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Uncharted Entrepreneurship - hosted by Brent Peterson out of the Minnesota chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization – brings you daring stories straight from the trailblazing entrepreneurs who are unmapping business frontiers across every industry. Settle in around our virtual campfire as Brent sits down to pick the brains of startup pioneers, visionary founders, and intrepid CEOs whose origin stories - marked by unexpected twists, lessons, and stumbles along unpaved paths - will inspire your own trek in launching a boundary-pushing venture. Trading war stories, strategies, and even warnings, these audacious guests invite fellow founders and future leaders into their confidential circles in a uniquely transparent, wise, and motivational way. So join us off the beaten business trails to light your entrepreneurial fire!
Brent Peterson (00:03.438)
All right, welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Sean Nelson. He is the CEO of Lovesac. Sean, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role and one of your passions in life.
shawn nelson (00:15.396)
Yeah, founder, CEO of Lovesac. We just celebrated our 25th year. You know, started with giant bean bags right out of my parents' basement and now we sell mostly couches. And look, we're a public company now. Just rounded out a year at 700 million in sales. So not a tiny basement enterprise anymore. Still growing rapidly. And so I run the business, but I have an amazing team that honestly runs the business.
On my behalf, I focus on investors. I focus on new product development. I focus on PR, all this kind of stuff. And besides Lovesac, I'm passionate about my family. I've got four kids taking my oldest daughter to the DMV today to get her license and dirt biking, surfing, all kinds of outdoor stuff.
Brent Peterson (01:03.598)
Oh, that's awesome. Well, that's kind of scary. So I have to act because I did I bought our kids both had cars in high school. Do they are they going to have cars in high school?
shawn nelson (01:15.108)
Let's put it this way. I bought an old Nissan Rogue with plenty of miles on it that will be my car that they will drive and we'll see how long they can keep it together.
Brent Peterson (01:28.75)
That's awesome. We won't go down the rabbit hole of what kind of car did you get for your kid for high school, but I can tell some horror stories about what I got my son. Anyways, before we jump into content though, you have volunteered for the free joke project. I'm going to tell you a joke. All you have to do is say this joke should be free, remain free, or do you think you should charge for it? So here we go. I didn't know that Sylvester Stallone is on his third marriage.
shawn nelson (01:53.828)
All right.
Brent Peterson (01:58.446)
I guess his first one was Rocky. His second one was Rocky too.
shawn nelson (02:04.452)
Oh man, I would call that a free joke, but not bad.
Brent Peterson (02:12.398)
All right, thanks. Yeah, you know, I think the last couple of weeks have been really in a slump and it's been I appreciate you helped me get out of it. All right. So tell us what inspired Love Sack and tell us how you kind of evolved into the role you're in.
shawn nelson (02:20.356)
the
shawn nelson (02:32.1)
Sure. Yeah, the fast version, because it is a 25 year saga. And in fact, I just put out the book. If you want the whole version, it's called Let Me Save You 25 Years and it's worth it. All proceeds are donated to the FBLA, Future Business Leaders of America. So I put it out because it's such a fantastic, wild story. But the short version, I made a big bean bag in my parents' basement. I mean, by big, I mean like eight feet across.
because I thought it'd be a funny thing to do in college. And it became my college side hustle. You know, everywhere I took it, everybody wants one. It's actually not a bean bag at all. It's filled with chopped foam, like, you know, camping mattresses, chopped up on a paper cutter, and quickly found a local couch maker that would sell me their scrap foam and let me eventually shred it up on their wood chipper converted, you know, electric shredding machine in the back corner they hadn't used since the eighties.
