655: Standing Up for Small Business - The Inspiring Story of Beloved Cheesecakes' Battle Against COVID-19 Government Mandates

Brian Nichols  0:07  
Almost three years later, and is COVID-19 still impacting small business owners? Or is it government's? Yeah, let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, howdy there, folks, Brian, here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host, Jordan, you live amongst Stratus ip studios, here in eastern Indiana, don't let cyber attacks or outdated Business Technology put your company at risk. Learn more at Brian Nichols show.com. Forward slash Stratus ip guys, before we get started for today's episode, I just want to make sure you did not miss the brand new, exciting announcement I had back on Friday, my brand new free ebook, How To Win your local election is now available, head over to Brian Nichols show.com forward slash win local sign up and get yours today. Just for anyone who's thinking about running for elected office, you're already running for local office or you're running for reelection. Specifically, though, folks who are running for local office, it's going to talk about messaging, voter outreach, fundraising, building your campaign, all that in between. And by the way, it's going to be a great resource we're using over at our candidate school and why is this important? Why is the idea and the conversation about building up a base of local candidates who know how to talk about the issues that people care about? So Gosh, darn important. Well, let's talk about what we've all experienced for the past, I don't know three ish years almost at this point. And that is yes. COVID-19. We were told it was going to be two weeks to slow the spread. And we were asked more so mandated by our governments that we had to hold tight. You know, we had to stop slow to slow the spread. We had to what was it a mask down to save lives. We're we're all in this together, whatever the excuse was, Hey, your essential, your non essential all that nonsense. We heard for three years, I thought we were all done. And I think we are all done in a lot of these red states. But unfortunately, a lot of our blue states our friends out there in the Liberty world are still facing a lot of challenges. Joining us today is an owner of a business who is experiencing a lot of challenges and has been experiencing challenges from the start. Jen Jacobson from beloved cheesecakes. Thanks for joining us on The Brian Nichols Show.

Jen Jacobson  2:38  
Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank

Brian Nichols  2:40  
you for joining us and thank you for fighting the good fight. Frankly, Jen at the end of the day, like there comes a point. Oh, I feel like a nerd. I'm quoting Albus Dumbledore, we must decide between doing what is easy. And what is right. And you did the thing that was right, even though it was definitely not the easy path. And that was standing against a lot of the tyranny being passed down through government eating out in Oregon. Before we get there. I'm putting the cart before the horse. Let's do ourselves a favor. Introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and specifically the role that COVID-19 and government overreach played on your business their beloved cheesecakes. Yeah,

Jen Jacobson  3:15  
so I'm the owner of beloved cheese cakes here in Silverton, Oregon. And I opened my shop, eight months before the lockdown. So August 2018, everything was going great. And boom, a lockdown happen. And prior to that I I've been a sole parent this three boys for six years. And so when I started the shop, I was single with my boys. And when they locked us down, I don't have biological family. I don't have siblings. It's just my boys and I and you're deeming me non essential, and I'm essential to my voice. So for me, I chose to stay open, because I'm essential. The first two, let's say because the other two weeks the solar spreads. So of course, we're close that two weeks, but then after that, I started doing special orders for people and then I just opened my doors and said forget it. And then when the mass mandate came and then telling people you can only have to go orders. I was like I'm not going to tell no one know if they want to come in and sit down. And I also went to school for social work. So for me, being part of a social worker is that you let people make their own choice of what is best for them. And so why would I tell someone that you have to put on a mask or you know that they can't come in sit down and so that is how we got started the whole I had a Kickstarter that started for me and got my voice and I rolling I'm here at beloved cheesecakes. And so we're really beloved here in the community. And then when I took my stance, that's when things really changed. And yeah, I was turned into OSHA six times, and I did not receive a fine, which that was I, this is God's shop. That's why I'm beloved use case. I'm his beloved, and he is mine. And so I believe it's his favor. And yeah, that's a little bit about me,

