My name is Jacob Barben, and I'm chronically curious.
Since I was young, my dream job has always been to do something new every day.
My favorite TV show growing up was Dirty Jobs. I was jealous that Mike Rowe got to show up somewhere new every episode, learn how to do something he'd never done before, and then move on to the next thing.
Unfortunately, I eventually realized that's not really a job.
So I decided to make it one, because you can just do things.
Jacob Just Does Things is my attempt to do something new every day...and share what happens along the way.
I've always been up to something...
As kids, my siblings and I would sell lemonade in the summer and hot chocolate in the winter.
I was the kid selling candy to other kids at school.
In middle school, I had backpacks made with our school logo and sold those.
My first "normal" job was lifeguarding at the city pool for $7.25 an hour.
I lasted a month. Boring.
In high school, I stayed busy with sports and eased off on the side hustles.
After high school, I did door-to-door sales for a couple of months before leaving to serve a two-year mission for my church in Spokane, Washington.
I loved my mission and met some of my best friends there.
When I got home, I gave door-to-door another shot. Turns out sales wasn't my thing. Getting rejected all day was brutal...really, really hard.
So I started trying pretty much every side hustle I could find.
I mined crypto in my college dorm, flipped stuff on eBay and Facebook Marketplace, donated plasma, participated in clinical trials, painted address numbers on curbs, flipped shoes, flipped houses, resold arcade prizes, sold "No Soliciting" signs door-to-door, built websites, ran ads for businesses, ran faceless content channels, sold stuff on Etsy...
And eventually, I started making wallets out of footballs.
I had some success with some of them, but weirdly, this was the thing that worked the best.
I called the business Gridiron Goods.
I made videos of myself turning footballs into wallets. The videos got views, and people would go to the website and order one.
The videos grew an audience of more than 300,000 people across social media. I even got to make a huge order of soccer ball wallets for Coca-Cola to give away at an event.
It was really cool.
But I got bored again...
I was making the same things over and over.
I wanted to move on to something new months earlier, but it's surprisingly hard to quit something that's working.
Then, in September 2026, I got a cease-and-desist letter that meant I couldn't keep selling my best-selling products.
I probably should've been devastated...
But I was stoked.
Part of me thought it was pretty cool that we'd gotten big enough to even get noticed.
But mostly, I think I was relieved.
It gave me the push I needed to close that chapter and finally go do something new.
So I shut down Gridiron Goods.
And transitioned it to Jacob Just Does Things.
If I've learned anything from all the random things I've tried, it's that you can just do things.
I think we spend way too much time waiting until we know exactly what we're doing before we start.
But I've found that the best way to learn something is to do it.
Want to start a business? Start one.
Want to make something you've never made before? Give it a shot.
Want to take a trip but have nobody to go with? Go by yourself.
It might not work. You might suck at it. You might lose some money. You might decide you never want to do it again.
But you'll learn something. And you'll have a story to tell.
That's really what Jacob Just Does Things is about.
Go do the thing. Just try.