And they were just thought I was a funny kid. Came in in the afternoon, stuffing these giant not bean bags my neighbor lady sewed up for me when I dropped the fabric off on her porch on a Monday, picked it up on Thursdays. That kind of a just raw side hustle, friends helping out. And that was 1995. I made the first one, 98, started the company selling them to friends. 2001 opened our first Lovesack store at the Gateway Mall in downtown Salt Lake City because none of the furniture stores would do.
would buy my stuff to resell it. They thought it was a stupid idea, stupid name. No one's going to pay 500 bucks, thousand bucks for a bean bag. Not a bean bag, but nonetheless, opened our own store on a wing and a purchase trying to pay off our debt. We had actually gotten a big order from a retailer for 12 ,000 sacks, caused us to build a factory. And when we completed that order, having broken even, didn't make any money, but broke even, had all this factory equipment, had to keep going, open our own store. It worked. People wanted to franchise it.
Started franchising back in the day, 2002, three, four, five, won Richard Branson's reality TV show on Fox network, the rebel billionaire, won a million dollars on TV, raised venture capital with that, bought back all the franchises, actually had to kind of start over, reorganize the company, just a full saga, every kind of up and down, the worst kinds of, I mean, full chapter 11 rework is what my venture capitalists put me through.
shawn nelson (04:57.572)
Rose out of our ashes with a dozen stores left. Grew it through 2010, 2014, 15, Saab. We had invented this couch. Okay. So in the corner of our first stores, we had a couch in the corner to look pretty, like with the sacks. And people would come in, flop down a sack and ask about the couch. So we, we, God, if only we could shrink a couch down, like we shrink these giant not bean bags down. We suck all the air out of these.
Saks made them shippable. If only we could do that. We get internet couches. Sure enough, we invented the sectionals, kind of the internet's answer for shippable couches, patented all that. Still struggled trying to figure out how to out -pottery barn, pottery barn out of 800 square feet across the hallway in the mall. And in 2015 saw Casper and saw Warby Parker and the whole direct consumer movement and realized, holy crap, we've got the product for that movement, that model.
Retooled all of our stores actually got rid of 80 % of our skews, you know, like rugs, bowls, lamps, baskets, decorative accessories, all the stuff we were doing to be more like a furniture store. We got rid of focused just on the couches, went into advertising, TV, digital, all of it. And from that point on, you know, probably grew the company at a 40 % keger for almost a decade. COVID turned out to be a huge tailwind to the home category. We didn't see that. We had to close at the time.
80 % of our revenues came through our stores. We now at that point, it had over a hundred locations. Had to close them all. Had to close 80 % of our revenue. It all shifted to web. Who knew? Ripped on the web. Got to keep all of our store managers working remotely. We survived COVID, we thrive through it. And here we are post COVID now with much slower growth. The whole category is in the toilet. Interest rates high, housing market down. Lovesac has continued to grow.
at the let's say plus or minus 10 % rate, which versus the category is much, much, much better. Um, but slow growth for us, nonetheless, it's taken us all the way to 700 million now having gone public in 2018 on NASDAQ at a hundred million. So seven exit just since then, really proud of that. And love sacks, uh, just continued to grow and thrive. And I think we can continue to grow. We are innovating into new product categories. Can't really talk about, but some, we're always putting new stuff out there on sectionals, but more stuff coming as well.
shawn nelson (07:24.644)
And here we are today, a little public company trying to get back to our billion dollar valuation we enjoyed for a minute during COVID.
Brent Peterson (07:34.094)
That's awesome. You know, I I'm pretty sure that I bought a love sack I had an I had a magento agency back in the before before kovat and I'm pretty sure we had a love the beanbag version of it just because that was all the rage in your office everybody you put out these beanbags and stuff and Yeah, so um, I
shawn nelson (07:55.236)
Totally. I bet you did. Yeah. I mean, Minnesota is where you were, right? And that was like one of our first locations, Minnetonka actually, in the Mall of America. Yeah. Yeah.
Brent Peterson (08:00.43)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (08:04.878)
Oh really, yeah, but Ridgidale probably. That's awesome. So I know that you like you're designing everything for life. Tell us about that philosophy of making products for life and does that sort of go counterintuitive to the way products seem to work? Like there's a life cycle and people buying new stuff all the time.
shawn nelson (08:25.284)
Yeah, look, I mean, I am an outspoken critic of the modern economy. I think we've all been conned into, you know, buying the next round of jeans that have to be loose and baggy again, like the 90s, because like all your jeans are now too tight. These trends, these imaginary color trends, fabric trends, style trends, you know, they're they are concocted by a machine that I think we've just grown up with and gotten numb to.
They're not real. They're not like gravity. They're not some universal law of physics. And they're thrust upon us. So we'll get rid of the old and get the new. And look, I mean, I'm not going to argue with America's or modern world's economy. At the same time, I do believe as a believer that people should buy better stuff so they can buy less stuff. And that's, you know, I'm not anti -capitalist, but I am.
uh, anti, I don't know, inefficiency. I think that, uh, you know, Apple's a good example, right? Like we're all conned into buying the same device essentially every year and that's, and it's not necessary. It could be designed differently. So we call that design for life. What happened is our couch solution has turned out to be wildly popular. It's probably the best selling couch in United States of America by the numbers. Um, just cause there's a bazillion couches and lots of firms, you know,
But as we watched on social media, people love our stuff and they post pictures of their family, dogs, pets, pizza night, you know, curled up and they behave differently on our couches versus our competitors because our competitors would be very precious. And bear in mind, our stuff's expensive. Love sex stuff is not cheap. We compete with, you know, the higher end and middle end firms for business, but our stuff lasts forever. Like actually my...
sectionals that I sit on every day are older than all my kids. Some of them are 16, 17 years old now. Some of my pieces, you can watch them, change them, change them. They're probably on their 10th set of covers because I can. It's fun. So, you know, we get into trends and we're producing systems that you can trade those in and resell them and all kinds of things that happens on Facebook marketplace now. And that whole observation led us to this design philosophy, design for life. You can build things to last a lifetime and they can be designed to evolve.
shawn nelson (10:54.724)
even as your life changes, so you can have new covers, new styles, et cetera. But still the core product can persist for a very long time and that is our design ethos. And I'm very public about it. It's our stated purpose now as a company is to inspire people to buy better stuff. It's think, buy less stuff. Of course we want to produce some of the better stuff, but we also want to inspire organizations to think this way. And I think it's just better for the world. Look, and there's plenty of other economic activity to be had. AI, travel.
with your family, go experience the world, but please, you know, buy fewer couches, says the guy who makes couches, right? And so I realized it may be controversial in some ways, but it's absolutely what we believe. It's how we design. And I think it's going to lead us to all kinds of new product innovation ideas that aren't being developed out there.
Brent Peterson (11:43.662)
Yeah, I mean, I think we have pets and our previous dogs who would not let on the couch for some of the reasons you're talking about, especially for some dog that may shed a lot. Having the ability to swap out or recover them easily is so important. Tell us a little bit about why, what was the thinking behind that and how you came up with it.
shawn nelson (12:11.588)
Well, you know, one thing led to another, and I think it's a really valuable lesson for, you know, it's so, it's so trendy these days to have a purpose and a mission. And I think that's great. But look, I just started a business as a side hustle, making these giant beanbags because it was a funny thing to do. And then it became survival, trying to pay off my, you know, student loans, credit card debt, whatever, factory investments. But that led us to this, you know, we, like I said, we had a couch in the corner of the stores. We were selling these giant beanbags that whose covers came off.
Cause it made sense. You know, there are eight feet across and you're going to be stuck with this thing that lasts forever. So like, let's make the covers zip off. Now you can change it. And not only that it was a good business cause I could stock one, but I have 20 covers on the shelf. I've got 20 for you to choose from, but my inventory is low. It was just a really good business model. And we kind of one piece at a time developed out the business, developed out the model, invented the couches in, in the image of that business that I just described for the giant, not beanbags, the foam bag sacks and those couches, you know,
became popular and then observed why, and that led us to this philosophy, right? So it wasn't the egg before the chicken, it was the chicken, the couches before the egg designed for life. And my point being, if you're willing to put in the time and follow your instincts as an entrepreneur, it can lead you to places that are good, as long as you're paying attention. So you talk about your dogs, now today, I think that's tragic. You should be able to just hang out with your dogs and enjoy your life and not be stressed out. And whether you knew it or not,
this inanimate object in your life that you probably paid a lot for, your couch, had been oppressing you and oppressing the way that you live. And I believe that Design for Life products can free people from that oppression that they probably never really thought about. And I believe most things, most objects in our life could be designed for life or more designed for life. So look, this is the Lovesac business model now and we get mistaken for a beanbag company or even a couch company.
But we're not, we are designed for like product company. And basically I view it as like kind of my life's mission now. But I didn't begin as a purpose driven entrepreneur. I began as a kid trying to survive. And so I think that's useful in the sense that I think there's a lot of pressure on entrepreneurs to like find your purpose and state your purpose. You know, I think like as good as that is, and I advocate it, I think you can also take your time and evolve into it if you're open and you're paying attention and you're in search of it.
shawn nelson (14:38.052)
And by the way, if you can align your strategy and your product and therefore the way you face consumers, et cetera, to this purpose, I think it can be very, very productive, not just an exercise in like culture or something.
Brent Peterson (14:53.902)
I do want to ask you about one of your products and I want to say that I feel like I was ahead of the game about 20 years ago. I put in these little thumpers that are inside my... We have a theater so I put these little thumpers inside my couches, but you have something called Stealth Tech which is for your couches which makes it even cooler. Can I ask you about that? That sounds super fun.
shawn nelson (15:06.148)
Yeah. Cool.
Uh -huh.
shawn nelson (15:15.684)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it's a good example of what I described. Like, you know, we just kept iterating and paying attention to our customers and paying attention to the opportunity. And, and, um, it was really my wife who we were moved into a home with like a great room and there was nowhere for me to put like surround sound speakers. I maybe cut holes in the ceiling, but even then the acoustics and ceiling speakers aren't good. I mean, they're far away. You're in a rectangular room, et cetera.
Where's the obvious place? Well, it's the cat and I make couches. So we began the pursuit of, of a design that would allow us to, to put front speakers, rear speakers, subwoofer, all of it inside the couch, under the foam, under the fabric, under the removable cover and project sound with no quality loss. And that was tough. And here we are, this beanbag company innovating into hi -fi and we did it. In fact, we patented it. We took it to Harman Kardon, our partner.
At first, you know, we were told it can't be done. You have to use acoustically transparent fabric. It's all in the book. You know, let me save you 25 years. This is a book I wrote. It's a wild story. And we end up, it's a, anyway, it's a wild story of how it all worked out. But now we have the only hidden surround sound system completely hidden from view. It's beautiful. It's perfect. It's, I think it's better than, you know,
most of the home theaters I've ever been in because of the proximity. I mean, these things are, you know, 12 inches from your skull, but they're very tasteful. They're very, you know, it's not just like blaring sound. They're tuned to be perfect audio, right, left, center, sub, all of it. And so you feel it, you know, you're inside the movie and it's moving around. You sometimes flinch, you know, for the bullets of the cars or the trains or whatever. And so I'm really proud of it. We'll continue to innovate in that realm. We have a lot of stealth tech solutions to come.
shawn nelson (17:09.38)
where we'll hide technology throughout your home. And we're the only one really innovating in that category in that way. And I'm very proud of that for a company that again started as like a not beanbag company.
Brent Peterson (17:20.366)
Yeah, that's so cool. I have a friend who writes for home theater magazines and I'll see what he thinks about that. I will say that he's now on board with the little sound bars that go into your TVs if you don't have a lot of space. But I mean, I think your solution is so much more fun. Does it? I think the website says 40 experience. You might almost be old enough to remember Earthquake, the movie Earthquake that came out in the late 70s or whatever, where they had it was sort of this.
shawn nelson (17:27.684)
Yeah.
shawn nelson (17:33.796)
Yeah.
shawn nelson (17:45.892)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (17:49.646)
immersive experience where I know they must just, it must've just turned the sound up in the movie theaters, but does it sort of shake you and rock you and roll you as you're sitting in the couch?
shawn nelson (17:58.82)
Yeah, we haven't gotten to transducers yet. It's possible we'll do that like you have. This is true subwoofer and look, it's tuned to be really tasteful. So it can rattle your windows and you can Bluetooth to it and it'll shake the house. It's really a powerful system. But for movie watching, it's less about, yes, you absolutely feel it. There's no doubt about that. But it's less about just trying to shake you and trying to, it's about really tasteful, correct.
audio. And I'm really proud of that because again, it's underneath all of those layers and it had to be tuned. So like if you were to strip all those layers off, it'd sound crazy. It wouldn't sound correct. And it's tuned. In fact, in the app, when you set it up, you know, you have to adjust. I mean, you have to tell the app what covers your sectionals are wearing and it retunes the system for those for that specific fabric down to the color. If you can believe that affects the effects, the sound profile, not joking. So it's really precise.
and really proud of that invention, Stealth Tech. It's cool.
Brent Peterson (19:00.814)
That's great. Okay, let's, I do want to talk about your book. So let's say me save you 25 years. Tell us about where the inspiration from the book is and do we really save 25 years by reading it?
shawn nelson (19:06.82)
Yeah.
shawn nelson (19:11.94)
Probably not 25, but it might save a chunk out of your journey if you can learn from my mistakes instead of making them all. But you know, we entrepreneurs, we like to learn from our own mistakes, I think. But I make an attempt. Look, I read all the business books. I love them all. I've built so much of Lovesack strategy around stuff I've learned from Jim Collins, Patrick Lencioni, you know, we could go down to Simon Sinek, right?
And I wanted to put something out there a little bit different. And I started writing the long version and got too long. So I decided to write a really short version. So actually the book itself is relatively short. It's, it's the whole love sack story packed into 25 chapters, 25 paired with 25 little lessons. And I've tried to boil it down to just the most important ones. So these 25 Seanisms I call them, we unpack each one kind of story paired with a, paired with a lesson.
You could read the whole thing in like an hour, maybe 90 minutes. Audio book is well available, but it's, I think pretty unique. And I'm really candid about every kind of mistake. So the subtitle is Mistakes, Miracles and Lessons from the Lovesack Story. I've tried to share them all as embarrassing as most of them are. And as miraculous as some of them are, Lovesack's a truly wild story, like I said, you know, from winning a million dollars with Richard Branson to...
going through a full chapter 11 reord to going public on NASDAQ and still growing despite all the naysayers, even to this moment. Lovesac is a highly shorted stock at the moment because look, our name is Lovesac. We started as a beatback company. We can't possibly, but we have the best numbers, I believe in most respects, both top and more or less bottom line in the category, especially at this moment where the category is beleaguered. So look, we're in it for the long haul. I'm in it for another 25 if it takes.
I'm committed to building the most beloved brand in America and on the back of a company that started in my parents' basement. So the book has it all, check it out. I think you get a kick out of it. I donate all the net proceeds to future business leaders of America. I just did it because I think the story needs to be out there. And I built a podcast around it where we unpack all 25 of these shantisms with really tremendous, from Gronkowski.
shawn nelson (21:35.844)
to Coach Urban Meyer, to entrepreneurs like Sarah Blakely. Each episode we unpack just one of these topics and I think it's very unique in that way. It's not an interview podcast, it's unique.
Brent Peterson (21:49.422)
That's awesome. So you're looking into the into the future of LoveSoc. Do you have and can you share any innovations that you have coming up that sort of teasers for people?
shawn nelson (22:01.636)
I can't, you know, we're a company that doesn't do a lot of things. We only do a few things. We try and do them really well. I mean, over the long time arc, we will do more things and even more. But in the near term, we're pretty secretive. I will say, but look, it's not a mystery. We operate in the home, the home category. If you were to look around your home life and say, oh, what would be cool if it was built to last a lifetime?
and could evolve with me as my life changes, as I grow up, as I upsize for family, as I downsize. Our products will do all of that and we will eventually do it all. But we'll focus on the big stuff and we'll focus on the meaningful stuff that matters to you so you can hang out with your dogs and kids and pets and loved ones and family and live your life without the oppression. So, and technology as well, more stealth tech to come, more technology packed into all of it.
more patented solutions. No, I don't think many are designing this way because it's so hard. Most of the firms we compete with just spin out endless new product that are just kind of like reskinned versions of the same stuff. And it's a new season, it's a new collection, it's a new market. We just don't do any of that. We have the covers that will allow you to change your styles a little bit and things like that. But even then,
You can trade those in back to us in the future. We're developing those systems. So that is an area of innovation I'll be transparent about. We see it happening on Facebook marketplace where sectional zoners are buying and selling and trading. We love it, but we want to facilitate it even more. So we are working on that. We call that circular operations. And it's all in the name of sustainability, but not in the way that you haven't even heard me mention it, because it's not in the way that the world thinks of sustainable. Yes, by the way, we make all of our fabric.
upholstery fabric out of recycled plastic bottles. We're proud of that. We recycle more bottles than all those t -shirt companies, shoe companies. I barely talk about it because the real sustainability I'm after is stuff that can sustain. But who's talking about that? And the reason is because it's hard. It's hard to make things that are not just built well. That's half of it, but can evolve with you. Because even if it's built well, if you can't love it 10 years into it, you might not keep it. So.
shawn nelson (24:21.028)
That's what we're passionate about. I love that.
Brent Peterson (24:23.758)
I just had somebody on from Recurate, Will Griffin, I think his name is, and he talked about this same thing where sustainability is at the forefront of what they're doing and they're specializing in marketplaces for other brands to resell used products. So I think I heard you say earlier that you're working on something like that other than just Facebook. Tell us a little bit about that.
shawn nelson (24:43.3)
Yeah.
shawn nelson (24:50.308)
Yeah, I mean, like I said, we call it circular operations. We make products that can last a very, very long time. We want people to, as they upgrade, for instance, with StealthTech right now to, you can add StealthTech to the sectionals you bought 15 years ago. I mean, that's pretty cool. You can't do that with your iPhone. But you know, you'll end up with a couple of extra side pieces. What to do with those? Well, we would hope you'd buy more of our pieces and build another couch somewhere.
But if you really don't have the occasion to do that, we would love to take those back. We'd love to give you credit for them. We'd love someone else to use them because they're standard and they can be reskinned and recovered and completely, you know, made new again. And so that whole business model is something there for the taking. And again, it gives you another example of like, we didn't begin with that vision. We didn't need to begin with that vision. We just had to keep following our instincts and passion and best design. I guess.
motivations, you know, instead of just putting more crap out there. And it's led us to this, I think, really cool business model where we're going to do exactly that.
Brent Peterson (25:56.398)
So I've got an idea for you. I just, I have a Model Y, Tesla Model Y, and maybe this is a bad idea since the Model Y sales are down, but I was just talking to somebody who used, I think they used an Ikea, one of those really little beds to roll it out. You can camp in a Model Y. They have all the climate control stuff. Maybe a Lovesac Model Y bed would be in the offering, or a Buzz ID is the new one from Volkswagen.
shawn nelson (25:58.116)
Okay.
shawn nelson (26:12.036)
Mm -hmm.
shawn nelson (26:18.18)
Mmm.
shawn nelson (26:23.844)
Yeah, I love it. Look, I think we've been approached by car companies to do different things. And we have these opportunities to do collaborations with various celebrities and other brands. And, and look, I mean, the tricky part is besides building great products, you have to run a great business, a business that's focused, a business that can be sustainable and producing profits, producing cash. I mean that.
That kind of fell out of style, I think, over this last decade, which is also a bummer. I talk about it in the book as well. You know, like, it's been so trendy to just lose tons of money. And I know that sounds crazy, but honestly, that's what's been happening out there in the landscape. And those days have obviously, in many respects, come to an end, but not totally. And I look, I guess I'm kind of old school. I believe in making money. I believe in producing cash. I believe in trying to balance that while...
