Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Emma, bringing you this episode with co-founder of Life is Good, Burt Jacobs. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at google.
Bert is the co-founder of the $150 million lifestyle brand Life is Good. When he and his brother John started the company in 1994, they had $78 in their pockets, lived out of their van, and sold t-shirts on the streets of Boston. It's been over 30 years since they sold their first t-shirt, but Bert and John champion the same mission today: to spread the power of optimism.
On their journey, they've been inspired by a vibrant community of resilient optimists, people from all walks of life who identify deeply with the brand and who constantly demonstrate the depth and the meaning behind the three simple words, life is good. Bert joins Google to discuss how to develop an optimistic mindset and tips on building a vibrant community and a brand that will stand the test of time.
Originally published in November 2021, here is Burt Jacobs, the power of optimism. Burt Jacobs, the man, the legend. Happy Monday. Welcome to Google. Such an honor to start my week with you. Hey, Fizz. My pleasure to be here, buddy. How are you? Outstanding. How's your weekend? Everything good? I see you may be a little banged up. I'm a little banged up, but I'll be just fine.
Yeah, I had a little too much fun. I was not drunk and fall downstairs. A little surfing accident. I banged into some rocks, but I'm going to heal up just fine. At least you're doing something that gives you joy. Happy to have you here. Exactly. Hey, Bert, the level of optimism you hold in your heart really comes across as authentic and special to anyone who has a conversation with you.
As we get started today, I want to understand where this comes from. Let's start with your childhood and build from there. Could you describe to the audience today what life was like growing up in your household for you and your siblings? Sure. Maybe not what you'd expect for a
for people with a company called Life is Good. We grew up just west of Boston in a beautiful little town called Needham. But our family, you know, our parents had six kids. They probably had enough money for two. And both of our parents struggled with depression quite a bit growing up.
And I think the difference, you know, was their coping mechanisms, the way that they handled it. I think for our dad, you know, we're all hard on ourselves. And I think our dad, he was a good guy. He never meant to go off and yell and scream all the time, but that's what our childhood was like. He really, really lost it. And I think as an adult looking back, I think he was yelling and screaming at himself because maybe he felt as though
he lost the American dream and he was failing us and he was failing my mom. I mean, I'm speculating because with our dad, we didn't really talk about these things. Our mom, on the other hand, she owned the depression. She was always being open about it, talking about her struggles, but her coping mechanisms were music and dancing and she loved to draw and paint and she taught us how to draw.
And she was a great storyteller. You know, she told us amazing bedtime stories and being around her was like being around a living theater. You know, she always had something fun and engaging. So she taught us a lot. And maybe the greatest gift she gave us was this ritual at the dinner table where she would look around and say, tell me something good that happened today. It was just something she always said. And as simple as that was,
it caused us to start talking about something that happened that day. And, you know, she taught us that we weren't the victims and that there were always things to celebrate and there was always something funny or unusual and things would never be perfect and things might not be easy, but that people are worse off than us. And she reminded us of that often. And I think when she asked us that question, tell me something good,
and we'd start riffing on something funny that happened that day, we'd start engaging with each other and acting like a family. And she changed the energy in the room. And she did that a lot. She changed the energy in the house. So I think she taught us to be what we would call today practicing optimists, like the
you know, to, to, to, you know, not, not that we're going to have perfect days, obstacles are going to happen, but focus on, on the opportunities. And I say practicing because people look at somebody who, you know, shoots foul shots and, and can hit a hundred in a row and say, well, she's a great foul shooter. You know, that's all there is to it. Right. The real story is she's probably shot, you know, 20,000 foul shots to be able to hit a hundred in a row.
And optimism is that way. It's a smart strategy and it helps us cope. It helps us get through things. It also enables us to be more open to solutions and enables us to be more attractive to others. So, yeah, it wasn't a perfect childhood, but we're grateful for it. And we learned a lot. And the lessons we learned from our mom, I think, you know, led us to a career in optimism.
That's remarkable. I just love, I mean, you've got an amazing story and it's remarkable to see how you can really connect the dots from what happened at home to what your brand eventually became. Now let's fast forward a few years ahead into young adulthood. And it's impossible to talk about the creation of Life is Good without talking about your brother.
So speak to us about your relationship with him and what life was like for the two of you as young entrepreneurs on the road. Sure, no problem. My younger brother, John, he's my business partner. He's three years younger than me. And I think since my parents had too many kids and not enough money, they paired us up. Never heard them talk about one sister or the other. They'd say, Eileen, Alberta, where are they? Or my older brothers, Ed and Alan, they'd say, where's Ed and Alan?
And it was John and Bert. We were together. We had bunk beds together and we really became best friends. And I think that was a strategy by my parents. Just like, let's turn it into three kids, you know, by parents. It's a two each. Yeah.
It's a good buddy system. Yeah. Yeah. And so Johnny and I shared a lot. We grew up in being sports crazy in the Larry Bird era when it was Magic Johnson with Akers versus Larry Bird. That was our sweet youth. So we were sports junkies and hoop heads. And and we learned a lot from those guys, two greats, you know, and yeah.
And so when we got out of college, we did a road trip across the country and we were trying to decide what to do with our lives. We both had thought about going to art school and then we got sort of turned off by going to visit art schools. And we felt as though, I don't know, it was all about being nonconformist, which is sort of what we wanted. But when we went there, we thought everybody looked the same. Everybody would wear black leather and face jewelry and
You know what I mean? And so we thought we, we thought we would miss out on the real college experience, you know? And so we both went for more of that real college experience. And when we graduated, we just didn't want to go get a job. We wanted to try to do something with artwork. We we'd been drawing our whole lives and we wanted to try to make a career. We were intimidated by the world of fine art and didn't know where to start with all that art galleries. And, um,
So we decided that we would start making T-shirts and just designing them. And we first just sold them in the street in Boston.
And then after about a year, we bought a used van and we called it the Enterprise. That was another childhood thing. We were Star Trek fans and we told each other we would boldly go with no T-shirt guys gone before. And we started. Maybe you have. Maybe, maybe. Yeah, we're still we're still on that journey. But we started traveling in the van and we.
you know, our next distribution move was to sell door-to-door in college dorms. So we traveled actually for five and a half years in that van and we slept in the van every night
And we went up and down the East Coast. And people always say when they see the old photos, you know, life must have sucked back in those days. Now life is good, right? And it didn't. It really didn't. They missed the point. Life didn't suck in those days because we were sleeping in a van. Life was good because we had an opportunity to start a business. And that was really our attitude. And we got to visit a lot of college campuses, you know, colleges and universities that we didn't get into. Yeah.
So it really wasn't that bad. We would hang out on campus, throw the football around, throw a Frisbee, meet some people. And then at night we'd work our tails off and we'd run around the dorms and do the best we could. And
yeah, that was life for the first five and a half years of business. That's awesome. It takes guts to do that. And also, I just truly appreciate the story of grit and hustle and just raw entrepreneurship and
And now you're a $150 million global lifestyle brand. To have those humble beginnings, it's quite remarkable. Honestly, I think part of what fueled us, while I'd love to just agree and say, yeah, it was so courageous.
we were afraid of getting a job. We were afraid of going and getting a, you know, our friends were starting to kind of wear suits and ties and get a company car and all those things that seemed like the thing to do. And we were honestly terrified of that. And so I think being afraid, we kept trying, you know, we kept just trying to make it work. Yeah, you stay at something long enough, something clicks.
Now, eventually, after roughly what, five or five and a half years in business, it seems as if you struck gold with Jake. The face of Life is Good as we know it today. It's become this iconic symbol for your brand. Can you tell us about Jake's origin story? We weren't sure in the beginning what was more powerful, Jake or the words Life is Good, because the first T-shirts we sold had both.
Over time, we've come to realize that Jake is the hero whose powers is optimism, but life is good. Those three simple words, that's the most powerful thing. And Jake was a drawing by my brother. You can see if you're looking at it there, it's drawn with magic markers and colored pencils while we were driving in the van. And if you look, there's a whiteout where life is good is because it first didn't say life is good.
It said draw. And the idea was that Jake's an artist. That's why he has a beret.
And he was meant to be, you know, the opposite of the dark, tortured soul artist. We felt as though we're happy people, we're mainstream people, but we're artists. And so it was kind of self-reflective and we wanted to make this character that was having fun being creative. And but what happened was in those days, towards the end of the five and a half years, we took jobs as substitute teachers back in Boston.
And because the T-shirt sales just weren't good enough. We didn't have life as good yet. And we had a ritual of our own where we'd go on the road for six weeks at a time, traveling in the van. And then we'd and then we'd come back to Boston and we'd throw a keg party.
And we'd have all of our friends come over and we'd tell some stories about what happened while we were on the road. But we had a business objective too. It was to try to put our latest artwork on the walls and have our friends, you know, kind of be a focus group and tell us which t-shirt to make next. Because we only made one t-shirt at a time. It was brilliant inventory management. And we would fill the van with those t-shirts and sleep on the t-shirts.
And so it was a big deal, which one. So we tested out in Boston and this girl that came to the party, a friend of ours, she drew an arrow to Jake and she said, this guy's got life figured out. And in the morning when we saw that,
It was probably about noon. And we woke up and we looked at it and we thought, wow, what if Jake isn't just an artist? What if he's an optimist whose power is his optimism, a hero whose power is his optimism? And so we changed it to those three simple words. Life is good. What she wrote was too many words for a T-shirt. So we kind of distilled it into the three words.
And two days later, you know, there's nothing different right here so far because we had an idea like this every couple of weeks, something that we thought was the greatest. And then we go out in the street and it wouldn't sell, right? The different thing that happened was two days later, we sold 48 Life is Good t-shirts in 45 minutes.
And we knew right away they were people from different walks of life and they all bought that same T-shirt. So, you know, it was one of the lessons we had learned selling in the dorms all those years. You could say, well, we were just failing and failing and failing. It's true, but we learned a lot. And one of the things we learned is we wanted something for women and men, for older people and for younger people. And we did it. We wanted more of a psychographic than a demographic.
And that's what we got with Life is Good. We say, OK, this is for anyone who understands that it's powerful to see the glass half full, that it's healthy, that it's more attractive, all of those things. And so, yeah, it all of a sudden we had something that we thought we could make into a brand.
That's awesome. I mean, first of all, who knew that kick parties could be great business strategy meetings? I think I'm going to take this insight back to my team here and see if we can make some changes. It worked for us. We lured them in with the beer, but they came and they really did help us. Our friends helped us a lot.
That's awesome. I mean, it's really remarkable to hear kind of where the best ideas and creativity and entrepreneurship can really spark from. Sometimes they're the most unexpected places. So you started kind of just selling within kind of still streets of Harvard Square. Yeah.
And how did you, how did the business grow from there and kind of, how did your kind of outlook on optimism grow from there alongside that? Yeah. So good question. So like, um,
When I say we knew we had it, we did. Like the people said, when did you know? We knew that first day in the street. I mean, it would take us two weeks to sell 48 T-shirts and now we just sold in less than an hour. So we knew we had some like lightning in a bottle thing, you know, but we had no idea what to do with it. We didn't have any sales reps. We didn't have any connection with retailers, nothing.
So we got in the van and we drove down to Cape Cod and we went for a swim in the ocean. We tried to figure out what to do. And we came up with the idea that we would drive around to all the T-shirt shops and see if we could wholesale this idea.
And it didn't work. I mean, everybody thought we stole the shirts because we just looked like we stole the shirts. And then finally, this one woman who had a shop that mostly sold flip flops. She didn't listen to I don't think to anything we said. She just looked at the T-shirt and she was like, yes, she's like, I'll take 24. And that was our first customer, a woman named Nancy. And so we shipped her 24 shirts.
A week later, she called. This was pre-cell phones. And she called our apartment and I picked up the phone and she said, hey, it's Nancy from the Cape. Guess what? We sold all 24 shirts. We want to get more. I said, that's fantastic. She said, listen, before you do that, remember, our shop is next to an ice cream shop. And we're wondering if that character Jake eats ice cream.
And we said, no, but he will. You know, the great thing about an imaginary character is they can do anything. And so we made a T-shirt with Jake eating an ice cream and it said life is good.
And that sold better than the first one. And then people started asking, does he ride a bicycle? Does he work in the garden? Does he play guitar? Does he climb mountains? And the answer is yes, yes, yes. And the fictitious character does all these things. So the business just started growing this one really simple concept.
And we were making every operational mistake you could make. We were shipping the t-shirts out of our kitchen. And we didn't have our own label. We were shipping on Fruit of the Loom t-shirts or Hanes or whatever was on sale.
But they were selling. And the message back to us was that our culture is starving for optimism. And that 6 o'clock news is not the 6 o'clock news. It's the 6 o'clock violent murder report. And these things are damaging. And still to this day, we're in the tail end of 2021.
The media by and large, mass media, does not give you a balanced reflection. It preys on your fears. And there's a reason for that. We're wired to be drawn to our fears, so it sells. So actually, there was a lot of people in the beginning who told us, yeah, good news doesn't sell. Like, nice try, dude, but this is not going to work.
And it was working. And I think it was working and it is working today because more and more people recognize that it's healthy to focus on what's good in the world. And there's lots of good things happening in the world and there's lots of things to celebrate.
And, you know, there's a lot of companies today that are focused on positive things, but we were really alone. You know, it was 89 when we started making T-shirts. It's 94, 1994 when we made the first T-shirt.
Life is good shirts. And there was no positive lifestyle. Thankfully, there's lots of them now. And it's great. It's great for humanity that there are. And I think businesses are recognizing how powerful and how important it is for people to have that quality of a disposition where they see positive things.
And in a lot of ways, you and your brother really paved the way, whether it's intentional or not. That's just now looking back at it, that's what it looks like. And now, of course, kind of your publicly stated mission for the business is to spread the power of optimism. So you clearly take this very, very seriously. Can you tell us why this is important to you now as a business owner?
And also, as a quick follow-up, practically speaking, how does this...
manifest in the operations of your business day to day? What does this look like within the walls of Life is Good? Yeah, so let me start by saying like, we didn't know most of what we know about optimism at all when we started. We had these lessons from our mom. We considered ourselves optimists, but we really hadn't thought the whole thing through. And
By starting Life is Good, it put us in touch with other people and their theories and their practices. And so through the years, we had the benefit of millions of customers that write us and send us photos and letters.
And a lot of those people were not experiencing easy times. We started right away receiving letters from people going through chemotherapy, people who, you know, didn't have an injury like me, but lost a limb, people who got in car accidents and lost a child, like the most unthinkable things. And somehow they were writing us letters. And we came to realize, for example,
Gratitude is like a superpower. And when people go through adversity, if they're able to make it through, okay, they come out the other side with a heightened appreciation for life. And that's really powerful.
And the access to gratitude is tripled by being an optimist. Okay. So your ability to access gratitude is much more likely if you wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to focus on what's good in my life rather than my weaknesses. I mean, Fizz, you have weaknesses and you have strengths. I have weaknesses and I have strengths. A practicing optimist wakes up in the morning and says, okay,
I'm going to acknowledge my weaknesses, but I'm going to put most of my resources into my strengths. And that's what our customers taught us. So when that started happening, we started making T-shirts about gratitude.
When people wrote us letters we thought were courageous, we started making t-shirts about courage. You know, we did plays on the Grateful Dead that instead of saying Grateful Dead, it says Grateful Dude, right? Very, very simple. You know, all simplicity. Okay, we have a lot of t-shirts about keeping it simple, the simplicity being a superpower.
That was taught to us. People sent us, hey, the world's becoming so complex. The way I practice my optimism is I focus on the simple things in my life. And we heard that so many times. We said, start putting those words, keep it simple, on a T-shirt. And they built our business with us. So, you know, as business leaders and business owners, if you're watching this,
If you think you're going to build your business on your own in the digital age, in the 21st century, you're out to lunch. It's not going to happen. We didn't build this business. We didn't pave this way of positive lifestyle. Our community, our customer base,
co-authored the whole story with us. They really, we, all the good ideas came from them. And so that's been super powerful to us and super humbling because our business has grown and grown and grown through the years, but really all we have to do is listen. You know, that's, I think the key these days, don't think you have all the answers. Listen to your staff, great answers, great answers and solutions come from our staff these days. We
We recruit and interview based on levels of optimism. So you ask about the culture at Life is Good. It's really central in all aspects in everything we do. When we're hiring, somebody can have great skills in IT or marketing or whatever. But if we get the sense that they're not a practicing optimist, and believe me, we've become enamored with smart people and made the mistake.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't fit in with the culture. And we reward it. We reward the people
who focus on the opportunities when things are difficult in adverse conditions. And we've been through a lot. We've been through 9/11, through the Boston Marathon bombings in our backyard. We've been through the Great Recession. And now, you know, we're still faced with the pandemic. But two years ago, you know, we were almost going bankrupt, like so many businesses, because
50% of our revenue was driven through wholesale. And by law, for the first time in certainly our history, everybody had to close their doors. So we were this close to going bankrupt. But because we got a house full of rational optimists who are focused on opportunities and solutions, we made changes and we're thriving today. It's not, I guess my point is,
It's not my brother and I. We're pretty ordinary people. And I know you get to speak to a lot of extraordinary people, but I'm not being humble. We're very ordinary people, but we have the humility to listen and listen and empower leaders and listen to the consumers. The relationship that matters is between the brand and the consumers. And all the rest of us are just a conduit. I mean, I love kind of your key lesson here to have a
close pulse with your customers and really encouraging that feedback loop. That's really, really strong and powerful to hear for many business leaders that will watch this video. Now, talk to me a bit more about your customers. I know you've mentioned that you receive tons of fan mail, emails, letters.
And there may be so many folks who came along the way who kind of inspired and had an impact on your business. Are there any kind of particular stories that jump out that you'd like to share today from a customer? Yeah, you know, the earliest ones are the ones that we remember the most. We get incredible ones today and we got one just last week from a guy who's been incarcerated most of his adult life. And he did some real dumb and horrible things when he was younger.
But he really studied while he was incarcerated and he learned and he had a dream of becoming a commercial fisherman in Alaska. And so as he was learning and bettering himself, he bought a Life is Good hoodie somehow or somebody sent him one and he sent us a picture, right, in prison.
And it was touching. And that was several years ago. Well, we now just got a letter and he's on that fishing boat. He got out of prison and he's just a working hand on the boat, but he's got his act together and it's unbelievable. So there's lots that we get right now. But the earliest ones we got were from children.
And and it blew our mind. And that's why our we started our kids foundation. We were so inspired by these kids. I'll give you an example of one. Her name's Lindsay Began. She was 11 years old and she was from our neck of the woods in Boston area. And she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer.
And Lindsay was at the Children's Hospital and she was running around cheering up all the other kids, even though she had a dire prognosis. And they asked her in an article in the Boston Globe if she understood her prognosis. And she explained that she did. And then they said, then can we ask why you're wearing a hat that says life is good? And she said, well, before I was sick, I took my life for granted.
And now I want to make sure every day counts. So you talk about courage, right? And as young men trying to grow this business, we did not know what to do with that information. What we did was we contacted Lindsay and we became friends with her. And we're friends with her to this day. She's a young woman. She lives in San Francisco. She beat it. She beat the cancer. She's got a wonderful, supportive family.
And she really had an incredible attitude through the whole thing. Um, but because of Lindsay courage became one of the values, one of what we call the superpowers that life is good. And, uh, yeah. So, and, and, and letters from kids like her, uh,
caused us to sort of think about what we're trying to do as an organization. And we blended social work in and we started working with children whose lives are threatened in the most poverty stricken neighborhoods, threatened with violence and poverty itself, as well as people like Lindsay who face life threatening illnesses from something like cancer. So we started the Kids Foundation and today we're working with millions of kids and helping millions of kids each year
And the way we do that is $1 out of every $10 in profit always goes to the Kids Foundation. And it's been that way from the beginning. So it's part of our organization. It's truly an integration of for-profit and nonprofit.
And we never would have known this, but the Kids Foundation is the single most galvanizing thing at Life is Good for our staff. They're proud of what we do for kids. So it doesn't matter which department they work in. They know if they just do a good job designing T-shirts or shipping T-shirts or working in I.T. or marketing or finance or whatever they do, if they do a good job.
They're helping to save kids' lives and give kids a chance that wouldn't otherwise have a chance. And that makes them proud. And it also allows them to go enjoy their weekend and not feel as though they've got to do something to make up for their work or go volunteer all the time.
it's blended into their work. We're blurring the line. And I think that that is really a model of business for the future, that we each choose causes. We can't fix everything, but you choose something that is closely related to your business. Our business from the beginning on the t-shirts is about emotional health. So that's how we're working with these kids. We're focused on their emotional health and giving them connection through adults to make them feel safe and loved.
And so it's all one and it's all really a simple thing. But we're we're really fortunate to still be involved with this business. We're still a privately held business and we're not interested in selling it or going public. We just really think we can help a lot more people with it. And we're still enjoying every day.
I love to hear that. It's awesome how you've been able to marry private enterprise with impacting social good in the world, especially in the lives of children. Tell us more about your Kids Foundation, how you're involved with children day to day, and what type of impact you're hoping this will have long term.
Yeah, sure. So what we've come to realize, again, listening to the people who are out on the front lines working in the field, and these are social workers that are child care providers that are working in homeless shelters, foster care centers in areas that are economically disadvantaged in the U.S., as well as in oncology departments, right, where you have child life specialists.
And when we started, we worked directly with the children, but we quickly learned that there are professionals who are heroes that are out there every day doing this great work. So what we do is we train them and we work directly with them and we make them feel loved and supported because you can't give what you don't have. And what we've learned is if these kids
don't get relationships with great adults who make them feel safe and loved, then those kids, by the time they're 12 or 13, are going to end up doing violent things to somebody else or themselves. If they're female, they might end up pregnant by that age. They might end up going to jail. They might end up killing themselves. And average adults like you and I will look at those kids and say, yeah, just a bad kid, just a bad kid, right? When that kid's innocent.
If we can get the relationships in place, people who can work with them day in and day out and make them realize that they're special and that the world isn't so horrible, then these kids won't just survive. They'll become leaders. And we've been doing this long enough to know that many of these children do become leaders. You know, somebody explained it to me once a long time ago that when the pendulum swings up on the dark side of life really high,
it's capable of swinging up on the light side of life really high. And when you're not challenged that much, it's hard to go up on the light side, right? These kids have a special opportunity. So we've been doing it a long time. We have great relationships.
all over the US and a little bit outside the country, but we're trying to focus mostly on the US right now. And as the for-profit expands, which it will in the next five years more globally, we'll bring our social work with us and we'll work with children who need it most all over the world. So that's kind of like our little dream. We don't think that the words life is good
are an American message. We think that's a human message. So we're really ambitious about where it can go. Wow. Sounds like very, very critical and important work. I love how you're embodying the practice of optimism in such a productive way. How can audience members get involved
If those who want to support. Thanks. Great question, Fiz. The best thing to do is just go on our website. You can read in a little more detail about what life is good playmakers, which is what we call, you know, in sports, when someone's a playmaker, they're the one you want to have the ball. These people you just saw the picture of that are working with the kids. We told them we call them the playmakers.
Our mom was the first playmaker in our life, right? And so read about it there and then you can find out how to volunteer. When you come to our website, even if you're just buying a t-shirt, you can always donate a couple dollars at the end and 100% of that money will go to the kids who really need it.
So you don't have to help in huge ways. We'll take that help if you want to get involved in bigger ways. But we'll take your volunteering. Any involvement will take two dollars, five dollars. And if you have one hundred dollars, we won't we won't turn that away either. And our.
Our customer base, just so you know, they're practically matching every year what we give. So as our business has grown and our bottom line has gotten stronger and stronger capitalistically, that means that more money is going to the Kids Foundation and more kids are getting helped every year. But as that business grows, more consumers and more touch points are available. And we're always asking online if you like that hoodie or that hat or those sweatpants you bought or whatever,
How about a couple of bucks for the kids? And our customers are getting more and more generous every day. So we love that. And we'd love for people who are viewing today to have a look at lifeisgood.com. And even if you can only give a dollar, please do. It'll help somebody.
Awesome. I love that. And those of you in the audience today who are Google employees, the Life is Good Kids Foundation is actually part of our donation matching program. And I believe there should be a link in the bottom of this video. So check that out. Cool.
Thank you for that, Fizz. I got a question for you. Of course. What would it take? I'm enamored with the name Fizz. I'd like to trade you my name, Bert. It's kind of like an old-fashioned, I should be like a 90-year-old guy. You got the name Fizz. That couldn't be cooler. I'd like to trade. You interested? It's an interesting proposition. I'll have my lawyers give your lawyers a call. It's a copyrighted name, essential to my brand, so we'll have to negotiate something. I can throw in some hoodies. I can throw in some hoodies.
I do like hoodies, hoodies and do all your Christmas shopping like that. That's true. That's true. It's not a bad offer. I'll have to think on it. It's a nice name. It would look great on you. I feel like it suits your brand. You know what? I'm going to look into whether I need your legal right, legal permission. I might just change my name to Fizz and start competing with you.
All right, I'm gonna have to make some phone calls right after we hang up today. So we'll switch to audience questions in about five minutes or so, but just a couple more things I want to run by you while I have you. During the past couple of years, there's been countless challenges across the country, across the world.
I would say that optimism has really been challenged in the minds of many people. What would you say to them? When you come across a skeptic, how do you address them? And even as you think about life during a pandemic, is life good during a pandemic?
Well, life is not easy and life is not perfect and life is good. So we acknowledge that there's challenges and sometimes challenges are greater than others. So we don't think that by being an optimist, all of a sudden a global pandemic goes away. But I would ask the skeptics, and there's always skeptics on optimism, always, always, right? Always have been and maybe always will be. But I would ask the skeptics to look through history
and in good times and in bad times. And tell us who the great pessimists are that they look up to. Give us the list. I'll be waiting for that incredible list of people that we admire so much and that we wanna be like. And we'll be waiting forever. Now, if I ask you the same question,
You'll give me an endless list of people through history during the most challenging times. Look at this girl Malala. What an optimist she was. Shot by the Taliban, right? Attempted murder on her. And she sees the glass half full. She sees an opportunity to teach people, you know, throughout history.
There have always been people during the darkest times who see something magnificent on the horizon. Those are rational optimists, all right? I mean, like the debate about pessimism and optimism is a ridiculous one.
Pessimism by its very nature is corrosive to an individual or to an organization. Now, realism, sometimes people say, I'm not a pessimist. I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist. Okay. Realism is better, but realism lacks imagination. Realism requires data, only what has happened so far.
can, you know, only what has been proven can be valued by the realist. It is the optimist that looks and sees something amazing. Imagine Martin Luther King. Imagine if he wasn't an optimist. Imagine if he couldn't have seen something that was so much better. So, you know,
Today, does racism exist? Of course it does. It's awful and ugly and ignorant as it ever was. But there's much more of us today that understand and see that it's so ignorant and so foul, right? At MLK's time, he was a lonely optimist. He had to be the person who, you know, led this thing and was able to speak eloquently about something more beautiful on the horizon.
And so throughout all of it, imagine the women's movement, right? Imagine 150 years ago, how many true optimists about feminism could you find? It would be difficult. And most would be pretty justified in saying it's never going to get better. But there was a few. And every woman that has rights today that she didn't, her ancestors didn't, right?
is standing on the shoulders of optimists, of people who could see something. So I think the greatest teacher, Fiz, is history. And as we look at history, and if you go through your own mind about the people you admire most, they are powerful optimists, no question about it. I think that's the biggest thing. And now to write where we are in the pandemic, I will tell you, we decided internally to start making t-shirts about the pandemic, right? Right.
And internally, there were people here at Life is Good that said it's not a good idea. People are dying. We don't want to talk about this. But we did. We first started making them about the heroes on the front lines, right, healthcare heroes. And we made T-shirts about, you know, heroes wearing scrubs, et cetera, et cetera. And those people working in the hospitals were the first ones to buy them.
And then their families bought them and then lots of us bought them. And it gave us a boost to our business. And then we started making it about support systems at home. We made a shirt with a dog.
who just had a T-shirt on and no pants like a dog wears. And it said, work from home, pants optional, right? And so ridiculous, but funny. And it sold like mad. We sold tens of thousands of these T-shirts and we kept going. And we made things about quarantining at home. And instead of the martini, the quarantini.
And we sold a lot of those and people did need and do need to have a laugh and they do need to recognize the support system and they do need powerful optimists celebrating with them. It's, you know, we recognize all the difficult things that people have been through. We've all been through it personally. I mean, John and I lost family members. Our aunt died of COVID. Everybody has their story. So we're not immune to that, but we,
But through good times and bad, we are practicing optimists. And we believe that it is the smartest strategy human beings have for living happy and fulfilling lives. That's why the mission is to spread the power of optimism. You know, it's not some lofty goal because we think it's best for business. It's because it's our lifelong dream. It's our service to the world. We're fortunate that we get to run a really great and profitable business doing it.
And we're fortunate that the social work we do blends so well with it. Because I think another thing we can tell today is all these customers who have seen what we've done for kids and whose families have been impacted when they were going through difficult things,
They become lifelong customers of Life is Good, and they talk to other people. So, you know, my brother and I, I mean, authenticity is one of those superpowers at Life is Good. And you know enough, after talking to me for 40 minutes or whatever this is, Fiz, I'm not the smartest guy, and neither is my brother. God knows neither is my brother.
So if we're not so smart and fast and strong, why is it that people support our business? Because we are who we say we are. You know, we make mistakes. We fall down, but we raise our hand and say it's our fault. We made a mistake. But they know that we're trying to do what we say we're going to do. And, you know, we define branding at Life is Good as knowing who you are and acting like it.
That's what a brand is about. What is your brand? Know who you are and act like it. It's really simple. Not know who you are and talk like it, act like it, do those things. And so our company does that. Doesn't mean we always make the right decisions, but we know what our brand stands for. We talk about that all the time internally and we act that way as a result. So it's not rocket science, but-
Optimism is needed most during the darkest of times. And we're still in this pandemic right now. And it is those of us that have been optimistic, that have seen opportunities, that have adapted and have survived this thing as businesses and other organizations. So I think it proves itself during the worst times. Optimism proves its power.
Your perspective on life, on the world, and just your vision is just so inspiring. I feel fired up. I wish I could have this phone call every Monday because I know I'm going to have a great week just from this conversation. Chris, I don't have any friends with names as cool as yours. Just call me. Sounds good. Sounds good. We'll make that happen. We'll make this a recurring weekly.
So I love the new year because, you know, I truly believe the new year is a time of reflection and clarity as we flip the page as a world, uh, as a humanity and look forward to something new. Yeah. So as we're approaching the end of the year and turn the page to 2022, what do you see around you in the world today that makes you optimistic about the future? Yeah. So, uh,
There's great silver linings in this incredibly challenging time. And one of them is that most adults that I know have rethought what's important in their life and are making changes as a result.
So I think most of us, Life is Good included, are going to physically go back to work for some amount of time. Okay. So I think we're never going to go back for, I'm just speaking for Life is Good, to five days a week in the office every day. But we're going to do a hybrid. And we're going to do a hybrid because we read every single letter from the surveys we did with our staff. And many of them told us about how they managed to lose five or ten pounds.
how they're spending more time with their boyfriend or their dog or whoever the people are that they love, their daughter.
and because they're not commuting two hours every day. So I look at it with my brother and say, you know, we'd have to be idiots not to listen to our people. So we're going to make some changes. I think the way we do business and interact with consumers is changing. We shifted to more of a speed to market model. You know, we've been operating with a supply chain that's 12 to 18 months long
And we've shifted it to only a few days. And that came as a result really with our backs up against the wall in this pandemic. So I think that there's a lot of adaptation and a lot of soul searching. Some people are changing their careers. Some people are realizing, wow, you know, life is finite. I won't be here forever. I'm 38 years old. Okay. I'm just making this up. I wish I was 38 years old.
I'm 38 years old and I'm realizing that I'm working 80% of my life and I don't spend enough time with the people I love. So I want to continue to be a valued employee of Google or Life is Good or wherever I work.
but I'm going to prioritize the time being with the people I love. Those things are just absolutely heartwarming to hear and I'm hearing them a lot. I'm hearing people say, "I've been putting off learning how to play guitar for 20 years. I'm going to do it because someday never comes." And I think sometimes unless we're challenged and faced with something horrible like this pandemic has been,
we don't get woken up and those wake up calls, there is a silver lining too. So listen to those changes. It's okay to kind of do an inventory of your life and keep the things that you love in place and the things that you don't love, maybe you don't have to keep doing them. So I think those are the big things.
Extremely insightful. I'll definitely be doing some self-reflecting from this conversation, and I'm sure that many of our listeners will as well. Speaking of our audience, I think it's time to kind of shift to them and start looking at some audience submitted questions live, if we can kind of have some of these pulled up. Great. All right.
A question from Aaron. In the story about the sandal shop and the ice cream, I heard the importance of building relationships and understanding context. Do you think relationships and context has been key for your business? Yeah, great question. It's been our business. I mean, absolutely right from Nancy was one of the first right there. But getting to know our customers as people.
Who are they? They're not just somebody who owns some retail store we want to hawk some stuff at. Getting to know everybody in our building as human beings. You know, we have quarterly something called a Jake Jam. And at Jake Jam, we shut the company down and we have live music and we have some great food. And my brother and I and the other leaders at the company, we serve, you
You know, we'll make homemade pizza or some burgers or some salads or whatever it is. And we hang out with each other and we'll play cornhole and volleyball and whatever else. But we won't talk about business. We'll talk about everything else and get to know who we are as human beings, each other. And then we find that when we're in the trenches, when we're trying to solve difficult things,
We have more empathy and it's easy for each other and it's easier for us to find common ground if we realize that, oh, for example, I shared a little earlier that my brother and I come from a pretty dysfunctional home.
And a lot of people come from a dysfunctional home. And when you share those kinds of things, you look at each other differently and you feel a kinship with them. You feel each other, you know, you just don't know each other and think, you feel something. And so relationship building is central to building any organization, building any brand and understanding each other or trying to understand each other as human beings
is massive. I became friendly with Brene Brown in recent years and her story is magnificent. She really left the business world long ago and studied psychology and sociology and became a researcher. And it wasn't until 2008, she gave a talk to a bunch of C-level business leaders.
And she struck gold and she hit home with them. Why? Not because she had all the answers to business, but because she understood the human mind and she understood emotions. And she talked to those leaders as human beings. And immediately this flood of great questions came and opportunities for her to speak with more. And her whole career was built on that and dialing in on the importance of vulnerability. People
People weren't talking about how important vulnerability is. So, yes, relationships and focus on being human beings. That's what our brand's about. And that's what our organization is about. Smart question right there.
Awesome. That's great to hear. And hey, Jake Jam sounds more fun than Coachella. So here's the new deal, right? If I get invited to the next Jake Jam, then you can have all the rights to fizz. Oh, that's a deal. The name. This is an official digital handshake right here. There we go. There we go. I am now Fizz Jacobs. Love that. Love that. I'll be pouring you the first beer at Jake Jam, buddy.
Perfect. That sounds like the VIP ticket to me. Great.
Alrighty, next question. Question from Kylie. What's your advice for those adults who have come from traumatic backgrounds on how to continuously live positively, how to establish a routine on practicing optimist lifestyle? I love this question. Yeah, great one. So we've spent a lot of time with people who face trauma and that's mostly what we deal with. And it's harder
as adults. So I'll acknowledge that upfront. The reason we work mostly zero to six years old is because if we can get them there, and these are a lot of kids who have witnessed horrible things, sometimes one parent killing the other, drive-bys in their neighborhood, you name it. They've witnessed or experienced lots of abuse and lots of adults have too. So it's harder
But the first thing I think is trusting some support system. So whether it's a friend that you love who loves you, whether it's a romantic relationship or whether it's a therapist that you can grow to trust, you need other adults. You can't do it alone.
And then you got to face it. You got to face. And that doesn't mean spend all day every day being the victim and soaking in whatever it was that happened in your childhood. My belief is that we all come from some level of trauma and we all come from houses that are dysfunction. It's a matter of degree. OK, so so.
number one, you know, support system, seeking somebody, who are those few people around you, you know, these days, people talk about having 10s of 1000s of friends. That's a joke. Okay, nobody has 10s of 1000s of friends. If you've got two or three good ones, you're blessed. And you know, my best friends are still people that I grew up with,
And and I go to them when I'm when I'm feeling down and they're my support system. I go to them when I feel bad, when I feel like I've screwed up. And and I have brothers and sisters that grew up in my same dysfunctional home and we don't have any secrets from each other. So that helps. So trying to connect on those things. Right. And then I think my third piece of advice is make a list of your strengths and of the good things around you.
And remind yourself of those. Keep that in your wallet. Keep that in your pocket. And remind yourself of those things because they're really valuable. And it's okay, once again, to acknowledge where you fall short, where your weaknesses are, and what your kryptonite is.
But you have superpowers. You have things about you that stand out and that people love and that people recognize. So keep those things front of mind and grow the good. That's the idea. Water the good. Grow the good. You have to keep reminding yourself of what those good things are and focus on those things. Because whatever we focus on grows. I love that. Such practical, actionable advice. Yeah.
that honestly anyone can start implementing in their lives. I think we have time for just one more quick question before we wrap up today. From Arash, how do you delineate between being optimist and delusional? Yeah, Arash, great question, man. Okay, let's talk about some examples. Delusional is the pandemic's over and everything's perfect.
Delusional is the pandemic was great because my little T-shirt company survived and therefore there wasn't suffering. Right. We we use the term practicing optimist, but we also use the term rational optimist, which I think was coined by the author of a book by that title named Matt Ridley. It's a great book.
And a rational optimist recognizes the challenges, recognizes the downside, recognizes the trauma of your own childhood, right? But chooses strategically to focus on the things that they want to grow.
That's the difference. It's not delusional if we recognize there are dark things, there are challenges, right? And we recognize that tomorrow may bring even worse challenges, even harder challenges, right? So optimism isn't about painting a perfect picture.
It's about moving towards a better picture by focusing on our strengths. That's the difference. And delusion is delusion. Don't kid yourself. Sometimes people will approach us and say, you ought to start your own network that only focuses on the good. I don't think so. What we need out there is a balance. We get too much of the negative.
Right. We get too much of going in the wrong direction when really we've done lots of great things as a species. We really have. And we're being really good to each other in lots of ways. But we really only hear about the terrible things we're doing to each other. So the answer isn't ignore the terrible things and just focus on the good. That's delusional.
The optimistic view is let's listen to both and let's put more of our energy into the positive. I'll give one example because I think it's an important one these days. Racism is a hard topic, especially for a white guy, right? Somebody whose history in many ways based on race has been privileged. I love sports and I love entertainment these days because using sports as an example is
I see people of all races together on TV and they're not talking about race. And I love that. It shows us where we should be, right? You get people that are talking about their coaches. They're talking about their defense. They're talking about where they went to college. One guy's not saying I'm a white guy. The other guy's not saying I'm a black guy. I love that. It's inspiring to me because why? It's focused on the solution. The solution is unity, right?
We can't give all the attention to the racist. The racist is a fucking idiot. We can't give that person the attention, but we do. We want to talk about racism and the racist. No, I'm not that interested. I want to acknowledge that racism is awful and it's ignorant. And then I want to put, that's 10% of my energy and 90% of my energy I want to put into the unity of different races coming together. That's optimism. That's powerful. Okay.
Very powerful stuff. Very, very powerful stuff. Bert, this has been such an insightful conversation. I know I got a lot out of it personally, and I'm confident that our audience members did as well. Thank you so much for being here and starting off my week on such a great note.
I definitely feel inspired and motivated. Thank you to everyone who's listening. We really appreciate it. There's nothing more valuable than your time. Fizz, thank you for your time. And thank you for my new name, Fizz Jacobs. I'll see you at Jake Jam. I'll see you at Jake Jam. Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.