We recently connected with Jess Obert and have shared our conversation below.

Jess , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Back in the summer of 2018, our six year old daughter, Payton, told us that she wanted to host a lemonade stand in our driveway. After adding it to her summer bucket list, we knew we had to make sure it happened. She made a trip with her dad up to the local hardware store to get some lumber to build her stand. She knew just what she wanted it to look like. We challenged her to donate the proceeds and think about where she wanted them to go. When Payton was a young child, she had an unexpected admission to our local children’s hospital.

While there, she was gifted a special teddy bear. This is a bear that provided great comfort to her and brought her happiness at a time that was scary for her. Upon reflecting on this, she decided she wanted to gift other kids with a special toy in hopes that it would provide them with the same comfort and happiness as her teddy bear provided her. To our surprise, she raised just shy of $800 at her first stand! We were able to provide so many kids in need with comfort items! When the event wrapped up and the gifts had been delivered, I thought we were done. In hindsight, I realize it was all just beginning.

The following summer, Payton was adamant that she host another stand. She challenged herself to raise even more. She set up her stand in our driveway once again on a hot July day and raised $7,000! We were blown away by the generosity of the community and had a feeling this might be turning into something bigger. At this point, news of her stand started hitting the airwaves and families started reaching out to us wanting to get involved. The following summer, we had 9 different lemonade stands participating in the 3rd Annual Payton’s Lemonade Stand. We even had a sponsor – Dwyer Insurance! Together, we raised $35,000! We were growing and growing fast, almost faster than we could keep up with. It was at this point, where I started to wonder how I would continue to do this in addition to my full time job at CCHMC.

By our 4th year, we had transitioned into a 501(c)(3) and grew even bigger! We had 29 stands all over Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Eastern Indiana. More companies had come onboard as sponsors and every local news channel was covering our story. That year, we raised $60,000 for kids facing medical, personal, and economic hardships. We continued to grow and there were no signs of slowing down. With this continued growth, I had found myself at a crossroads. The non-profit was starting to take up a lot of my time, more time than I had since I was working full time at CCHMC. I had a tough decision to make. Do I stay with a stable career or do I step out of my comfort zone, take a leap of faith, and work hard to continue to grow our non profit?

After a lot of prayer and a lot of discussion with family, friends and mentors, I decided to step away from my 14 year career at CCHMC and focus solely on Payton’s Lemonade Stand. I knew that if I could pour my heart and soul into it, that I could help it grow even more. And boy has it grown. We had our 5th Annual Payton’s Lemonade Stand this past July and we had our biggest turnout yet. We had 50 hosts including Fire Departments, baseball/soccer teams, girl scout troops, dance teams, local businesses and kids in the driveways all participating. We also had more sponsors than ever. Together, we raised over $85,000! We even made national news!

What started as one lemonade stand in our driveway in the summer of 2018 has now grown into a lemonade empire raising hundreds of thousands of dollars all year round to help sweeten the lives of kids facing medical, personal, and economic hardships and I truly feel I’m doing the work I was put on this earth to do. I’m so glad I took the risk!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I serve as the Executive Director for Payton’s Lemonade Stand. The mission of Payton’s Lemonade Stand is to sweeten the lives of children who are facing medical, personal or economic hardships. While raising funds for these children, we strive to empower kids to participate in philanthropy. We aim to teach them the value of putting forth effort through the hosting of their lemonade stands to make the lives of children going through hardships a little bit sweeter.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As we approached our 3rd Annual Payton’s Lemonade Stand, in the spring of 2020, we were faced with several covid challenges. Planning an event in the middle of a pandemic is not for the faint at heart. There were many days where I felt like we wouldn’t be able to put the event on. With each challenge, we learned to pivot and trust that it will all work out how it is supposed to. Did we ever think we would be hosting a stand with a plexiglass shield, while wearing a lemon printed mask and using hand sanitizer every few minutes? No. But we did it and raised $35,000!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think what resonates with people is how organically our story began. It was a six year old girl wanting to host a lemonade stand in her driveway. It was a little girl who hoped to brighten the day for a few kids in need. The evolution of it all has been very natural. Along the way she’s recruited hundreds of kids to join forces with her and it’s become kids serving kids. We’re empowering our next generation of philanthropists and who can’t get behind a mission like that?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://paytonslemonadestand.org/
• Instagram: @paytonslemonadestand
• Facebook: @PaytonsLemonadeStand
• Twitter: Paytonslemonade

Image Credits
Melanie Pace, Loft3Photography