The School of Greatness - 230 The Power of Optimism to Build a Brand with Bert Jacobs

Episode Date: September 21, 2015

"One of the superpowers that everyone has access to is humor." - Bert Jacobs If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/230

This is episode number 230 with Burt Jacobs from Life is Good. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to the podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Lewis Howes. I am your host. And we've got an incredible guest. His name is Bert Jacobs. He is the chief executive optimist of the company Life Is Good. You guys know that t-shirt company you see all over in airports and all over the world called Life Is Good with the little stick figure and smiley face dudes? That's this guy. He and

his brother John began designing and selling t-shirts in the street in 1989 by converting an old van and sold t-shirts dorm to dorm. They founded Life is Good Together in 1994. Their company has since become an internationally recognized lifestyle brand available in thousands of retail locations worldwide. They focus on guiding the company vision, creating inspiring content, and growing a healthy business, all while helping kids overcome poverty, violence, and severe medical challenges.

And I had a great time connecting with Bert today. I think you're going to really love this episode, really dive into how to build a $100 million brand today from scratch. If he could do it all over again, what would he do differently? How he built it up along the way. Really, the first five years, he didn't make much money at all with him and his brother until one thing changed it all and sales started going through the roof with this one decision they made. We cover all of that and more. Very excited to dive into this episode with Bert. Without further ado, guys, let's go ahead and dive into this

episode with my new friend and very wise human being, Bert Jacobs. my new friend and very wise human being, Burt Jacobs. Welcome, everyone, back to School of Greatness podcast. We've got Burt Jacobs in the house. Good to see you, man. How you doing? Thanks for having me here, Lewis.

Good to be here. Thanks for being here. I appreciate it. You've got a new book out called Life is Good. Cleverly enough. How to live with purpose and enjoy the ride. For those who are watching this, for those who are listening in, make sure to check it out.

Where can they get the book? Lifeisgood.com is the easiest. Any airport where Life is Good stores are around the world, you can get it there also. Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, it's all over the place. Yeah, exactly. Now, you've had an incredible journey. You started with $78. Is that right?

Well, $78 is what we had after five years. Okay. After five years. Yeah. We probably started with more than $78 we had after five years okay after five years yeah okay probably started with more than 78 bucks but after five years we're down to 78 gotcha and this is the life is good brand the t-shirt company that you guys launched how many years ago was this uh 21 21 years ago yeah and you started with an idea why did this even start and how did it start well you know what happened first was uh we just started making T-shirts. We were designing T-shirts.

We wanted to try to build a business selling art. And we were intimidated by the world of art. But T-shirts was not intimidating to us. Yeah, yeah. And we also looked at the T-shirt as a vehicle for communication. And, you know, what somebody's willing to put on their chest on the outside says a lot about who they are on the inside. So that was the idea. We had about five years of T-shirts that didn't sell well and not really good ideas.

And then finally, after five years, we came up with something that was commercially viable. And it really came about because we had one conversation. it really came about because we had one conversation. We were traveling in our van and sleeping in our van and selling door-to-door in college dorms up and down the East Coast. And we talked about how the media inundates our culture with negative information, always reinforcing what's wrong with the world and rarely celebrating what's right with the world. So we kind of talked about it like, you know, bad things do happen.

But lots of good things happen too. Sure. And we don't get a balance, you know. And in fact, you can make a really good argument that things are getting better and better. So we wondered if we could come up with some symbol that would celebrate what's right with the world rather than what's wrong. And my brother drew the Jake character, right? Jake character?

Yeah, and just his head. That was the first drawing. And in those days, towards the end of the five years, we had a tradition where when we came back to Boston, since we weren't selling enough T-shirts, we were selling in college dormitories in the the streets we weren't selling enough to sustain the business so we started doing custom work for local bars restaurants landscape companies etc and we took an apartment that doubled as a studio in Boston and

we'd go on the road for about six weeks and when we came home we'd always throw a keg party okay we'd always have all of our friends. Yeah, we had a very diverse group of friends come over, and we'd tell some stories, what happened on the road, and just good to see everybody and be home. And we also was kind of like a focus group because we'd put the artwork that we wanted to develop on the walls. See what people liked and what they didn't like or whatever. Exactly, and everybody really liked the character. And it didn't say life is good.

It was just a character. Just a character. But this one girl at the party, she kind of gave it to us. She put an arrow used to let people write right on the walls.

And she wrote, this guy's got life figured out. And in the morning, we didn't see it that night, but in the morning we looked at it and we really liked

that idea. We're like, this guy could be like the superhero of optimism. And we knew it was too many words for a t-shirt so we kind of distilled it into the three simple words life is good and you know at this point we'd had a million harebrained ideas and got excited about them every time so we did what we always did was print 48 of the shirt, get out on the street and sell it. This time it was different.

48 t-shirts, we sold them in 45 minutes. What? Scared the hell out of us. Whoa. Yeah, we were in Cambridge, Mass, and it was a street fair. It was something we were signed up for already. We had all our regular t-shirts there. Four dozen t-shirts in less than an hour,

and we were just looking at each other like, oh, my God, this is it. And, you know, the one thing is, like, people bought it and paid cash for it, so we knew we had something that could sell without any advertising. People could understand it. And the second thing was we loved it. We loved the message, you know. So that was it. I think, like, you know, from, uh, that was it. I think like, you know, from there we, we made every mistake in the book, but the concept was strong enough. How did you know for five years? I mean, most businesses fail within the first couple of years,

but you did this for five years. What kept you continually doing it even when you were still struggling after five years? Yeah. It's a good question. Um, um you know we grew up with the youngest of six kids and um like most families we had our challenges yeah and our parents did not have enough money for six kids and um when we were in elementary school our parents had a near-death car accident and our mom had her seat belt on and she got some broken bones but she was okay our dad never physically recovered he lost the use of his right arm and um i think the combination of the tight economics and that accident he was an avid outdoorsman he was a gifted blue-collar guy but a gifted craftsman and a frustration just hit a boiling point with him and And I think he became depressed.

Our entire childhood, he was yelling and screaming. He wasn't a bad guy. And we knew it even at the time. But when I look back, it's obvious now to say he was yelling at himself. Of course. But our mom kept it together. And she was really the first powerful optimist in our lives. She really showed us that life isn't perfect and life isn't easy but life is good and she did it in a lot of ways but maybe the greatest gift

she gave us was this ritual she had at the dinner table she'd look around at her six kids and my dad and say tell me something good that happened today and she always did it and um it changed the energy you know what i mean and she really taught us that idea that happiness and enjoyment doesn't come from what you have or even where you are but more from your disposition and so that later is the inspiration for life as good as a brand we should should have known it earlier. But, you know, when you grow up with it, I don't know, you know, we were so close to it, we didn't see it. Right, right. And then when we had that conversation about the media and the business started going, we really kind of looked back and said, you know, mom was kind of trying to tell us this all along.

We're a little slow on the uptake, you know? Yeah. But, yeah, so that was it. And, I mean, I think, like, business mechanics, anybody can figure them out. We didn't know anything about distribution or production or sourcing or any, you know, we still can't add two and two, right? So we had to hire some people along the way, but I think, you know, the brand concept was so strong it carried us. And, sorry, you know, your question about the first five years. I think we had a, you know, we were fairly resilient. And we had that since we were raised with that optimism.

Optimism, you know, in our perspective, isn't just a soft philosophy. It's actually very useful. It's very practical. isn't just a soft philosophy. It's actually very useful. It's very practical. And we created little scenarios where we say to each other, if we go out and sell T-shirts in the street today

and we don't sell any, we're not going to look at it as a failure. We're going to look at it instead as a rich learning ground. So what did we learn? We learned that we had the wrong graphics. We had the wrong editorial. We had the wrong color.

What did we learn? Maybe we had bad haircuts. Right. Something wasn't working in the street. You got feedback from that experience. Yeah. If we had a good day and we sold a lot of shirts, then we were successful.

If we didn't sell the shirts, we didn't look at it and say we're not successful. We looked at it and said, we learned something and it's valuable. It's like a focus group. That's right. And the next day we would apply that stuff. We would change it.

And so I think we were just, you know, we were practicing the art of optimism from the beginning, even before we had the optimistic brand. And we also had each other. So I'm not saying we didn't get down. There were times where it was a little bit of a bummer to us too, right? And we're just, you know, year after year,

and you're not really getting anywhere. But the other guy would always be there. And for us, you know, one of the superpowers that everybody has access to is humor. So, I mean, we'd make fun of each other. We'd try to make each other laugh. We'd make fun of ourselves. And that was another thing that kept us going.

Yeah, that's cool. And so the book talks about 10 superpowers, right? Right. Now, why did you distill it down to 10 superpowers? Yeah. And what are maybe some of the few that you really think we could tap into? Yeah, sure. So, you know, the word superpower is kind of tongue in cheek. The whole idea behind life is good is that optimism is a choice. Okay. Everybody wakes up in the morning and they can decide to focus on what's wrong with their life or what's right with their life. Yeah. And whatever

you choose is likely going to be what grows. Right, exactly. So you really want to pour your resources into a list of things that are wrong with your life or a list of things that are going to go wrong because that's what pessimism is. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And it's not helpful, okay?

Now, rational optimism, it's not blind optimism that we're promoting. Sure. We don't ignore that there's challenges in the world, right? Everybody has challenges. We just choose to focus our energy on what's working or what's going right, right? And we realized or came to realize through all these years of selling Life is Good t-shirts, we have a big customer base, millions and millions of people that write us letters and emails and share personal things. And we realize that that choice to be a rational optimist opens you up to a series of values that we call superpowers. So it enables you, right? Like when you're a pessimist, you've got your head down.

Yes. So one of the superpowers is openness, just being open. You know, if you're a believer in what's happening and you're focused on the good things that are happening and you're searching for the good things that are happening, you're more open. You're actually more attractive. Right. You're more magnetic to people. Right. So so that's the first one, openness, right? I mentioned the sense of humor, you know? So, you know, optimism enables all of these things. Gratitude. One of the things our customers taught us that really surprised us and we didn't know is that the people who face the most difficult challenges in the world, they're the ones who have the greatest appreciation for life.

Yeah. So if you and I had a sandwich today, Louis, right? in the world, they're the ones who have the greatest appreciation for life. Yeah. So if you and I had a sandwich today, Lewis, right, it might just be a sandwich. Right. But if you spent six months in a hospital eating through a tube, it wouldn't just be a sandwich. It'd be the best meal I've ever had. It would be the greatest thing on earth. All right.

And the people that go through chemotherapy and are lucky enough to come out the other side, they don't just eat sandwiches. Everything they do. You could have a barbecue in the backyard and it's the Taj Mahal to them. Right. Every day. They notice the trees and the flowers. They value their friendships and the people that they love.

It's a heightened gratitude. So gratitude is a superpower. It's a tool that we can use so all ten of these superpowers we call them superpowers but they're not like bullets speed or Herculean strength these are accessible to anybody of course I guess the other thing that's real important about these ten superpowers is that they're timeless we live in a day and age where you're expected to be on trend.

You got to be on trend and off trend on time every time, right? That's really hard. We're not on trend all the time at all. We try and we're running a business. So if the fit of t-shirts or whatever the trend for other businesses that we're in changes, We've got to follow that like anybody else. But the basis of our organization and the basis of Life is Good, the book, is that the most powerful tools a human being has to live a happy and fulfilling life existed for your great, great, great grandparents. In fact, if they lived a happy and fulfilling life,

they used these superpowers. And the cool thing is they will exist for your great, great, great grandchildren. These are timeless devices. And it's not rocket science. I mean, my brother and I are simple people. Simplicity is a superpower. We live in a complex world. So we all have to call down to what really matters. You know, we all have to choose what we

love and choose who we love and put our limited time on this planet into that. So that sounds simple, but it gets away from all of us. You know what I mean? Well, there's a lot, you know, I love the title about how to live with purpose. and a lot of people might be attracted to that, but thinking, how do I live with purpose and make money around that? I can't afford working five years on my purpose or my passion and not making money. What are some things you teach people around how to do both? Well, the world has changed, and it's changed for the better, in our humble opinion. Is there still challenges? Sure.

We've got ISIS in the Middle East, and we've got a planetary crisis with the environment, etc., right? But humanity's moved in the right direction in a lot of ways, right? So, sorry, I forgot what your question was. How do we live with purpose and make money? Oh, right. So the world has changed in a lot of ways. And one of those ways is that it was only 1989 that the internet was invented. Right. And the internet, it's taken a little while, but it's connecting everybody in the world. Right. That gives a lot of power to the buyers of goods and services. And what we're learning for the first time in the history of the world

is that consumers are taking control of the selling process away from the sellers. Advertising used to be about showing up at a party and talking about yourself and interrupting everybody. Now, consumers will tell you when to speak at that party, and they will tell you to make it relevant to their lives. This is actually a good thing. So for businesses that are authentically making the world better in some way,

consumers are patronizing those businesses. They're building those businesses, right? They're co-authoring the stories of those brands. And for businesses that are inauthentic and are hurting the world, consumers are starting to rip those businesses down. So for us, even though we didn't have all the answers, they believed we were trying to do the right thing. Once we heard from customers that were

facing difficult challenges, we decided to start a foundation for kids that face violence and poverty and illnesses like cancer. And we donate at least a minimum of 10% of our profits to those kids. Well, our customer base heard that. And instead of buying one T-shirt, they started buying two. What was more important, they started talking about it. And we've never spent a penny in traditional advertising in 21 years. Right. But our customer base, which is growing every day, has built this business with us because they believe in it. So I would say for somebody starting a business, forget about the idea of giving back, in my opinion. It's just a term, right? There's nothing wrong with the term. But I think the connotation of giving back is let me build this big successful business.

Let me have a pile of money and three boats and then I'll give back. Right. And that's not the direction capitalism is moving. The integration of social work into your business is a good idea. And it may be your best marketing campaign as long as it's authentic. Yes. As long as you're really helping. So I would also say make sure it's something you really care about. For us, it was

kids because kids are the greatest optimists on the planet. Our brand is about optimism. Our brand is about being open. There's nobody more open than kids, right? And we're all open like this, wide open when we're kids. And when we're adults, we have a tendency to get like this, skeptical, right? So for us, it made sense to support kids and try to make life good for everybody. So when did you start realizing, you know, you had this one shirt that started to sell. When did it start to get to a point where you're like, okay, we're actually making some money. Like this is creating a movement. We're not just like living out of the van anymore or schlepping at fairs.

Well, one of the most important things, like the first day we sold the shirts, people always say, what was the first thing you recognized or realized? It was the cash going in my pocket. My brother would tell you the same thing. People want to hear that right away it was more touchy-feely and it was all about the philanthropic side. You can't help anybody if you don't make profit. We're capitalists. all about the philanthropic side. You can't help anybody if you don't make profit. Exactly.

