![]() And I think that a lot of that has to do with even The Great Resignation and watching their moms or their parents come back and maybe freelance or consult or start their own side hustle. Junior Achievement actually did a study this year and over 60% of teens want to start their own business versus working a regular 9 to 5 job. Why at this stage of the game is it so important for you to be reaching kids and teens through your book? But something I love to say, and I definitely say it in Create Your Bright Ideas, is just because you hear crickets - doesn't mean no one's listening. From the outside, it looks insane what we've been able to build over the past 10 years. Headbands of Hope, even though we've donated millions of headbands today, we're the official headband provider for the NB. But once you get that first order from someone you don't know, it is a feeling that you can't even explain because it just means that someone out there believes in what you're doing and is willing to put their dollars behind it in order to buy whatever it is that you created. And two, how validating it was that up until that point, anyone who had purchased on was my mom or my cousin or my grandma who was just there to support me. One, I taught myself that sometimes you're going to get a lot of no's and all it takes is that one yes. ![]() This is the jackpot."īut it was one of those big turning points for me as an entrepreneur. We got $500 worth of orders that day, and I thought I could retire. I remember the day that she posted about Headbands of Hope on her blog. And out of the five bloggers, two of them responded back to me, and then one of them ended up posting, and I still remember the name of the blog. I reached out to each one of the bloggers and told them about what I was doing with Headbands of Hope. But I remember the one time that we actually got traction, it was around the time when blogging was super popular and there was an article in Fitness Magazine that was top five fitness bloggers to watch. I would beg college professors to let me speak in front of their class for five minutes about Headbands of Hope. But little by little, I kept going with it and I kept throwing darts. I remember my first order was from my mom, my second order was from my grandpa after he called me to figure out how to work the website. So I started a company called Headbands of Hope, and for every headband sold, we donate one to a child with an illness. ![]() I call it the dumbest, smartest moment of my life, being 18 or 19 years old and thinking, "Well, why not me? I could figure something out to give headbands to kids with cancer." This was around 2011, 2012 when TOMS Shoes was really popping off in these one-for-one models, so I decided, let me adapt that with headbands. I realized that no one had made that connection between headbands and kids with cancer yet. ![]() I like to also call that "inspiration from frustration." When you're frustrated about something that should exist or be better, maybe you could be the one to create it. The true moment you become an entrepreneur is when you are looking for something that doesn't exist. I remember going onto Google and typing in "headbands for kids with cancer" and realizing that that was a connection that hadn't been made yet. I would see so many of them wearing these headbands coming into the offices or going onto their wish and I thought it was the coolest gesture of confidence that they didn't want to hide what they were going through - they were just looking to restore their self-confidence through a simple accessory. A lot of them weren't really concerned with covering up their heads, they just wanted something to restore their self-confidence, and honestly just feel like a kid again. I was interning at the Make-a-Wish Foundation and I was seeing a lot of kids that would lose their hair to chemotherapy, and the immediate reaction would be to offer them a wig or to give them a hat to cover up their heads. I got the idea for Headbands of Hope when I was in college. How did you get Headbands of Hope off the ground? ![]() Jessica Abo: Take us back to the early days. She sat down with Jessica Abo to share how it all started and her advice for kids and teens who want to launch their own big idea. Today, she runs both Headbands of Hope and Mic Drop Workshop. Jess Ekstrom launched a multi-million dollar company out of her dorm room in college. ![]()
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