NO MATTER WHAT, YOU HAVE TO GO FOR IT...
My mom, my sister, me (with the bowl cut) and my dad on our family camping trip!
Hi, I'm Jess!
🌱 I can’t keep a succulent alive (aren’t they supposed to be easy plants?!)
🌮 I live for Taco Tuesday.
⛺ I also happen to live and travel in an Airstream Trailer.
🐕 My dog is the best listener.
😭 And I’ve been known to cry watching American Idol or romantic comedies.
I started out as your typical lemonade stand kid; standing out on the street corner with my sister and flagging cars down as they drove by.
The feeling when a car stopped and asked for some lemonade was electric to me. And if there’s one thing we do as kids, we follow the electricity without a shadow of a doubt.
I started selling (or swapping, I should say) my clothes on a site called SwapStyle. I would get a white sheet from our linen closet and hang it up in my bedroom when the light was shining perfectly through my window. I’d hang up clothing items in front of the sheet and take the picture on my mom’s digital camera and upload them to my profile. I remember I wanted this green Juicy Couture jumpsuit (oh the 90s!) and I traded in almost everything I owned to have it. I wore that jumpsuit every day for months!
Then I discovered eBay and started selling my American Girl Dolls and toys there. I loved packaging up a “sold” product and going to the post office with my dad to ship it. The electricity was booming.
The big boom happened on a family camping trip where I was frustrated that my headphone cords were tangled in a knot. I told my dad (who’s an entrepreneur), “I’m just going to invent headphones that are like slinky cords so they never get tangled again!”
He sat me down and looked me in the eyes and told me, “Keep thinking that way. Keep thinking about how you can solve problems and you will.”
And that was the moment I became an entrepreneur, was when I thought about the world through a lens that I could fix it.
Ten years later, I started my first company, Headbands of Hope. For every headband sold, one is given to a child with an illness.
Five years after that, I started my second company, Mic Drop Workshop. An online course and community for women to become paid speakers.
I was looking at the world through a lens that I could fix it.
" Jess Ekstrom's story is a great example of how pursuing your entrepreneurial passon and being a force for good can lead to extraordinary things!"
ZACH KITSCHKE, CANVA CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER
Now, I’m, on a mission to help people, companies and leaders discover their lane between PURPOSE AND PROFIT, so they can achieve UNSTOPPABLE GROWTH.
NO MATTER WHAT, YOU HAVE TO GO FOR IT...
Hi, I'm Jess!
🌱 I can’t keep a succulent alive (aren’t they supposed to be easy plants?!)
🌮 I live for Taco Tuesday.
⛺ I also happen to live and travel in an Airstream Trailer.
🐕 My dog is the best listener.
😭 And I’ve been known to cry watching American Idol or romantic comedies.
I started out as your typical lemonade stand kid; standing out on the street corner with my sister and flagging cars down as they drove by.
The feeling when a car stopped and asked for some lemonade was electric to me. And if there’s one thing we do as kids, we follow the electricity without a shadow of a doubt.
I started selling (or swapping, I should say) my clothes on a site called SwapStyle. I would get a white sheet from our linen closet and hang it up in my bedroom when the light was shining perfectly through my window. I’d hang up clothing items in front of the sheet and take the picture on my mom’s digital camera and upload them to my profile. I remember I wanted this green Juicy Couture jumpsuit (oh the 90s!) and I traded in almost everything I owned to have it. I wore that jumpsuit every day for months!
Then I discovered eBay and started selling my American Girl Dolls and toys there. I loved packaging up a “sold” product and going to the post office with my dad to ship it. The electricity was booming.
The big boom happened on a family camping trip where I was frustrated that my headphone cords were tangled in a knot. I told my dad (who’s an entrepreneur), “I’m just going to invent headphones that are like slinky cords so they never get tangled again!”
He sat me down and looked me in the eyes and told me, “Keep thinking that way. Keep thinking about how you can solve problems and you will.”
My mom, my sister, me (with the bowl cut) and my dad on our family camping trip!
And that was the moment I became an entrepreneur, was when I thought about the world through a lens that I could fix it.
Ten years later, I started my first company, Headbands of Hope. For every headband sold, one is given to a child with an illness.
Five years after that, I started my second company, Mic Drop Workshop. An online course and community for women to become paid speakers.
I was looking at the world through a lens that I could fix it.
" Jess Ekstrom's story is a great example of how pursuing your entrepreneurial passon and being a force for good can lead to extraordinary things!"
ZACH KITSCHKE, CANVA CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER
Now, I’m, on a mission to help people, companies and leaders discover their lane between PURPOSE AND PROFIT, so they can achieve UNSTOPPABLE GROWTH.
When I was in college, I interned at a wish-granting organization for kids with life-threatening illnesses. I discovered that a lot of kids losing their hair to chemotherapy loved to wear headbands after hair loss, but they were only given wigs and hats. I searched Google to see if there was any business or organization donating headbands to kids with cancer and came up dry.
So I thought: WHY NOT ME?
I could figure this out- I can give headbands to kids with cancer.
So I started Headbands of Hope. For every headband sold, one is donated to a child with cancer. After a few missed swings, running in circles, a loan from a family member, losing that loan to a fraudulent manufacturer which turned into a lawsuit, crickets on the other end when I launched it…
Headbands of Hope was born!
Hey, I never said things were easy, but they should be worth it.
Now, Headbands of Hope has been endorsed by celebrities like Lauren Conrad, Khloe Kardashian, a bunch of people from the Bachelor franchise (because I’m obsessed with that show). We’ve been featured on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, The View, and I’m a regular guest on QVC.
But most importantly, we’ve donated over 650,000 headbands to kids with illnesses all over the world.
But none of this would have happened if I didn’t have two things:
Optimism to make the world better
Belief in myself that I could be the one to do it (even if I didn’t have a lot of shiny skills)
As Headbands of Hope grew, so did my story.
My first speech was at my graduation at NC State for 20,000 people
My second gig was for a slice of pizza
And my third gig was for $2,200
So now,
I like to help women
move past the slice of pizza and get paid as professional speakers and authors. I do this through:
My online courses
for women to learn how to tell & sell their story through public speaking and book publishing
Make a Living, Make a Difference
You should know I believe that:
An inclusive world is a better world here are some free email templates I created for speakers to refer women of color for the next speaking event.
- One book or one speech can change someone’s life.
- Your story is your best product.
- Women should be paid more to transform audiences and readers.
- We all have a story that needs to be told...and get paid to share it.
Everything I create is to help women monetize their story and feel good about what they have to offer the world.
I’ll leave you with my values that myself and my team believe in. Because I’m not just some influencer on the internet that promises you the world and doesn’t give a crap after your card is swiped.
Take one step in my community and you’ll see I’m here to do one thing: help you make a living and make a difference at the same time.
ROI: anything you purchase from me I want to be sure it will make you that money back.
PURPOSE: let’s be aligned about the future and our place in it.
TRANSPARENCY: I’m not just going to cherry pick things that went right, you’ll hear it all.
FUNNY BUSINESS: because if we’re not having fun, what’s the point?
Sometimes the home-run product you're looking to launch, is the story you already have.
I am here to help you tell it.
My guided online journaling service for people who DO
