Baby Boom to Jams Gone Wild

Baby Boom 1987... An idea is born...

Do you remember the 1987 movie, BABY BOOM?  This popular movie inspired me to think about starting a canning business someday.  Not long after I received my MBA, I received surprising news I would be having another son, Joshua, and I would not be able to enter the corporate world as I had planned.  A superintendent of schools hired me for a marketing job at our local high school instead.   I couldn't live the life of a high flying  MBA, work in a metropolitan city, and raise three boys now could I?  Therefore, I chose my sons, because they were more important than climbing the corporate ladder, plain and simple.  The life I had been planning for three years, suddenly took a different path.  Leaving my beautiful, young boys to work and commute for a 14 hour day would not be feasible or safe for them.   Teaching was actually a very rewarding career and suited my new lifestyle.  I would be a business teacher during the day, mommy at night.. And so it would go for around 27 years.  I have no regrets because life is as it should be! There is a plan..

During this period of change for me, the Baby Boom movie premiered with Diane Keaton as the star.   She inherited a baby from her two cousins, who died in a plane crash.   J.C., Diane Keaton’s character, was an MBA on Wall Street and suddenly acquired this baby, changing her life immensely.   She tried to maintain her executive job, but back in the day, in the 80's, no one cared about a woman with a baby, especially a single one. So finally, J.C. was demoted because of her distraction with the baby from her normal 80 hour a week job.  Eventually, she quit and bought a farm in Vermont with an apple orchard.   Little did she know how brutal living in the country would be and how a cold, lonely, winter would affect her lifestyle.

J.C. had a huge adjustment from a NYC lifestyle to a slower pace in the country where it snowed often in the winter. She had many problems to deal with because she bought a money pit of a house and  really didn't realize this fact when she bought the house.   One day, she was so bored, she began picking apples from the orchard and more apples, more apples, until she had so many baskets, she didn’t know what to do with them.  Consequently, she made applesauce for the baby from the apples and the baby loved it.. She began canning applesauce jars by the dozens and tried to sell these beautifully decorated canned goods to some neighboring stores..  She wasn’t having much luck and one day, some New Yorkers were in the store and saw the baby food.  They ordered a lot of it, so J.C. thought, “BINGO,” she was on to something.  Not only did babies love her product, but adults loved them too because of the yummy and organic factors.

J.C. immediately went to the library and began researching markets, demographics, and marketing techniques for selling baby food.  She began selling her organic baby applesauce all around the state, marketed it, and eventually, had to hire people to help with distribution of the products.    She hired retired women in the community to help package and ship the baby applesauce all around the country. Because J.C. was an MBA, she knew how to run the business end very well. Her new business, Country Baby, became a huge success, and later, her former Fortune 500 Company tried to buy her little company.  J.C. thought about it, had a meeting with her old bosses, but in the end, she wouldn't sell it. She embraced her new lifestyle and slower pace of living.  The movie ends as the baby looks up at J.C. and says, “MAMA.”  I remember watching the last scene in the movie where she is rocking the baby and thinking  about my sons.

This movie made a huge impression on me in 1987 because I knew exactly how the character felt.   I was living J.C.’s life, in Texas, instead of Vermont or New York City.   I was also an MBA, who actually had a real baby and two more sons, instead of  inheriting only one child from a cousin.   I saw this movie again one Sunday afternoon on TBS.   I was bored and in need I had 4 peach trees in the backyard with loads of peaches on them.   I started to can fruit just as J.C. did in the movie from 1987, Baby Boom and was actually having a lot of fun.

I had used this movie as a teaching tool in my business classes as an example of how to start your own business.  Well, if it worked for J.C. and my students, why wouldn’t it work for me?  First, I started canning all types of jams, and began test marketing them with family, friends, and neighbors.   I was canning everything including peaches, pineapples, crabapples, etc.  I tested recipes, created new ones, and eventually needed to narrow my brands and focus on the best and most popular brands. It was wild!  I needed help and advice.  So, I arranged a meeting with my brother, a former business executive, about our company’s direction. Following his advice, we decided to concentrate on berries, fruit, and cacti from the wild and whatever is grown in our backyard. The customer would know exactly the ingredients used in the jams because we would harvest or grow it.  I liked this great idea and trusted my brother's business sense. He and his wife helped me launch the business.

The next step was to name the business and the name needed to be catchy, classy, and easy to say and type. First, I suggested wildjams.com, however, this domain was already taken.  My sister-in-law suggested jamsgonewild.com.. I thought to myself.. catchy, trendy, and the name fits the product.  Hmmm I like it.  We registered the name and Jams Gone Wild was born..  Funny, how a business gets started, like Apple was started in a garage.  In 1987, my fantasy was to actually start a business like J.C.’s in the Baby Boom movie involving some type of canning someday when my boys were grown.  Well, my boys have all grown up now and left the nest and Jams Gone Wild has grown from a simple idea to something very real!

Moral of this true story, my story:

 It is never too late to follow your dreams, even if you have to get out of the rat race to do it.   The teaching world, the business world, the rat race, will just have to survive with one less rat! Me.. I love my new life and I have such passion for making great organic jams!