Shawn Nelson On Humble Beginnings & Future of Lovesac | DSH #222

I think you've done a great job with that.

And one of the things you take seriously is customer feedback and 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 from love sack 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 it'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 uh i just made one i mean i wish i had a better story i was sitting on my parents couch and thought it'd be funny to make like

biggest bean bag in the world and uh got off the couch, drove down to the fabric store, bought some fabric, brought it home, laid it on the floor, you know, 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 like the pattern of a baseball, you know,

and just started cutting the fabric.

And so, you know, only got like,

I don't know, a foot or two into sewing and jammed 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 and 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 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 born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Okay.

Currently reside in southern Utah, St.

George, 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 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.

Yeah, that's good.

But I respect the culture, you know?

Yeah, no, it's actually, Utah's weird.

As you've probably observed, you know, interviewing so many people, there's like a real hustle culture out of Utah.

You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurship, a lot of small businesses.

I mean, just one after another, after another.

And it's, 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.

Nice.

Yeah, you drove over here, right?

Yeah, it's like Red Rocks, you know, 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, you know,

first of all, in our first love sex store, we had a poster.

Like, we had all these crazy posters that we shouldn't have even had.

We had like Elvis' image and,

you know, James Dean.

And anyway, we had Bob Marley.

We had these different posters.

We just like, you know,

superimposed a love sack in there.

And the Elvis poster said, it's not a damn bean bag.

Because it's not.

It's filled with chopped foam.

You know, it's, it's, bean bags filled with those little white beads.

They're actually kind of hard.

Right.

They just move around.

But the, but the foam was like what was magic.

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 beach ball.

Right.

when uh you first sit on it and so you have to engineer it so like the air can get out but then when it escapes you just sink into it like a pillow so it's essentially like a giant you know pillow bigger than your body yeah and that's what always made it you know made us sort of famous got us started and now we sell more couches than anything we invented this really cool couch yeah you have the rest of your life called sactionals and and i mean that's 90 of our 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 to open our second store and then off to California to open more and move the factory from Salt Lake to Mexico.

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 shouldn't have never taken this long.

But now, you know, LoveSack's pushing three quarters of a billion in sales damn um as a public company on nasdaq

and uh 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 sectionals

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What makes that different from like just going to Bob's furniture or something?

Oh, yeah.

No, this is first of all, it's a couch you could have the rest of your life.

In fact, we just moved house back from San Diego, Utah.

It's a long story, And I

unpacking 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.

Wow.

As your life changes, you know, you could move, you could relocate, you can wash them, change them.

I've been through eight or nine different cover sets, fur covers, stripe covers, patterns, you know, any fabric.

And,

you know, 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 design 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, you know, 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, 10K, 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, $10, $15,000.

I mean, it's not uncommon for people to put $15,000, $20,000 setups.

Let me tell you why.

Because,

you know.

Our perfect spot is not necessarily like your proper living room.

We can do that too.

Yeah.

It's beautiful.

But we're like, we're for where you watch TV, hang out, play video games.

We now have a surround sound system built in, completely invisible.

Wow.

It's our patent.

It's our invention.

It's called Stealth Tech.

It's in the couch?

Yeah, we partnered with Harman Karden to develop it, but it's actually our invention.

We took it to them.

They helped us manufacture.

And it'll blow your mind because you have like 4D immersive surround sound

inside of your couch.

You can't see anything.

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 stealth tech.

And

it's other technology as well.

You can set your phone on the arm.

It'll charge your phone.

It's just invisible.

But when you experience this, I mean, you've been in a lot of big homes,

fancy home theaters, whatever.

This is different because it's a little bit more like watching a movie in your car.

Because you're inside of it.

You can feel it.

You're dodging bullets because it's so close.

Like

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 sneakers squeaking on the court you'll hear like the chatter 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 i mean that's three thousand alone to add the stealth tech yeah so these are expensive couches but you're gonna 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 mean i don't know so far mine are 15 16 years old since we invented them okay um that's already way past average oh yeah i mean these are just really well built you know we're really you know and they've evolved a long way actually some of these ones that are older that i was talking about

They're they're not even good compared to the stuff we sell today.

Like they still work the same.

You can hook them together.

And when you put covers on, you'd never know.

Like the pieces, 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, you know, not to bore you with like 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 the cool thing.

Yeah, you buy a bunch of seats and a bunch of sides.

Oh, that sounds pretty good because sometimes setting up a couch is like super hard on it.

No, it's, I mean, you know, it's some work because you 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.

Right.

But.

But no, it's really cool stuff.

And

it's kind of magical.

Yeah.

So if you ever get a chance to go to a Love Sack showroom,

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 still peaks and valleys?

No, man.

I mean, LoveSack, 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 haybuster because I couldn't afford like some, you know, half a million dollar German shredding machine.

Yeah.

This is like me and my buddies

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 bought a tractor.

I got a loan from the government to do that.

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 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, opened another store, started franchising.

And then a couple of years into that, raised.

It's crazier.

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 them 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 know, you're at like 40 stores.

We're going to pair it down to just 12 really good ones and then grow it again.

And it was right on the heels of like

being Branson's protege, winning a million on TV.

It was just like

embarrassing,

demoralizing.

Oh, yeah, man.

So I've been through a full chapter 11 reorg there in 2006.

rebirthed the company.

We probably, at the time of the reorg, 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 actually, it was about 7-ish.

So 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 650 million and 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 up and downs 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 the home category yeah you know now not so much for home but but even through this this tougher time post

home

uh thankfully love sacks been growing really fast and so you know we continue to to beat the market beat the category and just comes down to i think good product and and 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, I mean, so one of the funny things

about marketing at LoveSack, so actually we, let me step back all the way.

We were born at retail

in 2001, our first store, right?

And

we were told malls 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, like, this is dead, that is dead, e-commerce is dead, digital is dead, you know, influence, whatever, all these dead headlines.

Malls are dead.

2001.

That's early.

And here we, yeah, man, here we are in, you know, 2023, whatever.

And I've got 250 locations, most of them in malls.

Wow.

And crushing.

And so,

you know,

marketing is constantly evolving, but it's not as always dramatic as people say.

I mean, there's peaks and valleys.

And my point being, whether it be the mall game,

the retail game, then we pivoted into internet, obviously, through these shrinkable sacks because we suck all the air out of those sacks.

Right.

Because we can, because it's not a beanbag.

Like 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 was good for the internet.

So then digital marketing kicks in.

And then by 2016, we finally, you know, grew the stones to test into TV, which, you know, 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?

Mm-hmm.

And just crushes.

What?

Now, so our ROAS in digital now is insane.

It's insanely high.

On social media?

Yeah, I mean, across all digital, because, though, you got to 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 the with a physical presence because we sell a remarkable product like when you hear about it you're kind of like what

and it but to your point whether even if you're just talking about a sack when you go sit in one it's game changer right and so 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 and um look I think uh 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 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 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 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 of the customer.

They're a friend.

You know, we are able to reach back out and sell you the next thing.

And you can add like Stealth Tech.

You bought your Sactionals 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 Sactionals you bought eight years ago.

Really?

Yeah.

That's crazy.

That's That's designed for life.

Yeah.

And so we have a very different point of view.

And look, it's easy to look at LoveStack and dismiss it like, oh, it's like this beanbag company with 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, you know, 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.

It's Apple and Tiffany's.

You're in good competition there.

Right.

Well, think about it.

We sell.

You leave an Apple store.

How much did you spend?

You're spending at least $1,000.

Okay.

You leave a LoveSach store.

How much did you spend?

They're like, well, if you five.

Five, seven, 10, 15.

The couches, yeah.

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 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 I just think, you know,

LoveSack's an easy one to dismiss because we,

you know, gosh, this beanbag company and like, where did they come from?

You know.

But 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 it's still growing at a very rapid pace.

That's awesome.

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 seriously.

Even to this day, almost.

Walmart doesn't really.

No, we had Lovesack.com crank 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 crazy like 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.

You know, like I said, we were sucking

eight, you know, seven eighths of the volume out of these sacks and shipping them.

I mean, that was a cool combination.

It worked, obviously.

Yeah.

But it's like, 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, you know, we were essentially like a a furniture company.

Once we had couches, we started doing rugs and lamps and bowls and baskets and decorative accessories.

And, you know, 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, you know, Tesla, even with their showrooms.

We said, like,

you know,

why are we trying to, you know, out pottery bar and pottery bar?

We'll never get there.

Yeah.

So

let's get rid of all that stuff.

Let's focus on our really cool, you know, 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.

And it's like, 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.

Yeah.

You know, and they essentially, you know, at this point, there's so much, it's crazy.

Like you walk into Walmart, and I don't, you know, I don't mean to pick on Walmart, but, you know, Walmart is what Walmart is.

Right.

And you start, you know, I don't know, walk through their clothing and stuff.

And if you really look at it,

it's no longer garbage quality.

Like, like the supply, the world supply chain, 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 you know it's out there

you know if you have the ability to market that's the harder part and you've you've obviously cracked that code but what's my point my point is that at this point even quality to some 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 see when you see what they do on video video and when you go into a showroom and play with the blocks you'll understand you patented it yeah it's very special we have like 40 patents it's very special got it and we've defended it very very aggressively okay that's why there's nothing quite like it but the truth is you know the the the patents will eventually run out and there's always different ways to do things yeah the real defense is to build a brand

you know uh and the evidence of that is is in the great brands around us the great brand you're wearing the great brand you know like that's where the real, like, and that's, that's an that's an audacious thing, I know, for like a company called LoveSack to say, but that's our goal.

You know, we're not here to just haw 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 seriously is customer feedback, customer service, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you kind of follow Jeff Bezos' approach with that model.

Look, just like we DM'd, I DM with our customers every day.

Yeah.

About their, me, you know, like, when's the last time you DMed with a public company?

Not you, but, you know, from the CEO of a company that you bought something from.

And 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.

It could 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 have to do is turn it around and hide it or change the cover and it's brand new again, whatever.

Now 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, man.

Oh, man.

You know what's funny is I've been through those moments, you know.

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

stuff.

And I've thought about that, but

I love what we've become.

You know, I began, like I told you, man, I wish I had a better story.

I just made a beanbag to be funny.

Yeah.

It wasn't even a bean bag, but people loved it.

And And then we just kind of hung on, we survived, we hustled ups and downs, the worst kinds of ups and downs.

And then, 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 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 fat.

We barely talk about it.

Because our path to sustainability is not that.

It's making stuff that actually sustains.

Who's talking about that?

Like nobody.

And so, you know, 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 like as you see us design other products in the future, they will that's our brief.

You know, so 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 so my point is, that's why I'm still here.

Like I'm 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.

Like, let's, let's build something that's here in 20, in 50.

Legacy.

Why not?

Yeah.

You know, 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.

So what keeps you going?

I mean, is this company the main thing of your life?

It's everything.

It's everything.

I mean, for my business life, I mean, the truth is, you know, 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 100 pictures in it.

It's like a coffee table.

It's pretty cool.

I think it'll be a neat book.

But

one of my little 25 chapters, so 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 Shaunisms.

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,

you know, 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.

Like this weekend.

Wow.

Yeah.

So it's fun to be in Vegas.

But,

you know,

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 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's good.

You know, that's beautiful that that people like the building all these relationships even you know whether it's whether it's you whether it's my employees, whether it's our customers,

our suppliers, you know, overseas even.

I 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.

And

they've been sewing for us for 13, 14 years.

Dang.

And they have a career here.

And it's sent their kids to college.

I'm proud of that.

It's all part of this hashtag LoveSack family.

So I know this this is not your typical interview.

I know that there's a lot of hustlers that are in it.

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?

You know, 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, yeah, learn from you.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Go get yourself a sectional, guys.

If you're watching this, I'll see you guys next time.