conversations
What’s in a conversation? It’s the beginning of new ideas. A sharing of personal stories.
A start of meaningful relationships. This Pulse section called Conversations
highlights opinions, ideas, visions and personal anecdotes of CEOs and leaders from across industries.
Join the conversation. Send your questions and suggestions on leaders you’d like Pulse to profile.
B Y M A E M A Ñ AC A P - J O H N S O N
L
ife is good CEO (Chief Executive Optimist) Bert Jacobs is the classic
example of someone who turns lemons into lemonades. Along with business partner and
brother John, he founded Life is good, a $100-million shirt company based in Boston, after
years of peddling T-shirts on the streets and selling door-to-door in college dormitories.
He claims to have stumbled onto Jake, their iconic hero who is the face of the brand, after seeing that
people don’t celebrate enough of what’s right in the world. “People would say, ‘Now life is good for you
guys, you made all these money,’ but they are missing the point. The point is: Life was good when we
were hawking in the street; life was good because we had an opportunity. And our character Jake
expresses that in his own way wherein he always finds a way to be happy.”
In this Conversations, Jacobs spreads the positivity bug and shares insights on how to infect others—
your team, peers and clients—with contagious optimism to nurture your team and grow your business
with a good dose of positivity.
BERT
JACOBS
CEO • Life is good
PULSE: In 1989, you and
your brother decided to
sell your own line of
T-shirts despite not
knowing anything about the business. What was the
key driver or business decision behind embarking on a
T-shirt retail business?
Bert Jacobs: Two reaso