Inside Sweetwater’s people-first approach to retail innovation

Episode transcript, edited for clarity

[00:00:01] Jason: We could sell rock and roll. How cool is that? People wake up today and decide to give us their money because they love what they do and we’re in a passion industry. Our company slogan from day one has been “do the right thing.” And a lot of companies I think say that, but we lead with heart and we really truly back up employees who execute on that. 

[00:00:18] I sit down on my first day with employees and I say, “Listen, if you think you’re doing the right thing, I promise you as a leader in this company, I will back you up 100%.” 

[00:00:27] Bill: Welcome to Retail Gets Real, where we hear from retail’s most fascinating leaders about the industry that impacts everyone, everywhere, every day. I’m Bill Thorne from the National Retail Federation, coming to you from NRF 2026. It’s Retail’s really Big Show in New York City. And on today’s episode, we’re talking to Jason Johnson, chief information officer of Sweetwater Sound. We’re going to talk to Jason about what drives him as a leader, his focus for 2026 and what excites him about the future of retail. Jason, welcome. 

[00:01:05] Jason: Yeah, thanks for having me.  

[00:01:08] Bill I guess I should start with, what is Sweetwater? But I don’t want you to talk about your experience at Sweetwater because I want to get into that next. 

[00:01:10] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:01:11] Bill: Okay. So what is Sweetwater? 

[00:01:13] Jason:  Sweetwater is the largest online ecommerce company for music, music instruments, anything that can produce sound. If I had to sum it up, I always say like, we get to sell rock and roll. So these microphones, all the gear that you’re looking at right now is gear you could buy at Sweetwater, and really anything else beyond that from services. Really, anything. So that’s thousands of guitars we’re shipping a day, hundreds of microphones. It’s a lot of gear. 

[00:01:39] Bill: Yeah. OK, I’m going to get to your career, but based on that, do people come, they say, “Well, I’m going to fly to Fort Wayne,” Indiana, which is where you’re based. Thank you for telling me that event. “I’m going to fly to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and go to Sweetwater and buy some stuff.” 

[00:01:53] Jason: We have a huge campus, over a million square feet under roof. Restaurant, doctor’s office, gym, you name it. Very Google-ish style campus. So there are people— we meet people every single day that come that said, “Hey, I’m on family vacation, and we made Fort Wayne a stop.” Your average music store does about a million bucks a year. 

[00:02:10] Our retail store does about 30. To put that in perspective, I’m not legally allowed to say we’re the largest music store in the world, but we’re pretty confident we’re the largest single music store in the world. We could say the United States. Our general counsel would be bopping me on the head right now, but it’s a pretty big place. 

[00:02:26] Bill: The lawyers. 

[00:02:26] Jason: Yeah. But most of it’s e-comm. And then on top of that, very unique to us, we have over 700 sales engineers. They’re all trained the same, and they’re commission-based— 

[00:02:38] Bill: How many? 

[00:02:38] Jason: 700 in a call center. They’re all commission-based. Think of them all like little mini retail stores in a call center. They all have their own set of customers. They’re all operating in our space. And those folks are doing 100 to 150 outbound calls a day, calling customers and talking to them, maturing relationships. 

[00:02:55] Business started in 1979 out of the back of a VW bus with a guy named Chuck Surack, who had a bunch of friends who saw him as an expert in the industry and asked him all sorts of gear questions. And he started a business, said, “If I can just—” Honestly, I’ve heard it right out of his mouth. He said, “If I could start a business and just help my friends and they could pay for the gear I want to get by selling a few extra, then I would love to just do that.” 

[00:03:17] And that’s really been at our core since day one, is how do we serve our customers. Just regular people in Fort Wayne, Indiana, trying to make sure that musicians’ dreams come true. The process of creating music is highly collaborative and very personalized, and so you need a Sherpa to help get you there. 

[00:03:36] Bill: Wow. The sad thing is, as we had talked about before we started recording, that my family, my parents both are from Huntington, which is just right outside of Fort Wayne, we used to have a [Inaudible] in Coldwater. 

[00:03:48] Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. 

[00:03:50] Bill: And I’d be really excited because I’d be like, “Oh, next time we’re in Huntington, I’m going to go.” 

[00:03:55] Jason: Please come. 

[00:03:56] Bill: But the problem is we don’t go back there anymore. And everybody’s pretty much gone. 

[00:04:00] Jason: Yeah. Now you got a reason. 

[00:04:01] Bill: But yeah, totally. When we are done with this, I’m going to call my cousin, Ronnie. I’m going to call a couple of other cousins. 

[00:04:10] Jason: He’ll know Sweetwater. 

[00:04:11] Bill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just ask them why we’ve never been there. 

[00:04:14] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:04:14] Bill: That’s pretty awesome. 

[00:04:15] Jason: Company about 3,000 employees. 

[00:04:18] Bill: That’s a lot for Fort Wayne. 

[00:04:19] Jason: It is a lot for Fort Wayne. I started in 2013. My first year there we did $230 million worth of business. I was the sixth person in IT. Last year, 2025, we did 1.8 billion. And I have about 240-some people in our team. 

[00:04:33] Bill: Sweet. 

[00:04:34] Jason: All through natural organic growth. Yeah, sweet. We use that word a lot internally. 

[00:04:40] Bill: Sure, you do. 

[00:04:41] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:04:41] Bill: All right, so now we’re going to get to your career journey. But even though I will tell you, your career journey is pretty unique. So hit it. 

[00:04:51] Jason: Yeah, yeah. So, born and raised in Fort Wayne. Was always aware of Sweetwater. I think if you live in Fort Wayne and you don’t know Sweetwater, which I meet people every once in a while, you may be living under a rock. 

[00:05:00] Bill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:05:01] Jason: Left Fort Wayne. Felt like Fort Wayne didn’t have a lot to offer me at the time. I wanted to just get out. Joined the U.S. Navy, ended up in Southern California for five years. Met my wife down there. Served at a research design and development base, so the Navy’s Area 51, if you will. Had a really bad back injury. Had a walker at 21, and became a contractor. 

[00:05:24] So I got discharged from the service, became a contractor. Spent another four years there. Basically same job, same phone, a lot better salary. And at the time, we were coming back and forth to Fort Wayne, visiting my family, and my wife said, “I really want to move to Fort Wayne. I want to get out of my hometown, and I think Fort Wayne’s great, and I get along with your parents wonderfully. Let’s get away.” And I’m the type of guy, I work in IT. I can work anywhere. 

[00:05:49] Bill: Sure, sure, sure. 

[00:05:49] Jason: I think home is where your family’s at. Happy wife, happy life. 

[00:05:52] Bill: Yeah, totally. 

[00:05:53] Jason: And so— 

[00:05:54] Bill: That’s where it all starts. 

[00:05:55] Jason: —we packed up and I took a job on the help desk at this company called Sweetwater Sound, the sixth person in IT. And I got in. And I think one of the things that is a leadership core value for me is, I’ve held lots of positions, some with great titles, some with not so great titles. 

[00:06:13] And when you figure out how things work and you try to provide an undeniably better solution to the people around you, people tend to just naturally follow you. And when I was on the help desk, I came in really early in the morning, and really late at night, and just started doing things that needed to be done, things that in the Navy we did at scale that Sweetwater had not really seen before. Simple things, server upgrades, reorganizing racks, stuff like that. And just started quickly growing in my influence and what I was able to get done. 

[00:06:40] Bill: And you were how old? 

[00:06:41] Jason: At the time I was 24. I had a two-year-old and a three-year-old. 

[00:06:48] Bill: Proceed. It’s just amazing. 

[00:06:51] Jason: And an amazing wife who takes care of everything else around me and always has. I love that about her. And she always says, “You’re so successful.” And I always say, “Only because of you, really.” That’s so true. And so I just started improving things, and I got a rep around the company as somebody who would just roll my sleeves up and get things done, and in a company that was growing rapidly, 10, 20% year-over-year. 

[00:07:14] And within 18 months I was running the department, which was six people at the time. And I sat down the owner when I took over and he said, “Hey, I think we’ve been lagging on IT, hiring.” And I took the job. I think I got the job September 15th time, and he sat me down. He said, “I want you to double the team by the end of the year.” 

[00:07:31] Bill: Wow. 

[00:07:33] Jason: And so we started hiring people and I started building out teams, and I’ve gotten this comment from my staff, but I learned a lot of stuff in the Navy and a lot of really great experiences I had. But my favorite thing was you get to see really, really great leaders in the military, and you get to see leaders that aren’t so great. 

[00:07:49] And seeing that spectrum, for me, I’m the type of guy who takes every input I get and molds myself and learns. And I think of life like I think of developing software. You just iterate over and over and over again. We’re never done. And so I started building a team that represented a family, and I started working really, really hard on the core components of that. And we just continued to scale that year-over-year, doing cooler and cooler stuff. And at the end of the day, Sweetwater is a tech company. We happen to sell music equipment. 

[00:08:18] Bill: Yeah. 

[00:08:18] Jason: But we really differentiate ourselves on the customer experience and how we treat people, going back to Chuck. 

[00:08:26] Bill: Yeah. A couple of observations. One is, I’ve said for a long time, that your best work or life experiences usually come from those who you would never do what they did to you or how they managed you. Those are the ones that you remember. And the good ones that instill something that makes you passionate and enjoy the work that you do. 

[00:08:49] But the bad ones that make you wonder, why the hell am I doing this? But you learn from that experience and you apply that in how you treat others moving forward. And then it’s the work ethic too. I think that’s so important. It’s so hard to find people that will go the extra mile, go in— when I first started in Washington, I would get to the office at 6:30, and I’d work until 8 or 9 o’clock. 

[00:09:13] My parents stopped calling me at home. They’d just call me at the office on weekends. And one day my boss came in and flew open the door of the office where I was, and he goes, “I found the person, Ruth,” which is his chief of staff. “This is the guy that makes the coffee every morning. What’s your name?” 

[00:09:31] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:09:32] Bill: And so it’s important. And I think that you definitely learned that very, very early. You were young. 

[00:09:39] Jason: Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things that stuck for me from boot camp from those days is when, on the very first day, the recruit division commander, the RDC, he sat down and he said, “You’re going to see a lot of people try to get out of boot camp.” 

[00:09:52] And he goes, “And I promise you, the fastest way to get out of boot camp is to just do the work and graduate.” And that sticks with me to this day of, like, you look at something, the more you don’t want to do it, the more you should just walk over and get it done. 

[00:10:05] Bill: Get it done. Totally. 

[00:10:06] Jason: Get it out of the way and move forward. 

[00:10:08] Bill: I think I apply that every single day to something. It’s like, I don’t want to do this, but if I do it, then it’s done. I don’t have to think about it, worry about it, or stress about it. 

[00:10:17] Jason: And nine times out 10, it’s half as hard as you thought it was. True that. And you feel, at least for me, I feel so fulfilled at the end. I’m like, “Man, I could go grocery shopping and mail a letter today.” You know what I mean? 

[00:10:32] Bill: Literally on my birthday, which was just a couple of weeks ago, I washed windows at the house because I wanted to get it done. It had to be done, and this is a place in Florida. And if it’s 88 degrees with 100% humidity, you can’t wash the windows. It happened to be a day that it was 68 degrees with zero humidity. 

[00:10:57] Had to get it done. I didn’t want to do it. It was my birthday. I didn’t want to be washing windows on my birthday. But to your point, get it done. You’ve got the rest of the day, and it’s off your mind and you don’t have to worry about it. 

[00:11:07] Jason: Yeah, totally. 

[00:11:08] Bill: All right. Sweetwater as an innovator. So what’s been the most exciting thing to roll out, I’m not going to say this year. I’m going to say, what did you do last year, and what are you planning for 2026? 

[00:11:22] Jason: That’s a great question. We are constantly making tons and tons of little changes. Our software teams deploy 3 or 400 times. I think last week it was 396 times that we’re deploying a week. So we try to just rapidly iterate on stuff over and over and over again. But on the AI space, one of the things that we started rolling out last year was a training and coaching platform. It’s able to mine all of our phone call data. 

[00:11:50] So we’re making 30 to 40,000 phone calls a day, and there’s just a mountain of data in those conversations that’s good for the customer experience. It’s good for personalized journeys, and it’s also good for our salespeople and other internal uses. 

[00:12:06] And so being able to really unlock that data and provide valuable insights back to the business, as simple as that sounds, has been something that I’m super, super, super excited about. It’s a gold mine. 

[00:12:17] Bill: Yeah. It’s something you can tap into on an ongoing basis once you have the system down. 

[00:12:21] Jason: A couple million minutes a month is what works out to be. 

[00:12:24] Bill: Unbelievable. 

[00:12:24] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:12:25] Bill: So that was last year. 

[00:12:27] Jason: That was last year we started that. 

[00:12:29] Bill: What are we doing this year? 

[00:12:30] Jason: We’re going to improve that. 

[00:12:31] Bill: We’re going to build on that. 

[00:12:33] Jason: We’re going to build on that. Some of the stuff we’re doing this year, we’re focusing on better serving schools and institutions in big ways. A couple of years ago we started a band and orchestra program. That was the first forte we got into that. That’s really at a point now where it’s scaling up. And so we get to meet musicians early in their journey, students. And then help them grow and succeed throughout the country. 

[00:12:58] Bill: To go into that program a little bit: Is that done through the school districts, through the individual schools, or through the people? 

[00:13:04] Jason: It’s fascinating. All of the above. Totally depends on the state you’re in, how the music program— it works totally different in Texas than it works in California, than works in Montana. So it can be that the school is all very prescriptive about it. Could be a personal relationship with a music director in a school. 

[00:13:18] Could be fractured amongst the school. Or it could be something like Texas, where they’re making recommendations and you’re just a retailer there and you’re on a list with a couple other retailers, and you’re going through. So sometimes schools buy them. Sometimes they run them, but the vast majority of them, you’re going to go to band night. Parents [are] going to get a flyer. They’re going to go to our website. 

[00:13:39] We built an amazing experience on our website. I’m a graduated band parent now. My daughter just is in her last semester of high school and band season’s over, but when she was a freshman, you get a piece of paper and you’re looking at a whole bunch of foreign stuff. 

[00:13:53] I was lucky I could go into work and say, “Hey, guys. Help me make sense of this.” But we’ve built journey, an ecommerce-focused journey with questionnaires that takes input from the band directors at a school level and helps curate that experience back to the individual student or the students’ parents to take them from setting up a reoccurring rental to get that instrument in their hands. 

[00:14:14] Bill: So my family, my parents, my mother in particular, she had us all taking piano lessons, and all of us then graduated from piano to different instruments. My sister was a clarinet. My youngest sister was drums. My brother was a clarinet, I believe. And I was the tuba, trumpet, trombone and bass violin. And didn’t stick with anything way too long. 

[00:14:36] But trumpet being the primary, and that’s the only instrument that I ever own, still have. But I think that there is something to be said for mom’s persistence in learning to rehearse and to practice and to experiment and to grow. If you have a program where they have the instruments available to you, you don’t have to buy them per se. You’re allowed to explore, and it’s a lot of fun. That’s great. 

[00:15:04] Jason: Yeah. And we get to introduce those budding musicians to Sweetwater and give them the Sweetwater experience. So some of the things that we do, your average time at a local place that you rent from is going to be a couple of weeks if that student breaks their instruments. We say, “Hey, ship it to us. We’re going to cross-ship you a brand new one.” 

[00:15:21] And within 24, 48 hours, depending on where you live, you’re going to have a replacement instrument in that student’s hands, which helps the teacher keep the student engaged in class so that they’re not doing it. 

[00:15:31] They’re not playing on loaner equipment. We provide upgrades. There’s just a lot of really great things that we wrap around the program to really make sure that the student gets immersed and is doing it the way their band director wants to teach, which is super important to the educators. 

[00:15:47] Bill: Did you ever play an instrument? 

[00:15:48] Jason: You know what? I always joked that I played the corded keyboard. My wife is a beautiful pianist. I played the corded keyboard, but about a month ago, I started playing guitar. So I’m very, very early in a guitar journey. 

[00:16:00] Bill: That’s fascinating. I always thought, I’m at the age where you start thinking about retirement. I was like, “When I retire, I might try to learn to play a guitar. Why not?” It’s a good stretch, and— 

[00:16:14] Jason: You don’t have to know how to read music. You can play it. I’ve got five different chords laid out in front of me, and I’ve been assured that if I learn these five chords, I can probably play 1,000-plus songs. 

[00:16:26] Bill: That’s awesome. So the approach that your company takes, it’s a customer-friendly approach. If you go into a store, if I went into your store and you owned that store and you sold musical instruments, and we’d walk around and you’d show me, and you’d tell me why this one is probably better for me at level or whatever, but I’m online, and it is a very, I don’t want to say personal choice, but you want to be sure that you’re doing the right thing. So how do you bring that customer-friendly environment to an online experience? 

[00:16:58] Jason: Yeah, so great question. First off, we always try to inject the human back into it. So hyper-personalizing the website, really making sure— you place an order on Sweetwater, you’re going to get a follow-up call from your sales engineer within minutes, sometimes hours of placing that order. And we’re going to thank you for the order. We’re going to make sure that we confirm what you got. 

[00:17:18] We’re going to talk about accessories. We’re going to really go through and say, “Hey, are we getting you to the right place?” We genuinely care about you at a very, very deep level. Making sure we have world-class content. So one of the things we do, we write all of our copy. We take 100% of our own pictures. 

[00:17:33] We really for a very long time have invested heavily in making sure that the online experience is as close to the in-store experience as it can be. And then making returns as frictionless as possible when it doesn’t work out. So one example of that, that I always tell people is custom guitars. So custom guitars can get very expensive. 

[00:17:51] Bill: For sure. 

[00:17:52] Jason: We’ve got a guitar right now. It’s a very specific Gibson guitar, but it’s like $350,000. Not every guitar’s that expensive, but you go buy a $2,500 guitar, five— I tell people, if you were shopping for a $5,000 car and you went on the website and you found one that you really liked on, insert any car website, and you went to the dealership and they said, “Oh, you know what? That’s just the one we show the pictures of online. Here’s another one that’s just like that.” You’d go, “Wait a minute.” 

[00:18:20] Bill: Yes, yes, yes. 

[00:18:21] Jason: So we sell guitars by serial number. We specifically photograph that guitar. And when you look online, we’ve weighed it to the ounce because ounces matter to guitar players when they hold it. Someone on heavy, someone on lighter. 

[00:18:32] We’ll set it up for you if you want us to, and we’re going to give you the guitar you saw on the website. So you extrapolate that out to the thousand guitars we’re shipping a day, we have 4 or 5 million photos at any given point, sitting at rest for the website to serve because we’re selling you that guitar. 

[00:18:47] Bill: Wow. 

[00:18:47] Jason: And so it’s important to us that we’re representing those products very, very well online and trying to mimic that in-store experience. On our content side, we do shoot-offs and we go through different amplifiers and play different instruments and stuff like that so that people can hear them over the computer. 

[00:19:05] And then of course you can call your sales engineer. And one funny thing about our building is everybody’s desk is a valid inventory location. So if you call your sales engineer and you go, “I want you to grab that guitar and play it for me.” They’ll pull it to their desk and pull it out of the box and answer whatever question, and play it to you over the phone if you want to, or send— absolutely. And so those salespeople are very, very, very empowered. We want you to have the right gear. That’s what makes the magic happen. 

[00:19:33] Bill: I’m going to have to try this. OK. So describe your approach. You were in the Navy, so you’ve got the military— I’m sure, since you were Fort Wayne, you’ve got great family, great parents. You went to a great school. How does that form your leadership, and what is your approach to leadership? 

[00:19:52] Jason: First off, you have to be a human. I always say I’m a big fan of bringing your weekend self to work. I’m a real person. You have to be accessible. One of the things I picked up from our owner that I try to do is respond to email. Respond to every email you get. And I would probably bet a paycheck right now, Bill, that if I emailed our founder and CEO right now, that I would get a response back within minutes. 

[00:20:17] Bill: Mm-mm. 

[00:20:18] Jason: I would bet a paycheck on it. 

[00:20:20] Bill: Minutes. 

[00:20:21] Jason: Minutes. Yeah. Just absolutely responding to people quickly and validating speed, and being humble, and really just throwing it out there with a quick answer, I think does a ton at a leadership level. Beyond that, you got to know people. You got to understand what makes them work, and you got to lead with your heart. 

[00:20:39] And for me, that is radical transparency. That is constant feedback. It sounds basic, but it really, really is just looking people in the eyes and saying, “Hey, we’re both on the same team here. We’re both moving in the same direction. Here’s what I need from you. What do you need from me?” One of the favorite questions I have to ask people that work for me is, how can I help? 

[00:21:02] Bill: It’s a basic question. And it really does mean something when somebody asks. 

[00:21:08] Jason: And then when you give somebody your word— 

[00:21:10] Bill: Yeah. 

[00:21:10] Jason: Yeah, you go execute on that. When I tell somebody I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it, and I mean it. And that’s really, really important to me. And the trust you build up with the people around you when you operate like that, you can’t buy it. 

[00:21:23] Bill: Radical transparency. Radicalized? Radical? 

[00:21:27] Jason: Radical transparency. 

[00:21:28] Bill: Radical transparency. I tell people all the time, leadership is about transparency, accountability. Transparency, number one. Accountability, number two. They go hand in hand, but you’ve got to have both. But transparency really is a key to gaining somebody’s trust and loyalty, is if you are honest, if you’re transparent, if you’re accountable for what you say and do. 

[00:21:51] Jason: I think it’s fascinating. I had a experience a couple of years ago where I took over an internal team that had a leadership change, and we decided to reorg them. The business didn’t love that team. They were an underperforming team within our organization. And the first thing I did was call them in a room, and I said, “Hey, how do you guys think the business feels about this team?” 

[00:22:12] Bill: Right. 

[00:22:12] Jason: And they looked around, and it was really quiet for a while. And I looked at them and I said, “Hey, I can live in silence. We’re going to sit here.” And somebody raised their hand and said, “I don’t think the business really likes us.” And I said, “You’re absolutely right. Why do you think that that is?” And people started throwing up reasons. 

[00:22:31] And I said, “Guys, you know the problem. Let’s go fix it.” And I walked out and a leader came with me and said, “I can’t believe you said that to them. I can’t believe you told them that. I thought we were supposed to go in there and pump them up.” I said, “We cannot gaslight people into performing well. People know the truth. All you have to do is say, “That’s valid. Your feelings are valid. But you know what? We’re here to fix it together. And nobody in the company doesn’t like you. That’s just a feeling.” 

[00:22:59] Bill: Right. That’s awesome. Yeah, next time we have an offsite, I may have you come in. 

[00:23:05] Jason: Yeah, I’d love to. 

[00:23:06] Bill: That’d be absolutely fantastic in business, and particularly in our business in retail, and because you’re serving the customer, you’re consumer-facing. I think you’ve hit on it, but just putting it in the frame of culture, how would you describe Sweetwater’s culture? 

[00:23:25] Jason: Oh man, that’s a great question. Sweetwater’s culture actually can feel a little cultish. I hired a guy one time. I hired a guy one— 

[00:23:32] Bill: Have you ever been to Walmart? 

[00:23:33] Jason: No. Well, I mean, I’ve been to a Walmart— 

[00:23:34] Bill: You should come to Bentonville. 

[00:23:36] Jason: Yeah, I would love to. Yeah, that would be awesome. I hired a guy one time and when I hired him, he said to me, he goes, “OK, I’m willing to put the robe on and drink the Kool-Aid.” And I was like, “Hmm, that’s an interesting thing to say when you accept a job. 

[00:23:50] But I had an existing relationship with this gentleman and we moved forward and he came back a couple of weeks later and he sat me down and he goes, “That was a really jaded comment I made, and I’m really sorry.” 

[00:23:58] And I said, “Why?” And he goes, “Because I’ve grown up in a corporate world and you look around and you hear about culture and you talk about culture. From the outside, this feels a little cult-ish here at Sweetwater. But I got in and I realized people actually are generally happy.” He goes, “I didn’t know you could actually be this happy at work.” 

[00:24:13] Bill: Yeah. 

[00:24:14] Jason: We could sell rock and roll. How cool is that? We get to meet— people wake up today and decide to give us their money because they love what they do and we’re in a passion industry. The first thing, you cannot take yourself seriously. 

[00:24:26] You just have to roll with the punches and you also have to— our company slogan from day one has been “do the right thing.” And a lot of companies I think say that, but we lead with heart and we really truly back employees who execute on that. 

[00:24:44] I sit down on my first day with employees and I say, “Listen, if you think you’re doing the right thing, I promise you as a leader in this company, I will back you up 100%. I’m not saying that we won’t have a conversation maybe about how I would prefer you to do something in the future, but I want you to know if you make a decision, if you think it’s the right thing for the customer, no matter what the impact of that decision is, I’m going to back you. We’re there.” 

[00:25:05] Bill: Sweet. 

[00:25:05] Jason: And that comes out in lots of really in inspiring ways, so yeah, we use that term in front of everything at work. 

[00:25:12] Bill: I’m serious. It is not subliminal, but it’s honest. It’s true. That’s really sweet. Wow. That’s great. 

[00:25:22] Jason: And when you create an environment where people can fail— 

[00:25:25] Bill: Yes, yes. For sure. 

[00:25:26] Jason: When you celebrate that failure, when you run postmortems and things to inspect that, when you make— we run this process in IT called blameless postmortems, and we get together and we say, “Hey, something happened. How do we prevent it?” And people really feel safe and comfortable. They do their best work. 

[00:25:44] Bill: Yeah, for sure. 

[00:25:45] Jason: And they give you great ideas. And I’m telling you, every business’ problem is solved with the ideas of the people who work there. It’s whether or not they’re willing to tell you them or not. 

[00:25:54] Bill: Yeah. One place where I worked, we had opportunity sessions. Those were the failures. And so if you’re going into an opportunity session, you were going to learn something. 

[00:26:05] Jason: Yeah. I hate the whole industry of calling problems opportunities. Guess what? A problem is a problem, and I believe in solving every problem creates opportunities. And opportunities are how we win. 

[00:26:17] Bill: Yes, yes. You have postmortems. We have autopsies. So if you don’t like change, you don’t like retail. If you resist change, you need to get out. This is not the place for you. 

[00:26:29] What is the future of retail in your mind? We’ve got AI, agentic. We’ve got all of these things, but when you look at the future, what do you see? 

[00:26:39] Jason: I think that the future of retail is what we’ve been doing. I think that the human connection is becoming more and more priceless. And I think people buy things from people. At the end of the day, everybody’s got a guy or gal that’s their guy or gal. 

[00:26:55] And I have people in my life, on hobbies and stuff like that, that I just trust so much that I never check the invoice. I never check the bill. I’m doing business with them. And that’s what we strive to build. And I think that the commodity that AI is going to allow expertise to proliferate through different industries is going to level the playing field, and it’s going to be the humans that sit above that that are going to be the differentiators. 

[00:27:22] Bill: People keep talking about AI, and we’ve started to use it at work. I’ve used it personally, but what I’ve found is I can read emails or I can read documents, and I know this was AI-driven. This is Chat. This is Copilot. This is Gemini. This is not the person who wrote it. 

[00:27:45] And to me, that’s my great hope, is that you have to have human touch. You can’t fake it. And we’ve all got a voice. We’ve all our way that we talk and we think. And if somebody gives me something and I know that’s not their voice, I’m not very impressed. 

[00:28:01] Jason: Yeah. I think it’s just a tool. I think we’re at a time where it’s a tool and— 

[00:28:06] Bill: Yeah. 

[00:28:06] Jason: I know a lot of people are concerned that they’re going to lose their job over it, and I think a lot of that is just industry hype, frankly. But the truth of the matter is, I think we’re at a job site, and everybody’s had hammers for a really long time, and somebody just showed up with a pneumatic nailer, and it’s not going to be whether or not you can— you’re not going to get replaced by the pneumatic nailer. The pneumatic nailer can’t run on its own. 

[00:28:26] Bill: Right, right. 

[00:28:27] Jason: It’s just going to be somebody who can outwork you because they’ve decided to adopt a tool. When farmers got the tractor, they didn’t just plow their two-acre field and say, “Oh, I’m going to go take a nap at 9:00 a.m. and I’m good. I bought a tractor.” No, they went and bought 200 acres. 

[00:28:41] And so I think this massive expansion and what we’re able to accomplish, and then also using it as a tool and recognizing what it’s good at and not good at, depending on your industry and use case and all that stuff, is going to be the name of the game. I think of AI as Iron Man suits. And what’s interesting is when Tony Stark gets out of the Iron Man suit, he’s the star. No one has to go, “He could only fly if he had that.” We all know that. You look at it. You see the tool. You see what’s going on there. 

[00:29:11] Bill: Right, right, right, right. 

[00:29:11] Jason: But he’s a star. And so in all things AI, for us at least, we’re really thinking about, OK, how do we accelerate what’s already good? How do we work with the team? How do we get the team so they’re thinking less about tools and how things work, and they can really focus on the customer and really focus on what they need to do and the value that they can uniquely provide? 

[00:29:30] Bill: So you got your job. You just double your six to 12, or whatever it was, staff. Right? 

[00:29:37] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:29:37] Bill: How many staff do you have now? 

[00:29:39] Jason: 242. 

[00:29:42] Bill: Yeah. Matt’s toes just curled at the thought. I don’t want this interview to end. It’s not an interview. I don’t want this conversation to end. I’m absolutely, I’m hugely impressed with what Sweetwater does, their ethics, their approach, with you as a leader, as a young person that took the ball, ran with it, and has been incredibly successful as a result. But all good things have to come to an end. I hate it. And we’ll have to have you back. But before I let you go, we’re going to do a little rapid response, if that’s okay. 

[00:30:14] Jason: Go ahead. Yeah. 

[00:30:15] Bill: I’m going to make it easy. 

[00:30:16] Jason: I’m ready. 

[00:30:17] Bill: I promise. What is the book that you’ve liked the most that you’ve read recently? 

[00:30:22] Jason: It’s by Will Guidara, “Unreasonable Hospitality.” I just read the entire book with my leadership team. I got to see him speak in September. I’m addicted to it. 

[00:30:31] Bill: You’re the second person that has said that today. 

[00:30:34] Jason: Wow. Yes. Great book. 

[00:30:36] Bill: I got to pick that up. Who is your favorite musician? 

[00:30:39] Jason: Ooh. Right now, probably John Summit. He’s a DJ. That’s going to cause some waves, I’m sure. But I’m an electronic music guy. Yeah. 

[00:30:49] Bill: You going to go see Joe Jonas tonight? 

[00:30:51] Jason: No. 

[00:30:52] Bill: OK. I was just curious. 

[00:30:53] Jason: No. 

[00:30:53] Bill: What is your favorite instrument other than guitar? 

[00:30:55] Jason: Other than guitar? Oh, that’s a great question. I really love the saxophone. There’s something special about the saxophone that I love. And I love piano. My wife plays piano. And on my most stressful day, I’ll come home and she’ll just pick up that I’m stressed, and I’ll go downstairs and sit in a chair and she’ll just play classical piano music for me. 

[00:31:13] And it is just such a wonderful thing. Yeah. She probably plays two or three times a week. She would kill me right now if I was even admitting that she plays music because she’s like most musicians. “I’m horrible. I’m not good at it.” And like, you’re wonderful. I have all these videos of me sneaking up behind her and then she finally realizes I’m recording and turns around and is like, “Hey, turn that thing off right now and delete it.” 

[00:31:34] Bill: That’s all. What that sounds like to me, if I have a hard day, I go home. I go to the basement. I try to chill. I hear piano music. That’s called heaven. I would think maybe perhaps I have died and this is it. Enjoy these few minutes. The best perk of working at Sweetwater. 

[00:31:52] Jason: Oh man, the best— this is going to sound cliche, so I’ll give you another one, but the best perk of working at Sweetwater is the people. We have some of the most smartest people. I have always said, I go into that place and learn something every day with some of the smartest people. And I really believe in the guy Kawasaki, A players hire A+ players. B players hire C players. C players— and I have really strived to say, in every room that I sit in, I want to be the dumbest person. 

[00:32:17] And I feel like I get to go to work every day and watch the coolest people do the coolest stuff at the coolest company. And, for me, I’m just in awe when I walk in that building across the way. But the actual perk, we have an on-site doctor and a nurse. He’s 100% free to employees. 

[00:32:33] They fill 70% of their prescriptions right on site. So if you get sick and you need a Z-Pack, you walk upstairs. You talk to Dr. Todd. I’ve known him for 10 years. You get a Z-Pack in five minutes and you go back down to your desk, and it is just one of the most convenient little things in our building. 

[00:32:50] And it’s like an old-school doctor with a black bag. My son, when he was younger, got real sick, and we took him in on a Friday, and he had 104 fever and the doctor gave him a bunch of med. And I wake up Saturday morning, I had a text message from the doctor saying, “Hey, Jason, how’s Logan doing? I’m concerned about him.” And just feeling that level of family and everybody has your back from all angles, I think it’s the best part. 

[00:33:13] Bill: Again, Fort Wayne. So Jason, I can’t thank you enough for taking this time. I really have learned a lot about your company and about you, and I’m impressed by both. So thank you for being here. 

[00:33:26] Jason: Well, I’m a product of the company. And so I would thank everybody there. It really is a great, forward-looking, leaning culture. It’s a special thing we have going on there in Fort Wayne. 

[00:33:36] Bill: You do. 

[00:33:37] Jason: I appreciate the invite. 

[00:33:38] Bill: No problem. And no problem to get you back either. And thank you all for listening to another episode of Retail Gets Real. You can find more information about this episode at retail gets real dot com. I am Bill Thorne. This is Retail Gets Real from New York City and NRF’s 2026 Big Show. Thanks for listening. Until next time.