Full Transcript – Shawn David Nelson – Wild Business Growth Podcast #336

This is the full transcript for Episode #336 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Shawn David Nelson – Lovesac, Let Me Save You 25 Years. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Shawn David Nelson 0:00
Human beings, almost more than anything. Hate uncertainty.

Max Branstetter 0:23
Well, you are certainly welcome back to Wild Business Growth. Welcome back to Wild Business Growth. This is your place to hear from a new wild entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host. Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. That’s MaxPodcasting.com I just, you know, really worked up a breath there. This is episode three plus three equals six, and today’s guest is Shawn David Nelson. Sean is the founder and CEO of Lovesac, the iconic company, maker of couches and bean bags and so many things. And he’s also the author and podcast host of Let Me Save You 25 Years. In this episode, we talk insights from all phases of Shawn’s life, of the Lovesac story, and even some of the top Shawnisms that have shaped Shawn’s and Lovesac’s success. It is Mr. Lovesac. Enjoyyyyyyy the showwwwwwww! Aaaaaaalrightyyyyy we are here with Shawn David Nelson, Founder and CEO of Lovesac, actually. And I couldn’t resist. I saw on your LinkedIn that over time, you’ve also been a Chairman there as well, which was, was that a pun, or was that just truly Chairman?

Shawn David Nelson 1:58
No, also true. We’re now actually a public company listed on NASDAQ, LOVE is our ticker, which is a lot of fun on Wall Street.

Max Branstetter 2:07
So you’re loving it. You’ve been the chair man, but you know, founder, we’re gonna get back to the OG story here today. But Shawn, thank you so much for joining your time means a ton, and your your sofas and love sacks mean a ton as well. So how you doing today? I’m good, great to be on. Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s an honor. And before we get to love sack, I want to pose a an out of this world question for you. Maybe it’s because I just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. So my mind is kind of all over the place. Let’s say you were living in a an alternate universe where gravity wasn’t a thing, and therefore, as we know it, couches, love, sex, bean bags could not be a thing. What do you think you’d be doing for your life? Oh,

Shawn David Nelson 2:51
you know, I almost at 22 years old. I almost took a job in China. I was being recruited, well, two different opportunities, but being recruited to work for a company and be head of their Asian sales force, which was crazy for a person my age, like I was up against, you know, like, I don’t know, middle aged sales professionals, but my Chinese was great, and I had a bit of charisma. And was a final anyway, it was, it would have been one of those moments. It was right when I was building the love sack factory to kind of do our first big order. And I was kind of conflicted, like, man, if, if I get this job, like, would I leave everything to go do that? It was high paying, it was International. It was super sexy for like, recent graduates. So I, who knows, I could be on a totally different path by now,

Max Branstetter 3:48
I think so. And you’d also be out there spinning in the universe without gravity. So let’s just be glad that that alternate universe didn’t come true. But that’s really, really cool. You know, you hear a lot about I don’t know this is just my theory, but I feel like entrepreneurs are more prone to be interesting. Prone to be interested in learning other languages and kind of challenging their minds like that. Chinese can’t be the easiest one in the world. What’s What’s your super quick tip or like thing to know if you’re going to consider learning Chinese? Chinese

Shawn David Nelson 4:14
is not as hard as you’d think, depending on how you come at it. It is intimidating to people, because there’s a lot of sounds that are different than the English language that you have to learn, but the language itself is actually very simple. You know, like we have all of these tenses and conjugations and suffixes and things that we take for granted. In the English language, of course, we grow up learning it. But in Chinese, it’s like, we go mall, we go mall now we go mall yesterday. And it’s about that simple. And so from like, a grammatical standpoint and others, you know? And by the way, you can also be Mall. We go today. Today we go Mall. You can. Say it in any order, and it works. In fact, it sometimes makes you sound more sophisticated. Anyway, Chinese, a really cool language, reading and writing is a whole other story that’s very difficult, but don’t be afraid of it. You want to learn Chinese, go for it. It’s it, depending on your musical ability, it may be, I think it’s very hard for people who can’t really decipher the tones. It’s a tonal language, and that can be hard for hard for some people and quite easy for

Max Branstetter 5:28
others. It’s interesting. There’s like, you almost trim the fat. It’s like, you get rid of these extra words that we’re so used to saying, and some words that, like, if you take in, like a college writing class, like they train you to get rid of, like we use the word that in so many sentences that you don’t need the word that, and it sounds like in Chinese, some of that’s already trimmed out. So that’s fascinating. So let’s get to Lovesac. And actually, there’s a unique tie to the show. The Price Is Right in the early, early days, can you share what happened in that life changing moment in your mom’s basement?

Shawn David Nelson 6:07
Yeah, I’m not sure. Maybe Price is Right inspired it, but I was 18 years old sitting on my parents couch watching the price is right. I remember very clearly eating a bowl of Captain Crunch, and I had this dumb idea, like, maybe, like, I should make a bean bag this big, like me to the TV the whole floor. And I had this idea, this kind of vision, and being the impulsive weirdo that I was, or am, I turned off the TV, drove down to Joanne’s Fabrics, bought seven yards of tan vinyl and seven yards of black vinyl that was on sale because that’s what you make a bean bag out of. Came home, rolled it out, drew out some figure eights, looked at a baseball the pattern, and kind of copied that, and began sewing them together, and jammed my mom’s sewing machine. Quickly realized I don’t have the seventh grade home ex skills to complete this thing that I thought I did. So my neighbor helped me finish sewing it up. Put a zipper in it, and then we began stuffing it with anything we could find that was remotely squishy or soft or whatever. And it was the it was those foam mattresses, you know, like the kind you go camping on with a bungee cord around them that I took in the basement, chopped up on a paper cutter into strips and then into cubes. It was like three weeks of chopping stuff up, stuffing this thing, but it was the foam that made it really squishy and made it different than a bean bag, and that’s why people loved it. Everywhere we took it, everyone loved it and went one on one, and that was the birth of everything else.

Max Branstetter 7:36
Oh, my God, at what point in those first three weeks did it turn from like, all right, Sean’s in the basement doing something ridiculous to, like, hold on, he might be onto something here.

Shawn David Nelson 7:48
Oh no, it was none of those things for In fact, it would be three years until I made another one for my neighbors, who really they had seen it go up and down the street a bunch of times. We took it camping. We take it driving movies. My neighbor would stop me, hey, I want one of those for my kids. And finally, you know, meanwhile I had left the country to go serve a mission, that’s where I learned Chinese. Was on a mission for my church. And so two years later, after that, came back home, dating again, driving movies again, my neighbor finally convinced me to make them one if I’m gonna make them. Wanna you know, I need a company. If I need a company, I need a name. It’s love peace, hate war. Hippie, bean bag, love bag. Love sack, that’s cool. Paid 25 bucks to register the name in Salt Lake City, Utah, and had a little business called Love sack. And it was kind of a side hustle. As I went through college, I was actually slinging cell phones at one point and waiting tables to pay my way through school, and this love sack thing was sort of like, sort of a hobby, sort of a funny thing to do, sort of a pain in the butt, sort of took all my money, like never made any money, just kept having to fix the van, fix the shredder, you know, buy more fabric. And that’s how businesses are. They kind of eat you alive, until one day, finally they start giving back.

Max Branstetter 9:06
When did it eat you alive enough to know that like this, this would be actually something to pursue after, like this is, I mean, now it’s funny in hindsight, clearly more than a side hustle.

