A Rebel With a Cause (and a Cone) with Jeni’s Ice Cream Founder Jeni Britton

0:00 you know, whether it was like driving around the scene of Metallica and just like getting revved up to go. I mean, I grew up in Ohio, Slayer Metallica, all of that. You know, of course, so nice little, you know, midwestern, absolute nonsense. You're, you're heavy metal. Oh, all of it, you know, I did like deaf leopard.

0:17 Oh, well, yeah, sure. Just Hermania, just the one album. That was great. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, that was fun. We've lost, you know, the whole generation that was tuned out of what we're talking about now. Yeah. My next guest and I are both Gen X. We're both from a generation when we made mixtapes.

0:35 Manually, on tape, we'd spend days crafting our playlists. You needed to have a vision. You needed to know who you were making the mixtape for. You needed to have something to say. They took so much time and energy to make one was actually an act of love, which is a perfect segue to introduce my guest, because a great mixtape is actually a perfect metaphor for true entrepreneurship.

1:03 Jenny Britton started Jenny's ice cream after she dropped out of art school at 22 years old. And more than great ice cream, that brand has helped transform the whole category. With flavors like Bramble, Berry, Pie, and Powder, Jelly, Donut, you can actually taste her creativity. Jenny didn't follow a playbook.

1:23 She did it her way. So what does this have to do with mixtape? Simple. Jenny built her business with love. And her business is her mixtape for the world. This is a bit of optimism. This episode is brought to you by Portia, which if you like German engineering, this is about as good as it gets. Jenny's is famous for its flavor.

1:56 So let's start with flavor. I think Cardamon is completely underappreciated as a flavor and as a spite. Thank you for saying that. I totally agree with you. 100%, 100%, and people are actually afraid of Cardamon. And so I don't know why, because it seems it's so beautiful. When you just open it and smell it, I mean, I use it in my oatmeal.

2:17 I use it in baked goods. It's so beautiful. Everything. Yeah. I'm an experimenter. And I just add things to things just for whatever. And so let's trade off ridiculous things that shouldn't go together. That go get together. That you discovered just by being creative, okay? Oh, yeah, okay. You want to go first or shall I go first?

2:35 Go, you go first. Okay. I sprinkle cinnamon on eggs. Friday. Interesting. Friday. I just read it. I just read it. Just eggs. I sprinkle salt, pepper, cinnamon on eggs. Salt and pepper, and cinnamon. Salt and pepper, because that's the base. I like it, okay. And then I add cinnamon to eggs. Yeah. It is spectacular.

2:53 Doesn't make it taste like a pancake. Doesn't make it taste like anything else. It's just great, because cinnamon can be on sweet things or on savory things. It really can. It's magical. It is. And it's in like Cincinnati, Chile. I'm from Ohio, so it works. Yeah, definitely. Oh, I love that. I'm still going.

3:07 I'm still on ice cream a little bit, because that's just my, that's the lens for me and my brain. But it'll get to other things. But I really, I will say one of the things I always said that mint is hard to pair. Like because yeah, because in at the ice cream shop, we'll always offer like a pairing suggestion.

3:21 There's obviously ones like chocolate. But one that I discovered that I love, it's from a cocktail, but I discovered it, and then I sort of related it to this cocktail is caramel and mint, which you wouldn't think about. But so there's a cocktail, and I'm not a big drinker, but something like this just is too interesting to me.

3:39 It's it's creme de menthe and cognac. It's called the stinger. Don't know it. It's phenomenal. And so when I had that, I was like, that's like caramel and mint. So caramel and mint is one of those ones. It was a big aha for me that like, I never would have thought. It's like, you know, I never go into the test kitchen.

3:57 If I, you don't brush my teeth within two hours or something, you know what I mean? Of course, we'll learn everything. So I guess we should probably get into serious stuff. Your journey's amazing. A lot of people want to start businesses. Not many people redefine businesses, and you sort of had a huge impact in the ice cream business, as a lot of people know, bringing crazy and experimental flavors to the industry.

4:21 What made you want to do it as a business? Business is hard. And food business is really hard. And I think a lot of people have entrepreneurial dreams and entrepreneurial ambitions. But it's, this is a very difficult business. It's brutal. Business is brutal. It's a brutal place to exist. And there's a lot of, I mean, I love it.

4:43 And that's also really hard. It starts with an idea. It starts with an idea, which I had. It changed my life. It was an epiphany. This idea, I was trying to be a perfumer. And I realized that ice cream could be a great carrier of scent. So I started to use farmers working ingredients and steeping it in cream.

4:56 So even like an inexpensive vanilla would be considered, it's a scent. So I had the idea. The idea was, was, was interesting. And I thought, also I thought, all of the ice cream around me, and I'm from Ohio, from the Midwest. I'm from Peoria, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio. And so ice cream is something we do all the time.

5:12 It's just constantly having ice cream, especially at night, before bed, you know, if you have a date, whatever. But I felt like all the ice cream. So it was like, for kind of like nostalgia. So grandparents and grandchildren. So I thought, well, what about for people like me who want to go on dates and like, you know, be somewhere that has good lighting, you know, and cute and fun and discovery flavors or whatever.

5:32 So I had this idea. But the biggest thing is I did not know how hard business would be because I was isolated. Columbus is not a small city at all, but I was the way that I was brought up was not through business. It was through art. I had been studying art. But everybody, my family had little businesses.

5:49 So I did not ever think I couldn't do it. I also grew up in the city where there were entrepreneurs in the city. And so I would follow them. And I knew I had an entrepreneurial spirit since I was very young. I was always doing little businesses as a kid. It just never occurred me not to do it. I didn't know how hard it would be.

6:03 It would be the shortest answer. And it's a good thing. You know, I mean, it was a really good thing because to find hard, hard expensive, hard hours, hard, how do you think it's all this problem? It's just survival. You know, it is, get to the next day. You know, and especially, you know, I think that one of the reasons actually that I was good at it was because I could survive longer than anybody else off of less.

6:26 You know, and I'm still that way. You know, I can still live off the land in a way that I think people think they're going to be rich right away or they're going to go raise money. You know, we make business all about raising money and not about customers. Did you do it with a raise or did you bootstrap?

6:42 No, it was just the SBA getting loans. That's cool. And eventually I raised money, but not until at least 15 years in. Okay, so it was already a thing. It's already a brand. It's already a thing. We already have an ethos. We already know what we're doing. You know, it's an interesting question. I wonder if your form of entrepreneurship which is getting a bank loan and there are systems that exist to raise money.

7:05 I wonder if that is a dying breed. I think it is. And I'm always out talking about start small and build entrepreneurship. That's what I call it. It's like one big bunch of words. But I still believe that in America, anybody can start where they're at and build anything they can imagine. And that's the work.

7:24 I mean, that's what we should be as a country. I still believe it is possible. It is really hard. And it's not what we're showing. So if somebody wants to start a business, they see, oh, we have to know somebody, raise money, have some kind of status. But then people do it all the time without those things.

7:39 And it seems like it's this, you know, miracle or something. It's just about one foot in front of the other, literally one dollar and then another dollar and another dollar. My sort of lamentation, I guess, is there was a time where where people said that if you worked for a public company, that was the worst because of all the precious from Wall Street for companies to do the wrong thing, etc, etc.

7:59 that weren't in the company's employees or customers' interests, just in the shareholder's interests. But so many companies now venture back, or private equity back, that the pressure from the investors, the private investors is as aggressive, if not more aggressive than Wall Street. So you have the same pressures in the private company to grow at all costs.

8:18 And growth is the goal, not survival, right? Not great product, not something that can outlast the founders, just short-term growth. And the amount of pressure, you and I both know some of the investors, and I will bring them great ideas, not mine, but like I'll be like, I've got a great, and they're like, it's not scalable.

8:40 It's a great business, but it's not. Nobody would have thought my idea was scalable. But they don't want to invest anything that doesn't have immediate scale. And so it makes me wonder, are there an entire class of entrepreneurs that probably won't bother, because somebody's talked them out of it, because quote unquote, it's not scalable, or they can't get venture, and so they think it's not viable.

8:59 And or they don't know that there is such thing as a small business loan, or credit card debt, or friends and family, or bootstrapping, you know, all of these old-fashioned ways of getting cash infusions to build a business. I'm wondering if that form of entrepreneurship is just going away. I think it is, but I think it always is ready for a resurgence, because it'll be a rebellion.

9:19 And that is actually what entrepreneurship is, is a rebellion, right? That is literally what it is. Same work. If you take money from someone you work for them, you're not an entrepreneur in my mind. Like, entrepreneur is taking risks. They are rebelling against the system. They are planting a flag and say, I'm going to take a stand for something that doesn't exist.

9:38 And I'm going to do it. And eventually, once you start to get good at it, you have to earn your team. People start to want to help you. People start to come to your team. That's kind of the way I think of it. So I don't want to work for somebody else. Like, that would be really challenging for me. It would have been when I was in high school.

9:54 It was when I was in high school. I've always been told I'm a nice person. But, you know what I mean? I've never... You says on all your school reports. Literally. Jenny doesn't do what she's told. She's patient. She's kind. But she can't follow the rules. Right. Um, which is like curiosity is just that.

10:08 You know? So yeah, so I think that that's where it will come from. Um, you know, it's like in all these people who have these great little coffee shops and, you know, they inspire the kids in their neighborhood. But it won't come from... Yeah, absolutely. But your business has to be scalable. Well, absolutely.

10:25 I mean, there's this coffee shop upstate that I'm absolutely in love with. And they are open from like, you know, whatever it is, eight to two every day. And that's it. And they are only open like, I don't know. They're not open three days a week. You know, they... Like, it's a fantastic life. I mean, it's hard.

10:40 It's hard to go to one location every single day. I do that for 10 years at Jennings. It is hard. For me, I have to have a bigger vision. I like to be challenging that way. But also, I started a farmers market. And around me, there were... There was the flower lady, you know, the poultry people, you know, the butcher.

10:57 And all of those people had been there for years, decades. And they're still there now, 30 years since. But that's part of the rebellion spirit, which is... That's what they do. Yeah. You're too confined in the farmers market. It's like, I got to break out of my little town. Yeah. You know, I got to make it the Broadway, whatever, you know, whatever the ambition is.

11:13 And I had this vision. I mean, literally, I saw Ben and Jerry's and I was like, okay, I can do that too. Yeah, I start putting salt in our ice creams and in our caramel kind of early on. It was actually a mistake. And all of a sudden, you know, the Vogue magazine people are there. And, you know, Jeffrey Stingard used to write, the food there, like, came to visit because he was very interested in that idea.

11:32 And the people from Haganaz are sending their people. And they're in their shirts that say Haganaz. And I'm thinking, like, well, if there was ever a validation... Right. ...that we can be bigger. ...that Haganaz is stealing your flavors. Yeah, or just that we can wrap. Salted caramel is now a thing.

11:44 It's huge and salty, because mine was actually a mistake. Salted caramel is the way everybody makes caramel in America. It's just always got a little salt in it. But me not being able to travel... I was working in a French bakery. I didn't know anything about the world. I would spend all the time in the library just reading about various places.

12:01 And, like, a French chef from Brittany was, like, to me, very heavy accent. Uh-huh. The caramel is salty. And I thought he meant, like, Swedish licorice. Right. Like, it was salted licorice. And so I started making caramel, like, that I thought was authentic. With lots of salt. With a little extra salt.

12:17 Yeah. Then what we were used to in America, which is, like, just basically what would be a salted butter in France. So, yeah, yeah. So it's basically his poor grammar. Yeah, exactly. You invented an entirely new thing. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So when you go to France and get salted caramel, it's just beautiful.

12:34 It's, like, this perfectly salted caramel. Yeah. The salt doesn't... The salt enhances. You don't taste the salt. But in my, you taste a little more. So I want to go back to this entrepreneurship idea. I love this idea of entrepreneurship as rebellion. And I think entrepreneurship has become a vehicleful wealth.

12:49 Like, we've forgotten the source of it, which is invention. Well, and also a vehicle for somebody else as well. And a vehicle for somebody else as well, which is the worst kind, right? Right. Yeah. So there's a book, the, an old book, by Michael Gerber called the E-MIT, the entrepreneurial myth. Yeah.

13:03 He wrote years ago. And it was really the challenges idea that, like, I was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. You know, he's like, he kept meeting people who were working double the time and making half the salary than if they had a job. And he's like, why are you doing this? Like, my freedom is like, you don't have weekends.

13:20 You don't have nights. You've been doing this for 10 years. You work harder than you've ever worked. And you don't make more money. Like, why are you doing this? And this entrepreneurial myth, it's not all that's necessarily cracked up to me. So I'm going to regret this question. I don't even like the sound of the question coming out of my mouth.

13:35 We're going to ask it. Is there a formula for who should and who should not start a business? Well, I don't know. I want to say it's for anybody. But I also think that there are people who love to step into a team, do their part and go home. When I was young, I thought everybody would think, like, we all think that everything's like, I mean, I started when I was 22.

14:01 So it was like, I was just gung-ho and ready and excited and whatever. I thought everybody would be like that. And it took me actually probably longer than it should have to realize, like, oh, yeah, other people have other lives. Sometimes when you have a vision, you get really locked into it. And it starts to lead you.

14:16 Everything that you're doing starts to lead back to or advance that vision. And you can't, you almost can't help it. You just have to keep peeling back the onion and then all of a sudden you're in. And you're locked in and it's, I don't want to say you don't have any other choice. It's just like, that's how it is.

14:33 And you can't really get out of it. Because if you do, your curiosity would kill you. Right? You have to keep going. And you're compelled by that no matter how much it hurts. You know? Your turn of phrase is so good. You know, we talk about following a vision. But I think it undervalues actually what happens.

14:52 And you said there's this, there's a switch that happens at some point where you come up with this vision at some point, the vision leads you. As opposed to you following the vision, it still starts with you. But when the vision leads you, it's now starting with the vision. Yeah. And the vision will attract other people.

15:05 That's right. And the vision is the one. Everything else can change, but the vision doesn't usually change. It shouldn't change. Flexible enough. But the big vision is something that should come together because you know so much about whatever it is you're doing that you understand who you serve, who benefits, what the world looks like, you know, at the end.

15:27 And then everything else between that sort of is now you know. You're right. There's the making the thing as well, right? Because what did Thomas Edison say? A vision without a hallucin... Vision without execution is hallucination. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We interrupt this podcast with an ad with authenticity.

15:47 This episode is brought to you by Porsche. It's more than just a fancy car brand. It's a company dedicated to connection. Their engineers feeling connected to the brand, their drivers feeling connected to the road, and Porsche fans feeling connected to each other. So it's no surprise that when they invited me to the Porsche Experience Center with race car driver Patrick Long, we did more than drive, we connected.

16:12 Porsche as a brand is a conduit to relationships with people. It's a commonality. I've met people all over the world. And the icebreaker is our love for the brand. But actually what's more rewarding is the human connection, hearing someone's story, meeting you today, hearing and learning from somebody and understanding their story and taking something with you.

16:32 It's about relationship. It's about being vulnerable and getting outside of your normal routine. It's funny because as you're telling me the story, I'm thinking about how my car connects with other people and what people can learn about me. And it's really funny, when I'm with a friend in the car, I will literally say, listen to this and I turn on the sound.

16:51 And I say, I paid extra for this sound. It's like the customization. That matters to me. But it says a lot about the joy that I want in the world. It's sort of a metaphor. The car becomes a way for me to tell somebody about myself. And you say, find those connections. And I never thought about the car giving me that connection with my friends who just happen to be passengers when we're going somewhere.

17:11 And I see and feel your energy and how it makes you so passionate. And it lights you up. And being the receiver of that, when you're in this small confined space and you're going somewhere, like strip it back and think about the windshield as your picture frame in life and takes me back to being a child and being in the back seat with no screens or devices and what you see in the world and how these cars bring that connection.

17:32 Those are the memories I carry with me forever. And I think it's about those impactful moments. And that's what I love about these cars. They're emotional. You know the old trick? Do you know the old trick about sell this pen to somebody? Do you know this? Now, it's a sales trick. It's a where you say to somebody, sell me this pen, right?

18:00 And almost every time people go, so I've got this new pen here. It's got, you know, a unsmuggable ink and it's got like, and it's really comfortable to use. The pictures. And it's really, and it's amazing how, how few people say, do you write? Oh, right. Exactly. Nobody asks. Nobody asks any questions.

18:19 They start talking about the pen and the good sales people say, so when do you write? Yeah. I keep a journal. What do you write in that journal? How often do you keep your journal? And then the pen becomes the, but it's amazing when people start, you know, to your point, which is go sell something, especially something you've come up with.

18:37 And I agree, and I think even go sell an idea. Yeah. Because in many people, they're like, I don't know, you know, versus like, I love your idea. You know, and also everybody will say, we'll sort of be like, yeah, not a great idea. You'll get a lot of that. I had a friend who's here was, if one other person likes your idea, you might have a thing.

18:54 I agree with that. I 100% agree with that. You can get one person. And I also think this sort of starts to plan to sort of what an entrepreneur is. And I love your ideas of the rebel. Because I think we have a misunderstanding of what entrepreneurs are. You know, there's a difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner.

19:09 A small business owner owns a small business. Yeah, you'd be dentist. And an entrepreneur solves problems. And you'll find entrepreneurs in companies and very large companies. They are the entrepreneurs. And you can spot them because they keep getting performance reviews that they're not following the rules or they're not following the process.

19:23 I mean, I started, I started out in a big company. And all my performance reviews were Simon, you have to do things the way that we do them. And I would always say, but your way sucks. And it doesn't work. Oh my gosh, I'm not sure. Simon, that's just, I remember my boss asked me to do something and I got it done.

19:41 And then, you know, sort of a few days later and he comes and knocks on my door and he goes, I need to have a conversation with you about the thing you did. That's not how we do things here. And I said, did anybody complain to you? He said, no. I said, did I break any rules? Any laws? No. I said, are you happy with the results?

19:59 He says, very. I said, so why are we having this conversation? He goes, because that's not how we do things here. There's a process. And I'm like, nobody complained. I broke no laws and you're happy with the results. I still don't understand why we're having this conversation. And my point is, as I worked in a big company, but the rules, if I had a better way, then do it.

20:20 That seemed to make sense to me. And so the entrepreneurial venture, this is why I like your definition of entrepreneur's rebel. Because you can have rebellion inside companies and there's entrepreneurial things that happen inside companies. And it's about seeing things, or vision, or problem solving, all those magical things, where the rules say, you can't, you shouldn't, that's difficult, that's impossible.

20:40 And I'm going to use your language, because I love it, where the vision leads you, and you, for some reason, get to the point where you can't not. And it doesn't matter if you get in trouble. And you can walk, even if it just doesn't matter. In fact, there's a badges of honor. Yeah, exactly. Where, how did you get in trouble?

20:57 When you started Jennings, so you're this little ice cream shop? I mean, all the time, it was, I mean, everything from, I wanted to use grass pasture dairy, better dairy, smaller farms. Just everywhere I went, it was, that's not how it's done. That's not how you do it. You can't do it like that. Not using it, you know, sort of generic, off the shelf ice cream base that a lot of dairy sell with lots of ingredients in there that I didn't want to use.

21:24 There were a lot of things we couldn't do in the beginning, because we weren't big enough. We didn't have what we needed to, but not letting it stop me, right? So it wasn't perfect when we started. Give me the example. Well, just this ice cream, like, not being able to go with small farms, not being able to make it with specifically my recipe.

21:42 But, okay, well, then we'll do this with this, and it will be like this for now, but then with this idea that, you know, so you're always inching toward the bigger vision, which is to get better dairy. And I think it's gonna be six months from now. Of course, maybe it was three years, but there were a whole bunch of those things.

21:58 But what happens was it was about getting better every day. So then that locks in this sort of, just how I do things, that's how we do things at Genies is, we incrementally just get better. So we can't have everything right now. First of all, we can't afford it anyway. But we'll just continually start to get better as we can.

22:14 And so then it's about, honestly, like just constantly finding that good trouble of like, okay, how can we tweak this? How can we make this better? But it's everywhere. It's customer service and all of the huge, and all of the details of that, it's our product and quality. And as we grow, we can actually get now, Vinala Beans direct trade from a specific one farm and support them to leadership.

22:35 I mean, just like how do you survive even like, learning how to be a leader over time, whose founders are weird people and like over the time in their company, you know, you're shaken up all the time over the trajectory. And I was, you know, I built Genies for 26 years. That was all I did every single day.

22:51 It takes a long time to become an overnight success. Yeah, exactly, exactly. As I said, I think that we live in a day and age where there's a lot of talent at entrepreneurs and there's a lot of great ideas and there's a lot of disruptors. And I am just curious what the world would look like if not everything was so growth, money, and VC obsessed.

23:09 And I don't think you'll, we would have creative ice cream company. Well, I take it back. You could, but it would take the same amount of time. It would take time. It would take the time and you'd have to prove the case. But because I don't think the VC would be rushing in if you're like, I have an idea of making, you know, like salty caramel.

23:24 I mean, Genies wouldn't pass a business school. If it was a, your business, and a VC wouldn't look at you. It doesn't fill any space or anything that they usually look at and they would look at the scale and they'd look at your social media following and all these things and you wouldn't pass muster.

23:38 So it's too complicated. It's too complicated. And so, and so it's an interesting question. Like could that, could that company ever exist today? What's the social value of, of this old school entrepreneurial bootstrap? Because there's a word in your vision. What's the vision that you have? What, how do you define your vision?

23:56 Well, our mission is make better ice creams, bring people together. Me two very simple things. But they can be unpacked forever and ever. Right. Yeah. And the vision is. What's the vision that you, well, the vision that led me, it's always about being the sort of place for creative people to have conversations and spark conversations.

24:16 We know that you're there to get to know somebody else better. And so how can we be the place that people go to get to know somebody else better in like creating that space in America? So this is the most interesting. I find this more interesting than the ice cream. Yeah, because it's not about ice cream.

24:31 Because it's not about ice cream. Even in the mission statement, like you happen to make ice cream. It could be anything, right? And I love that in the mission statement, it's, you know, we make great ice cream to bring people together. Like it's a human mission. Ice cream is a conduit. And yeah, I'm curious, like where did that come from?

24:49 That in your vision, it was about togetherness and human connection, your mission, you know, ice cream is this conduit to bring people together. Where is that from? Did you have a lot of it or did you not have a lot of it growing up? I don't know, a little bit about both. So I moved every year growing up.

25:06 What? So I didn't have, my parents just moved a lot. They were like a cross town. It wasn't like to, you know, they were kind of nomadic in that way. And so I never had like a, like a friend even longer than a year. I mean, my sister, lucky I had a sister 18 months here at me at home. So we moved constantly, and I think I craved community.

25:27 And on, and the other thing is, I've always been a very big introvert. When I was a kid, they always called it shy. I don't know if I ever felt shy. It just wasn't introvert. I like just, I like people a lot, a lot, a lot. But I also just, I'm an introvert. And so when I got my first job in an ice cream, I actually my first job was in an ice cream shop, of course.

25:47 I always knew I would be in ice cream. But what happened was that I was really good at it because it helped me put my ego and anxieties aside and just serve other people. And like honestly, like this is literally serving, literally serving other people. Yeah, like let me give you a second. And I excelled.

26:03 I wasn't shy anymore. I just had this character that I played at the ice cream shop that I loved so much. I didn't want to go to school anymore. I just wanted to be there all the time. And it was so great. And I think that this ended up being why service is so important to me, why ice cream is so important to me.

26:17 And of course, I had no money to start. I had nothing. So my whole life ended up being that, especially that beginning. Like I realized like I needed so much help. And so I would start just helping other people. And then they would come help me. So it was like, it was always about, almost like an act of co-creation, just serving and helping and, and getting other people's participation and trying to like get other people to like enjoy it and have fun doing it too.

26:39 So the idea of servant leadership was very literal, which is literal, literally serving you ice cream. And because I don't have to, all my insecurities fall away, because we're really talking about ice cream. I mean, it's the happiest substance on earth. Yeah. Like, nobody can be angry eating ice cream.

26:56 No. You can't be depressed or angry, I guess you've never seen it. But you can't be angry. You can be very, you can be depressed. You can be depressed. You go through points of ice cream from depressed. But you can't be angry eating ice cream. It just doesn't exist. And so I love this idea that your inhibitions fall aside because you're learning this thing called servant leadership.

27:15 I'm literally giving someone something that they want that will make them feel happy. And I get to be that person who gives them that thing. And so I guess what I'm scratching out here is, because ice cream is now a metaphor, right? Oh, it's a lot of metaphors, yes. So ice cream is now a metaphor for service to bring some betterment to someone's life, some joy, some sweetness, whatever it is.

27:34 What's the ice cream that you're giving to your employees? Not literally, but, you know, how are you serving the employees? What ice cream do you give them that, even gives them joy and happiness that makes them want to, you know, come follow your vision with you? At Jenny's, you know, we all get our endless tastes.

27:48 And so when somebody comes, they can wait in a long line. But when you're in front of me, we're together until you're done. I mean, you can stay with me for two hours if you need to. Like, we don't rush people through the line once they get up to the front. And there's something in that like, what I loved about working with like high school kids, starting, because that was the beginning of the company.

28:09 For a very long time, they were very young people. Who don't really, and don't really get service? Well, you would, they get taught terrible service and they often come in with what they believe because that's how they've been treated. For example, going to a coffee shop, like, you know, little things where you, you might, you know, you're kind of confusing.

28:26 You ask a question and say to somebody answering you, they like point to something, you know, just little things somebody, you know, I think they're giving you the answer by pointing. Yeah, or they're actually literally annoyed by you because they feel that they're like in servitude or something, that they don't really want to be there.

28:41 So at Jennings in the early days, it was about like, this is a profession. This is like, there's dignity here. Like if you make somebody's day, if we do this, service is a gift you give to the world. It's not something we even pay you for. Like we pay you to like, show up on time and get the corners when you mop and do all those things, but like, services a gift you give, it comes back to you later.

28:59 And us as a team too, but you keep giving that and keep generating that in the world. Think about what you're creating for you. And we talk about that a lot. And so we would get high school kids who were, I have goosebumps just even talking about because they were just so incredible. They're just regular kids that went to the art high school and some of them were at the theater down the street and then they came over and got jobs.

29:24 But they really set the tone for who we become because they stepped into this big role. And to this day, our team behind the counter is just so incredible. That team is like 1,200 people now. And they're the most important thing in the company for us because we learn it's like me being on the front line.

29:43 I was on the front line for 10 years. That's how I learned everything. It's not just like the specifics. Americans like Carmel better than any other flavor. It's like the nuances, I think of like atomic patterning. It's like how somebody's eye might move when they like something or whatever. You start to learn these like, and you adjust your emotion every time somebody new comes around.

30:04 You teach people this. They learn it. We talk about it. You can't really teach it. You have to experience it. If you've worked at a nice room shop for two summers and probably a coffee shop too, any fast service kind of place, you're like looking at the third person on the line because you know you have three people down here and you're going to probably get that person and you're wondering already while you're serving this person, what that person's emotional state is.

30:25 And that is actually how people do these fast orders. You know you're going to get that person. And you're starting to think about what it takes and what that energy you're going to put forward is when you get to that person. But right now you're here and this person wants joyful and light it up. And it's like interesting.

30:39 It's like it's so new, it's so atomic almost. And so we talk about like whatever you go on and do in your life, remember this and be able to articulate this forward because it's important, because it's an art. I think a lot of people would complain about young people today. Yeah. A little bit of obliviousness.

31:07 I don't know if it's the modern generation or young people. And when it comes to customer service, it's not there or less you know this idea of serving and service. Is it a midwestern thing that you or have you noticed variation across the country? Like is it a myth that young people today or sort of struggling to serve?

31:30 Is it just sort of old people complaining about young people or have you noticed a trend that your stores actually help and give these young people a skill that their friends don't have? I think a little bit of both. But I mean we're gen Xers, right? I mean, I actually looked up your birthday. I didn't look up your birthday, but I was doing some research on it.

31:44 That's a grown generation. I'm September 29, 1973. And I think you're October 9th. Night, so I have a birthday. So gen X. Remember, we were like slackers and all that. And then the millennials came along and then that was the whole thing. I worked with a lot of them in the early days and everybody was complaining about them.

32:00 We're slackers. I know what we weren't. No. Well, we're not slackers. We were absolutely nuts. No, I mean, definitely not. We just got to work and got stuff done and didn't complain or why. It's why I get a kick out of this, which is there are books written about the greatest generation who served in World War II.

32:18 There are books written about the boomers who broke everything and ruined everything. There are books written about millennials, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha. There are no books written about Gen X. It's so small. It's a small group. We just got to work and got stuff done and like, there you go. Here we are.

32:32 We also just didn't feel important. I think our generation had success younger than our parents. So our parents generation, they made vice president in their late 40s. And our generation was making vice president in our late 30s. We grew up in very good times. In the 80s. It was really very good. Awesome.

32:51 They were. They were awesome. It was a kind of gentler cold war. We weren't practicing hiding under our desks for a nuclear war. You know, it's not the 60s. And we just kind of like graduated school and got to work and got jobs and worked hard and just like. Okay, this is interesting to me too because the music we were all listening to.

33:08 Amazing. We were all united by that. And I was listening to some Bruce Springsteen, some Tom Petty the other day, come back from Montreal. And I think about this everyone was like, the music that we grew up with was meant to get you off your chair. Like meant to get you to do something. And it made you feel that you were bigger than you are.

33:26 Two Shadishai. Shadishai. Shadishai. Yeah. I mean, it just. Karma. Karma. Oh my gosh. Alter club. But like we had music where the lyrics literally made no sense. But they made you. It wasn't even words. They made you feel like you could walk into a room. I mean, I was always like trying to get up my courage to give a speech or something like that.

33:46 But you know, you get the music and you go in and do it. And I'm not sure about this, but I feel like some of the music when my daughter is 18, it feels very like inward. I just feel like I was lucky to. I mean, you know, whether it was like driving around listening to Metallica and just like getting revved up to go.

34:03 You listen to Metallica. Metallica. Metallica. Metallica. I mean, I grew up in Ohio. Slayer Metallica. All of that. You know, of course. Like this. Nice little. Right. Oh, all of it. You know, I did like death leopard. Oh, well, yeah, sure. Just Hermania, just the one album. That was great. Yeah. Yeah.

34:22 I mean, you know, we've lost. You realize it's a whole generation that was tuned out of what we're talking about now. I know. And it's, yeah, it's interesting. You know, we were somebody. I read somebody just speech on the mixtape generation and what it took to create a mixtape. It was work. And it was an act of love.

34:37 You put yourself into it. An act of love. And I was like, this is such a beautiful thing. Out of the story. I mean, it's really, it's so beautiful. It's like it's. It's really sad. It's heartbreaking. We're so happy that. To have been a part of this. Yeah, you have to plan record on two different things.

34:49 But so to bring it all back anyway, because like entrepreneurship, I think. Is ready for a comeback. This new idea of entrepreneurship. Or it isn't working for somebody else. It is more of a, not a not that sort of. Heroic. It is though. It's a Frodo fun adventure. But like I think there's that idea of like go get money.

35:04 And then. You know, be a unicorn. Yeah. Like go be a unicorn. But there's also like. like this kind of entrepreneurship is very humbling. You're always like, you know, a kind of embarrassed, you're kind of like putting yourself out, you're taking risks, and it's never comfortable in search of this vision, I guess, or whatever.

35:29 You have just summed up the best metaphor of what true entrepreneurship is, which is the mixtape. Yeah. Okay, because the desire to make a mixtape is a lot of work, like old school, you know, you need the two tape decks, right? And it's very time consuming. Like if I wanted to flirt with somebody and I wanted to go out with a girl, like, you know, you can't do it on the first date, that's too aggressive. No, like five or six dates in, or like when you're dating somebody and they're your girlfriend, like the way you say it, I love you is you make a mixtape. And if you make a two-sided mixtape, I mean, that's hardcore.

36:08 Yeah, that's a lot of effort. And it takes days. And if somebody gives you a mixtape, if somebody gives you a mixtape, repeat, active love. And you're listening to it and active love, like non-stop and and and and you're even like every song. But you love the reason and they loved it. And there's a vision that has to be there, which is I want to tell somebody something.

36:27 I want to show the world something. I'm going to put my stamp on it and do it my way. And I'm going to give it a little of myself. You know, it's you're getting to know somebody through this. And even though the songs exist, like everybody knows the songs in this order, in this order with these lyrics or these melodies or these and you write the and you write the notes and like real love is like the design and you and like if you get a real mixtape, the whole thing is filled in with words, not just what is what's on there. That's right, because you got to write the and I think this is this is the greatest metaphor for why you should start a business, which is exactly right, which is I want to I want to tell somebody something.

37:06 And I'm going to there's an active love. I'm going to put in this huge amount of effort with with a high probability of failure, but it's worth it. Yeah. And there and there is a rebellion to it, right? You should be doing your homework, but instead you're making a mixtape. You should be coming into a doctor or a lawyer, but instead you decided to become an entrepreneur, because it's so time consuming. Yeah. And you have to have a little bit of organization, because we can tell when a mixtape has done badly, because it's just whatever was on the radio, right, versus thoughtfully. This is totally agree. Like what is driving you to do this? Like what is so powerful, so important that's driving you to do this? Yeah. Like understanding that is, is it? Because that's

37:55 where you take the risk. That's where you take the effort you put the effort in. How do you go from ice cream to fiber? How do you go from protein to refuge? Right. How do you go from really sweet and lovely to no taste at all? Yes. Well, it's just curious how you made that transition. Like what active love was that? I was with Jenny's, you know, I was, I was 100% in, 150% in too much in.

38:21 For 26 years. And it was, I was probably in too long actually. Covid was about to happen. It was pretty clear that the team was doing great without me. And I was probably hanging on a little too much. You know, there's still too many things that needed my attention or whatever I thought, you know, it was just time. They were doing great. And, but I hadn't put a ton of thought into it. And then suddenly I didn't know who I was. I didn't have anything else. Everybody that I knew was in there, everything that I, my entire world was tied into your business.

38:53 Everything. Yeah. It was the world that I created. So they didn't have to be in this one, honestly. And now I was in this one. And I had to figure that out. And so I was really trying to, trying to figure out who I am outside of that. It was great. But it was really hard also. And so I went to the forest. And I just spent, I mean, I walked to the literal forest, literal forest. I walked, not the metaphorical for it. 10 miles a day or more sometimes and just hours out there every day. And I started to feel really good. And I started to eat a lot of, well, I actually started to eat a lot of blueberries and nuts and things like I don't know for us. I was like, I was like, I was just becoming part of the forest. And I was just like eating things. I don't know,

39:28 it was just sort of a thing for me. It was Covid then happened. And I was just like able to be out there every day. And for some reason, I was craving. But it ended up being fiber that I was eating. And I started to read a lot of books about fiber and realized that like when you get diverse fibers, you actually change how you feel and that 60% of Americans have one more chronic illness.

39:48 And it's related to fiber and 95% of us are deficient. And it was like, you know, just like, it was like reading all these books and, and you know, peeling back that onion. And then I was helping another entrepreneur just for fun. And he and I were working with other rounders and we were touring this massive produce place in, produce processing company in Vineland, New Jersey and saw the watermelon rind and the apple cores and realized that they're full of fiber. And he and I had already been talking about this. And so it was like this epiphany moment. And again, it gets back to like, we didn't even mean to start a company. We were helping other entrepreneurs. We were doing other things. And, and it was like, there's all of this waste

40:26 going out. Well, what if we could take it and what if we could figure out how to make it into a flower, a paste or whatever that we can use to make products that people will actually eat. And so we put together a little group of registered dietitians and functional medicine practitioners and people who could help us Ohio State University. And, and we just started.

40:44 And it was like, it was that sort of like the light is just the past to start to live. Where's the togetherness? Where's the togetherness? Because accord everything you're doing. And, and the thing that I love. So the, to me, the fun flavors of Jenny's. So if you go to a restaurant that's fine. And somebody says, how was your doing? It was fine. It was fine. It's good.

41:07 It's fine. And that's it. And what defines a great restaurant is not that is is too. Yes. I see. Not only do you talk about it after the meal, you talk about it the next day. And Jenny's because your flavors are so fun and creative. It's not like how is the ice cream? It's good. Just talk about ice cream. It's good. Right? That people are talking about it when they're done.

41:30 They're talking about it the next day. Yeah. It's like a great restaurant. It wants to create a conversation. And to your point that that ice cream is simply the mechanism for people to smile and have a conversation. Even if they hate it. Oh my god. I hate that one. Right? But at least you have an opinion about it. Right? How does the bar fulfill your goal in the world of creating togetherness and conversations? Well, it's interesting because it's to me, I always say it's about making people feel better because at Jenny's we say make people feel loved. That's like that's just what we say on repeat at Jenny's inside outside. And so this is similar to that in that it's a chance for me to make people feel better. You know, but it's just a different kind of better.

42:19 And I believe so much that there's like nature inside of you and nature outside. And and you know, all of this. And to me, it's just all it's all one. Can I propose a logic? Yeah. It's not a marketing thing. It's not a marketing thing. It's just as I'm talking to you and getting to know you. If the goal is to make people feel loved, you were much better equipped to give love if you feel good. That's true. That's exactly right. Yeah. If you're if you're unhealthy and I mean that in physically unhealthy, mentally unhealthy, like all the unhealthy, it's very hard to to give love when you your body is depleted in some way, shape, or form. And one of the reasons to eat well, get sleep, exercise is you are better able to serve the people you love by giving

43:05 them love. And and I think you're right. This is a very, very simple and often forgotten component of health. But if people feel good, they're better equipped to love others. And and I think that that was that's something that we we definitely felt at Flora. Like I read books like even something like hope and optimism can come from whether you have this microbe in your gut that's being fed the proper fiber and is releasing chemicals. No kidding. So once I read that, I was like, and there's a whole bunch of you know, mental clarity, but also like if it affects your emotions, it's really like it's not even your second brain. It's like your first brain.

43:45 It also reduces the glucose spike you'll get from ice cream. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So eat your fiber first. Then eat that ice cream. Make sure you get your fiber, you know, whatever. And the more before you before you have your time. Yeah. Yeah. So we're thinking about that. We're like, wow, I mean, if we could just wave a magic wand and just get people back to eating fiber, not even our fiber, just get back people back to eating enough fiber and diverse fibers every week, it would have an a huge impact on all of the challenges that we have right now. Not just chronic illness that's diet related and physical, but also how we treat each other. I read a thing recently that I found a little overwhelming, which is, you know, we're supposed to eat vegetables and leafy greens and

44:26 all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, and so I would have like kale with every meal, a spinach with every meal. And then I read a thing recently that I have to eat 30 different types of fruits and vegetables per week. Yeah, 30, well, 30 plants. So that can also be like spices and herbs. So I can't, but they have to be different plants. I mean, sorry, legumes, beans, nuts, it's actually not, but it's not 30 portions of kale. No, 30 different. You have to have diversity. That the thing that that really freaked me out. 30s a lot. It's, it is. And that's why floor exists. If you're out foraging and getting plants, the interesting thing about nature and our ecosystems is that every year it's going to come up with different ones. So you could get all of all sorts of different

45:07 variety of your diet, just by leg, which is probably why this is a thing because we are born of nature and we ate from nature and we we evolved from nature. And it makes sense that our bodies adapted for the worlds that we grew up in, which is not the world we have now. Right. So we have to go unfortunately recreate. But we have this diversity of nature through a bar. And we are not processing 30 vegetables and fruits and things in our kitchens anymore. And so but you should, you can. I have to ask you a couple. We do. I don't want to end, but this is shame.

45:41 Where the, so here we go. I have a few questions that I'm that I'm supposed to ask you. Okay, great. We'll see if I can answer. Jenny's splendid ice creams almost didn't recover from a recall in 2015. What did surviving the cataclysmic event teach you? That is absolutely right. We we had a big event in 2015 that was game ending for the company. And and it was and it was actually like the worst thing I've ever been to and also been through and also the best thing I've ever been through. I would never go back to the day before. I mean, it was really the end and it was also like reputational and it was like, it took me years. Did it contain the pint of ice cream, right?

