An Interview with John Jacobs, Life is good, Inc.

For John Jacobs, BA '90 (Art and English,) Life is good...in fact it is very good indeed. Tall, boyish and infectiously enthusiastic, he came to the College of Humanities and Fine Arts in April to visit the campus and talk to students about his passions: spreading his optimistic message through Life is good products, and lending his time and energy to help children facing totally unfair obstacles in their lives. Illuminating had the pleasure of sitting down with John for the following rambling, and very upbeat interview.

I: We'll talk about Life is good in a moment, but first, how did you originally come to UMass Amherst?
JJ: Well, I always drew things. I was drawing from the time I was about three years old, and I thought I wanted to go to an art school and had looked into that. When it came time to go to college though, my older siblings convinced me that I should get a broader education, and I'm really glad I listened to them.

I: Why is that?
JJ: Oh, I really came to love literature and writing, and I played a little baseball and a lot of pick-up basketball and frisbee. UMass Amherst offered great options to study and play too, and the diversity! One of the things I later realized as we traveled around selling T-shirts on college campuses was how a lot of them are pretty homogeneous; students at UMass Amherst though, are all different: clothes, racially, ethnically, there's so much here to learn from. It's a lot more "real world" than most other schools.

I: So you came here and then what? Were you a serious student?
JJ: For the first year I think I really focused on my class work, but one of the most important messages I like to share with students now is that you need to be able to enjoy the whole experience. Ambition and plans are good things, but you need to laugh along the way and balance all the elements of learning. They don't all happen in classes.

I: What do you think was the biggest lesson you learned as a UMass Amherst student?
JJ: The diversity for sure. That you can't judge people by their looks or backgrounds, and that there is a social, people element to everything you do in work or school or whatever you're doing. That's the magical part: the people.

I: Life is good, Inc. You started your business at UMass Amherst too, didn't you?
JJ: (laughs) We made T-shirts and sold them in the dorms! It was fun and we really liked meeting people. We were creating art, meeting girls, I had no idea it would become my "career." Then we started selling shirts on other campuses, driving around and living in a van. After I graduated I was substitute teaching, but my brother and I sold shirts at fairs, on the street in Cambridge, did special orders, and we learned about business as we went along.

I: What's the most exciting part of your business now?
JJ: The Festival Division! Absolutely! We decided that just giving a check to charity was fine, but not what we're all about. We started doing special events for charities and it's been amazing. The first one was through our retailers right after 9/11. We did a line of patriotic shirts and raised $211,000 for the 911 Fund. Since then we've concentrated on organizing family festivals that raise money for groups helping kids facing unfair challenges like life-threatening illness, abuse and poverty. There's a whole lot of information about them on our website. (http://www.lifeisgood.com) The first was our Pumpkin Festival in Portland ME last Halloween, and now we have a Back Yard Games Festival on the Esplanade in Boston in June, and another Pumpkin Festival on the Boston Common in October. We hope to add a festival a year.

I: So, business is good?
JJ: Very. But, we think business is more than hitting sales numbers and projections. We get the biggest kick out of the positive impact Life is good has on culture. The very best are the e-mails and letters we get from people who tell us the brand, the message, has helped them; been inspirational. We hear from folks who wore our baseball caps while they were undergoing chemo, and how the message really meant something to them. One woman told us, "your company makes people feel good." How much better can you get than that?