Shawn David Nelson 9:16
Every time Lovesac started to make a little bit of money, whether in those early days or even later years and years later, even as we had dozens of stores, there’s always ways to spend it all, to reinvest, to open a dozen more stores and take on more debt so you can grow faster because you have momentum. And so it would be that way on and off for a decade or two. I mean, a decade really, we were, we were, it was sectionals. We invented sectionals. Years later we had in the first store. We had a couch look. We opened a store. Let me back up. We opened a store because all the furniture stores laughed at us and thought it was a stupid idea. And we had completed a big order that we got at a trade show, and that forced us to build. Factory. So we had this factory. Needed to keep going. We were using farm equipment to shred foam. It was just like a wild effort in survival. But we were surviving, and it was my cousins. I did well, these stores won’t sell our stuff, these furniture stores, let’s, let’s open our own store. And then we went to the malls, and the malls laughed at us. You know, it’s like we’ve got Pottery Barn and Abercrombie and Fitch and you know what’s love sack get out of here. But one mall who had rejected us called us back and said, Okay, we’ll let you in. Just don’t make us look bad. So it was on my cousin’s credit cards this time because mine were already maxed out building the factory. So neon sign, carpet, paint, try to make it look good people. People came in November 17 of 2001 the same week Harry Potter opened. So we got wizards walking through the mall. We’re hoping that people just wouldn’t laugh at us. No one’s ever seen a giant bean bag store, but they’d come in, flop down, have a great time, and want to kind of take a piece of that vibe home with them. And so it never was just about thumb and fabric. It was the vibe. You know, we had music plan. We were just having a good time ourselves. We had a big screen TV playing funny movies. We had a couch in the corner. People could ask about the couch. How much is that couch? And years later, we’d finally decide to start making them, because people kept trying to buy it. So why don’t we make a couch that also comes shrunken down like like our giant bean bags can come shrunken down. That was the birth of sectionals, and sectionals propelled us, but again, almost a decade of selling sectionals before we finally crack the code to the business that would really propel us into the toward 100 million in sales, the place where we could finally be really profitable, we kind of bumped along break even for many, many years, requiring a lot of investment, requiring venture capital, requiring private equity to support us, which was good and bad, but it was our story.

Max Branstetter 11:55
Do you still have like a soft spot in your heart to this day for the Harry Potter franchise and all those wizards that help support the launch.

Shawn David Nelson 12:01
You know, never been much of a Harry Potter fan, but my kids love it. And yeah, Lovesac was born the same week.

Max Branstetter 12:09
It’s the famous spell Wingariam-Lovesac-osa, I think, is how it’s it’s called in the movie franchise, in the books, that is spell. So you kind of hinted at this, but you took a really different approach to what some of the other competitors did out there, and, you know, it’s important in terms of how that was rolled out in the stores, and kind of the overall vibe of the brand. And also, I think, when you have love in the name, it lends itself to love and fun, and obviously it lends itself to love what this is a genius podcast host you’re talking to, but what in like, those early days when you’re first opening stores, what were some of the kind of like principles you had as a brand, or at least messages that you want to get across to make sure that this brand could be healthy in the future?

Shawn David Nelson 12:52
We were just trying to be ourselves, you know. And I think that for the most part, that’s a very important part of look a brand is just like a person. You know, they just like a corporation is treated like a person under the law. You know, you can sue a corporation. A corporation can can be wealthy. A corporation can have a lot of the same rights that a person has. I think that a brand is not much different. You know, we like people. We don’t like people. We find people attractive. We don’t find them attractive. Same thing with brands. Look at all these brands that people get behind align themselves with. Why does someone choose, you know, Adidas over Nike? Who knows? But that’s the one that resonated with them. And so it does well for brand builders to find who they are and be that person, because there’s a lid for every pot there. There. Of course, you can do things to make yourself more lovable and attractive. That’s the same with people, and you can do that for a brand, but at its core, there’s power in authenticity. People are attracted to people that are honest and authentic. You know? I mean, you can hate Trump, but he has a lot of followers, I think because he speaks his mind and is authentic, and it’s not everyone, but it’s enough to get him elected, right? So I think it’s the same thing with a brand. It’s very important to unearth who a brand is and do your best to be that person as it were.

Max Branstetter 14:38
I imagine that becomes much more challenging as you grow as a brand, how did you handle that and do what you can to instill that throughout the growth of the company? You

Shawn David Nelson 14:49
have to document it so unlike a living human who has, like an internal compass, and hopefully through you know, an effort and self awareness can still. Sort of know where they are on that on that spectrum, a brand is not truly living, and so you have to document these things. You know, we have a really, really well refined, what I call strategic guide. It’s simple, a PowerPoint document with a dozen slides that captures our purpose, our mission, our values, our vision. All these things are different. These are not the same words. They all have a different role to play in the sculpting of a brand, the brand positioning, the value prop. All these things and they have to be documented. They have to first be sought out. They have to be unearthed. They have to be challenged, they have to be debated, they have to be aligned to by the team, and then they have to be documented and practiced and put into practice. So it’s not enough to have like core values or even hang them on the wall. You have to integrate them into the lexicon of the organization. So for instance, at Lovesac, we know what they are. We talk about them all the time, but furthermore, we have these weekly and sometimes daily rituals. And that sounds weird, but traditions and things that we do to sort of cause those words and those concepts to be practiced or to be talked about, at least celebrated on our weekly rallies, where we have an all hands meeting, and there’s awards given based on those values. And people kind of bequeath and give a little speech, you know, bequeath the award on their on the next person. And in that speech, they’re expected to sort of name a couple of these values that that person lives, things like that. That’s just one dumb example, but there’s 100 ways that you can integrate the brand’s ethos into the daily operations of the company and the way that people behave and the way you manage, the way you do reviews and everything else, so that from the culture of the company itself to, of course, the Marketing and the communications, all of it is aligned and feels authentic, feels parallel, feels real, feels unique, and again, it may not resonate with everyone, but a unique, authentic individual that’s at least making an effort to be well liked and loved and authentic to who they are. Can find love, can find attraction. That’s the magic of sculpting a brand.

Max Branstetter 17:28
We’re all just out there looking for love Zach in the world. So you’re very well versed as far as the whole mission, vision values thing, which I struggle to even say, but that’s obviously, as you know, as a CEO of like, billion dollar public company, that’s obviously one of the most important things you do is making sure that flows throughout all the team and the customers resonate with that as well. And retailers in those, like, first five to 10 years as a company before that is brushed up as much as the founder. What would you say was, like the main things that you were focusing on in that first, you know, 510, years of the company,

Shawn David Nelson 18:10
it’s never too early to be making the effort to develop that brand and those those concepts. But you should not be lost in those because, in my experience, the more time you give it, the more likely it is they will emerge on their own. And you almost have to, like I keep saying, unearth them. You almost have to observe them a bit like our children. You know, when they’re when, when my kids were babies, you get a little bit of a hint of kind of their personality, but it’s very hard to decipher who they’re going to be. And in fact, what I remember, some of the things that I thought about my infants being very different than who they are today, and so you kind of have to watch them grow up a little bit to get a sense, like, are they going to be shy? Are they going to be bold? Are they going to be, you know, we almost named my daughter pepper Minnie. She’s going to be the tallest of any of us, you know, and that’s a physical trait. But my point is, you have to let these things grow. So in the meantime, the exercise is in survival and trying to thrive as an actual business that can sustain, that can support itself. You know, if you can’t pay the bills, you don’t get the chance to do any of this cool, heady brand work. You know, you have to just survive, and, in fact, find a way to thrive and compete and pivot. Because, look, we sell mostly couches today. There was a major pivot to say the least, that was not how we started. The couch was an afterthought. In fact, it would be years before we even made one, and we survived on giant bean bags, and they’re still around today. And by the way, you know, if we try to survive on only couches forever, we probably won’t survive. And so we’ll pivot again, and we’re doing that now, and you’re going to see love say. Continue to grow and change and morph into other realms, but all somehow on the rails of these brand ethos that I’ve described, so that these other things that we do don’t violate that personality that people have grown to hopefully love along the way. You can’t just choose to operate like a big business because you want to be a big business. You have to play it where it lies. You have to be a small business while you’re small business, you have to be medium while you’re medium, you have to and you have to lead those businesses differently at those different stages.

Max Branstetter 20:40
Well, I have to shout out my cousin Sam, who we all used to live in the same building in Hoboken. And in their place, they have one of your, I forget the name of it, but one of your giant bean bag sacks that also can go on like a stand, almost like a futon, pillow sack. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pillow sack. And I just have to share that. I think they got it with, you know, like humans in mind, but very quickly, their dog Ollie, has totally claimed it as hers, and now their daughter uses it as well. So fun for all the family. But those things are amazing, and to your point on surviving, what do you think has been the key in as a company? You guys just surviving for multiple decades now.

Shawn David Nelson 21:24
I had a tweet that did well a week or so ago. I just said, Success is nothing more than surviving long enough to figure it out. And I think there are many keys to surviving. Number one is energy. Man like you have to bring it. You have to have the energy, the stamina, the grit, the buoyancy, times are tough. So it comes back to like your own personal management, the management of your body and soul and mind and mental state, because I, and I’ve, in my podcast, I’m, you know, I’m 60 episodes in interviewing some of the most successful people on Earth. I’ve had Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, Rob Gronkowski, actors, athletes, there is no one who hasn’t had really tough times, and no one who doesn’t expect to continue to have really tough times. And so if you can’t, as an individual leader, whatever capacity you’re in, manage yourself and find ways to develop yourself, to develop that grit, to develop that buoyancy, that positivity, that optimism, to keep going in hard times, you will not survive. So that’s number one. I think you know. Number two is determination. So you got to manifest it. I’m going to survive. You have to, and by the way, and not just survive, I’m going to thrive. I’m going to be successful. I’m going to become the most loved brand in America. That’s love sex goal. We intend to become the most loved brand in America, not most loved home brand, not most loved couch brand, the most loved brand. And by the way, it may take another decade or two to get there, but we’re going to and then you got to do 1000 other things. You got to be able to recruit people around you to do their roles better than you can do you got to you. And in the meantime, you got to be able to do those roles. You know, there was a time when I was reconciling the American Express nightly statements against our daily sales from the register at love sack that’s after working in the showroom, in the store 12 hours and probably checking on the factory that was down the street on my way home. But now there are people in each one of those expertise that are, of course, far better than me at any of those things. And so you have to grow and pivot yourself, even as you’re growing and pivoting the brand and pivoting maybe even the point of the of the idea that you had in the first place. Like I said, we’re, we’re a couch company now, sacks are a very small part of our business, compared to, obviously when we started, that’s all we had. And what’s funny is, I’m 26 years in, and I still feel the same, like we’re still just getting to the next phase surviving, if you want. And look, we’re profitable, we’re cash flow positive. We turned a lot of those corners, but it’s not a guarantee. You got to stay profitable. You got to stay cash flow positive. I’ve got tariffs trying to eat me. I’ve got competition trying to eat me. I’ve got the economy and the housing market trying to trying to destroy my business. It just never ends. It just becomes, in fact, more complex the bigger you get, and you have some advantages. You’re big, you got momentum, you got some profits, you got some cash, you got team. But it’s a lot slower to make changes, because it’s like turning an aircraft carrier, and you can’t just turn on a dime. And so look. It never ends. The truths of managing myself, staying positive, staying buoyant and even trying to have some fun along the way, or you will have just grown old. 26 years will have passed, and you wouldn’t have done anything if you don’t find a way to live as you as you go.

Max Branstetter 25:22
I Yeah, well, that flows swimmingly to your podcast and book, which share the same name. Let me save you 25 years which, first of all, thank you. I feel like more entrepreneurs should try to save that chunk of time for people. So appreciate that. But really, really cool mix of shaunisms, as they’re called, as well as stories throughout your career that you share. And so I’d love to dive into some of them there, but just off the top of your head, pick a totally random one, scroll, scroll your head through a random one of 25 what’s kind of an interesting shaunism that you can share and a little bit of background behind it you think is relevant for entrepreneurs? Relevant for

Shawn David Nelson 26:03
entrepreneurs. Oh, I mean, look, I wrote the book to be useful, you know, I wish that I had had something like this. And now there’s so much available to entrepreneurs, right, that was not available to me when we were getting started. And so I think all 25 are useful. And I, you know, I’ll give you a taste of a couple, and I’ll dive in on one, you know, we open with the first shaunism. Just do something. Had I not turned off the TV, got off the couch and made that sack. I might have been talking about this dumb, big bean bag idea for years. And by the way, here’s an interesting thing. There were two other that I know of giant beanbag company started by 1999 that didn’t know anything about me, because that’s the way the universe works. Man, like, when race car movies come out, there’s three race car movies. When asteroid movies come out, there’s three asteroid movies. Like the universe is weird that way. So you got to do things you can’t just talk I think another shaunism I talk about is embrace uncertainty. It’s a weird concept that isn’t much talked about. I don’t think, but human beings, almost more than anything, hate uncertainty. They would almost rather know they have cancer than live a week or two having been told they might have cancer. And let’s, let’s wait to see what the test says. I mean, that’s the most miserable week of your life. You know, because once you know, you can at least then deal with it, right? So, but entrepreneurship, you are faced with some kind of uncertainty, or 12 kinds of uncertainty all the time, every day, and you got to go to sleep with it. And so you just have to embrace it like this is what I chose. And if you cannot cope with that, you probably shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. And that’s okay, by the way, I sit here and preach it, and my own employees listen to my podcast sometimes, and I think I’m sitting there basically encouraging them to leave me and go do their own thing. But I’m not in the sense that if p if everyone was wired that way, there would be nobody to build great things together. I’m so grateful for people who want to be a part of something else and don’t feel they need to go get rich and famous by being an entrepreneur. It’s too celebrated. Not everyone should do it. Not everyone’s wired to embrace uncertainty. They don’t have that natural capacity, or they’re at least unwilling to develop it, and that is not a bad thing. But if you’re going to do this thing, it’s a critical thing, and you can’t be afraid of it.

Max Branstetter 28:44
Can you share like an example of one of the most significant challenges that you’ve survived through? To use that word again, with love sack,

Shawn David Nelson 28:56
I had to bankrupt the company. I had just won a million dollars on TV with Richard Branston at the time, you wouldn’t have known I had 2 million in debt having built all these stores out you know, some were good, some were bad. We were 24 year olds trying to build a retail chain. The fame of that and the energy and momentum helped us raise venture capital, and the venture capitalists first idea was, look, you got a good thing going here, but like, half of these stores, the leases are terrible. The locations are terrible, whatever you guys were kids, let’s bankrupt the company. Let’s get out of your bad leases. Let’s get out of your bad debt. Let’s start the over. And I didn’t want to do that, and frankly, we probably could have found another way. But whatever the case, that’s the way the egg rolled off the roof and had to go through a year of my life that was humiliating. You know, having just achieved some fame, now I’m in the news for the other end of it. I’m in Delaware State Court being accused of, you know, you. Losing all this money and putting my debtors at risk, and where’d the money go? And meanwhile, we got to run the business. We got to survive. We got the thing people don’t understand about chapter 11 is like the goal is to survive the company through achieve new funding and come out the other end successful. And that’s exactly what we did. But I’m running around the country, closing down stores I’d opened a month before in the middle of the night, because you got to do the work at night, staying up all night, taking a Sawzall to fixtures that I just moved in, to cut them in half, get them out the door on a dolly and throw them in a dumpster. It’s exhausting, humiliating, embarrassing, difficult, and then showing up at work on Monday, keeping everyone jacked to make sales this next week, because it’s Fourth of July, and we got to have a fourth of July sale, even as you’re living through this like a chapter 11. Reorg is one of the most difficult things to possibly navigate through. Forget as a business, even just as a person, as a leader, as an individual with your face and name on it. And it was in the middle of all that that I was nearly broken, and I’m at Sunday dinner at my mom’s house for a bit of a break, and I’m asking my parents for advice, and this is in the book. And you know, they don’t, they’re not entrepreneurs. I mean, really, there, and they can’t really, I mean, the 10s of millions in sales already, they can’t give me a lot of help. But I said, What do you think I should do? You know? I mean, because I could go again, get this international job, I could do these other things, I’ve hurt people. People have lost money. They hate me. I’m, you know, and my mom finally said, look, she was a little bit upset, of course, with the conversation. She said, The way I see it, Sean, you can quit or keep going, and it’s dumb advice, but it’s honest advice, and that is the choice we face, not even just every day, every minute of every day, you can quit or keep going. I got some great advice from someone else on my on my own podcast. Let me save you 25 years. If you’re ever confused in that moment, like, man, should I should I quit or keep going? I could see it either way. Ty goes to the runner. Ty goes to the runner. If you’re not sure, you keep going. And I have been not sure 10,000 times, but we kept going, you

Max Branstetter 32:32
get extra brownie points for any baseball analogy. But, oh, that’s incredible advice. And we had Dr Jason worseland on from uh, their body, and he actually shared a story of how there were words of advice that his mom wrote on his mirror as a kid, bathroom mirror that, like fueled the, you know, like continued to fuel him and inspire him to build that company bigger and better over time. And so it’s amazing, just like a few words of advice from a mother, what it

Shawn David Nelson 33:02
can do? Yeah, yeah, listen to your mom.

Max Branstetter 33:06
That’s, that’s the bottom line of the the entire interview. If you zoom out, you’ve gone through bankruptcy. You’ve yourself had to, had to deal with the guilt and embarrassment, humiliation of shutting down stores right after opening, and then now you’re a publicly traded company, some incredible sales numbers like just a truly amazing, you know, quote, unquote, American Dream success story. What else would you say to any other aspiring entrepreneurs out there who I mean, let’s face it, like you’re going to have dips and dark moments as an entrepreneur, what would you say that like has kind of made the difference in you being able to have some, would say, some sort of success with this company?

Shawn David Nelson 33:51
Look, there are a lot of lessons that I, frankly, learned a lot later than I should have, and if I would have been willing to learn them earlier. I could have avoided I could have done this in half the time. We could have been further along, even now, and that’s why I wrote the book. Let me save you 25 years. Like I genuinely look you might not save 25 years, but it might save you a chunk if you’re willing to learn from someone else’s mistakes, as opposed to making them all yourself. You know, we love to learn lessons ourselves. My kids, man, I told you, and sometimes we have to learn them ourselves. But I think one again that stands out, another shaunism from the book is hire better than you and let them own it. Even in my 20s, I was hiring some really capable people that, you know, I could, couldn’t afford, who were willing to come and be part of something that was growing and had energy and was cool, and you can, you can attract people to your brand if you have some momentum, and if you’ve got some kind of vision. But if I’m honest, I wasn’t letting them own it, you know, I was having to. To be the man be the CEO, you know, approve all the marketing. Let’s go with my idea. My idea, you know, I just was way too cocky, way too domineering. And it’s tricky, because in order to raise money and find support, in order to attract people to the brand, you’ve got to be a little bit a lot confident. You’ve got to be very assertive. But if you’re lucky enough to hire better than you, and you can attract people that are really good at something, you’ve got to let them own it. And if you can’t let them own it, they’re the wrong people. If you really feel deep down like you can’t let them own their domain, then they’re not the right people. But if you if they remotely have that ability and alignment, and this is what this is, one of the key things I learned that got me there as I watched Lovesac have radical success, starting back in about 2015 when we really started doubling the company every couple years, and we grew from 70 million to 700 very rapidly, or not, not even very rapidly, but rapid, pretty rapidly.

Max Branstetter 36:08
We’ll give it to you. There were a lot

Shawn David Nelson 36:11
of things that my head of marketing was doing that I didn’t love. I didn’t love the commercials. I didn’t even love our rebrand. You know, we, we chose this color teal. You’d think it must be the color that I loved from the time I was four years old, because, like, everything at love SAC is teal. No, it was a great design that, you know, was kind of open in the marketplace and positioned us differently than the other first come around that the agency kind of teed up and showed us okay. And when I started letting go and realizing that even if it wasn’t my way, that way can work too, even if my way could have worked, maybe even worked better. And when you allow true leaders and experts to have their way and to have autonomy and to take the gratification that comes from exercising that autonomy they’re motivated by that you almost can’t pay them enough to match the motivation that comes from people being able to truly make decisions on their own drive success in their own way, even if your way might have worked even a little bit better. And when you’re able to do that, then at a you know, a dozen at a time. So you got a dozen people, let’s say, all acting autonomy, autonomously, all enjoying the gratification that comes from autonomous decision making. Again, you might have 11 times out of 12 done it slightly differently, but their way worked two times 12, and your way can only stretch as far as you have time, energy and expertise for so hire better than you, and let them own it. That is the job of a CEO.

Max Branstetter 38:04
Well before we let somebody else own the end of this podcast interview, let’s wrap up with some rapid fire. Q, A, you ready for it? Yeah, all right. Let’s get wild. Let’s go do something. And that’s something right now. Is this rapid fire? Q, a, sorry, Bucha bubble, let’s get wild. What is something that like shocked you about the behind the scenes of filming that show with Richard branstet,

Shawn David Nelson 38:29
nobody knows what they’re doing. At the end of that show, we had this amazing high def answer to Trump’s apprentice, and they tried to flip it to be like Amazing Race kind of show, because they they saw another business show fail, and these high powered executives at Fox Network kind of turned a hamburger. I mean, it was a great show, still, but like, I realized at that moment that nobody really knows what they’re doing. Everybody’s guessing, even the pros.

Max Branstetter 38:57
All right, what is the biggest moment, or the first, like, big moment of culture shock you had when you were in

Shawn David Nelson 39:04
Taiwan, the traffic, I was asked eventually to drive a car. We mostly worked on bikes, but trying to squeeze a van down a street that you swear is not wide enough, possibly to fit. I got really good at hugging the left side.

Max Branstetter 39:19
Oh my god, that’s I have, like, scary chills from that. We were in Sevilla in a Spain, Portugal trip last year, and that, like, heart of the city center, or Old Town, whatever it’s called, in Sevilla, the guy who dropped us off at the hotel was was driving through that like, it’s like, cars should not fit there, and then he just drops us off and he pulls out, reverse the same way, and not a scratch on the car, I don’t know. So maybe that was actually you. So the puzzle is coming together. Here it is a skill. I know you’re very into outdoor activity. I said that with an accent, outdoor activities and do a lot of stuff as a family. What is like the one thing that if you were ever able to get yourself to retire. Here, this would be like your go to hobby.

Shawn David Nelson 40:03
It’s a tie between dirt biking and surfing. It’s just both of them are very present, difficult to master, endless opportunity to improve, get better and put you in touch with nature in an instant.

Max Branstetter 40:23
So dirt surfing or surf biking is the new invention. Try that the extension from love sack by Shaw, all right, and the last one I know through that billionaire Branston show, as well as through your podcast. I mean, you rattled off some of the names earlier, as well as, I’m sure, other aspects of life you’ve met, just some of the most incredible names, and in business and in sports and beyond, who’s somebody that, when you met or were interviewing them, were like, wow, this person is there’s something like different, or something’s just a little bit more like genuine, or just A little different than what their I guess, internet persona appears like

Shawn David Nelson 41:04
a great one. I had a great conversation with Coach Urban Meyer. And Urban really inspired me, you know, because when he came to Utah, he got to coach at my school Utah, shortly after I was there, when Lovesac was really coming up. So we got to be on the field. We got to know him. He actually had sacks in his office, and he was determined to just win every game. That was his point of view, and that taught me that mindset. But what’s cool is talking to him in person, even though that’s his point of view, as a coach, he is so much more people centric, player centric, interested in humans than you could gather by just kind of picking up on that hard nose coach persona that you might perceive.

Max Branstetter 41:49
That’s an amazing example. And yeah, that was well before what that was, before his time in Florida, and before winning at Ohio State for the NFL, before talking on TV like, wow, that’s really, really cool. Well, Sean, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate all you do and all you share and produce and reveal behind the scenes stories. Thank you so much for joining today. I know if anybody wants to, well, if you want to get anything, Lovesac. It’s Lovesac.com the book. Let Me Save You 25 Years the podcast, same thing. Where’s the best place, Sean, if they want to connect with you online or any CTA you want slide

Shawn David Nelson 42:24
into my DMs. Yeah, I’m Sean of love sack on like every social media channel, and I love staying in touch with people, especially on Instagram. I’m very active,

Max Branstetter 42:36
perfect. You heard it here. First slide into his love DMS and last thing, final thoughts. Give you a quote, another short and sweet shaunism, whatever you want. Send us home. Here,

Shawn David Nelson 42:47
I’d have to go with the final chapter of the book. Let me save you 25 years, which is you have to practice top ambition with infinite patience, don’t lose your top ambition. You know, when we start, we have these wild ideas. We’re going to change the world. We’re going to build the most loved brand in America. You are going to watch Lovesac do exactly that. And it may take another 25 years, but we’re going to do it. And if you’re willing to have infinite patience, and might come faster, but if you’re willing to have infinite patience and exercise it that way, there really is nothing you can’t do.

Max Branstetter 43:33
Shawn David Nelson, thank you so much, Shawn, for coming on Wild Business Growth, sharing your lovely Lovesac story. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow Wild Business Growth on your favorite podcast platform. Tell a friend about the show. And if you want to check out the video versions, make sure to subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter. You can learn all things MaxPodcasting, the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, which is every Thursday, and this podcast at MaxPodcasting.com and until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!