We're capitalists. We believe in capitalism as a powerful force for good. So the first thing was, hey, man, this is commercially viable. We might be able to get out of that van, right? That was honestly it. The second thing we noticed was that there was a very broad demographic, only 48 shirts, but these people came from all different walks of life and they're buying the same message. The idea of trying to use the business to help really didn't come until September 11th, which is oddly anniversary today as we talk,

right? September 11th, 2001, devastating day. And our own small staff was walking around. We were a $3 million company. And they were walking around saying, I'm not sure life is so good right now. Right. And another thing I remember people saying was, I don't know if the American people wants to hear that life is good. Right. So it's a tricky thing. So we held a company-wide meeting.

So you don't want to shove it down people's faces like. That's right. And so we weren't sure what to do. But it's a tricky thing. So we held a company-wide meeting. So you don't want to shove it down people's faces like... That's right. And so we weren't sure what to do. But it's the only product we had. So we'd be out of business if we stopped selling. You can't say life sucks. Right. So what we did was we held a company-wide meeting. And this one girl in our warehouse raised her hand and she said, why don't we make a t-shirt and give the profits to the families that lost someone? And we said, okay okay that's a great

idea let's go for that and the first thing it did it was like galvanizing to our employees you know we put up a big american flag we started screen printing this stylized american flag and we sent word out to all the retailers we were selling and said 100 of the profits for 60 days are going to go to the united way right that, we had a goal of trying to raise $20,000, which we thought was pretty pie in the sky for a $3 million company, right? We sold, well, we raised in profit $207,000 with that one shirt in 60 days. Wow. That was the breakthrough.

That was when we realized this business could be much more than a business wow so after that we started supporting a bunch of different non-profits we got focused on kids charities we started having life is good pumpkin festivals we broke the guinness world record for the most lit carved pumpkins in one place at one time. Ridiculous, right? And breaking a Guinness record really didn't matter. That was fun. And it was on our bucket list. But the more important thing was in one night, we raised a half a million dollars. So yeah, it's always something. But now we can look at it and really encourage entrepreneurs and startups to choose a cause, a social cause that you care about up front and find a way to integrate it into your business.

Don't wait for someday. So you make the money, lots of money. All ships can rise. It can help build your business. So you think it's pretty much worthless to start a business unless you're adding some type of giving back from the beginning? Should that be? Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't recommend a business without some social cause. I wouldn't tell you how to go about it and how much. But there's two big reasons. One is we like to say,

takers eat well, but givers sleep well. So you want to feel good about your life. Everybody wants to, right? So if you're just grinding away trying to make a living, if it doesn't wear on you in the first year or two, it will in the first five or ten years. Eventually you're going to want to do something to help other people. Compassion is a superpower, right? You're going to want to help other people.

Start from the beginning in a small way, in some way, but associate it with your brand. Make it easy for consumers. Make it easy for them to understand. Our brand is about happiness. It's about, you know, social and psychological health, if you want to get academic about it, right? So why not then have our nonprofit focus on the same stuff? Yes. So we deal with kids that are facing violence and poverty and illnesses.

We don't get them the medicine, the food, or the shelter. We deal with their disposition. We deal with their view of the world. We create resilience for them. And so people understand it. You see, life is good. Who doesn't want life to be good for all kids, right? So they understand it. One of the worst things that businesses do is make heavy lifting for consumers, making it difficult to connect.

A lot of businesses start having a five-mile walk or 5k because someone in the company got breast cancer yeah that's a good thing to do but if your company's not say making women's products it might not be the easiest thing to connect sure you should probably try to connect your company because you're going to help a lot more people you know uh now maybe your company does make women's products and maybe breast cancer would be the best cause for it. But I think you have to be strategic. You can't be all heart. You got to use your head, too.

Yeah, that's smart. So after that happened, after the 9-11 and the 60 days, what was the next big step for you guys? Like, where did it grow to the next level? Because you were on $3 million then in 2001. Like, when did you see like, oh, we're now a $50 million company? Yeah, it was interesting. We made a bold move. Some guys came to visit us and they wanted to

buy the Life is Good brand. This was right at the same time. $3 million company. We just decided to do this shirt. You had retail stores at this point, right? No, wholesale, only wholesale got you yeah uh we had an econ from the very beginning we launched our own website with the econ business

wow we were shipping six seven shirts a day but we were in business and and the thing with that was we were learning from those six or seven customers more than we were from wholesale yeah so i'm a believer that they can live symbiotically and they certainly have for us. So we had two business units, e-comm and wholesale. And these guys came in and they wanted to buy the brand. We weren't interested in selling it. After some discussion, we really needed sales guys. They had great sales guys with them and we wanted parts of what they had. So we ended up agreeing to license the brand. My brother and I would design and continue to come up with the editorial and the graphics and do the creative and they would be the muscle

of the business. And they had been around the block and been in the T-shirt business a lot longer than us. And so that relationship really worked. Between the year, it took us six years to grow from $78 to $3 million. But then from 2000 to 2004, we grew from $3 million to $40 million. Wow. So it was a very good move to outsource and hold on to the piece that was kind of in our wheelhouse. Right? and hold on to the piece that was kind of in our wheelhouse, right?

The issue that happened in 2004 was that now we were dedicated to this kids foundation. And we really wanted to make that a part of who we were, a part of our brand. The licensee, and I'm not blaming them, wasn't so interested in that. It wasn't that they didn't like kids or want to help. They wanted to make money. They wanted to make money, and they were saying to us, you get a nice fat royalty check. You give your money to kids. Right. We'll decide what to do with ours. Right. Well, our thing, when we kept talking about it, was we want the brand to be about helping kids. We think the company can give and will continue to give. i feel this way today the most giving and awareness

will come from our customer base the most powerful thing we have is a reach out to millions and millions of people i think we have you know nearly three million facebook fans these days so like that's a community of optimists that's an army of optimists that can help when somebody needs it right so we had to buy back our license really and in the process we bought their company it was scary because now for the first time in our lives we're making a good living my brother and i both bought homes in downtown boston in a nice neighborhood we never would have dreamed of living in the back bay yeah we were doing well now you know i was sitting on my roof deck looking at the Charles River going,

wow, what happened? Right. And now we're about to go in debt. We borrowed twenty six and a half million dollars, sixteen and a half million to buy the license back and the brand. I mean, and the company and another ten million we had to invest in inventory to run the business because now it was a 40 million dollar business. Sure. The good news is when we got control of it, we got along with all the staff of the licensee, so we still kind of had that muscle. We took off. We went from $40 to $100 million over the next three and a half years. How do you think you got to $ do you think is, I mean, how do you think you got to 100 million with that? I mean, it was still the same company. I mean, you still had the same team.

Essentially, you just acquired them as opposed to being separate. But what was the difference maker? Was it just the time? Was it the. Yeah, I think it was learning how to say life is good to more audiences. Right. Life is good is applicable to almost every audience. But we started exploiting different groups.

So one of the first to take hold of it was outdoor athletes and enthusiasts, people that climb mountains, ski, snowboard. They're close to nature. They're open-minded. They understood life is good right from the beginning. They know that a day fishing, that's pretty good. You know, to them, it's not all about how many cars they have, right? So that was a real easy one for us. Then we went at team sports. I mean, we grew up being hoop junkies and,

you know, loving baseball and football and basketball and hockey. So we had some distribution because of the outdoor within sporting goods. So sporting goods came next. But then home hobbies, things like playing guitar, things like painting, things like gardening. So all we really had to do to grow to $100 million was listen. Listen to what? And that became the tagline of the company. Do what you love, love what you do. Really simple.

We didn't have to figure everything out. It's another thing I would say to the budding entrepreneurs out there is like, don't feel like because you're the founder or you're the entrepreneur, you need all the answers. Talk about your business and leave it open to people and then welcome their ideas. Because you and your brother didn't have all the answers we didn't have the answers the retailers gave them

to us one of the first retailers asked us if uh this character jake likes ice cream i don't even understand what she meant i said what do you mean and she said well, we thought that eating an ice cream is a time when life is good. So does he eat ice cream? And we said, hmm, nobody will. You know, pretty soon Jake started eating ice cream. And then somebody called and said, does he ride a bicycle? And we just started listening to what people loved. So I think, you know, the other thing that happened from $3 million to $100 million was we hired specialists hired somebody that

really understands the technical environment my brother and i aren't strong at finance so we had to get somebody who comes from that background and you know like at first you hire your cousins and you hire the guy at the pub and the guy on your softball team and we did all that yeah and um and and a lot of those guys are still with us, and they're our best friends, and they're great. Not all of them work out. So I think you've got to grow up, get professional, and hire more sophisticated people.

So hiring people that are faster, stronger, smarter than us wasn't that hard. Right. Now, how many employees do you have in the company now? It's about 165. Okay. And how many retail stores do you have? Well, there's about 55 dedicated Life is Good stores, but we don't own them. You don't own any of them?

Any of them. They're independent. So independent, franchise that someone buys? Yeah, it's actually just wholesale accounts with nothing in the store but Life is Good. So they either threw out all the other brands and for that, we give them like a special discount. We'll give them special merchandise that other stores don't have, et cetera. And we have a tight relationship with them. We call them genuine neighborhood shops. Or sometimes they kept their multi-brand store and they invested in a second store across the street that only sells life is good. Wow. And they do pretty well just selling your goods. Yeah. I mean, every parts of our business, we've made our mistakes and we've learned as we go, you know.

So not all of the genuine neighborhood shops had the right management. We're in the right places. Life is good. The parent company didn't always do the right things. Yes. But I think we've gotten better at it, just like all facets of our business. So where's the business going now? Is it more going online? Is it more going online?

Is it more retail stores? We're going through a kind of a, this is like the third chapter of a phase of the business. So the recession really stalled our business. And we could look at it and we could blame the macro picture and say, hey, there's nothing we could do. You know, the country went into a huge recession. The reality is, is the recession exposed weaknesses in our business. The good news is the brand is rock solid. Our mission is rock solid.

Our vision, you know, the mission is spread the power of optimism. The vision is to be a multibillion dollar global company that saves kids lives everywhere and spreads the power of optimism. Right. Right. And the values are the superpowers. They're timeless. They're for humanity. So those things are solid. Everything else is changing. Everything. Right. So that doesn't mean we won't still make T-shirts, et cetera. But we're changing aesthetics. We're welcoming new art styles. Content is the buzzword in all business now. So we want to become the hub of optimism.

