The Life is Good Company was founded in 1994 by Bert and John Jacobs. They started by designing and selling t-shirts out of their van in the streets of Boston.
Jake, the iconic stick figure, was created in the same year the company started. Jake was the beginning of Life is Good. The two brothers printed shirts of Jake and found that they were selling like a wildfire.
Their mission is to “spread the power of optimism”
Their story: https://www.lifeisgood.com/our-story.html
It is funny talking about Facebook because I can’t remember a time without it. Facebook was originally created so someone could rate faces of anonymous individuals. It has become though the platform on which it seems all other social media is either based or modeled after. I know that almost everything you connect to via internet now has an option for you to connect that to Facebook or Sign-up/Login using Facebook. People will even look at social media now before hiring someone. Besides being a place to share what is on your mind people will use it before their dates or just after meeting someone, or more so to look up to see how old friends are doing, or send a message to someone you have been meaning to talk to like a relative or friend. This masterfully crafted product was created by the household name Mark Zuckerberg. At the age of 32 he now has a NET worth of nearly 55 billion dollars. Facebook although seems to have been taken over by moms, has been coming back with the introduction of Instagram. Instagram is masterfully crafted to once again revolutionize social media, this time it is a lot harder to rant about politics and silly viewpoints. Instagram users share a picture followed by a short caption. It has only been recently that advertising/sponsored posts have been seen on Instagram. Mark has been in the spotlight a lot over the past few years with his recent successes and I have no doubt that though we haven’t seen him recently he will be back, and maybe this time with something even better.
As a communications major, I have been wondering if there are millennials out there who have used entertainment routes to start their business. YouTube, though known for popular cat videos, has created an outlet for entrepreneurs to express their niche in the community and get a following. Through ads and merchandise, many of these youtubers have been able to make a living off a once purely entertainment field. A rising youtuber, by the name of Yolanda Gampp, (probably known by her business as “How To Cake It”) has been growing in popularity within the past year. Yolanda, a self-taught baker after her father, has been posting YouTube videos about how to make really cool cake designs…and when I say really cool…I mean realistic to the point that it’s crazy to think it’s cake! I happen to follow her on YouTube and have enjoyed watching every video her team has posted over the past year. Yolanda also customizes her own tee-shirts (a different tee-shirt for every cake she makes) along with other merchandise that can be sold at howtocakeit.com. Yolanda and her team work to produce high quality weekly videos, and just recently How To Cake It won a Webby Award for Best Online Film and Video How-to & DIY.
As a mere 32 year old from Canada, Yolanda has created a business that many have grasped on to (Over 2 million subscribers to How To Cake It, and those numbers continue to grow). My hope for Yolanda and her team is to watch them grow in success, and I wait in anticipation to see what other amazing ideas they put forward into the world. Yolanda is a big inspiration to me. As a communications major, YouTube is an amazing outlet to start a career… but me just as a person, I look and I see Yolanda succeeding at her line of work, because she found something she loved. Her business is great because it combines that aesthetic appeal people crave, and also a unique skill that only she has perfected. She is innovative in her techniques for creating different cake pieces, and her skill is what has captured many people’s intrigue. A degree does not define her, but instead an entertaining and respectable mindset. That is what makes her a millennial entrepreneur. Anyone can make a cake. I can make a cake! But few can turn a cake into a watermelon with such great detail and creativity. Her personality is also fantastic, which leaves me as the viewer, always hungry for more. Check out the link and let me know what you guys think!