Episode #78. Ready for a ray of sunshine? I have Jess Ekstrom here and she is using her storytelling superpowers to tell us all about normalizing failure, having success with speaking gigs and building our businesses with entrepreneurial optimism.

Interested in speaking? Ready to overcome any and all failures that come your way? Jess has such great wisdom to share, it’s truly a mic drop. 🙂 Listen now for lessons you can implement instantly.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • How Jess is normalizing failure and breaking stereotypes around success 
  • The key to using optimism to uplift your business from the beginning
  • Why Jess pivoted into speaking while her business was still in debt
  • How the speaking industry has changed and the trick to getting started 
  • What to charge for speaking engagements and why we don’t talk about it
  • The short and sweet mantra that will help you get great pr for your business

We like to overcomplicate entrepreneurship with all these fancy words, but it’s just about creating what you wish existed.

Favorite Quotes:

“We like to overcomplicate entrepreneurship with all these fancy words, but it’s just about creating what you wish existed.”

“If we equate not knowing what we’re doing with failure, we’ll take ourselves out of the game before we even begin.”

“Speaking has changed. It’s not lecturing, it’s inspirational storytelling.”

Discussed on the Show:

More About Jess:

Jess is the founder and CEO of Headbands of Hope, a company she started as a junior in college in 2012. For every headband sold, a headband is given to a child with cancer. The company has been featured on the TODAY Show, Vanity Fair, Seventeen, Good Morning America and more. But more importantly, they’ve donated headbands to every children’s hospital in the United States and 15 countries.

Jess is also a professional speaker and has a book coming out called Chasing the Bright Side with Harper Collins in November 2019. She’s also the founder of Mic Drop Workshop, an online course with the mission of empowering more women to share their message as a speaker. She’s currently traveling in an Airstream around the country with her husband, Jake, and standard poodle, Ollie.

Find Jess: