I love

it.

So the subtitle of this book, Mistakes, Miracles, and Lessons from the Love Sack Story is exactly what it appears to be.

You could read the thing in like 90 minutes.

But I combine, you know, each little chapter in the story.

We have a crazy story.

Look, I won a million dollars on TV with Richard Branson.

Can you talk about that values-based leadership concept that probably comes from all of that and how we can take that and apply it into our worlds, whatever our values are and how that builds companies and families that last forever?

Can you walk me through a little bit, like, how does that change you and what, what needs to change in order to be able to do that? So take us through the journey for a second.

Going public is pretty cool.

And in fact, I s-really, now eight years in, condone the public company structure.

I think it's a better structure.

I think it's-- I think every company should be made [chuckles] to go public, even if it was mostly owned by a person or a family, like many are.

In my case, most of our stock is owned by public investors, and I'm held to account.

And that's...

What kind of advice you wish you would hear and that would save you some pain?

It seems to me that it is a journey worth taking or else you probably would have hung it up a while ago then.

100%.

And in fact, for me, and look, this is an advice for everyone because everyone's in a different situation, different timing, different, you know, industries, everything.

But when more recently, like in the last number of years, when I made the decision to like First, I know what my ambition is.

Like our ambition for Love Sack is to build it into a Nike, to build it into a brand that's here for a hundred years.

And we've got a lot of ways that we think we can do that.

And I know that sounds ridiculous coming from a company that makes like two products, but we have a lot of love out there for this brand and for this company.

in

And their salespeople,

as they will in China, just start talking in front of me in Mandarin about how much it costs to make this fabric.

And I knew that they could hit my price.

So I just sat there for like three days and negotiated and negotiated and negotiated.

And finally they come down and they're like, okay, we'll do the deal.

You know, we'll cut them, we'll sew them, we'll ship them to you for this low price.

You've got to stuff them in America, obviously.

Well, it's

But what does that look like over time as you've kind of Yeah, for sure.

This book behind my head, let me save you 25 years.

I wrote recently for me at 18 years old or 21 years old for that person who's got ambition, but I would have loved to have this book and the subtitle mistakes, miracles, and lessons from the love sack story.

I share the 25 Sean isms from the 25 years, these little lessons I've learned and lesson one is, to your point is just do something, you know, stop talking about it, just do it, whatever it is.

And you never know where it's going to lead.

Of course, I couldn't have known.

And three years through college running this thing, to your point, you know, we had to either quit and go take a real job, which I had waiting for me, or find a way to make this thing grow into a real business that could, you know, pay our bills.

How did you, was it mostly a word of mouth thing that has helped it to grow as big as it has?

the

early 2000s, we took money.

And their first move was to look at our menagerie of 40 stores at the time.

spread out across the Western United States mostly, franchises, and say, look, we think we need to start over.

You guys made a lot of good decisions and bad decisions as 20-somethings.

Let's bankrupt the company, take it through Chapter 11, hopefully survive that, and emerge with just a dozen stores and start over.

That's... you know, terrifying, not something that I would have chosen myself.

What's your immediate response? And then what's your solution based response? Like, is there a time period that lapses? Do you do some breath work? Do you like sit there and think about it for a second? You turn on some music? Like, what do you like? How do you how do you shift yourself from going like, the world is burning around me to I need to come up with a solution to solve this problem without losing my shit because a lot of people are depending on me right now.