Brian Nichols  5:27  
though, thank you for that, because that gives us some of the context. And I think it's important for folks to hear what actually happened. And I will preface that with I know my audience, Hey, guys, let's be real. A lot of the folks listening to the show you guys out there, you're mostly living in areas that were probably more red leaning states, or very red states during COVID. Life in a red state was vehemently different than life in a blue state. Now, Jen, I wasn't in Oregon, right. But I was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So I experienced, even though maybe wasn't to the level of the insanity that your governor was wearing her Christmas mask, or animate mask. But I did see the insanity with folks like Jim Kenney pushing down his mandates, and then decided to go down to Maryland to eat lunch, when he was trying to get out of his own mandates. So you see that? Yeah, a lot of the impacts that we saw in the blue areas, it was like, it's almost hard to put into words, because people can't comprehend like the idea that you're just being told, No, you can't operate your business, because some random government bureaucrat or elected official is determining whether or not and this is the most arbitrary thing I've ever heard of essential versus non essential, and not just arbitrary, but arbitrarily like dystopian, like, what are we doing here to determine who's like who's labor and that labor that then helps provide value, not just value, but the ability to feed your family? Like, come on, what are we doing here, and then you talked about you are a single mom with three kids. Not only was that directly impacting you, now they're impacting your kids and their livelihoods. And that right there just speaks to how, even though the laptop class thought that they were doing the whole stay home, save lives, you said two weeks to slow that spread, I forgot how many slogans we had there. So I got them all mixed up the beginning because everybody had their own, you know, Woody from Toy Story when they pull the strands back. And they have a catchphrase that come out with everybody had their like six or seven catchphrases that they would pop out there at the beginning of COVID. You know, hey, you know, we're all in this together, saves one life, this is for Grandma, you just, you know, it makes me so frustrated because people lose the emotional appeal to then, like, quite literally damage people's ability to provide for their families. And they don't even care about that they don't even act like what you experienced, was as Denning. And as, as I'm sure, troublesome as it was, and she surely still is.

Jen Jacobson  8:01  
Oh, absolutely. Well, it's a double standard, you know, and in the Social Work realm, and I graduated Portland State in 2018. And that is a very left leaning school. And, and the social work field is in general, and when they they're so concerned about, you know, those who are homeless or the underrepresented people, and then it's like, well, wait a second, what about small business owners? You know, they're being underrepresented right now, as well. And so as it's just this huge double standard, it, it made no sense to me. And then me being a social worker, I've, I really wanted to integrate my social work practice with my business. And so I hired people with disabilities, trauma survivors, people with backgrounds and different barriers. And so now you're telling these kids who have disabilities that they have to put a mask on their face? And these are the people that they're supposed to be caring about? Again, it's just a huge double standard. It's so hypocritical.

Brian Nichols  9:14  
Where do you think? And I guess this is a hard question to answer because it's all dependent on what government officials do and can we remotely guess what they're going to do? Absolutely not. But I guess, do you see things getting better in Oregon? Or do you see things kind of maintaining this weird new dystopian status quo?

Jen Jacobson  9:36  
While we surely did not get the governor that we were hoping for, and I pushed really hard throughout this whole journey with COVID I was not enter politics at all. Pre COVID could care less and now I'm ahead first deep Dovin into the politic realm and I I've become a PCP in my area and really got on board supporting candidates and campaigning for them and doing phone calls and door knocking and all of that. And so we didn't get the governor we wanted. We did get some seats in that house, which is good. And locally, here, my husband ran for city council, and he didn't make it here in our town. Our Town, didn't vote anyone conservative on City Council, which is really frustrating. But we have school board elections coming up. So that's gonna be our focus. And I don't know if it's going to be better or not. I just saw, I think I've heard that California is putting their mask mandates back on the students at schools. And Oregon usually follows that. So I can only imagine what's going to happen.

Brian Nichols  10:54  
I just I can't believe we're still doing this. Like, that's the part that just blows me away. We're three years into this. And I just, I don't know who's like, who's still doing this, like, unless you are, I mean, a hypochondriac. And that's really what this has turned into its weaponized hypochondriacs taking the fear that they they were able to weaponize in 2020. And now that they have been able to figure out how to use that effectively as a tool, the tool belt, now there's going to keep on using it and going back to it because they know it will consistently work. And as long as you can get enough people to be afraid, oh, man, you can get people to do the most bizarre, crazy and sometimes everything, Jim,

Jen Jacobson  11:38  
it's true, and then is that I also think, at least here in our area. I mean, there's so many people that wear masks, and it's more of a self righteous feeling, you know, if I'm better and I care about the people around me or whatnot, and you know, all that kind of stuff that they say, but it, it is it is shocking that we are still in this, you know, we've been masked free. And we were, I think the last state to actually end our mask mandate, which was last April. And so we've been mask free for not even a year yet, while except for the medical offices. And then my son broke his collarbone this last weekend. So we had to go to some medical offices this week. And, you know, hear you have to wear a mask, and we had our masks under our nose. And then we're getting yelled at that you have to keep a mask over your nose. But yet, there's employees with their masks under, you know, on their chin. So I took pictures and videos and I told the lady, I said, you're going to require us to wear a mask and keep it over our nose, you have to do the same for your employees. And as just I hate multiple offices now. It's terrible. And it's just, yeah, it's I don't even understand we can go anywhere else in the public without a mask. But medical office, you have to put on the mask

Brian Nichols  13:06  
in the fact I mean, and I have family in my in laws, they're they're nurses, and they're all in the medical industry. Like I get it I get the the importance that they they their role was and it still is. But I will say there are those in that class who have almost taken this essential versus non essential mentality. And you're right, they have almost weaponize the are you wearing your mask? Did you get vaccinated and if you didn't, if you're not wearing your mask, if you're not adhering to the what was the arbitrary six foot distance between all of us right with the bubble boy more or less like that was that you don't care and you you want others to be harmed. And it's it's just such a backwards way of thinking. And I think one thing that I've really appreciated and hey, maybe the I'm planting some seeds here for you. But like I moved from Philadelphia, I got out of Pennsylvania, I moved away from the northeast, I got to Indiana now and to be in an area that I'm surrounded by folks that don't vehement ly despise not just like my perspectives and my politics, but like will make you know it they'll make you feel bad. I remember when I lived in Philadelphia now this is like April of 2021. And like we had just gotten rid of our mask mandate nonsense to I think around then, as a city. And I remember like there are still so many people on the Ben Franklin Parkway wearing their masks and glaring at other people when they didn't have their masks on. And I'm like we're outside. What are we doing? Why is this conversation where his common sense and logic and reasoning gone? And then I realized, Oh, that's not the argument here. This isn't a matter of logic or a matter of reason. This is a matter of weaponizing fear for power and then to use that power to get your ideas your your views into public policy and to use this as an excuse. Now, that's not to say that COVID was not real. That's not to say that COVID did not kill people. Of course it did. I know, friends who lost loved ones, I think we all know folks who have either lost loved ones or have somebody in your life who either was affected by COVID are passed away from COVID. But their response by a lot of these, I'm sorry, specifically, blue state governors, and blue state mayors. It just it really set the like the discrepancy between one side versus the other side. And I hate that we're in this point, it's side versus side. But like, if COVID didn't make it that much more apparent, I don't know what will. And frankly, I don't want to see what that would be that would cause that to have more fractured because I think then that's one more step away from national divorce.

Jen Jacobson  15:48  
Right? No, it is so true. I can't stay on the side thing, either and pre COVID It was, even if you were left or right or in the middle, you could still tolerate each other get along. And I don't understand other than this COVID has completely divided us is why we cannot tolerate each other again, I mean, I can tolerate people, I I've had so many people saying negative things. You know, I remember my son and I were going to a rally. And we were carrying an American flag and we hadn't even reached the rally yet. And someone yelled out their car, go back to Idaho, or go back to Eastern Oregon, you idiots and I thought isn't that the beauty of America. So you can have your freedom of opinion and your freedom of belief. And then when we were at the reawaken tour, in April of 2022, I had a person write to me and say, May cancer find you and your family, you worthless on American human being. And I don't take that on of oh, I'm offended and hurt by that. It's this is the this is the beauty of it. As I'm fighting for your freedom to you know, you can have your freedom of belief and your and your freedom of speech. And you're wanting to give that up. And I'm fighting for that. I don't care, say whatever you want to say. But that's what we're fighting for.

