We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Felicia Jackson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Felicia , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Growing up in a strong, caring family afforded me with those same characteristics. I always knew I would have a career that served and cared for others so it was a no-brainer when I entered the medical industry. Years pass and now I am a wife and mother of three beautiful children and working in a hospital. My life was complete with no worries and concerns, to me, nothing could go wrong, but I was wrong. During a road trip with my family, my life would forever be changed. I am what you call a helicopter mom because I am always checking on my children. This particular day I look back to check on them and noticed my youngest baby, who was two at the time was crying but no sound was coming out. He looked to be in distress and I immediately knew something was wrong. I screamed for my husband to pull over to the side of the road and we both jump out the car. My husband pulls our baby from his carseat and hands him to me. He hands me our baby and he was blue and unresponsive! I was CPR certified but the only thing I could do was scream and shake my baby. I had completely forgot everything I was trained to do. My husband noticed me panicking and took our baby from my arms and saved his life. I was devastated! I knew if a trained professional could panic and forget their CPR training, what about the countless people that have never had training. This is the first time I knew I had to do something to help not only myself but others around the world to react quickly and effectively during emergencies that required CPR.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I like to tell people I am a procrastinating innovator. At a very young age I can remember tinkering with things trying to see how things worked and that curiosity never left me, even in adulthood. As I got older, I began inventing things but I never followed through or finished it. After the incident with my baby I had a very vivid dream and in that dream I witnessed a victim that was receiving CPR but I also saw something dropped over his chest while someone was giving compressions. I woke up and traced that image from my dream and forgot about it. A few years later at a book club I showed the women my invention and that set the tone for what would catapult me into the world of entrepreneurship. At this bookclub I met a young woman that was a facilitator for a local business incubator and she invited me to her class. At the time, I had two inventions I was working on but I brought the medical invention I’d invented after the near-death choking incident with my baby. After ten weeks of being in that incubator, my idea that was on a napkin had developed into a non-working prototype and a dream of saving lives worldwide. I could not believe it. I had actually finished something I had started. I was able to introduce to the world CPRWrap Resuscitation Kit. What made my innovation different was the simplicity and the affordability of the product. CPRWrap was going to be the lifesaver to the over 400,000 sudden cardiac arrest victims that die every year in the United States.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The saying “If you build it they will come” is not always true and was definitely not the case after I launched CPRWrap to the world. I thought that because I had an amazing product and a social impact company, people would flock to be part of our mission to save lives worldwide. Problem with that is this a big world and no-one knew we existed. I was boot-strapping everything and did not have any money for marketing to increase our product awareness. Sure, I did pitch competitions, was able to acquire earned media in multiple publications but it was never enough. Around the time I officially launched my business I had also quit my job of ten years to work on my building my business. My growing family had went from two thriving incomes to one and to make matters worse, I quit before communicating my intentions with my spouse. I wanted this business to survive and didn’t think about the consequences. A few months passed and I’d drained my 401K, lost my car and we had almost lost our home.
I’d decided that my family should not have to suffer because of me and had made up my mind to close my business and get a job. A group of investors reached out to have their liaison meet with me and offered me $1.2MM for 80% of my company. They wanted me to still be the face and run the company but they wanted to own it. I was torn because I did not want someone else to own my business but my family was financially hurting because of me.
During that meeting I called two of my mentors and alerted them of what was going on. They did not advise me to take or leave the offer, but they only reminded me of my initial reason for inventing CPRWrap and starting a business. I went back to the table and turned the offer down. I continued to work hard to grow my brand and grow as a CEO and have sold over 50,000 CPRWRAP Resuscitation Kits all over the world with testimonies from parents, caregivers, and even medical professionals on how empowered and safer they feel because of my innovation..

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Marketing is one of those things that need to happen to expose your brand to a wider audience and it’s something I literally had no clue on how to execute. I knew who my target market was but how could I effectively reach them with zero dollars to spend on a marketing strategy? My oldest daughter, who is a content creator, was showing me her videos she posted on this social media platform called TikTok. I thought her content was super cute and appropriate for her but not for a medical company, so I refused to sign up. I was already on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even Pinterest with sub-par results from posting content. After looking into TikTok more I gave in and made a business page and started posting your basic, boring videos about the product. I wanted to do something different and posted a video of me holding up my invention, telling the story of when a mentor advised me to make the face of my company a White person to get more sales. That video got over 4MM views and people all over the world started giving me words of encouragement and wanted to know more about CPRWrap. We sold out of inventory in 48 hours and sold out again three more times. People not only introduced CPRWrap to their families and friends, but their jobs as well.
I had to step outside the box and do something different and if paid off and is still paying off today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cprwrap.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cprwrap
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CPRWrap/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cprwrap
• Twitter: @cprwrap
• Other: Tik Tok : @cprwrap

Image Credits
Christopher Shaw Sydnee Cearlock