How Authenticity Built a Global Brand | Sean Whalen x Ryan Alford Podcast

Speaker 1 Look, we get it.

Speaker 2 You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that.

Speaker 7 And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people

Speaker 1 better?

Speaker 11 AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that, from crafting the perfect survey, which is harder than you might think, to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly.

Speaker 5 SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business.

Speaker 11 Try it today at surveymonkey.com slash Ryan.

Speaker 16 What does true success really look like, and are you brave enough to pursue it?

Speaker 17 Put on your big boy pants and get after it.

Speaker 16 In this episode, we sat sat down with Sean Whalen, founder of Lion's Not Sheep.

Speaker 16 Listen in as he shares his raw, unfiltered journey into building a multi-million dollar brand by speaking his truth and encouraging others to do the same.

Speaker 16 A lot of great insights from this conversation that starts right about now.

Speaker 18 This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production.

Speaker 18 We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month,

Speaker 17 taking the bs out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes you ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks well it starts right about now right about i know we could go a lot of rabbit trails a lot of things 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.

Speaker 17 Let's give our audience, you know, the recap of Sean.

Speaker 17 I'll keep it super simple. I mean,

Speaker 17 I was really successful at a young age. I grew up in a single parent home, built a couple of companies and made a lot of money in my 20s.

Speaker 17 And I talk about in my book how I felt like I was juggling bowling balls. You know, I essentially quit juggling all the bowling balls.

Speaker 17 And I don't know what a midlife crisis is, but I left my marriage. I left my business.

Speaker 17 I stuck my head up my ass for over a year trying to figure out not how to make money, how to build business, but like, why was I even here? Like, what's the purpose of all this?

Speaker 17 I went on an interesting journey. I got really depressed, suicidal, and found myself in a really, really, really dark dark place.
And look, we get it.

Speaker 2 You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that.

Speaker 7 And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns.

Speaker 5 But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people better?

Speaker 11 AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that, from crafting the perfect survey, which is harder than you might think, to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly.

Speaker 5 SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business.

Speaker 11 Try it today at surveymonkey.com/slash Ryan.

Speaker 17 You can go whenever you're

Speaker 15 Hey, small business owners, let's talk about how Found can help you wrangle your finances once and for all. When was the last time you felt like you had your business finances totally under control?

Speaker 15 Every expense categorized, every receipt tracked, every invoice sent. Oh, and you were prepared for tax season.
If the answer is never, you're not alone. And that's what Found is for.

Speaker 15 Found is reimagining what business banking should be by putting your bookkeeping, invoicing, and tax tools directly into your business checking account.

Speaker 15 They've automated things like expense tracking, finding write-offs, and budgeting for tax time. You can even send invoices for free and pay your contractors, everything all from one app.

Speaker 15 Look, I struggle with this myself. I pay contractors left and right,

Speaker 15 here, there, everywhere. Keeping up with all of it as a small business owner with multiple companies is next to impossible.
That's what I love. Found.
They help me with this. They'll help you.

Speaker 15 I basically replaced three apps with just found, and I don't miss the stress at all, and neither will you. Take back control of your business today.
Open a found account for free at found.com.

Speaker 15 That's f-o-u-n-d.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank.
Banking services are provided by Lead Bank, member FDIC.

Speaker 17 I ended up hiring a coach, trying to figure out how do I get out of this mindset? How do I shift things around?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 To make a really long story short, I ended up sharing one night some real dark shit and really just told the truth.

Speaker 17 For lack of better words, I just fucking told the truth for once. And that post ended up going viral.
Millions and millions and millions of people bought it.

Speaker 17 I went from having like 200 friends on Facebook to almost 40,000 followers in a matter of 10 days. And in that process, you know, I left the company, I left everything.

Speaker 17 And one day the phrase lions, not sheep, came into my mind. I was looking at this catalog and there was another company.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And it was like, no, dude, fuck that. Like, like, what do I want to do? Like, who do I want to be? Like, what life do I want to build? And when Lions on the Sheep came to me, I

Speaker 17 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.
And

Speaker 17 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, where that's badass. Where'd you get that?

Speaker 17 Can I 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

Speaker 17 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 uh it it became and what is now a huge movement where you know millions of people engage with the content and know about it and and uh just recently we've had some people that have um guy name ion smith who's in uh new jersey who the governor was trying to shut his gym down 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 open up instagram and there's this guy who's like super defiant like screw the governor whatever whatever and he's got a line of cheap hat on he ended up just seeing one of our ads and bought the hat and his post went viral and it was really interesting over the course of the next couple of days.

Speaker 17 He was on CNN, Fox, Tucker, Carl, Sabund, all these big, big shows. And he was wearing the Lions Not Sheep gear and our free man t-shirt.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And it just kind of brought me full circle. Like, it's pretty freaking amazing.
How enlightening was it?

Speaker 17 I can only imagine like like you said you felt like you lived not necessarily a lie but you never felt comfortable being transparent and being maybe vulnerable if that's if i can use that word sure how enlightening was that moment when holy 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.

Speaker 17 It was. And what's interesting is we're all programmed to lie.
Okay. I don't care who's watching this, black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor.
All of us were programmed the exact same way.

Speaker 17 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 would be pleasing to everyone.

Speaker 17 Don't wrestle anybody's feathers. And that's literally what we do.
We're told, tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. But the ramifications for telling the truth are dark.
They're bad.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 It's not because there's a lack of money or a 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.

Speaker 17 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 you doing? I'm like, I'm good.

Speaker 17 Well, then I was like, oh, shit, Bob killed himself. We didn't even know Bob was sad.
Bob looks like he's got this ideal life. Well, no one thinks that they're lying.

Speaker 17 The reality is, if you're not speaking the truth, then what is it?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 It's like, what are you doing? Are you speaking your truth, yes or no? I noticed two things that happened. Number one,

Speaker 17 people resonated with my message. Millions of people resonated with it.
And the second thing that I saw after I shared this was that I felt better. It was almost like, okay,

Speaker 17 you know what I mean? And so when I talk to entrepreneurs and business owners and people, I'm like, dude, you're a better father when you feel better. You're a better mother when you feel better.

Speaker 17 You're a better everything when you feel better.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Something has shaped Sean Whalen at some point in life.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I was actually a really quiet kid. I was really reserved.
I was a chubby little kid.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I mean, you're out basically selling God, where you're going door to door, pitching God to people. And it was something I was really passionate about.

Speaker 17 It was something that, like, I didn't grow up in the Mormon church. I grew up Catholic.
And so, I was kind of a recent convert to the church.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 Like, why do you like that water? Okay, great.

Speaker 17 You know, whatever, but like really fucking listening to people and hearing them and knowing what's driving them and and something that i've always been fascinated about and with is is what's behind it everybody knows they're being sold something so we've already got that out of the way but what are you trying to tell me what are you trying to communicate with me if the answer is a simple no then just 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 you know we're in a digital agency here and we work with 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 what have been some of those mechanics of you know because i've heard you talk about it 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 for the tactics and the, in the, and some of the ways with which you've seen growth.

Speaker 17 Can you talk about some of that? I found for me that I embodied Lions Not Sheep. It literally was for me.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 17 Like when I wrote my book, which has sold over half a million copies completely organically, I mean, I wrote a book that I wanted to read.

Speaker 17 And so for me, Lions Not Sheep, it 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?

Speaker 17 You're

Speaker 17 either the lion or you're the sheep, which is great, you know, but everybody now wants to jump on that, right? And they want to plug into that emotion.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And I think that's what really makes Lions Not Sheep unique. And I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this.

Speaker 17 And it's really difficult to do is having the consistency of delivering content and messaging.

Speaker 1 Look, we get it.

Speaker 2 You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that.

Speaker 7 And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people

Speaker 1 better?

Speaker 11 AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that, from crafting the perfect survey, which is harder than you might think, to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly.

Speaker 5 SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business.

Speaker 11 Try it today at surveymonkey.com/slash Ryan.

Speaker 17 You can go whenever you're

Speaker 15 hey, small business owners, let's talk about how found can help you wrangle your finances once and for all. When was the last time you felt like you had your business finances totally under control?

Speaker 15 Every expense categorized, every receipt tracked, every invoice sent. Oh, and you were prepared for tax season.
If the answer is never, you're not alone. And that's what Found is for.

Speaker 15 Found is reimagining what business banking should be by putting your bookkeeping, invoicing, and tax tools directly into your business checking account.

Speaker 15 They've automated things like expense tracking, finding write-offs, and budgeting for tax time. You can even send invoices for free and pay your contractors, everything all from one app.

Speaker 15 Look, I struggle with this myself. I pay contractors left and right.

Speaker 15 Here, there, everywhere. Keeping up with all of it as a small business owner with multiple companies is next to impossible.
That's what I love found. They help me with this.
They'll help you.

Speaker 15 I basically replaced three apps with just found.

Speaker 15 And I don't miss the stress at all. And neither will you.
Take back control of your business today. Open a found account for free at found.com.
That's f-o-u-n-d.com.

Speaker 15 Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Lead Bank, member FDIC.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And it wasn't with the objective of selling t-shirts or selling hats or selling any of that shit. I believe that the very best salespeople on planet Earth are never selling anything.
Like

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Where are we going? You know, I know

Speaker 17 you're knee-deep in a lot of things. I know this has opened 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.

Speaker 17 Is it Amazon or just your personal site?

Speaker 17 Yeah. Amazon.

Speaker 17 But where are 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.

Speaker 17 I turned everything on back in March. And what I mean by that is I hired a team.
We come in and we started running ads. I'd never run an ad before.
I'd never put ads out there.

Speaker 17 And we went from that to,

Speaker 17 you know, we were doing two to $3,000 a month of just apparel sales. And we did $463,000 last month of apparel sales in basically 90 days.

Speaker 17 And it fucked some things up. And I learned some very valuable, expensive lessons on production and being able to keep up.
You know, I really do, I'm passionate about this, man. I'm passionate about

Speaker 17 the ability of, especially with men, to really fucking step into who they are.

Speaker 17 And not in some hippy-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.

Speaker 17 Like, why do I fucking hate my life?

Speaker 17 Why am I not doing anything I want to do? I mean, my wife and I, we eat at the same place. We fucking vacation at Disneyland once a year.
Like, what am I doing with my life?

Speaker 17 And Lions Not Sheep and 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?

Speaker 17 Like that 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.

Speaker 17 And I want to be able to show people and show kids and teenagers, like, we got one shot at this reality. We have one shot at this life.

Speaker 17 Go build the shit you want to build.

Speaker 17 That's my end game is I want to leverage what I've got now through social media and the following and connections and whatever but i want somebody to be able to see this hat see this message see this t-shirt resonate with it and have the same feeling of of empowerment and power that i do i don't want to ask you what do you want you've said it i've i've interpreted where you see your legacy but i i do want to kind of ask it because like what do you you know

Speaker 17 When they go Sean Whalen in 50 years, you know,

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 401ks and IRAs,

Speaker 17 my kids are splitting up.

Speaker 17 If I play this game right, I've empowered my children to become their own entrepreneurial, independent creatures.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I was all in every single day, like with my, with my lover, with my kids, with my business, with my message.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I feel like I'm on a pretty good track for that because that's how I feel literally sitting here. I think you're living it.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 We're smart. You know, you and I, everybody, we think, we all think we're smart, right? We should.
You shouldn't think you're dumb, but like, if you're smart, I love to study and I love to read.

Speaker 17 And I, and if you think about all of these

Speaker 17 great men that have come before us, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Steve Jobs, the Steve Coveys, these literal like industry creators, and

Speaker 17 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 questioning.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I would have spent more time with my family. And I consider myself a pretty smart fella.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I get that I'm supposed to be balling and Lambos and Jets and the whole thing. But at the end of the day,

Speaker 17 I'm enjoying my life. I'm living the life and I'm taking the counsel from those guys.

Speaker 17 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 mean, I got a great business.
I got a phenomenal family.

Speaker 17 Like, I literally wake up every day. I'm like, I'm fucking doing it.
I love it, brother. I really appreciate your time, Sean.
Been really enlightening and love what you're doing.

Speaker 17 So if you're looking, follow Sean Whalen on all the social media channels. If you just Google Sean Whalen, W-H-A-L-E-N, you'll find him, SeanWayland.com, lionsnotsheep.com.
Go find him, man. And

Speaker 17 find your truth as well. Sean, really appreciate it.

Speaker 15 Hey, guys, you know where to find us, ryanisright.com. You'll find highlight clips.
You'll find all of my social links at Ryan Alford.

Speaker 5 Got that blue check before you could buy it, baby.

Speaker 17 We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 Right about now.

Speaker 18 This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Speaker 18 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 12 Look, we get it.

Speaker 2 You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that.

Speaker 7 And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people

Speaker 1 better.

Speaker 11 AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that: from crafting the perfect survey, which is harder than you might think, to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly.

Speaker 5 SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business.

Speaker 11 Try it today at surveymonkey.com/slash Ryan.