Sharon Price John

And so we doubled the teen and adult business that is now 40% of our sales.

I have to give the team a lot of credit because they gave this a lot of heart.

And it was 10 years of near bankruptcy, the retail apocalypse, activist investors, Brexit, and a global pandemic where we had to shut down all of our stores around the globe in 48 hours, and our stock price dropped to an all-time low.

Now I'm happy to tell you, 250 million furry friends later and a whole lot of heart ceremonies, we have had four years of record results.

And recently, a stock price appreciation of over 2,000 percent.

So yeah, a teddy bear company outpacing tech giants like Nvidia, Microsoft,

You gotta ask, how is that possible?

Is there a strategy smart enough to make that happen?

Well, actually, I have to believe that it all came down to getting in touch with our real purpose, who we really were.

And that had to start with heart.

Uh-oh.

Um.

Am I seeing skeptical stares and maybe some silence?

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, oh, that heart stuff, that works for companies like Build-A-Bear.

But there's no way starting with heart can be more important than just being smart when it comes to turnarounds and business.

Okay, I'll give you that.

But I'm going to submit a quote to you, widely attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States.

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

Really, no matter how brilliant you are, what your big idea is, your financial acumen,