YouSaid · the spoken record

Bert and John Jacobs

lines on the record: 47
first: 2019-09-02
most recent: 2019-09-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Jim's company is called Counter Ev Furniture, short for Counter Evolution. He now makes furniture full time with sixteen employees, and his revenue is in the low millions of dollars. If you want to find out more about Counter Ev or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, How I Built This dot npr.org, and of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. And thanks so much for listening to our show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibt at npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how Ibuel This or at GuyRaz. Our show is produced this week by Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Rumtin Era Bluey. Thanks also to Julia Carney, San Azmeshkanpur, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers, our intern is David Job.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And today, about 10 years after starting out at that first flea market, Jim just opened his first storefront in Brooklyn, and he's placed his furniture in a number of fast casual restaurants, his biggest client, Shake Shack, is using Jim's furniture in over 100 locations, and you never know who's going to walk into one of those places”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So now a familiar entrepreneur's dilemma, Jim had to scramble to deliver on two orders. He hired a few other people and started scaling up production of bowling alley furniture at a small facility in Brooklyn. Unfortunately for him, since a lot of bowling alleys across the country have closed down, there was no shortage of wood”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But finally, after those four nail biting months, the woman from Starbucks did get back to gym and she ordered a big communal table for the store in Brooklyn. And soon after that, another designer from Sweet Green ordered tables and chairs for two restaurants in the DC area.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the story might have ended there except right The same time, Jim lost his job in an animation studio, and a friend of his who loved. The table he made suggests. That maybe he could make more pieces of furniture and sell them at the In Brooklyn. So Jim thought about it and he said, sure, and he set up a booth.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the great American pastime of bowling kind of found its way back to Jim about twelve years ago. He was looking to build a new table for his apartment and he was poking around a store full of reclaimed wood in upstate New York. And the guy there said, hey, if you need a good deal, I think I've got something for you.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's John and Bert Jacobs, co founders of the Life Is Good Company. By the way, we know for a fact that at least one of their t-shirts has traveled all the way to space. In 2013, astronaut Karen Nyberg posted a video from the International Space Station, and she was showing how she washed her hair in zero gravity, and the shirt that she's wearing in that video, it's from Life Is Good. It's of a grinning girl who looks a lot like the original Jake sitting back-to-back with her dog. And underneath it says, Lean on me. Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And our story today starts with Jim Malone, who, like a lot of people, used to go bowling from time to time when he was growing up. But these days?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's definitely not skill. I had a lot of luck. I just can't do math, so clearly there was a lot of luck. No question about it.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's pretty good. First Sebert, when you think about the success of this company, do you attribute it to your hard work and your brother's hard work and your intelligence, or do you think that some of it came from just luck?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know when you think about this crazy story going from t-shirts up and down the eastern seaboard to a cylinder out of the back of a van to knocking on the dorm rooms to $78 between you to a shipping container is your office and the company today what it does reportedly almost $100 million in revenue a year is that about right”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What did your parents make of your business? Your mom, I know, passed away a couple years ago and then a year later your dad passed. What did they make of this? This t-shirt business that turned into something huge.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, do you guys feel like you grew up with very working class home? I mean, in the room upstairs with frost on the windows, and like, you presumably today, both of you are doing pretty well. I mean, you can live pretty comfortably.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys, I mean, you've been doing this now since really, I guess, since the late 80s, right? You've been selling t shirts. Have you ever any part of you guys want to just sell it, sell it to a bigger company and just kind of cash in? Because both of you have become pretty well off from this tiny little t-shirt business, and you can, I don't know, kind of do whatever you want.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, did you think about a very simple phrase, some very basic, I mean, you guys are great artists, no judgment, but like very simple artwork? And it became this thing t shirts and dinner plates and posters and things like that. What other things? I'm probably forgetting about that.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was buying the shirts. Because I mean, when I think of life as good, I think of going to Okra Coke Island, you know, someplace, or like Cape Cod. Life is good and it's the summer and it's easy to feel that way. Is that where the shirts were being sold in like beach towns? In places like that in the summertime”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was that just mind blowing to you? Were you just thinking, how did we go from having like $78 between us three years ago to a million dollars in sales?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess there was a turning point, a pretty significant turning point in 1996. You guys get a call from a pretty big sporting goods chain based out of Indianapolis named Galleons or Galen? Yeah, what was that”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. How did you guys divide up labor between the two of you like who did what? Who did finances? Who did the art? Who did the deliveries? How did you guys? Who was in charge? Who was the boss? Is the older brother the boss?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's amazing. So you got the trademark on this phrase, life is good as a brand. And that's it. I mean, you sort of own this phrase and you can use it as your business.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did you get the trademark on it? I mean, it seems like a very common phrase life is good, but you got the trademark. How did that happen?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I guess that year ninety four after you kind of become life is good, you did like almost ninety thousand dollars worth of revenue, which is great. You can start to see maybe a path towards real profitability. And then I guess the next year you really, I mean, you're still running this business, by the way, out of your apartment in Boston that you guys share, right?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We come back in just a moment how Bert and John grew their 78 bucks into 250,000, which grew into $1 million, and then $100 million. Stay with us. I'm Guy Ros, and you're listening to how I built this from NPR. Welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1994 and John and Berger Jacobs are getting some traction with a new t-shirt design. It's a smiling guy wearing a beret with sunglasses and just underneath the words life is good. And they start to get the shirts into some small shops mainly in beach towns.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I mean, this was like kind of like a make or break moment for you, right? Because I read that at this point you only had a couple hundred bucks between you. I mean, is it true or is that an exaggeration?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, here's the thing there's something almost counterintuitive about what you were introducing in 1994, because I remember 1994. I was just starting out of college, and it was like grunge and cynicism, especially among young people, that was the way to be. Life is good. Like, you must have gotten a lot of eye-rolls, right? It just seems so counterintuitive to try and sell that to college kids at a time when so many of them would have been like, you guys are lame or this is silly.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what was life is, I mean, I mean, what was life as good supposed to mean? Was it supposed to mean the easy life is easy? Was it aspirational? What was it supposed to convey?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess we should just explain here for a sec that this drawing that you do, this guy that you called Jake, this was a super simple drawing. It was almost like a kid's drawing of a face with this big giant toothless grin.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened in 1994? How did your t-shirt business that made you think? We should really do this. What was a thing that happened?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So at this point, were you thinking, was any part of either of you thinking, you know, maybe this t-shirt thing isn't the right way to go. We've been doing it for four or five years.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm still trying to figure out what's on the t shirt. I'm standing in my dorm room. You're knocking on my door. You show me a shirt. What does it say? What does it look like?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm just trying to put myself in the position of a college student at that time, and I get a knock on the door, and then there'd be these two guys or one guy with a duffel bag. And you would say what? I'd be like, yes. And then you would say, what?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what would you do? You would walk down the corridors of the dorm room corridors. T-shirts for sales? Oh, you would knock on the door.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did that work? You would just drive to colleges and open up the door. I guess this is back in the day when they weren't locked and you would just walk in”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Showbeck at your parents' house, and you have decided we are going to make some t shirts and sell them. And I understand you could take your design to a silkscreener and they could just make a bunch of t-shirts that you hand over to them. What were the designs that you decided on making at first? What did the t-shirts look like?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you guys get back to Boston. And by the way, when you got back to Boston, did you guys move back in to your parents' house?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if it's apocryphal, but I've heard that that's really when you sort of, like the two of you are driving and one of you is like, hey, maybe we should do a business. Is that really true?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're doing this road trip. Making your way across the country. And you get to back to Massachusetts, right? And I guess presumably you'd be on the mass pike, right, going down through western mass coming in. That's right. Yeah.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so I guess after you guys finish college, both of you head out west, I guess Bert, you go to Colorado, and then John, you go out to California, right? And then I guess it was around 88, 89. Both of you meet up in California and then you decide to drive back together back to Boston and then sort of figure out what you're going to do next with your lives, like what was that the plan?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I guess Bert, you went to, because you went to college first, you went to Villanova, and then I guessed to Fitchburg state in Massachusetts, and John, you were at UMass Amherst. Did either of you at that point in your lives think about that you were going to create a business one day?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you guys were, you had six of you total, the two of you are the youngest. You're about three years apart. So were the two of you fairly close from an early age?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what would your parents like? I mean, were they like warm and fuzzy? Were they strict? Were they different kinds of people?”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As you'll hear, to their mom in particular. The brothers grew up in Needham, Massachusetts. They were the youngest of six kids. Their dad worked at a machine shop, and he and their mom had trouble making ends meet. But the way John and Bert tell it, the early years of the family before they were born were actually pretty good.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bert and John Jacobs started experimenting with this phrase back in the mid-1990s at the time they were barely scraping by. They were selling t-shirts on street corners and in college dorms. So at one point they tried something new. They drew a picture of a guy with a wide grin on his face, wrote life is good underneath, and amazingly the shirt started to sell. Today, life is good is a one hundred million dollar brand. Sold in stores all across the country. And the slogan is not only on t-shirts, but on socks and keychains, posters, magnets, mugs, tote bags, towels, even tire covers. Things that presumably would not be selling so well or so fast if they did not say life is good. Burton John can actually trace the idea behind the slogan to their childhood.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most big brands have a slogan Just do it, fly the friendly skies, think different. The slogan is there to help sell the shoes or the airline or the computer. It's there to boost the brand. But now imagine if the brand was the slogan. So instead of Nike, the product you are buying was just do it. Or instead of a razor, you were buying the words the best a man can get. That is essentially the brand you're going to hear about on the show today. Because unlike almost every story we've profiled, Bert and John Jacobs didn't really sell us specific product or offer a specific service. What they're selling is an idea, an attitude, a way of seeing the world. And that idea can be summed up in the phrase life is good. That's it. What they sell, those three words life is good.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's how I built this show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Bert and John Jacobs rescued their floundering t shirt business with three simple words. Life is good. And then turn that phrase into a brand and a one hundred million dollar business.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you're ready to launch, you offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval. So really quick before we start the show, I want to tell you about our How I Built This Live Tour. It's happening this fall supported by American Express. I'll be in New York talking with Christina Tosi of Milk Bar, in Boston with Luke Holden and Ben Connor, founders of Luke's Lobster, and wrapping up the tour in Denver with Kurt Richardson, founder of Otter Products. You can get tickets for all these shows and get more information at NPRpresents dot org and I hope to see you there.”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2019-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT