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With dual degrees in Art and English from the University of Massachusetts, John Jacobs is involved with the design of all products. ganizations that supported some causes," Bert says. "The last question I asked in the interview was 'Are there any mines in the feld that you could help us avoid, or do you have regrets of anything in the way you did it?' And by far the number-one answer was 'We spread ourselves too thin. Better to choose one cause and support it.'" The advice prompted the Jacobses to approach Gross. "They believed that getting behind one organization and completely partnering with them could help that organization get to the next level," Gross says. Amid their discussions, however, the brothers raised concerns. Life Is Good was a simple brand, and the problems Project Joy was addressing were diffcult to explain. Life Is Good was a national brand, and Project Joy was a local organization without a broad expansion plan. And while Life Is Good was seeking to go all in for kids in need, Gross was running Project Joy in his spare time. The conversations motivated Gross to address the Jacobses' concerns. While focused on delivering its story more effectively, Project Joy converted from a direct-care provider to an organization that trains and supports front-line child-care workers, a more scalable service model. And Gross committed to run the organization full-time should Life Is Good provide requisite support. With their respective visions more closely aligned, a Life Is Good–Project Joy partnership began to emerge. In 2006 Life Is Good formed the Life Is Good Kids Foundation, and Project Joy became its primary benefciary, enabling the nonproft to hire staff and design a comprehensive training program and follow-up protocol for child-care providers. "We really started to increase our activities and reach way more kids," Gross says. "When we frst started out with Project Joy, we might have been able to reach two hundred kids. Now that we were training folks, we were able to reach about three thousand or four thousand kids." In 2007, Project Joy trained hundreds of preschool teachers along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to implement a play-based group intervention program with children who had suffered trauma in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which had devastated the region in August 2005. A subsequent study by ALMOST TWO DECADES AFTER SELLING THEIR FIRST JAKE T-SHIRT, THE JACOBS BROTHERS HAVE PROVED BEYOND A DOUBT THAT THERE'S A MARKET FOR OPTIMISM.