I, Jessica, am 28 years old and was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. I attended the University of Florida which is where I met Sabrina. We both majored in Business Marketing. After school I moved to NY where I worked in non-profit marketing doing mostly social media for international development agencies. Sabrina was also living in NY working as a buyer for Macy’s. We remained friends after college which leads us to The Jam Stand.

Jam Stand was started in 2011 by both Sabrina and myself. At the time it was just a hobby with no clear direction. We were making jam for fun and dabbled with the idea of selling it at farmers markets on the weekends. From there the company grew to online sales and then to stores.  The Jam Stand now has distribution for over 100 stores nationwide with distribution in the NE as well as the SW.

On Today's show Jessica will share:

- What’s  Your Personal Mission Statement        
Make products that are both delicious and promote creativity. We want our jams to have a personality and inspire our customers to be fun and silly.

- Biggest Business  Mistake           
We have definitely made a lot of mistakes, but we take everything with a grain of salt and learn from it. I wouldn’t say that anything in particular stands out as being “the biggest.” We’ve gotten to where we are now with a not of trial and error.

- How Do You Handle Business Stress and Uncertainty              
Just go with it and believe in ourselves. I think a lot of the time it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, it is important to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and dive back in tackling things one at a time.

 - Greatest Business Decision That Changed Everything               
I think that after our second year we were seeing real growth. We had to make the decision to either raise capital, build out our own kitchen, and bring on full time employees or outsource to a co-packer. After long discussions we realized that a co-packer was the way to go. It felt weird handing our baby over and putting the production into someone else’s hands, but it allowed us to focus on a bigger picture.

- Best Book For The Entrepreneurial Mindset               
Sabrina is actually much more of a “business book” reader than I am. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read, but when I sit down to read a book I want to escape into a fantasy-land of relaxation. I asked her this question and she said “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

- Plus much more...