Getting Sticky With Jess Jacobs

Photos by Nuria Rius, Words by AnaMaria Glavan

In October of this year, it was announced that Mammoth Brands would acquire the beloved Coterie — a David-sized diaper brand taking on the Goliaths that have gone untouched for decades. What has propelled this little giant forward, and made it a darling among parents, is simple: superior quality. Fabric that is ultra soft and genuinely absorbent, keeping babies dry and helping them sleep longer through the night. (Wet diapers are a major culprit behind middle-of-the-night wake-ups, FYI.)

Coterie’s CEO, Jess Frenchman Jacobs, experienced this firsthand. When her daughter, Penelope, transitioned to Coterie diapers, she began sleeping in longer spurts. The whole family breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Life-changing. It really changed my life,” she says. And as anyone who has been in the trenches of sleep deprivation knows… we don’t need to emphasize how meaningful this point is any further.

We spoke with Jess about her professional goals and how they intersect with her personal ones. There’s a real commitment to make Coterie’s internal culture reflect what they portray externally: a place where parents feel validated, supported, and truly seen. She talks openly about the career moments that shaped her leadership style, the discipline it takes to say no more often than yes, and the clarity that motherhood brought to her work.

Below, our conversation with Jess — on building a company with intention, choosing excellence over speed, and creating products (and a workplace) that make parents’ lives easier. And also: the value of remote work and creating an environment where her daughter coloring beside her on a Zoom call is more the rule than the exception.

“There’s no one who can compartmentalize like a mom” 

My journey to becoming a mom wasn’t particularly hard or easy. It was somewhere in the middle. I did suffer a loss in between my two girls, around the same early-ish phase as so many women do, but I was overall lucky… though with my second, I wanted all the drugs I could get and there was an emergency in the hospital, so all of the anesthesiologists and interns were pulled into that. I ended up delivering without an epidural, which wasn’t planned, and it was wild. I’ve done it both ways now, and I personally prefer the drugs. But the big shifts and learnings came post-delivery for me.

I would like to talk to every person out there who's growing a team and hiring—every leader—and say: prioritize the parents on your team. Tap into their strength, their abilities, their skill set. There’s no one who can compartmentalize like a mom. All of these almost survival-level skills you’re suddenly thrust into become the way in which you have to live your life, and ultimately the way you’re able to work.

I even think the way parents think about time is amazing. I’ve seen that shift in myself. There’s only a finite amount of time, of course, but before I had kids, I felt like I had all the time in the world. I didn’t structure my day or my conversations in the most productive manner. Now it’s like: we don’t have time.

We’ve got to get to the point and make a decision and move forward. That decisiveness, everything, kicks into high gear because time is more of the essence than ever. And when I think about my team, we’ll hop on the phone and solve something in ten minutes that, in a past world, would’ve taken seven meetings. Before, it would have been: let’s go through the process, socialize it, review it, meet again. Now we can just cut through and get from A to B in a much smarter way.

I really believe that I could only have taken on this career role as a mom. The way I approach work, the way I build teams, the way I prioritize; everything went through a cataclysmic shift when I had kids. Everything matured, gained clarity and focus. I’ve gotten incredibly skilled at delegating, handing things off, trusting people, and being able to see the forest through the trees in knowing what battles matter and which don’t. Becoming a mom was the shift I needed, personally. 

Reminder that David beats Goliath

Coterie was only about a year old when I joined. The business had launched and the product philosophy was fully in place, and that’s what inspired me. I was using one of the big diaper brands and having what I thought was a “normal” experience.

When I started speaking with Frank, the Coterie founder, about coming in to partner with him and help lead and grow this team, that’s when I tried the products for the first time. The whole family was able to get more sleep because Penny, who at the time was one, wasn’t having those nightly wakeups. Her diaper rash quickly went away. Life-changing. I got to really live the experience of how great and exceptional and clean the product is. What didn’t resonate for me was the brand and the world around it.

And that’s what the founder was so open to transforming—giving me the keys to do so with a lot of trust. At the time, he wasn’t a parent, and he was the first to say that. He trusted my personal experience. He was very supportive of my vision and the opportunity to swim against that sea of sameness found not just in the diaper industry but in baby care in general. It was an incredible opportunity to come in and flex every muscle I’d worked on before and also gain new skills, because it was a small team with big, ambitious goals.

We had to be scrappy, and we had to fight these giants in the industry. It was David and Goliath, and it was incredible. We got to do it our way. And I also needed it to be a place that prioritized parents externally and internally as well.

To me, there’s almost no greater betrayal than a company or brand that espouses one thing and doesn’t practice what they preach internally, especially when you’re talking to specific groups that are yearning for that community. I’m always trying to create environments where people can really flourish with freedom. I’ve wanted that at every level, and I’ve seen teams come alive in those environments. I’ve also seen cultures of fear and micromanagement suffocate teams. That trust and freedom—recognizing that we’re all adults with the same goals, all rowing in the same direction—matters. Giving people the leeway to do things at their own pace, in their own time, and in their own way often leads to something far more beautiful than what could ever be micromanaged into existence.

In my early days of copywriting and advertising, there were moments where I would feel deep down, I know this is it, while the room disagreed. Especially as the only woman on certain briefs, particularly intimate ones. There were so many moments where I thought, I am literally the only person in this room who uses this product and you need to listen to me. Those experiences shaped me.

On how a less-than-stellar return to work informed her leadership style 

Candidly, before Coterie, re-entering a company post-kids wasn’t so easy. That pushed me and made me want to create a promise and a reality at Coterie that was better, where I could actually control things.

We’re increasing our maternity leave from four months to five months, which I’m excited about, especially as the number of parents on our team grows. We had many parental leaves last year and will hopefully continue to have more. The majority of our team are parents.

We also realized the paperwork required to file for leave is incredibly annoying and frustrating—it practically becomes a part-time job. As you’re nesting and getting ready for your baby, wrapping things up at work, you’re also needing to fill out endless forms. It becomes untenable. So we work with a leave-of-absence platform called Cocoon. It helps provide a better experience for our team and takes a lot of the tedious work out of the process.

We give a baby bonus for all parents and a team-curated baby library, which is cute. Everyone on the team recommends their favorite baby book, and we buy one from each person so you have all your first books covered.

We also give a spa gift card of your choice when you have a baby. Everything tends to be for the baby and nothing for the mom, and I’m very interested in shifting that narrative. I had a friend who just had her fourth child, and I know it’s a lot of hand-me-downs at that point. So I was like, I’m just getting something for you. You need it.

Outside of Coterie, there are still so many systemic, cultural, and logistical things that need to change. Tackling what we can, together, one step at a time, is key. What Spread the Jelly is doing is a huge move in the right direction, for example. I didn't have your community and resources when I was pregnant. And there were moments where I felt the mom guilt. I felt the postpartum anxiety. I felt so much of that weight that we carry. And sometimes it's less about swift solutions and more about knowing that you're not alone in those thoughts. 

I’ve talked to so many women who are interviewing for jobs and don’t want to ask about maternity leave policy because they feel like they’ll be judged and don’t want to put that out there. But I think more and more companies, at every stage, need to see parents as the assets they are on a team. The more people start doing that, the more it becomes a norm. And a deserved one.

I always advise not going in with really specific questions that feel overly process-oriented or tactical, because those can easily get pushed down the road with, Oh, we’ll get into that with D. Instead, having more general philosophical conversations shows your understanding and allows you to ask things like, How are you taking care of parents externally and internally? Depending on the company, the external part varies, but I think all companies should be thinking about parents—consumer brands especially. Showing that you understand that, whether you’re a parent or not, opens the door to how those intentions translate internally.

Zoom calls featuring… your child and their army of colored pencils 

Penny is currently coloring on the floor behind me. I’m working, I’m talking, and she’s close by. That’s part of why I love working from home. It’s chaotic and sometimes hard to focus, but it allows for a kind of togetherness I wouldn't trade. My other little one will wander in too, so it’s a full, fun house. It’s those real-life “working parent” moments that keep all of this grounded in reality for me: the work, the policies, the culture, it all has to function in the context of actual family life.

We’ve always been a remote office, which I think is incredibly important for the parents on our team. There’s flexibility in how you structure your day, what works with your schedule, your kids’ schedules. We’re all very conscientious of one another.

I’m very good at handing things off and letting them go, because if you’re handing something off but still tethered to it, you’re not actually delegating. If anything, you’re making it harder on yourself because you’re so tied into what’s happening, and you’re not the one controlling it, which is even worse.

For me, balance is not the goal. I think about walking a tightrope which, to me, is scary and absolutely not the goal. What I try to do instead is be as centered as possible and constantly check in with myself. If I feel myself going this way, I shift back. If I go that way, I shift back. It’s a constant process and practice, not some perfect state you’re supposed to achieve 24/7. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself sets the wrong expectations and ultimately leads to disappointment.

“That’s the whole goal” 

Everyone’s staying on after the acquisition. I’m so beyond thrilled about Mammoth Brands and their two founders, Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider. They’re brilliant and supportive and so excited about us. We have a lot of freedom and support to keep doing what we’re doing, and that’s why we were acquired: because of exactly the way we do things. It’s just more fuel to stay on our trajectory and keep building a world that makes parents’ lives easier. That’s the whole goal.

Some of the smartest decisions we’ve made as a team have been saying no to things, and not being afraid to say no. Knowing that opportunities will come back again, or that they weren’t meant to be, has been grounding. It’s easy to want to capitalize on certain moments, opportunities, offers… but we’ve said no far more than we’ve said yes, and that discernment has really helped us as a brand. Limiting our goals to just one or two a year allows the team to focus, breathe, and actually achieve them.

On a Coterie level, we’ve kept our retail expansion quite limited and strategic. Now we’re thinking about what’s next and how we’ll show up for more parents in more places, but saying yes too quickly in the beginning could have really hurt our bandwidth and capabilities as a team.

On a personal level—oh my gosh—I’m saying no all the time. Especially as a mom, everything you say yes to is at the expense of something else. There’s always an opportunity cost. It’s always a trade. And a lot of people don’t understand that.