum on itself. So that's the best piece of advice I could give you. All right.

Well, we're going to dig into a little bit of your lessons you learned from your Parsons Design experience here back when we get in the, the locker room section. But thanks so much. And for those of y'all who love what you're hearing, you want more tech, check us out at joinbighitters.com. Thanks so much, Sean. Cool. Thanks for having me. That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor, share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper? Join us inside the Big Hitter community at joinbighitters.com. That's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying, and there's no standing still. Keep winning, and I'll see you next week.