Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2015; the statement that the brothers do this exercise with their employees today describes their practice at that time.
We already talked about brothers Bert and John Jacobs when we looked at 4 simple business ideas that turned out to be worth 100 million dollars. These entrepreneurs’ idea was as simple as selling T-shirts with optimistic messages along the lines of “life is good” or “enjoy life”…
In fact, the company they founded is called Life is Good, a message of optimism they took to heart at an early age and that became their philosophy of life.
Bert and John are the youngest of six children from a working-class family in Boston. In an interview with Business Insider they explain that, when they were at school, their parents had a serious car accident that nearly cost them their lives. In the end their mother came out of it with a few broken bones, and their father lost the use of his right hand.
See also: ViralNova: this entrepreneur built a website with no employees and sold it for 100 million
The stress and frustration of physical therapy, along with their father’s helplessness at losing his mobility, made them develop a very harsh temper. The family was already struggling financially, and after the accident they found out that things in life could get worse.
In fact, they understood that life isn’t perfect, and it isn’t always easy. A lot of hard things happen.
But their mother, Joan, still thought life was wonderful, so every night, when the whole family was sitting round the table at dinner, she asked her six children to tell her something good that had happened to them during the day.
The two entrepreneurs say that their mother’s ritual, that simple question, could change the energy in the room.
Before they knew it, the brothers recall, those simple words had everyone joking and laughing as they remembered things that had happened to them.
Day after day, this kept them from developing a victim mentality along the lines of “What a crap day I’ve had.” Instead of complaining and moaning, they joked about a classmate’s terrible haircut, a new friend they had made, a game they had won, an exam they had passed or an interesting project they had been given.
That optimism, Bert and John Jacobs write, was something their family always had, despite the hard times.
Growing up with a mother like theirs, who sang in the kitchen, told lively stories and got everyone at the table to bring out the best of their day, it didn’t matter how bad a patch they were going through.
As they put it, being happy doesn’t depend on your circumstances: their mother showed them that optimism is a courageous choice you can make every day, especially in the face of adversity.
In their book, Life is Good: The Owner’s Manual, they explain that this unshakeable attitude to life is what inspired them to start their T-shirt business, a company that soon reached 100 million and whose optimistic philosophy (their motto) they carried over to the product:
Life isn’t always perfect, life isn’t always easy, but life is good.
And that optimistic philosophy they learned from their mother didn’t just help them in business, to get through the problems of running a company; it helped them in every area of life. So much so that today they do this exercise with their employees because, according to them, it steers employees towards building on their successes rather than dwelling so much on the challenges.
See also: I built a 100 million business after being fired for getting drunk at a company event
Featured image: Afifa Afrin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