Brian Nichols  17:21  
Where do you see us going? Now, I know I asked this a little bit earlier in a different type of way. But more so not just Oregon, but as a country as a culture. Do you see us coming together? Or do you see this fracture continuing this this divisive? pneus continuing? Well, I

Jen Jacobson  17:39  
don't know if you're a believer in Jesus Christ or not, but I am. And I do believe there is a move of God, I do believe something is shifting and changing in the atmosphere. And I believe the more people come back to Jesus, or meet Jesus, or whatever, I really believe we have our country come back to God, I think we can get on the right track. And I do see that happening. I do see people who have been injured, you know, by the jab. I've seen people who have felt ashamed for getting it. And you know, they're waking up. And I do see that. I think that can change our country. But if, if we don't have God, I don't think America is going to change at all. And I think it's just going to get worse because people aren't putting their hope. And Republicans people are putting their hope and the, you know, the left put their hope in the left. And people put their hope in Trump or whatever. And there's only one person that we can get our hope from. And that's gone.

Brian Nichols  18:45  
And I mean, this is a little off topic, but not really. It's just like I feel a boomer saying this, but like, I've really noticed it in the younger generation, this almost narcissism of like, like they're what does it matter? Like, you know, so what, like, what's my legacy matter? What is legacy and just like the idea of just everything being embodied in this ego of yourself, and only the things that impact you without realizing the direct impact that you have on others, but also the long term impacts of the things that you're doing now that you don't see impacting you will impact you negatively in the future. Now, the most perfect example I like to give is I used to weigh 380 pounds now, I didn't go from being you know, a skinny little twig to a whale overnight. It didn't do magic wand snap of my fingers. It was stupid, bad decisions and bad habits for years on end that culminated into me being the size of a house. And just in turn from getting away from that size. It also wasn't a snap of fingers. It took a lot of new habits and actions to get away from that. I see when I look at the younger generation, a lack of understanding or at the very least a refusal to acknowledge that there are long term implications that you have to address. Because they're so into this, like instant satisfaction this tick tock mentality of I want, it's the JG Wentworth, it's my money and I need it now. It's like, I need my dopamine hit now. And it's it's really, it's depressing, I think, because it's going to help pull us back from the progress we were making up until folks just stopped caring. The apathy is just running rampant. I don't know, do you see a way to save us from that?

Jen Jacobson  20:30  
That is a frustrating thing. Even being a Christian, the apathy and Christians is mind blowing to and I really think it comes down to, and this is what we don't want to have happen is when it becomes so uncomfortable, then it's Oh, okay, now we need to change. Well, it became uncomfortable for me from the get go, you know, I'm essential to my mom, I don't have parents to lean on, I have to provide for my kids. So I was on the front lines, I understand that, but I have friends and people who they're still just idling by, they want to just pretend that nothing's going on. I call it ostrich syndrome put their head in the sand and that everything's fine. And they they're so concerned about their kids in their sports, or, um, you know, I mean, that's not bad. It's not bad stuff. But all this stuff has, they're not uncomfortable enough, you know, they haven't lost their job, they're still working from home or whatever. So it hasn't become uncomfortable enough. And until it becomes uncomfortable enough, that's when change comes obviously you with having to lose weight, you know, it probably for you how to the pain has to become so great for there to be change. And I just don't understand, I really don't understand why some people aren't waking up to it. And they're just they're apathetic.

Brian Nichols  21:57  
I think my one kind of as we're talking through that the one thing I see is like, the most obvious, I guess, answer I can think of off the top my head is that the natural consequences of terrible policy have been almost negated by the federal government intervening. So when I would leave Philadelphia, and smugly say to the person who was like, oh, we'll go live with a bunch of hillbillies, you know, and your group thing? I'm like, Yep, I will. And I'll take my tax dollars with me, that used to feel good as a smug response. But then I'm like, oh, what does it matter, because the federal government's gonna give them you know, a $3 billion check anyways. So they're almost getting rid of the negative consequences of that terrible policy. So nobody's really feeling the pain. And instead, they're able to keep on living in this fantasy lala land, which I had Daniel Miller on my show, he's the head of the Texas, the Texas National Movement. And one of the main arguments that the Texas National Movement has, is when you look at Texas, like the there is no ability for Texas to remedy the budget situation when the government continues to arbitrarily print more money, and then use that to spend more money. And I mean, what else if you're a state right? What what other recourse are we going to have left on the table up until we get to a national divorce and nobody wants that? But I think more and more people are finally getting open to the idea because they don't want beyond national divorce. The worst case scenario and that is a civil war. Nobody wants that and, and if anybody thinks they do, not like go go hang out in the Middle East for a couple of months. Go watch live in countries that are currently going through civil wars. It's not you know, sunshine and rainbows like you seem to think it is though I will say an interesting fact. A one steak sauce was created in the middle of our civil war. So I guess some crazy fun things are experimented and happened during the middle of a civil wars. But that's a different story for different day. It also I just looked at the time, Jen, I'm so sorry. We're already over time. So with that, I know. You're hard pressed because you got to get back to work making some delicious beloved cheesecakes. So do us a favor as we wrap things up. Go ahead. Give us some final thoughts for today's episode. But also do us a favor and make sure we point people your ways to continue the conversation and learn more about your story and stay up to date with what's happening in your world.

Jen Jacobson  24:23  
Yes, so if you could please support love and cheesecakes, we are patriotic business that absolutely love and value and cherish our constitutional rights and freedom. And so you can find us at beloved cheesecakes.com We're also on Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, truth, social rumble, and we have one best dessert, Willamette Valley the last three years and I've only been open three years. So we I promise you it's America's favorite cheesecake. And I've served Dr. Judy and she asked A little bit in General Flynn, and he loves it. So you can order online. And then just final thoughts is I didn't know that you wrote a book I'd like to order one is I completely. I want to learn how to win those local elections. But I really believe that we all need to get involved. And that is, you know, so we don't have a national divorce, we don't have civil war. Those are the baby steps that we do. And we do it at our local level. And just, it's just a baby step of getting involved and start learning and educating yourself.

Brian Nichols  25:35  
How do you pet elephant one bite at a time?

Jen Jacobson  25:37  
Right? Yeah. Take one bite at a time. And you got gluten

Brian Nichols  25:41  
free, which makes me happy. And oh, by the way, Jeff, and I will let you know you don't have to worry about necessarily spending any hard earned dollars for that ebook, because the ebook is free. Yeah. So you can go ahead and grab that free eBook. And anybody out there, by the way, who's maybe considering running for office? Or at the very least, you know, you just want to know what would it take it we're going to walk through literally everything from start to finish. It's about 17 pages or so. And I've gone through I've fired it over to a couple of my good friends and consultants I've worked with in the past. So far, thumbs up across the board. They're like, Yeah, this is literally right hand to somebody, if I was to say, Hey, you want to start your local election, read this first. Use this as your template then go from there. So folks, yes, if you want to go ahead, check it out. It's over at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash win local, that's for you audio listener, which I know like 99% of you out there are joining us on the audio version of the show. But if you are joining us here on the video version of the show, low YouTube rumble and Odyssey is where you can go ahead and find us if you are joining us here on video. Do me a favor hit that subscribe button and little notification bell. And also you can see here at the bottom of the screen. We have our ticker here for the new ebook going across with our links and make sure you go ahead check that out. And also by the way, if you want go ahead and support the show, you can do that by getting some awesome merch over at our shop link on our homepage there on the website. I'm rocking a couple of it today I got our good ideas don't require force hoodie in our snapback here. So if you're gonna go ahead and check those out, Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash shop, use code TBNS at checkout for 10% off your order. That's all I have for you guys. With that being said, Jen, thank you for joining us here on the program. Any last words for the audience today?

Jen Jacobson  27:23  
Stay in the fight. Do not give up. Stay involved.

Brian Nichols  27:27  
Amen. All right, folks. Well, with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai