Ecommerce ft. Sean Whalen

 You're listening to the Radcast.
 If it's radical, we'd cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, what's up?
 This is Ryan Alford.
 Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
 We're here in the middle of our e-commerce series
 and excited to have our guest today.
 Again, Sean and I were just talking
 and we could go a lot of avenues
 but want to really talk about Sean Whalen
 and his growth with Lions, not sheep.
 Sean, thanks for coming on, man.
 Thanks, man.
 Appreciate you.
 Thanks for having me.
 Cool. Well, you know, again,
 I know we could go a lot of down,
 a lot of rabbit trails, a lot of things.
 You know, but, and maybe let's just start there.
 You know, I don't want to cap us too much
 but as we build towards where you've taken Lions,
 not sheep and all the e-commerce growth there,
 maybe let's just back up, let's give our audience.
 You know, I know you've got a huge following
 but it may not be the following of our podcast
 that have heard of you and know about you.
 Let's just start there like, you know,
 the recap of Sean and history and what got to there.
 I know that loaded question brother.
 I'll keep it super simple.
 I mean, I was really successful at a young age.
 I grew up in a single parent home,
 built a couple of companies and made a lot of money in my 20s
 and I talk about in my book,
 how I felt like I was juggling bowling balls.
 You know, the success looks like this
 and it needs to be this.
 And so I'm working 20-hour days,
 building, growing the whole thing.
 And, you know, as a work,
 and you need to be a home,
 and as a home, and you need to be a work.
 And kind of the whole, I mean,
 really what a lot of men are going through,
 not just today, years ago,
 but, you know, where we're at as a culture in a society
 is like, this is what success looks like.
 If you're on Instagram, it's like,
 you got to be here, you got to be born.
 If you're not working 29 hours a day,
 like you're a fuck up, it's just,
 I was that guy and I,
 I said she could juggle on all the bowling balls.
 And I don't know what a midlife crisis is,
 but I left my marriage.
 I left my business.
 I stuck my head on my ass for over a year trying to figure out
 not how to make money,
 how to build business polite.
 Why was I even here?
 What's the purpose of all this?
 Like, why am I doing any of this?
 You know what I mean?
 I've got the cars and the Rolexes,
 but what am I even doing with any of this?
 And so I went on an interesting journey.
 I got really depressed, suicidal,
 and found myself in a really, really,
 really dark place and ended up hiring a coach,
 trying to figure out,
 how do I get out of this mindset?
 How do I shift things around?
 And one of the things that he,
 he had challenged me to do was to start sharing my thoughts
 and what was going on on social media.
 And at the time, I was like,
 believe it or not, my ex-wife had Facebook
 and a year before I did.
 And I was like, that's the stupidest thing ever.
 Why would I do that?
 I didn't believe in it, right?
 Which is ironic now,
 having almost a period of using my videos and stuff.
 And the 37 stories I've watched of yours just today.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's just,
 it's phenomenal.
 We talk about that from a marketing perspective in many,
 but you know,
 I went through a really nasty divorce
 and to make a really long story short,
 I ended up sharing one night
 with some real dark shit,
 some stuff that I was, you know,
 ashamed of and had been hiding
 and really just told the truth.
 For lack of better words,
 I just fucking told the truth for once,
 which was like,
 instead of doing the alpha thing,
 it was like, no, I said a lot of dumb shit.
 I was angry at it.
 I didn't have all the answers.
 And that post ended up going viral.
 Millions and millions and millions of people.
 I went from having like 200 friends on Facebook
 to almost 40,000 followers in a matter of 10 days.
 And then people were hitting me up going,
 dude, teach me more of what classes do you have?
 I'm like, you know,
 pump the fucking brakes, man.
 I'm just, I'm just telling you my shit, right?
 Like, I'm not Doc Phil.
 Call somebody else.
 And in that process, you know,
 I left the company.
 I left everything.
 And I kind of still dabbled in real estate.
 But one day,
 the phrase line is not she came into my mind.
 I was looking at this catalog
 and there was another company that was something kind of similar.
 And it just popped into my head.
 And it just resonated.
 And it just, it wouldn't go away.
 And for days, it just lines on the sheep.
 And I kept thinking to myself,
 like, looking at everything in life,
 like, like, I have a choice, right?
 To follow and do what everybody else is doing
 and to buy this because he bought this or build this
 because he built this or this is what this needs to be.
 And it was like, no, do you fuck that?
 Like, what do I want to do?
 Like, who do I want to be?
 Like, what life do I want to build?
 You know, when you tear everything down
 and essentially burn it to the ground,
 you're pretty much starting from scratch.
 I knew what my skill sets were.
 I knew what I was good at.
 But like,
 I just decided to do the things
 that I was really passionate about.
 Like, what do I really want to do?
 And when the line is not she came to me,
 I called my buddy who went to clothing company one day
 and I said, hey, man, can you,
 can you make me a t-shirt?
 Sure.
 So I went online,
 literally went to like fonts.com
 and found this cool font and did this.
 And I was like, yeah, can you do this?
 And he got it to his designer and I spent 40 bucks
 to make a screen and made a t-shirt.
 Original, you know, the original lines
 not cheap black and white t-shirt.
 And I was wearing it one day and I had a picture
 and I posted it on Facebook
 and all these comments started coming in.
 Dude, that's bad ass.
 Where'd you get that?
 Can I get that shirt?
 And I called my buddy.
 I was like, I don't know how to sell t-shirts.
 It's like, how the fuck do I feel?
 He's like, I'll set you up shop if I store and whatever.
 That kind of started the whole for me.
 It was just my mantra.
 It just became my way of thinking, my way of being.
 It was very personal to me.
 And I saw a lot of people gravitate towards it.
 A lot of people connect with it.
 And we started selling the t-shirts and then, you know,
 I formed the company and then I formed multiple companies
 inside of that and it became
 and what is now a huge movement.
 Where millions of people engage with the content
 and know about it.
 And just recently, we've had some people
 that have venimian Smith who's in New Jersey
 who the governor was trying to shut his gym down.
 I woke up one morning, this is probably a month ago,
 a month and a half ago.
 And I had been tagged over a hundred times in this post.
 I'm like, what the fuck?
 And I opened up Instagram.
 And there's this guy who's like super defiant,
 like truly governor or whatever, whatever.
 And he's got all kinds of cheap hat on him.
 Well, I'm not connected to him.
 He's not connected to me.
 It was just like, oh, dope.
 So I followed him and say, hey, man, love the hat, you know,
 whatever, whatever.
 He's like, oh, dude, I've been following you.
 Like, just started like, knew the brand.
 He ended up just seeing one of our ads and bought the hat
 and his post won viral.
 And it was really interesting over the course of the next couple
 of days.
 He was on CNN Fox, Tucker Carlson,
 all these big, big shows and he was wearing the lines
 and that sheet gear and our free man team.
 And it was just really cool to see that he hadn't, he wasn't really,
 he didn't know me per se, but he vibed with the brand.
 He recognized it, resonated with it and decided to buy a shirt
 and a hat.
 And it just kind of brought me full circle.
 Like, yeah, man, like this was me, my kind of rebirth coming
 back into the marketplace, kind of getting my balls back
 and building some business and now knowing that it
 resonates literally with millions of people around the world.
 It's, it's pretty freaking amazing.
 So that's, that's about a 20 year story in three minutes.
 Yes.
 A couple of things on pack there.
 I mean, how enlightening was it?
 I can only imagine like, like you said, you feel like you live,
 not necessarily a lie, but you never felt comfortable being transparent.
 And being maybe vulnerable, if that, if I can use that word.
 Sure.
 How enlightening was that moment when, holy shit, I can be,
 I'm being myself and I'm getting garnering the attention,
 not that maybe you were seeking before when you were copying
 everyone else, but just the irony in that had to be just fucking amazing.
 It was.
 And, and what's interesting is, you know, we're all,
 and this is kind of some of the stuff that I teach.
 Like, we're all programmed to lie.
 Okay?
 I don't care who's watching this.
 Black, white, gay, stray, rich, poor.
 All of us were programmed the exact same way to lie.
 And don't believe me.
 And we go back to when you were a kid, sit down, quiet down,
 and slow down.
 You're a little child.
 You go to church.
 This is right.
 This is wrong.
 Don't say this.
 Don't do that.
 And when you really stop and think about it, like we've been indoctrinated
 since we were children to do as we're told to speak words
 that will be pleasing to everyone.
 Don't wrestle anybody's feathers.
 And that's literally what we do.
 From when we were little children, elementary school,
 middle school, high school.
 You know, you got to raise your hand and go to the bathroom.
 I mean, nowadays you can't say shit.
 I say anything, and I'm called a neo-Nazi online.
 And this and that and the other.
 I pissed everybody off, right?
 But when you think about it, like we've been programmed
 since we were little children to not speak our truth,
 to not share what's inside.
 We're told.
 Tell the truth.
 Tell the truth.
 But the ramifications for telling the truth are dark.
 They're bad.
 You know, slap on the hand, put them in a principal's office.
 Parents are mad at you, so that we just lie.
 And as you get older, you become a man.
 It's like, we don't talk about emotions.
 We don't talk about where we're really at.
 You just man the fuck up.
 You know, put on your big boy pants and get after it.
 And the truth of the matter is that, you know,
 more men killed themselves in 2018 than during the Great Depression.
 Why?
 It's not because there's a lack of money or a lack of opportunity
 or lack of chicks or, you know, ass running around.
 It's because dudes are like trapped in this box,
 like I was 10 years ago.
 I'm like, dude, I'm not happy with where I'm at.
 But I don't know how to talk about it.
 And my boys are like, hey, man, how you doing?
 I'm like, I'm good, right here.
 I'm good.
 Well, then I was like, oh, shit.
 Bob killed himself.
 We didn't even know Bob was sad.
 Bob looks like he's got the idea of life.
 Well, you know what I mean?
 And so when I talk to people about this and I coach on this,
 it's like, no one thinks that they're lying.
 But the truth, the reality is if you're not speaking the truth
 then what is it?
 And if you're not sharing what's really inside of you,
 how you really feel, what's really going on,
 it's not an issue of political correctness
 or I don't want to piss anybody off,
 it's like, what are you doing?
 Are you speaking your truth?
 Yes or no?
 Well, I can't because my mom follows me on Instagram
 or my church people are over here and this and the other.
 And so we literally are living lots of lives.
 A vast majority of our culture or society
 is just fucking lying.
 And so the challenge from my coach
 was share what you're really thinking and feeling.
 And when I shared that post, it was wrong,
 it was scary as shit because I talked about anger,
 I talked about frustration, I talked about not knowing
 what the hell was going on, right?
 But what was really interesting is this
 and this is a huge lesson for people to understand.
 I noticed two things that happen.
 Number one, people resonated with my message.
 Millions of people resonated with it.
 No one, there's all these people
 like I'll teach you how to go viral.
 Nobody has a fucking recipe to go viral.
 Anybody tries to sell you a course of how to make viral videos?
 Tell them to fuck off because it doesn't exist, right?
 Well, I didn't wake up one day going,
 you know how I'm kind of tired of making money in real estate?
 I'm going to be a social influencer.
 I just shared my shit, but I shared darkness.
 It wasn't the filter, rosy, look at my wind,
 look at my accolades, look at my cool crap.
 It was like, dude, I was depressed.
 I almost blew my freaking brains out.
 I made a lot of mistakes.
 And I realized that millions of people resonated with that
 because we're all experiencing that.
 In one way, shape and form, right?
 Sex, money, politics, religion, divorce, depression,
 bankruptcy, suicide.
 Those are topics we don't talk about.
 They're not politically correct, not socially acceptable.
 Yet everyone on this planet is somehow intertwined
 with sex, money, politics, religion, divorce, depression,
 all of these fucking things.
 So what do we talk about on a day long?
 So I realized the first thing was how many people resonated
 with my darkness.
 And I coined and bought the phrase,
 your message, your message, bought the domain.
 And that'll probably be the title of one of my books
 coming down the pipe here.
 But my mess literally became my message.
 And the second thing that I saw after I shared this
 was that I felt better.
 It was almost like, okay, I got back up there.
 You know what I mean?
 And so when I talked to entrepreneurs and business owners
 and people, like, dude, you're a better father
 when you feel better.
 You're a better mother when you feel better.
 You're a better, everything when you feel better.
 Lying doesn't feel good.
 Lying is scary.
 It's, do they know?
 Do they know?
 Do they know?
 Where you just fucking tell the truth.
 And you got nothing to worry about.
 So it was like, if this is the recipe for me connecting
 with people and me feeling better,
 then I'm just going to keep doing it.
 And at the time, five years ago,
 and not that I was the only guy sharing shit on social media,
 but very few people are talking about real raw shit.
 You know, it's just airy, fairy, political things,
 reshairs of this.
 And so I just went on a mission, like, I'm going to share me.
 And since then, I literally have almost a billion views
 of my videos, millions of followers.
 I mean, literally hundreds of millions of engagements on my post
 from Instagram to Facebook.
 I mean, some of my videos have reached 150, 160, 170 million views
 of one video, which is just mind bending to me, right?
 But that's what I found is my own little kind of recipe.
 And I felt better.
 The marketplace plays resonate with it.
 And I just kept fucking running it.
 I love it.
 I want to get into some nuts and bolts
 on the back half here on the e-commerce.
 But I do have one follow up because I feel like,
 no matter how a loss you may have felt, you know,
 kind of being what you categorized as a man
 that everybody wanted you to be and not the real, maybe you.
 Something has shaped Sean Whalen.
 It's some point in life.
 Well, well before you got lost or you got found
 or anything like that, I feel like there has to be
 these, these opinions and these beliefs
 that kind of formed all of this, something shaped that,
 either early, whenever I would think.
 I don't know.
 Nobody's ever asked you that.
 Thinking back on life, like my parents split up
 when I was an early teenager.
 I was actually a really quiet kid.
 I was really reserved.
 I was a chubby little kid.
 I was a pretty good baseball player.
 But like, I wasn't popular.
 I wasn't the class valedictorian.
 I was really, really quiet, really reserved.
 And I think for me when looking back at it,
 when I went on a Mormon mission,
 I went on a two year Mormon mission,
 that was where I really started to kind of find my voice.
 I mean, you're out basically selling God.
 And you're going door to door, pitching God to people.
 And it was something I was really passionate about.
 It was something that, like, I didn't grow up in the Mormon church.
 I grew up Catholic.
 And so it was kind of a recent convert to the church.
 And I just started realizing that people love to connect.
 People love to talk.
 And I was really good at it.
 I was good at just talking to people.
 And I know that sounds really weird.
 But like, there really is an art form of communication.
 There's an art form being able to not just tell us,
 so, hey, how's your water?
 Like, why do you like that water?
 Okay, great.
 You know, what are, like, really fucking listening to people
 and hearing them and knowing what's driving them.
 And something that I've always been fascinated about
 and with is, is what's behind it?
 You know, this is why headlines and shit.
 I'm not, like, bouncing around like every other freaking bulls-o,
 or like, oh, my God, oh, my God.
 I'm like, man, you know, let's talk about this for a second.
 I like to critically think.
 And for me, being able to be in a place where I can ask deeper questions,
 it's fun for me.
 Yeah.
 And I found, you know, on my mission as I was talking about God,
 I mean, God's such a crazy topic for so many people,
 because you have people that are way over here
 and the people away over here and people have no clue.
 And so it kind of forced me to really,
 number one, find my foundation, like what I really believed
 and how I really felt about life and who I was
 and purpose and the entire thing.
 And I found that, like, people just love to connect.
 And so it's just become almost a skill set in art form
 that I've just gotten better and better and better at
 is communicating with human beings.
 But, you know, it definitely doesn't come from my youth.
 I mean, I was a quiet, freaking kid, man.
 Well, it's just, I've shared some of your stuff with people
 and they go, oh, man, he's pretty hardcore on this set and the other.
 And, you know, they care.
 He's a great community.
 I said it as a, I caught your great communicator, period.
 I mean, that's, I'm talking.
 I mean, when you, when you really give a shit about people,
 like, when you really care, like, I think it's a something that,
 I mean, we're not, we're just so busy trying to get,
 believe me, hear me, this is me.
 And it's like, I really, it sounds funny,
 but if it can't be explained on a whiteboard or like with crayons,
 it's too complicated.
 We should not have a tax policy in America that can't be explained
 on a fucking whiteboard, right?
 We should not have foreign policies that take 30,000
 pages, freaking manuals to fucking explain, right?
 No one's interested in that, really.
 And so we can tie this into the marketing and the business
 into the whole thing.
 Like, copy is really important.
 You know what I mean?
 Like, what are you telling me?
 Everybody knows they're being sold something.
 So we've already got that out of the way.
 But what are you trying to tell me?
 What are you trying to communicate with me?
 Yay, yay, nay, nay.
 Like, if the answer is simple, no, then just fucking say no, right?
 But I love being able to look at complex things
 and I break it down in my brain to just, like,
 coloring book kind of conversations.
 Like, yeah, this is what this really is.
 And it's just more, to me, it's more fun that way.
 I have more connection to stuff that way.
 You know what I mean?
 Absolutely.
 And so let's talk about Lion'sNotSheet.com.
 I mean, you know, we work, you know, we're in a digital agency here
 and we work a lot of brands.
 And, you know, they come to us and they have great products
 but they have no story.
 Right.
 And I will take a company that has a purpose in a story all day
 because that's, it's organic, you know.
 Again, it just becomes about blocking and tackling.
 It's real hard to figure out the Hill Mary, you know, the message,
 you know, the blocking and tackling you can do.
 But let's get to some of that blocking and tackling.
 What have been some of those mechanics of, you know,
 because I've heard you talk about it, you're like, you know,
 you started the company, you were selling t-shirts,
 you had a message, you had a plan.
 But something poured gas on the fire, you know, for the tactics
 and in some of the ways with which you sing growth.
 He's talking about some of that.
 Yeah, for sure.
 I, first of all, you know, there's two philosophies, in my opinion,
 like anybody who's a really, really, really good ad guy
 or a copy guy or whatever, I mean, you can take any product
 and figure out a way to sell it, right?
 And there's a lot of people that do that.
 They take, you know, products from China, they're really good.
 They figured out the game, the algorithms, they can do that.
 And then there's people that have passion behind something,
 they live it, they breathe it, they sleep it.
 It's big to them because their kid has cancer
 and they want this product out there and they want this thing
 or that thing and there's a story and a connection behind it.
 And either one of those is phenomenal, right?
 But I think the people that struggle the most are the ones
 that they feel like they have that passion
 and they feel like everybody's supposed to have that passion.
 I had to, this shirt is so bad at ass and this saying
 and everybody's going to buy this saying and this entire thing.
 But like, I found for me that I embodied lines not cheap.
 It literally was for me.
 You know what I mean?
 Like when I wrote my book, which is sold over a half a million copies
 completely organically, I mean, I didn't even put page numbers in there.
 We forgot it was so basic and just put out there the marketplace.
 I wrote a book that I wanted to read, like that I would want to read.
 And I think a lot of people need to realize,
 like, what do you want to wear?
 Right? It's easy to come up with slick marketing and slick products
 and whatever, but if there's no marketplace for it,
 it doesn't fucking matter how great your landing pages are this at the other.
 So when you're trying to tie in that story, you know, like,
 why is this relevant to you?
 Like, why do you believe in this?
 And then I've literally for the last couple of years
 I've been talking about lines on a sheet, but it's become me.
 And people have watched my journey as a father, as a business owner,
 as a man, as a divorced guy, as a dating guy.
 Like all of these things have been really transparent.
 And I think people vibe with that.
 They resonate with it, right?
 And so for me, lines not sheep it.
 Everybody's been telling me, dude, you're in the perfect storm now
 with the whole political climate and Trump because it's like,
 we're all, you're one or the other, right?
 You're picking up the line or your sheep, which is great.
 You know, but.
 Yeah, there's 175 million people on your side.
 Here's what's cool is everybody now wants to jump on that, right?
 And they want to plug into that emotion.
 They want to plug into the political climate and whatever,
 and you really don't have a track record.
 You don't have a tribe.
 You don't have any of that.
 I didn't set out to do that.
 And I think that's what really makes lines not sheep unique.
 And I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this.
 And it's really difficult to do is having the consistency of delivering content and messaging
 for the long game because now we're in the perfect fucking storm.
 Now we're crushing because so much content has been put out there
 over the last couple of years.
 And it wasn't with the objective of selling t-shirts or selling hats or selling any of that shit.
 My mom literally, she retired last year and she was bored of shit.
 I said, mom, come help me make t-shirts.
 And so we had one heat transfer.
 She was in the office and we'd sell 20 shirts a month just people stumbling on the website.
 And she'd run down and she'd get the shirts and she'd make them and she'd write a little note, package them all out.
 And that was really what the apparel brand was until the beginning of this year.
 But being able to like sit in a story and deliver that to people that they believe
 without trying to sell them anything is massive.
 And that's a huge tactic that I don't think very many people understand is I believe
 that the very best salespeople on planet earth are never selling anything.
 Like you go to my Instagram or my Facebook, you will never see me selling anything.
 Yet I'm literally able to make millions of dollars through coaching and consulting and other companies that I have.
 But I'm not selling anything. So how does that work?
 I'm living it. I'm breathing it. I'm exuding it, right?
 And that's, you know, if you're a jeep guy, you want to start a brand around jeeps, right?
 If you're driving a fucking Honda core, good luck, right?
 You better know the clicks and the algorithms.
 But it's like some of those dudes are like hardcore jeep guys. They get it.
 They know what jeep guys talk about. They know what jeep guys want.
 And they're able to exude that message, right?
 And people instantly resonate with it.
 So I really do believe that it's, you're in a day and age where we're completely bombarded and flooded with products and things and ads and messages.
 And if you want the short game, you better freaking figure out how to become a really good marketer, a really good calculator and buy ads better than anybody else.
 But if you want to build a real brand like something that has legs, they will be around for a long, fucking time that resonate with people like,
 why is it important to you? And you better be fucking living it.
 If you're living it and talking about it, everybody's like, do I, my personal page and my this page that I got.
 I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of followers on my personal page of way less than my business page because I just.
 I'm always living this talking about it, breathing it, eating it and be surprised how many people can plug into that.
 And now that we're turning on ads and running ads and doing shit like that where I have almost a billion views on my videos, I can now target some of those videos.
 And you know what I'm saying?
 But I've been playing the long game and consistently doing the content consistently talking about it.
 And people just know like some people will see the shirts, I get messages with it like, dude, that's the, that's the bearded guy.
 Like that's the bearded guy. They don't know my name because they recognize my video or post like, I know that guy. That's his thing, right?
 And it's it's really cool.
 What's the vision? I mean, where we're going? You know, I know you're, you're, you're knee deep and a lot of things. I know this is open doors.
 And yeah, that, you know, you're coaching how to make shit happen is the book everyone listening to check it out on Amazon.
 Amazon is your personal site. Yeah, Amazon. But what's where we headed? Where are you going?
 Well, right now we're trying to put the wheels back on the bus. We got our asses kicked in production. We grew so fast.
 I turned everything on back in March. What I mean by that is I hired a team to come in and start running ads. I'd never run an ad before.
 I'd never put ads out there and we went from that to, you know, we were doing two to $3,000 a month of just apparel sales.
 We did $463,000 last month of apparel sales and basically 90 days.
 And it, and it, and it fucked some things up. And I learned some very valuable expensive lessons on production and being able to keep up.
 And it's kind of a funny story. I mean, everybody thinks it's just sunshine and roses. But all my kids and their friends worked for me.
 And they were all part of our production team. And so we were doing the heat transfers and the whole thing. And I run all the numbers and I've got all the production companies and all the big promotional companies they're hitting me up.
 Let us do your shit. Let us do shit. Long story short, we had 10 of them employed as we were just crushing. We went from literally like picking up one box of shirts and screen prints to get powder delivered.
 One of the kids apparently got COVID. And because they're all like my daughter's friends, nine out of the 10 kids, their parents made them quit. Their parents made them literally self quarantine.
 And so we were doing 350 orders a day, which represents about six to 700 shirts. And so we're like, oh, no problem.
 We don't get a 10 page and see and bring all these people. Well, they fucking takes forever for them to learn and speed and well, anyways, we got we got really far behind. We got about 6,000 shirts behind.
 The team came in and they're like, bro, we got a problem. And I'm over here, like, go, go, go, let's go. And they're like, hang on, bro, we got a fucking problem. Because even if we work 24 hours a day, we can't get the numbers that we need.
 If that wheel on the bike isn't working, you can't.
 Because I've got some guys, some dear friends of mine, they're big in the e-com space. They do millions of dollars a month. And I've told them this and they all laugh and chuckle because we're like, yeah, dude, like, you know what I'm saying?
 Like every single person has this happened to him. I was bringing in hoverboards and he bought like 20,000 hoverboards from China. And they had already sold a bunch of them. And then they all got hung up on customs. And he's like, it cost me almost a million dollars.
 I'm like, yeah, this is a fucking pain in the ass. And he's like, now that you're learning it, you know, the vision for me is obviously getting that part of the business straight now, which we do now. But, you know, I really do, I'm passionate about this man. I'm passionate about the ability of, especially with men to really fucking step into who they are and not in some hippie, hippie way. But like, I'm 41 years old.
 And there's a lot of 41 year olds that are like, okay, I got the house from the car and the kids and the thing like, why do I fucking hate my life? Am I not doing anything I want to do?
 I mean, my wife and I were eating at the same place. We fucking vacation at Disneyland once a year. Like, what am I doing with my life? And Lion's not sheep in me specifically is, you know, I'm coaching a lot. I've got multiple facets to the business.
 But I really want to show people that it's possible. You know what I mean? Like, building a really bad ass life is possible. It's not whimsical. It's not because I got a silver spoon. In fact, it's anything but with me, I've worked my ass off for this. And I want to be able to show people and show kids and teenagers like, we have one shot of this reality.
 We have one shot of this life. Like, go build the shit you want to build. I mean, I've never, I've never built a, an apparel company. And I'm building a multimillion dollar apparel company. It's like, I'm showing people literally like I'm posting on Instagram my numbers every single day, sales and all this other shit.
 It's like, I'm showing people how this is done right to literally be able to build from scratch a huge brand. But to me, like, I want my end game is I want.
 I want lines not sheep to be a global company and to have a majority of our people not have any clue who I am. That's my end game is I want to leverage what I've gotten out through social media and the following and connections, whatever.
 But I want somebody to be able to see this hat, see this message, see this t-shirt resonate with it and have the same feeling of empowerment and power that I do and that, you know, thousands of other customers and people do.
 So that's my end game. But we've got, you know, six different companies inside of lines, not sheep that are all doing different things and, you know, it's fun, man. It's fun.
 It's sweet. Well, I love the way you bring your kids in to talk about it. I've got four boys under the age of 11. We're, we're need deep in it. But I love the way you bring them in. You talk about that. You're transparent about it and, you know, like, work here. It's like they got to see me get my ass kicked and like, I'm talking to my son and we literally have a pile of shirts that are sitting on the warehouse floor that we ended up trying to solve part of our problems.
 They outsourced to another company to be able to help us expedite these shirts and we sent them 5,000 shirts and almost every single one of them came back completely fucked up.
 Like the logos were all crooked and it's not the other. So we had a pile and I'm like, look at my son. I was like, that's $25,000 sitting on the floor right there that I can't do anything with, you know, and teaching them these things and showing them.
 Yeah. That's so freaking fun for me. That's awesome. I mean, is that, I mean, I don't want to ask you what do you want to, you've said it. I've, I've interpreted where you see your legacy. But I, I do want to kind of ask it because like, what do you, you know, when they go to Sean Whale and in 50 years, you know, what, what do you want people to think?
 My legacy is my kids. It's not wealth. It's not assets that can be distributed. It's not, you know, you know, 401K's and IRA's a kid just putting, you know, my kid just putting up.
 If I played this game right, I've empowered my children to become their own entrepreneurial independent creatures.
 My legacy, if you will, is that is if I can help these three kids break the chains that I came from and having dysfunction and having, you know, divorce at a young age and having a dad that was never around, you know, if I can be that man to where I'm laying on my deathbed knowing, I don't give a fuck about the money.
 But my kids know that they literally live the fullest life with me. That's my game. I mean, then to me, I quote, unquote, one. I mean, my son is 14 years old and he's raised the Baja 1000 with me twice. He's raised the Baja 500 and that's something I'm super proud of because it's like, that's our thing. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's, there's 50 year olds that that's been on their bucket list for 30 fucking years and my son's already done it twice. You know, and so to me, it's like,
 I want to be able to lay on my deathbed knowing, chance I'm never going to be on my deathbed. I'm going to blow myself up or driving a racetrack off. I'm stupid shit like that. But I want to be able to sit back and not have any fucking regrets know that I played the game. I was all in. I was all in every single day, like with my, with my lover, with my kids, with my business, with my message. Like you can go back and watch thousands of videos and you know that whether you like me or not, whether you agree politically with me or not, you know that I'm spitting my truth and you know that's coming from my soul.
 And for me, that's, that's the game. I win if I accomplish that and I feel like I'm on a pretty good track with that because that's how I feel literally sitting here, you know, this is the last podcast I do. It's like, well, you know what I mean? Yeah.
 I think you're living it and it's someone that doesn't agree with every single principle of yours. I respect the hell out of you and wanted you on the podcast because I see that is as clear as day.
 Yeah, there's, we're smart, you know, you and I everybody we think we all think we're smart, right? We should. You shouldn't think you're, you're dumb, but like if you're smart, I love to study and I love to read and I, and if you think about all of these great men that have come before us, the Carnegie's, the Rockefeller's, the Steve Jobs, the Steve Cubbies, these literal like industry creators and they just have changed the face of the earth.
 They all say the same thing at the end of their book, all of them without question. They all literally say at the end of their books, their biographies, like if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have spent more time doing the things that I wanted to do.
 I would have spent more time with my family and I consider myself a pretty smart fella. So if, you know, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Steve Jobs is saying, if I could go back and trade places with Sean at 41 and I'd spend more time playing and doing the things that I want to do.
 Then I get what Instagram is trying to tell me, I get that I'm supposed to be bawling in lambs and jets and the whole thing, but at the end of the day, I'm enjoying my life. I'm living the life and I'm taking the counsel from those guys, you know, and it seems to be working.
 It works really, really well for me and I've literally never been this happy for a man. I've got a great business here, a phenomenal family, like I literally wake up every day. I'm like, I'm fucking doing it.
 You know, I love it, brother. Well, I'm going to let you go. I really appreciate your time, Sean. I've been really enlightening and love what you're doing.
 So if you're looking, follow Sean Whelan on all the social media channels, you just Google Sean Whelan, W-H-A-L-E-N, you'll find him, www.SeanWhelan.com, lions.cheap.com, go find him.
 I know, find your truth as well. Sean, really appreciate it. Hey, guys, this has been the latest episode of the Radcast Follow Along at theradcast.com, and at the.rad.cast on Instagram, and we'll see you next time.
 To listen to full episodes or to contact us, visit us on the web at theradcast.com, or follow our host, at RyanAlford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.