You're growing and it comes at the sacrifice of maybe some growth. And by the way, as a public company, I have investors that criticize me for both. Some think I'm going too slow. Some think we're going too fast. So ultimately it's up to you, I guess, as the leader of an organization to balance, but it's so, look, I love the idea. I think that the final chapter of my book, the shanism is called maintain top ambition with infinite patience.
So what I've had to learn over the years in order to scale the business to a size that I think really matters, we're approaching a billion in sales over the next few years, I think we can double that again, I believe. Oddly, so there's my top ambition, but patience. And so I love the idea, Brent, and it's on the list, like something like that, right? But by the time we get to it, out of an abundance of focus, it may be years away.
And you might think, well, the opportunity is now, guess what? The opportunity will be then as well. And that's tricky, man. And I'm telling you, like, that's the hard part really about being an entrepreneur, I think, if you're going to scale something and not just exit, is maintaining that top ambition with the patience to have some discipline. It's so hard.
Brent Peterson (28:39.79)
Yeah, I'll agree with you having exited, I think two years ago now. Once that decision is made and once you're in that phase of transition, it is hard to maintain a lot of energy. And I think you know, as an entrepreneur, there's a secret little piece of you that has to have energy to drive to a place. I mean, however you're going to make your next goal, there has to be some energy to get to that goal. And it's something that a lot of people don't understand that.
shawn nelson (29:09.636)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (29:09.934)
It's not like a punch in and work a job.
shawn nelson (29:14.148)
No, no, it's tricky. I don't have a silver bullet for it, but I do talk about it in the book. I talk about it a lot on the podcast. Look, I challenge myself all the time. Where am I at? Where am I at? I am the CEO of this company. I am heavily involved in so many aspects and I do have great people pushing with me, for me.
You know, and so it all boils back down to self -awareness. You know, I talk about that a lot. It's really the kind of the key to success, like in being honest with yourself where you're at and trying to dig deep. I don't know, man, it's not easy, but we keep going.
Brent Peterson (29:56.75)
Sean, we have a few minutes left. As we close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you'd like. What would you like to plug today?
shawn nelson (30:06.18)
Yeah, I mean, I would love you to anyone listening to check out my podcast. I think that I'm really proud of the content we're putting out. It's different as much as I am so flattered and honored to be on your podcast, Brent, and do these interviews. I found a unique place where we explore these Shaunas and in great depth with very successful people. And it's interesting as I have actors and celebrities and entrepreneurs.
and different leaders on to talk about these, these shantisms, you know, these, these, these, whatever these principles that I call out in the book. It's amazing how we all learn the same lessons. Like you and I, Brent, I barely know you, you know, we chat a little bit. I guarantee we've learned all the same lessons, you know, through our exploits and you've learned it through the lens of tech and, and media and web. And I've, I've learned it through the, you know, medium of foam and fabric.
and retail stores, but the fundamental lessons are mostly the same. And if you can learn from others mistakes, and that's hard to do, like somehow we like to make them ourselves, but I'm telling you, man, I so wish, what a blessing. Like when I was bootstrapping, I don't think that word existed. I mean, really, that's how old I am, right? Like in the late nineties, I don't think anyone was using that word. I think that evolved in the mid -2000s, really.
And so we didn't even know what we were doing when we were doing it. We raised venture capital at a time. Now I look back, there were hardly any venture capital firms for businesses like ours at that time. I didn't realize how avant -garde it was. And even then, you know, we messed it up. And I talk about how we messed it up and why we messed it up and share that. So anyway, it's all in the book. It's all in the pod. Let me save you 25 years. It's a good look and I appreciate the opportunity.
Brent Peterson (32:03.502)
Yeah, it's awesome. I will make sure I put the links in the show notes and and encourage people to work with them by your book.
shawn nelson (32:11.332)
Yeah, Amazon, you know, lovesac .com, anywhere books are sold and obviously lovesac store is lovesac .com. But I don't care where you buy it, all those net proceeds are donated and I'm really, really proud to get it out there.
Brent Peterson (32:24.558)
That's great, Sean Nelson, the CEO and founder of Lovesac. Thank you so much for being here today.
shawn nelson (32:29.38)
Thanks for having me.