We want to work with artists online. We want to, but we're still going to sell brick and mortar. We'll probably get more in the retail game ourselves, too. We'll continue to grow our e-com business. We have a licensing business that's growing. We're going into food and beverage. We're going into automotive. We're going into publishing,

entertainment, education. But none of this works unless we can create artistic content that spreads the power of optimism. So we're working with spoken word poets. We're working with musicians. We have nice relationships with the Zac Brown Band,

who's very aligned with us. He's opening a camp for kids with musicians. We have nice relationships with the Zac Brown Band, who's very aligned with us. He's opening a camp for kids with challenges. It's called Camp Southern Ground. And he's authentic, man. He's really on board. We can use his star power, and he can use our knowledge about optimism. And our nonprofit, Life is Good Kids Foundation, is training all of the counselors at his camps. So it's nice, we align well.

Michael Franti in San Francisco, a great friend and a hero of ours. The guy has the right idea. He has a growing fan base. He's a tremendous artist, but he really believes in optimism. He really believes in practicing gratitude. As he says, it is no different than file shots. You got to practice it every day. So we're going to work with lots of artists. In fact, we're letting a lot of them design new T-shirts. And so we feel as though we're like a 21-year startup. It really feels like that. We've got a lot of young energy around our place,

and we're taking chances and risks. And, you know, maybe we'll crash and burn, or maybe we'll take our Little League team to the World Series. There you go. I like it. And for anyone who's thinking of starting a clothing line or a t-shirt company today, if you could, from all the years of knowledge that you have from launching this business, there's so many t-shirt companies coming out lately. Yeah. What advice would you give to someone who's starting their own

maybe it'd be maybe you wouldn't want to give it because they'd be competitive no I don't mind we don't have any secrets it's not easy

I welcome anybody to do it right what would you if you were like if it was you starting out today you had all your experience but you didn't have

the brand anymore you were starting a new brand a new t-shirt line the life is amazing yeah yeah yeah what would you do what would be the first year strategy yeah yeah yeah what would you do what would be the first

year strategy for you yeah so and you had limited resources yeah yeah a few things i would do um definitely um keep it simple okay because unless you have an enormous advertising budget one of the things that worked for us, people understood life is good. It existed before us. We were lucky enough to trademark it, right? But we didn't invent life is good. So you have to have an emotional connection right away, right? So keep it simple. The world is complex. It's noisy. There's lots of competition for people's attention, right? So first one, really keep it simple. The second one I would say is that make sure whatever you're building is something you believe in, that you're really passionate

about, because it will show through. It won't be authentic. And your business will grow much faster if you're truly behind it. You'll burn out if you're not really behind it too. So if it takes more time to develop fine uh make sure you love it yeah the third thing i would say is that um we hear from people all the time they have all these elaborate projects and prototypes and focus group after focus group make something get in the street and sell it build a website and get a customer base, even if it's seven people a day. That was a big breakthrough for us. We were naive. We didn't know any better. So we just, you know, we heard about the Internet. We opened up and we just sort of saw what happened.

And what happened was our customers helped us. They were the community. So I find people have been trying to, I remember we did some articles with Inc. Magazine and they told us that America is obsessed with starting a business, but 99.9% of them never do it. They talk about it for decades and decades. You don't have to quit your job,

but make something and sell it. Go sell it. Go sell it. Go sell it. Do it on the weekends. Stop with the prototypes. It's good enough. You know what I mean? Whatever it is, even if it's a shoe that doesn't fit right, sell it.

Get something out there, right? Because you're going to learn like mad, and then you're going to apply that the next day. And, yeah, so I just think, like, we're big on skin in your knees, school of hard knocks, not too much academia. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think is the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself over the last two decades? I mean, I think the biggest thing we've learned is that this business isn't about us. It's about the receiver of the message.

We're grateful to be pitching the words, life is good because it's a lot of fun to sell it. But the reason it's worked is that it's meaningful to our customers. They've led us into their homes. They've led us into their private stories. I guess, yeah, if I were to summarize that, maybe the biggest thing we've learned is that we all think we have a lot of stories, right?

And in that book, there's lots of stories. But when it comes down to it, every one of us has one story, and it's called your life. And deciding what you're going to do with that life, you know, how you're going to spend your time and protecting to do with that life, how you're going to spend your time, and protecting that time with your life.

There's nothing more important because that time is your life. Yeah, I love that. What would you say is your greatest superpower? For me, maybe a sense of humor. I'm not the brightest person on the planet, but I've always been able to make people laugh. And I think that nothing breaks down walls like having a laugh. As an example, we started doing some public speaking, my brother and I, and we never had any training.

We're not polished speakers. We never will be. So I get intimidated and nervous backstage when I see there's a lot of people out there. And for us, the speaking thing's ramped up real quickly. And sometimes it's, you know, 2,500 people and they're all smarter than us, right? And they're all like executives of business. So I'm nervous when I walk out. But if in the first 60 seconds I can make them laugh, that room gets small. You know what I mean? So humor, you know, the reason we say it's a superpower is that, right? It connects people, but it's also super healthy. We all know that like, you know, talk about nutrition

and fitness, but if you can laugh a couple of times a day, that's going to do as much for you. It's the biggest stress reducer. You release endorphins, dopamine, which is our natural happy chemical. That comes from laughter. So I think if I have anything to offer, it would maybe to make people laugh. That's good. What is your daily ritual, either in the morning or during the day or at night, to live a good life for you? Yeah. What makes up living a good life? Yeah, Yeah. What makes up living a good life?

What are the things that people do? Yeah, I mean, to me, the most important thing in living a good life is, do I see my family and my friends? I'm single, but I'm still tight with my siblings that have families, so I want to see my nieces and nephews. We lost our folks, unfortunately, over the last two years, and I miss them every day, but there's friends that I consider family too. And so every day being able to see them and just

have a laugh with them, uh, listen to what's going on in their lives. That's really important. We're physical guys, both my brother and I. So, you know, for me, the last six years, I've gotten into surfing. I love it. It's favorite sport of my life. Um, play on an ultimate Frisbee team and play some pickup. I love it. So fun. So getting a little, you know, we're, we're, we're simple animals, you know, we like to run like dogs and, uh, it's, it's another way to, um, you know, have a happy, fulfilling life is just stay active, you know, action is eloquence. So, um, I think that's it.'s it and then uh spending some time with our team at life is good and we have good days and bad too but as long as we're moving in the right

direction and we're trying and we're a team yeah what's uh what's a personal goal for you right now do you feel like you can build this business into a multi-billion dollar business give back and also do you feel like you can have the relationships you want to or intimate relationships and yeah yeah have a family is that something you want it is actually a real central personal goal of mine is uh you know something most people want find the love of your life i've had a lot of great girlfriends in my life but never the one you know so um i'd really like to have a family i'd really like to have a family. I'd really like to settle down. And then professionally, I really think we've just gotten started. So I think we're in the process of replacing me as president. I'm going to remain CEO, but we're going to get somebody in here who's truly a great operator.

I'm not a great operator. You know, we've been good enough to get it from A to B, but no ego about that. So getting somebody in place so that my brother and i can work more on the creative elements of the business where we started and then um really grow the thing we're not into being a uh small giant or you know people in when people like a business they always say you're going to stay small right because they believe if you grow big everything has to go wrong we want to you know if the mission is spread the power of optimism, you can only do that so much as a hundred million dollar business, as a multi-billion

dollar business all over the planet. You know, we don't think that life is good, is an American message. We think that it's a human message. So let's go for it. Let's, let's see the world. What are you most grateful for in your life recently? You know, I think with the passing of my mom and are you most grateful for in your life recently? You know, I think with the passing of my mom and my dad, grateful for both of them. Our mom for being the hero of our youth and being a powerful optimist. But I'm grateful for my dad because even though he had his struggles throughout our upbringing, he was a great guy kind of before our time. And that great guy came back in the last 10 years of his lives.

We'd like to think we played a role in it. Our friends would show up at the house and say, what's gotten into your dad? He had a sense of humor. It was like he and my mom were dating. So I'm really grateful that the autumn of their life was really beautiful and that they got to see all of us six ragtag kids kind of land on our feet yeah um i think more than anything i'm grateful for that and all the friends that we've made uh along the way with life is good we always say like we made more mistakes

than we know what to do with but the only thing we made more of is friends that's cool i like that what's something you've done that you're really proud of that most people don't know about you yeah something that people that uh people wouldn't know um i think it's the relationships that you know you can't talk about all of them but we've spent time with people that are going through the worst things in their lives and um it's behind the scenes with the Life is Good Kids Foundation. It's the families that are suffering through the worst things and the kids that really need help. I think that's the stuff that we're most proud of and the most meaningful part of Life is Good.

And, you know, you can't always share all of that, but it's rich. It's rich and it becomes part of you. And I think today, you know, we think we can do more, certainly, and we will. But I'm sleeping well. I feel like we're living a good life because it's not all about, you know, what we have and making more money. I think we're finding ways. I think I'm most proud of realizing that at an early enough stage that we weren't born for business. Business was born for us.

And business is a tool to live a happy and fulfilling life. And that includes helping other people. That's cool. Now, at the end of the book, you have a story about your mom and her last wishes, right? You asked her, is there anything you want? Yeah. Can you tell that story? Sure. Yeah. So, um, our mom was 87 years old when we found out she had lung cancer and, um, you know, she never smoked a cigarette in her life. Uh, and her mom lived to be 102. So we were expecting my mom to be around for a long time and she was in great

shape. And, um, so we quickly learned that there wasn't much we were going my mom to be around for a long time and she was in great shape. And so we quickly learned that there wasn't much we were going to be able to do. And she accepted it very courageously. And so JJ, my business partner and brother, and I went to her and asked her, is there something that you always wanted to do? Some place that we could take you or some, you know, do you want to meet the president or something? We said, you know, we don't know the president, but we'll figure the shit out, Mom. Right? And so she said no.