46:19 One pint of ice cream with Listeria in it. And that's something that you work really hard to prevent. Just one pint. It happened. Yeah, it was one pint, but it was in the kitchen. So we found it and it was just like, you know, that's just sort of, it's a, you know, if you're not going to battle with Listeria every single day, every moment of every day, you know, it's there because it's part of Earth and it's, you know, especially farm farms and soil and things like that. But it was interesting because it really made us as a company. Like it made us. I mean, we had all these values before. We had it. We were like united by our values. We thought we were like talent, hustle and guts. And I don't know. You know, we had all these things we said about ourselves. You

46:54 know, we were just so cool. And we were like, whatever. And then we get into this and we get through this big storm together and it took everything and everyone. And what happened was we shed everything immediately that was not important, which was actually like 90% of what we were doing. For example, so we got, we got it down to, you know, what are we here to do? Like what do we do that nobody else does? And that was really the question that we were asking. And so do we actually have to make all of these pralines or is somebody else better at it than we are? Like, are we being led by this idea of artisanal? But it's actually not serving us. But it's making us more complex and difficult, more difficult to run and, and potentially even the safety issue.

47:36 So we started to think like, okay, I'm thinking like, this is what artisanal ice cream is, but actually it's not. It's, I know these people out in, out in Ohio who make candy and they're actually going to be a lot better at making that and probably our Brambleberry jam. Then we are, like we were doing everything in our kitchen to the point of like cutting the strawberries.

47:52 And that was just ridiculous. It was actually ridiculous. But I never would have thought differently about it had we not been through that. And then it was like, wow, there's like this fifth generation dairy and they can do this for us. And there's, so we kind of restructured everything and it made us just tighter and better. Just sort of making your own pralines. You could buy the pralines from somebody who's making them better. Well, we can give them my recipe. Or you can give them your recipe and they'll make them for you even better. And they might even say like, well, hey, we've been making pralines in our family for 150 years. And we would do it this way. And I'd be like, that's great.

48:20 That's actually better than us trying to make them. And so there was just, there was a lot of that. But I think the big thing was just like, I was stuck in this perspective that I couldn't see the other side of it. I never even would have if it hadn't been for that. But also, I say the team is still there. Most of the people who went through that in 2015, they're all still there.

48:37 The problem with scale is scale breaks things. And you said it, which is everything was becoming more complex. And it's likely that it's that level of complexity that you, you sort of misunderstood what our seasonal means. That means we have to make everything ourselves and everything has to be the best. And we have to touch everything ourselves that that complexity that was built into the system may have created the conditions that that one point got contaminated. And if there was always simple, it may never have happened. You know, this when it comes to food, like great food is not how complex you make it. It's really high quality ingredients, you know, simply prepared. And that makes great food. And we live in a world now where we've industrialized and taken the taste out of

49:22 high quality food and made it with low quality food. And then we have to add tons of chemicals to make the quality, to put the taste back in. And now we have complex foods that make us unhealthy and destroy our guts and all the rest of it. And what we're saying is this complexity breaks things. And again, this conversation we use filled with metaphors, which is your Listeria in a plant is somebody else's cancer and somebody else's depression and somebody else's because life is getting too complicated, too many moving parts. And if you can strip out the unnecessary and work and go back to your theme of together, which is if I just work with people who are better at this and my friend who's better at problem solving, my friend who's better at

50:00 listening. And if we just like become friends and take care of each other, all of our lives get better. And you'd never, so you would never wish that kind of crisis on anyone. Of course not. And it's the best thing that can happen to you because you will never cut that much out of your life without crisis. And it's so freeing. And as an organization and as a human, that was that was like that was it for me. I mean, it took years to get out of it and to get beyond it as personally and also in the company. And also, I knew the day that within the week that it happened, we're going to come out of it better. And just to put a full stop on this, we're talking about this dying form of entrepreneurship, this sort of very love driven effort driven kind of entrepreneurship

50:46 that's not obsessed with scale, not obsessed with feeding investor, but rather giving a customer something magical, bringing people together. It's also the way you're describing this simplifying of a business is really the core of what capitalism is, which is sort of Adam Smith capitalism said, the baker is driven to make the best bread and the cheese makers driven to make the best cheese and the farmers made driven to make the best ham. And so what you get is the best sandwich.

51:14 And so you don't have to make the best strawberries, the best pralines, the best, the best, the best. That's right. If you have somebody's obsession is the best praline and somebody else's obsession is the best milk and you combine those with somebody gets is the best ice cream. That's exactly right.

51:28 Yeah. That is that is what Adam Smith envisioned that what capitalism supposed to be and the customers always the winner at the end of that at the end of that equation. And we care very much about what we're creating. I mean, this is just like, you know, to sort of double bow it too. And that idea of like for me, even in the beginning, I always thought, how do we create a heritage brand now? Like how do we how does the brand live the company really live on long after me and thrive and continue to get better and serve people all the time? And that's the same at Florida too.

51:59 So it's just always trying to, I don't know, you know, play the infant game, I guess. Hey, man. There you go. Jenny, you're the best. Well, likewise. Thank you so much. And for anybody who hasn't tried Jenny's ice cream, I mean, you're missing out. Get your spoon. Get your spoon and do it with someone. Go try two different flavors, even if you get them at the supermarket. Go get two different flavors and and each your heart out and do a taste test because that's the fun. I know I know when I go when I bought your ice cream from the supermarket and I and I really hate you for this. I go to buy one pint and I ended up buying three because I'm like, ooh, we really should try this one. Yeah. And then you want to try it and then

52:37 they're all open and we're all sitting there with spoons. And that's what it's about. And it really it is really it is, you know, for depression, you eat hug and does and for joy, you eat Jenny's. Yes, exactly. I love that so much. It's so true. It's so true. I love it. Thank you. So fun. Jenny, thank you so much. A bit of optimism is a production of the Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford and Devon Johnson.

53:07 Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts and if you want even more cool stuff, visit SimonCeneg.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.