Jess Ekstrom launched a multimillion-dollar business from her college dorm room. Today she runs both Headbands of hope and Mic Drop workshop. She sat down with Jessica Ab to share how it all started and her advice for kids and teens who want to launch their own big idea.
Jessica Abo: Take us back to the early days. How did you get Headbands of Hope off the ground?
I got the idea for Headbands of Hope when I was in college. I was an intern at the Make-a-Wish Foundation and I saw a lot of kids who would lose their hair from chemotherapy, and the immediate response would be to offer them a wig or give them a hat to cover their head. Many of them weren’t really into covering their heads, they just wanted something to rebuild their confidence and honestly just feel like a kid again. I would see so many of them wearing these headbands when they entered the offices or granted 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 confidence through a simple accessory. I remember going to Google and typing “headbands for kids with cancer” and realizing that was a connection that hadn’t been made yet.
The real moment you become an businesskinda.com is when you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist.
I also like to call it ‘inspiration from frustration’. If you’re frustrated with something that should exist or could be better, maybe you could be the one creating it. I realized that no one had yet made that connection between headbands and children with cancer. I call it the dumbest, smartest moment of my life, when I was 18 or 19 years old and thought, “Well, why not me? I could think of something to give headbands to kids with cancer.” This was around 2011, 2012 when TOMS Shoes really came out with these one-to-one models, so I decided, let me modify that with headbands.
So I started a company called Headbands of Hope, and for every headband sold, we donate one to a child with a disease. We launched on April 25, 2012. I remember my first order was from my mom, my second order was from my grandpa after he called me to find out how to use the website. But little by little I got on with it and kept throwing darts. I would beg college professors to let me speak about Headbands of Hope for five minutes in front of their class. But I remember the one time we really got traction, it was around the time blogging was super popular and there was an article in Fitness Magazine that listed the top five fitness bloggers to watch.
I contacted each of the bloggers and told them what I was doing with Headbands of Hope. And out of five bloggers, two responded to me, and then one of them posted, and I still remember the name of the blog. It was called Healthy Tipping Point. I remember the day she posted on her blog about Headbands of Hope. We got $500 worth of orders that day and I thought I could retire. I was like, “Oh my god, $500. This is the jackpot.”
But it was one of those big turning points for me as an businesskinda.com. First, I taught myself that sometimes you get a lot of no’s and that one yes is all it takes. And two, how validating it was that until then everyone had bought it headbandsofhope.com was my mother or my cousin or my grandmother who was just there to support me. But once you get that first order from someone you don’t know, it’s a feeling you can’t even explain because it just means someone out there believes in what you’re doing and is willing to put their money behind it to buy whatever you made.
Headbands of Hope, even though we donated millions of headbands today, we are the official headband supplier for the NB. We have been sold in all Kohl locations. From the outside it looks insane what we have been able to build in the last 10 years. At first it was crickets. It wasn’t fire right out of the gate. But something I like to say, and I definitely say it in Create your bright ideas, is just because you hear crickets – doesn’t mean no one is listening.
At this stage of the game, why is it so important for you to reach children and teens through your book?
Junior Achievement actually did a study this year and over 60% of teens want to start their own business instead of having a regular 9 to 5 job. And I think a lot of that even has to do with The Great Resignation and watching their mothers or their parents come back and maybe freelance or consult or start their own hustle. The reality is that we are just entering a new era of entrepreneurship and an economy of creators, where we can build a social media following or get to grips with our ideas without a huge marketing budget. The threshold to start is therefore less, but that also means that the threshold to scale up can be more difficult.
Because it’s easier than ever to start and harder than ever to scale, I think it’s so important that kids and teens understand that the best ideas are itching.
If you’ve ever had that itch between your shoulder blades that drives you crazy that you can’t reach, this is how your idea should feel.
When I found out that headbands would really boost the confidence of kids with cancer, but no one was predicting it, it made me itch. That was my problem. Headbands of Hope, which gives kids with cancer headbands, that was my scratch, that was my solution. And why I wrote Create your bright ideas. It’s important to me to help kids and teens understand that entrepreneurship isn’t just about making money or having your own freedom which I hope you do and I hope you make a lot of money but it’s about looking at the world through a lens you could fix. And the next time you see something you wish existed or could be better, you might be the one to create it.
What do you hope people take away from reading your book?
I know every generation has its own challenges, but when I look at the past few years with kids and teens — be it the pandemic, being pulled out of school, their extracurricular activities, missing graduation, the stress of the election , or even just social media is always changing and leading to a mental health crisis among teens – it was hard.
And one of the things that I think is so important when it comes to entrepreneurship that we tend to forget is that a lot of the good ideas are born in the bad because hard times give us a choice: hard times can be the excuse why we do less, or they could be the reason why we do more. Of course I want children and teenagers to read Create your bright ideas and do all the journaling and even coloring activities (there’s even a tear-out business plan in the back of the book for them to start creating their bright ideas). But more importantly, I want them to feel that they can be the problem solvers the world needs, that they can be the ones who can make things better, and that they believe that they can be.
In fact, in the first chapter of the book I have them sign a contract that before reading any further, they have to believe it could be them. Sure, I want kids and teens to read this book and start their own business, but more importantly, I want them to read this book and adopt an businesskinda.com mindset, which means they are a problem solver, a creator, they are an advocate, they are a philanthropist, they look at the world through a lens they can fix whether that means starting a business or not.
If you could give one piece of advice to people wanting to start a business, what would it be?
A few years after starting Headbands of Hope, I really wanted us to hit the stores. And I had heard about this show in Atlanta, where you could set up a booth and come in stores from all over the world and choose which brands they wanted in their stores. I had drained my bank account to go to this Atlanta fair, and I didn’t realize there was also seniority for booth locations. Since it was my first time there, my booth was literally behind the bathrooms. I couldn’t even find my own booth when I got there. I was like, “How can a buyer find my booth?” I remember it was day two of a three day show. I hadn’t written any order and I was thinking how the hell am I going to pay for this.
Out of the corner of my eye I had seen a woman coming down the escalator. They all had name tags with their names on them and the store they represented. Her name tag read “Ulta makeup stores,” which was a hit for headbands. And I had a moment where I thought, “Should I run after her and chase this buyer from a makeup store in Ulta? But what if she says no?” So I did a quick analysis of the results. I thought, “If she says no, I’ll be right here behind the bathrooms, just like I used to.” I started running after this Ulta makeup buyer. I chased her down some stairs (I’m surprised she didn’t call me). I finally got to her. I launched my elevator pitch. I think I literally took the headband off my head and handed it to her and thought, “I’d love to discover Headbands of Hope in Ulta stores.”
I got nothing from her, no response. She took in the information, but I didn’t really see any spunk in her eyes. But I remember going back to the booth and realizing, “I live to tell about it. It’s okay.” And I almost felt better knowing what the end result would be, instead of wondering what could have been, what if I had chased her down those stairs.
But four years later, four years, so on track for the next Olympics, we launched in all 1,000 Ulta stores because of that one split second. It taught me a life lesson that I share in all my speeches (someone even got it tattooed on their arm after hearing me speak!)
Failure always feels better than regret.
And I’ll take it a step further and tell you that the aftermath of a “no” will rarely be life-destroying, but the aftermath of a “yes” can be life-changing. My advice is that you might as well ask, you might as well shoot, because the odds will be in your favor.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.