You know, she thought about it for a little while, and she said, you know, I'm the happiest I've ever been. Wow. She said, I'm scared of the cancer, but I just want to be around you kids and the little ones, a bunch of grandkids, and I just want to be at home. I don't want to be in the hospital. And if it's my time, it's my time, you know.

And while it was courageous, it really bothered us because you think about it, your own mom's dying. She gave us so much. Now we have the means to help her in some way. You just want to give her last wish. So it kind of bummed us out um but then we talked about it and came to realize that she lived her whole life you know like giving love and she loved with all her heart every day and um so now that she knows she's dying she didn't have to run around to make up for love she didn't get. That's why she was comfortable. So we went to see her. I went to see her and I said, hey, mom, you know, we got it figured out. You know, now we know why you don't need to go do something because you've loved with all your heart. And she said, oh, that's really sweet. But I did think of

something. And so we said, what was it? She said, nothing while I'm alive. But after I go, I want you to throw me a ripping party. And so we did. We threw her a great party and great music and great dancing and great food and all our friends and her friends. And, you know, it was really great. And I think right to the end she was teaching us because that time will come for you and that time will come for me. And when it comes, you know, the question is, will we have to run around and make up for love we didn't give? Love might be the most powerful superpower of all ten, right?

Yeah. So will we have to run around and make up for love that we wish we give and didn't? Or will we sit back like our mom did with a big smile and say, throw me a ripping party? You know? I like that. So if you got to go, it was a good way to go.

That's cool. It was a great party? Great party. That's awesome. Yeah, we can only hope that, you know, it was a good way to go that's cool it was a great party great party that's awesome yeah we can only hope that you know it met up to her standards I'm sure it did

yeah that's awesome a couple final questions for you this has been great I feel like we could do this for hours something I like to ask

at the end of every interview is the three truths question so if this was you know 50 years down the road, it's your last day. Your book's gone.

Your business is gone. The shirts have evaporated from the world. No one has access to anything you've ever created. But you have a piece of paper and you get to write down three truths. The things you've learned about life that you know to be true in the world. From all your experience,

that's your message you leave behind. What would those three things be? I think the first one would be choose to be an optimist because it's not only more fun

it's powerful the second one would be share your optimism because the ride's a lot more fun when you're with others. And the third one would be whatever it is you want to try to do in the world, start it today. Don't wait because life goes by like that. Yeah, powerful truth. I love it. Uh, final question before I ask, I want to acknowledge you Bert for, for coming on and sharing your wisdom. I want to acknowledge you for the optimism that you bring on a daily basis to the world and for

your, your commitment to spreading love, joy, peace, community to the world. Your mission is so powerful. You've inspired millions of people, and you're consistently going to inspire more people. So thank you for your mission. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. For your service to the world. Yeah.

Appreciate those words, and I appreciate you having me here. Yeah, yeah. Final question. Yeah. What's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is fulfillment. And fulfillment is different for everybody. So what will make you fulfilled in your life is something you ought to ask yourself and review every day.

Because you don't reach goals and you don't reach greatness without knowing how to define it you know so for me uh fulfillment will be is today and will be for my whole life knowing that i've tried everything i can to make the world a better place yeah um you know anything i learn try to teach that and pass it on. And try not to take credit for it all because, you know, everybody's standing on the shoulders of people that came before. Yeah. So. I love it.

I love it. Get the book, Life is Good, How to Live with Purpose and Enjoy the Ride. Make sure to check this out. It's at lifeisgood.com. Also, amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, anywhere books are make sure to check this out. It's at lifeisgood.com. Also amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, anywhere books are sold, go get this book. And where can people connect with you specifically online? Are you on everywhere yourself? Yeah, go to lifeisgood.com. And, uh, are you on Twitter personally or Instagram or anything? I'm not, I'm kind of simplified.

So life is good. The brand uses all the social mechanisms, but, the social mechanisms. But personally, I don't even have email. There you go. All right. We'll buy the book and send you a snail mail. I'll send you an email somewhere. Please. Yeah, yeah. Send us.

I'll get it. Send me anything to lifeisgood.com and they'll get it to me. Cool. Bert Jacobs, thanks so much for coming on, man. Appreciate it. Right on, Lewis. Thank you. And there you have it.

This is episode number 230. If you enjoyed this episode and you enjoyed connecting with Bert, then make sure to share this with your friends. The link is lewishouse.com slash 230 for 230. Go ahead and post it over on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram. Let me know where you're listening to this in the world. Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram. Let me know where you're listening to this in the world. I get tagged on Instagram constantly from your photos of where you're running and listening to the podcast, when you're working out, where you're cooking meals, where you're traveling to on the trains and the subways and flying.

So continue to tag me at Lewis Howes over on Instagram and online where you're listening to this show. If you enjoyed this, make sure to connect with Burt. Buy a copy of their book as well, Life is Good, the book, How to Live with Purpose and Enjoy the Ride by Bert and his brother John Jacobs. I hope you guys enjoyed this as well. I appreciate you guys so much. Please share this with your friends again, lewishouse.com slash 230. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music