Shawn David Nelson is a creative, intelligent, savvy, determined entrepreneur. He’s also a crazy, impulsive, risk-taking, spike-haired rebel. It’s this dichotomy that’s helping Shawn—and his Original Oversized Sacs—defy generally accepted convention and make LoveSac the greatest brand for the world. He is establishing his name as the next-generation CEO.
First of all Shawn, I would like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview for YoungGoGetter.com.
Joey: We know you’re a “Young Go Getter”, but so our readers know, how old are you?
Shawn: 31 now. I started LoveSac, technically, when I was 18. Registered it officially as a business when I was 21.
Joey: Can you tell us the quick history on Love Sac and how it came from an idea to product?
Shawn: I thought it would be funny to make the biggest bean bag chair in the world when I was 18, and just graduated from High School. I actually got off the sofa, drove to the fabric store that day, bought 14 yards of vinyl fabric, cut out the biggest baseball pattern I could draw, and my girlfriend’s mom sewed it up. I spent 3 weeks trying to stuff it with every soft chunky thing I could find. Bean bag beads made a mess. Foam from our yellow camping mattresses worked the best. The Sac was born – and it was much better (and far larger) than a bean bag, no doubt.
Everybody wanted to buy one. Three years later, after abandoning the Sac for two years to become a missionary in Taiwan, I returned home and took the Sac out to the drive-in movies again. I had so many people trying to convince me to make them one, that I started the company, registered the name “LoveSac” in October, 1998, as the name seemed the best fit for a bean-bag like thing inspired by the love-piece-hippie generation. My friends and I made them in the basement, and sold them at home-shows, boat-shows, car-shows, and out of a van, as we finished college. We showed them at a trade show and secured and order for 12,000 small Sacs for a retailer’s Christmas merchandising. We had to build a real factory to make that many, so we credit-carded a lot of farm equipment for shredding foam, and built a factory in an old warehouse in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.
After completing our first large order, we had spent all of the money on inefficiency in the factory. We opened our first LoveSac store in a brand new shopping mall out of desperation—luckily the mall, at that time, was just as desperate to fill empty spaces. We had to pay for this factory somehow, and the big furniture stores just weren’t willing to stock gigantic oversized Sacs from us yet. The first store, at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, was a huge success! We sold far more than the Sac-a-day we had hoped for to pay the rent. Ten days into it people were asking about franchise opportunities. Six weeks into it, and we had sold every single Sac our little factory could produce before going home for Christmas on Christmas Eve.
Years later, LoveSac is still small, but growing fast with 25 company owned stores in high-end shopping centers, from Los Angeles to New York City. LoveSac.com is a major part of our business now too. In 2005 I won a reality TV show on FOX Network called “The Rebel Billionaire,” where the host, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin fame, took us around the world facing business and risk taking challenges. I won $1 Million which I invested in LoveSac, and Richard became a minor investor in LoveSac as well. LoveSac has had to completely re-organize, start over, and grow again because of mistakes made along the way, but somehow, not only are we still alive, we are about to explode!
Keep reading…
ShareThis
|
Subscribe to our RSS feed
I finally was able to sit down with Jake Nickell, one of the founders and CEO of our favorite t-shirt company, Threadless.com and ask him a few questions. Enjoy the interview Young Go Getters!
First of all Jake, I would like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview for YoungGoGetter.com.
Joey: We know you’re a “Young Go Getter”, but so our readers know, howold are you?
Jake: I was born in 1980 and am currently 27 years old. I started Threadless when I was 20.
Joey: Can you tell us the quick history on Threadless.com and itsparent company Skinny Corp and how it came from an idea to product?
Jake: Well, when I was going to college I became a member of an online art forum called Dreamless and entered a tee shirt competition that wasbeing held there. I won that competition and then got to thinking how cool it was and came up with the idea of Threadless. I bounced it off a friend, it resonated and we decided to do it. Threadless was created as a hobby, a way for artists to spend a little free time making something on their computers that could become an actual object. skinnyCorp was started as the parent company to Threadless because we also did web development work for clients. We don’t do that anymore thank God.
Joey: We know you are the founder of Threadless, but I am sure there is more to you than that. What are some other things you have done prior to founding Threadless or things you are currently working on?
Jake: Before Threadless I was going to school and working as a web developer. I like to hang out with my wife and our daughter… My dad was in the army and we moved around a lot growing up. My favorite place I lived was Colorado and my wife and I are moving back there in the Fall this year. I love snowboarding and hiking and just being outdoors. I really want to get into whitewater kayaking. As far as other things I’m working on, I’m interested in starting a summer camp and growing our other projects at skinnyCorp like Naked & Angry and Threadless Kids.
Keep reading…
ShareThis
|
Subscribe to our RSS feed
I was fortunate enough to steal a few minutes from Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer behind Wordpress, the blogging software that runs YGG and thousands of other sites around the world, and its founding company Automattic.
Joey: First of all Matt, I would like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview for YoungGoGetter.com. We know you’re a “Young Go Getter”, but so our readers know, how old are you?
Matt: I’m 24 years young.
Joey: Most people who are reading this know who you are because of
WordPress, but I am sure there is more to you than that. What are some
other things you have done?
Matt: I have arranged and scored the Mario Brothers music for a saxophone quartet and written Akismet, the anti-spam web service.
Joey: Can you tell us the quick history on WordPress and how it came from
an idea to product?
Matt: WordPress was based on a previous open source project called b2, so out of that existing codebase we began to transform it into WordPress by tearing out the configuration system, adding the initial links manager, and more. There wasn’t really any website or users at the time, so it was just a function of work and code.
Keep reading…
ShareThis
|
Subscribe to our RSS feed
After passing through customs and finding a quiet corner to call her own, Jennifer Kushell was able to find some time to allow me to interview her. When we’d normally be struggling to gain prime position in the buffet line at lunch, Jennifer is hopping and skipping from state to state presenting keynotes, promoting her book, introducing her new website, and being a strategic consultant, among many other things.
You know you’re speaking to a very powerful individual when a message from their PR rep and personal assistant await you in your voicemail, confirming the interview later that day.
YSN is the network Jennifer just brought out of beta a couple weeks ago. Your Success Network pretty much enables you to develop relationships with business persons on all levels. As you’ll hear in the interview, there are millionaires and billionaires in YSN that interact with young go getters like you and I, and enable us to get advice from the frontline.
Keep reading…
ShareThis
|
Subscribe to our RSS feed
YGG’s second interview is with Sean Alsobrooks of Third & Grand web design firm in Wildomar, California.
Hi there Sean. How are you?
I am great, how are you doing?
I’m doing good. Alright, let’s get started on this little interview here.
Sounds good.
Let’s start things off by telling us a bit about yourself?
Sure. I have been in the web design industry since 1999. I own a company called Third & Grand. We make websites for clients all over the US. We absolutely love doing this stuff….it is our ultimate passion and that makes it very easy to come to work each day!
When did you start your first company?
I believe it was early 1999…the California Cactus Company. Our plan was to sell Cacti online and retire millionaires!
How’d that work out for you? ;)
Ha ha, we sold a total of 0! However, it was the middle of the dot com boom and it really allowed me to get my feet wet with the internet and ecommerce and all that good stuff
Yeah, I guess cacti and bubbles were never meant to be together.
Good point!
So how long after that until Third & Grand began?
Third & Grand was born out of that. After making that first website I had a few requests from friends and family to design small websites for them. I really had no real clue what I was doing; I went down to Best Buy and bought some HTML editor and went to work. It was September 1999.
How much has your business grown since then?
Great question. It has grown wonderfully. The Lord has really blessed us with great, high profile clients and a steady flow of new work every month. It took a while to get to this point. There were some very hard, slow months, but it seems like we hit a point a couple years back where it started to get much easier….find clients that is.
What do you enjoy most about the web business?
Definitely the design aspect. I just said to someone the other day, “I love this business, I love everything about it, except the people!” That was just a joke, but the creative design part is amazing. I love to create tools and sites and apps that that really work well for the end user.
Did you have a design background before starting Third & Grand?
Not really. I always loved to draw growing up, but when I was attending Eastern Michigan University, I was studying to be a teacher. So I did not have any formal training, I just really studied on my own, looking at great design and many times copying it until I could learn to come up with nice stuff on my own.
Imitating great ones while trying to learn how to be great is definitely a great method.
For sure, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
You probably get asked this a lot, but where’d the name Third & Grand come from?
Great question. We first started in 1999 and named the company Mighty Box. We stuck with that for quite a few years. Last year we decided to go for a change, to better represent the way our work and focus and style had changed. There is no real meaning to it, just the result of a lot of brain storming. We wanted something sort of unique, catchy, easy and “upscale”, so to speak.
One of the things I really enjoyed about your company is the unique way you tell a story for each of your clients and projects through video. How has that approach helped your business?
Another great question! It has had a very dramatic impact. We get calls/emails all the time from people telling us how they really enjoyed watching the videos. We tried to create a story about each client. We had gone through many, many versions of our portfolio and wanted something that really shows our capabilities while at the same time focusing on our clients and most importantly, we wanted to give the visitor something worthwhile to watch; something a bit more interesting than just reading about it. It’s fun to create those as well!
For those clients, what’s your process for taking their problems and manipulating it into a solution on the web?
We focus almost entirely on their potential visitors/audience. In the early days, we tried to make something that was “pretty” so that the client would really like it and could show it off to their friends. Nowadays, we think about who will be using this website and what do they want/expect to get out of it? How can we make their experience better and easier? At times this has caused a bit of friction with clients as they often want to do things “their way”. But they usually come around and see that it really “isn’t about them”, it’s about their visitors
To carry off of that, your 6th reason of your “7 reasons you shouldn’t hire us”, describes clients that want to fit into their industry with a cookie cutter website. How do you deal with clients like that?
Ha ha. That is a funny question because it occurs so often. Clients usually go out and find their competition’s website and say, “do this!” We can usually get the feel of a client up front, and the ones we are able to educate/show the light to, we go ahead and produce something amazing for them. For those clients who insist upon doing it just like their competition, we usually refer them out to our competition!
It’s nice to hear that your firm has the cojones to show them the door when needed.
Well, to be fair, it is not the easiest thing to do, but sometimes it just has to be done. We try to identify “problem” clients up front and say “goodbye” as soon as possible.
It seems like many businesses think of a website as mandatory but not a significant part of their company.
Why do you think there’s such a disregard for the importance of an online presence, mainly with small companies?
Great question. I think that most small business owners either “get it” or they don’t. They either recognize the power of the internet and are ready to try to harness it or they really don’t have a clue. I think when small business owners hear on TV or a website that they can get a website for $99 it tends to devalue the whole idea of what a website can/should be doing for them. We have a saying around here, “they don’t know what they don’t know”. To be as honest as possible, most business owners don’t have a clue about the internet or their website.
I mean that in the nicest possible way of course!
Haha, of course. I kind of see it as a generational gap, where most of the 20 somethings and teens just getting into business will have an understanding of the importance of the web in all their future ventures.
That seems to be very true.
You have a great blog called “Hello, Website”. Do you think it’s essential that a business has a blog nowadays, and why?
YES, YES, YES! Thank you by the way, I appreciate that. Yes, it is a free avenue to the heart of your customer, why the heck wouldn’t they? I think blogs are awesome when the owner/blogger is passionate about their subject/industry. If not, I have seen a few that are a giant waste of time. I think a blog has the power to start conversations and really open up the “relational” door with your potential customers. Instead of reading through your sales talk and industry jargon, they can learn and read the thoughts of a “real person”, even interact with that person. That has a powerful effect
Yeah, the personality a blog creates is much more impactful that pre-packaged sales pitches.
Amen!
When it comes to this whole “web 2.0? madness, where do you think websites are going in both form and function?
Great question. I think the direction websites are taking is heading towards being much more simple and purposeful. Not using flash just for the sake of using flash, stuff like that. I also think the social/interaction part is a huge thing. Getting users to create, modify, share content is huge. Overall, it’s a good thing and an exciting time. Sometimes however, I do get the strange sense of 1999 all over again, especially with so many internet startups working so hard just to be purchased by Google or Yahoo. That worries me a bit.
I think we’re all expecting the sound of burst in the near future.
I am afraid you may be correct
You offer a monthly marketing package on your website. What are some of the best ways young go getters can market their websites, along with your package of course?
I think marketing a website successfully on your own can definitely be done. It takes one thing for sure though, time. If YGGs can put in the time to visit forums, write blog posts, respond to comments, setup links with other sites and most importantly, keep the content on their site fresh, they will do very well for themselves. Most of the technical and difficult part is just the icing on the cake, the main ingredient is to put in the time and effort.
I wrote a short ebook a few months ago and gave it away free on our website. Since then, it has been downloaded hundreds of times. That was my last idea, give away something of value, share your insight, it will come back to your for sure!
We’ll close things off with a golden nugget. From all the triumphs and mistakes of your career, do you have a story or tip that every young go getter should remind themselves of each day?
It may sound like a cliché, but it is true, do something you really love. Something that you are passionate about. Don’t just look for a “get rich quick scheme?, but do whatever it is that you absolutely love. The work will be easy, you will be good at it, the jobs and money will follow and you will have a blast along the way!
Fantastic tip Sean. Well, thanks a ton for the interview and best of luck to you and Third & Grand.
Thanks so much for having me for this interview, I really appreciate it.
Be sure to drop by Third & Grand.
ShareThis
|
Subscribe to our RSS feed
PPC Management
Hell Yeah Dude!
Reverse Funnel System for Beach Bums
