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

What if a great business was built like a handmade mixtape? A lovingly crafted experience that is as much a love letter from its founder as it is custom-tailored to its audience. Before Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams became a household name, Jeni Britton was a 22-year-old art school dropout scooping her ice cream creations at a farmers market in Ohio. She didn’t have investors, connections, or a playbook. What she did have was a vision - not just for ice cream, but for connection. Jeni believed her bold ice cream could be a conduit for something bigger: a place where people feel seen, conversations happen naturally, and strangers become community. Over the next two decades, she bootstrapped her way from a small counter to a nationally recognized brand by doing everything the slow, hard, old-fashioned way — one customer, one flavor, and one act of service at a time. She refused shortcuts. She prioritized people. And she built her company like a handmade mixtape — crafted with intention, risk, rebellion, and love. In this conversation, Jeni explains what true entrepreneurship really is: not hype, not hyper-growth, and not chasing venture capital, but the courage to follow a vision long enough for it to start leading you. We talk about the creative process, the power of service, the lessons learned from young employees, the myth of “scalable ideas,” and how walking in the woods helped Jeni discover her next chapter - Floura. Jeni’s story is a reminder that the best things in life - and in business - take time, heart, and a willingness to make something beautiful even when no one is watching. This is A Bit of Optimism. --------------------------- This episode is brought to you by the Porsche USA Macan --------------------------- Visit Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams: https://jenis.com/ Check out Jeni’s newest venture — Floura: https://www.floura.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You know, whether it was like driving around, listening to Metallica and just like getting revved up to go.

• 0:04Simon Sinek?

  Did you listen to Metallica?

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I mean, I grew up in Ohio, Slayer, Metallica, all of that.

• 0:08Simon Sinek?

  Oh, my God, this changes my whole major. It was like this nice little, you know, midwestern absolute nonsense. You're heavy metal.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  All of it, you know?

• 0:16Simon Sinek?

  I did like Def Leppard.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  Oh, well, yeah, sure.

• 0:19Simon Sinek?

  Just Pyromania, just the one album.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  That was great. Yep. Yeah. I mean, you know, that was fun.

• 0:24Simon Sinek?

  You realize there's a whole generation that was just tuned out of what we're talking about now. My next guest and I are both Gen X. We're both from a generation when we made mixtapes. 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. Jenny Britton started Jenny's Ice Cream after she dropped out of art school at 22 years old.

• 1:09Simon Sinek?

  And more than great ice cream, that brand has helped transform the whole category. With flavors like Brambleberry Pie and Powder Jelly Donut, you can actually taste her creativity. Jenny didn't follow a playbook. She did it her way. So what does this have to do with mixtapes? Simple. Jenny built her business with love. And her business is her mixtape for the world. This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:46Simon Sinek?

  This episode is brought to you by Porsche, which, if you like German engineering, this is about as good as it gets. Jenny's is famous for its flavor, so let's start with flavor. I think cardamom is completely underappreciated as a flavor and as a spice.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Thank you for saying that. I totally agree with you. Hundred percent. A hundred percent. And, and people are actually afraid of cardamom. 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. I use it in baked goods. It's so beautiful.

• 2:19Simon Sinek?

  Everything.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:20Simon Sinek?

  I, 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?

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 2:34Simon Sinek?

  You want to go first or shall I go first?

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Go, you go first.

• 2:35Simon Sinek?

  Okay. I sprinkle cinnamon on eggs. Fried eggs.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Interesting. Okay.

• 2:41Simon Sinek?

  Scrambled eggs, just eggs. I sprinkle cinnamon, salt, pepper, cinnamon on eggs.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Salt and pepper and cinnamon.

• 2:47Simon Sinek?

  Salt and pepper, because that's the base.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  I like it. Okay.

• 2:49Simon Sinek?

  And then I add cinnamon to eggs.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:51Simon Sinek?

  It is spectacular. Doesn't make it taste like a pancake. Doesn't make it taste like anything else. It's just great. Cause cinnamon can be on sweet things or on savory things.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  It really can.

• 2:59Simon Sinek?

  It's magical.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  It is. And it's in like Cincinnati chili. I'm from Ohio, so it works. Yeah, definitely. Oh, I love that. I'm still go, 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.

• 3:17Simon Sinek?

  Mint is hard to pair.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cause in, at the ice cream shop, we'll always offer like a pairing suggestion. There's obviously ones like chocolate. But one that I discovered that I love, it's from a cocktail, but I, I discovered it and then I, 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. It's, it's creme de menthe and cognac. It's called the stinger.

• 3:43Simon Sinek?

  Don't know it.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  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 if I, you know, brush my teeth within two hours or something. You know what I mean?

• 4:00Simon Sinek?

  Of course it'll ruin everything. Yeah. So I, I guess we should probably get into serious stuff. Your journey's amazing.

• 4:07Simon Sinek?

  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 experimental flavors to the industry. 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.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  It's brutal. Business is brutal. It's a brutal place to exist. And there's a lot of, I mean, I love it.

• 4:43Simon Sinek?

  You had the idea. It starts with an idea.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  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 farmer's market ingredients and steeping it in cream. So even like an inexpensive vanilla would be considered, it's a scent. So I had the idea. The idea 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. 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 creams was like for, kind of like a 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?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  And cute and fun and discovery flavors or whatever. 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 in my family had little businesses. 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 to me not to do it. I didn't know how hard it would be, would be the shortest answer. And it's a good thing, you know, I mean, it's a really good thing because um.

• 6:09Simon Sinek?

  Define hard. Hard expensive, hard hours, hard, how do you figure it's solved this problem?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  It's survival. 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. 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 gonna be rich right away, or they're gonna have, they're gonna go raise money. You know, we make business all about raising money and not about customers.

• 6:39Simon Sinek?

  Did you do it with a, with a raise or did you bootstrap?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  No, it was just um the SBA, um getting loans. And eventually I raised money, but not until at least fifteen years in.

• 6:50Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so it was already, it's already a thing.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  It's already a brand, it's already a thing, we already have an ethos, we already know what we're doing, you, you know.

• 6:56Simon Sinek?

  It's an interesting question. I wonder if your form of entrepreneurship, which is, you know, getting a bank loan and like there are systems that exist to raise money. I wonder if, um, if that is a dying breed.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  I think it is, and I, I am 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 if, and that's the work. 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 and, and it seems like it's this, you know, miracle or something. It's just about one foot in front of the other, one, literally one dollar. And then another dollar and another dollar.

• 7:48Simon Sinek?

  My sort of lamentation, I guess, is there was a time where, where, where people said that if you worked for a public company, that was the worst because of all the pressures from Wall Street for companies to do the wrong thing, et cetera, et cetera, that weren't in the company's employees or customers' interest, just in the shareholders' interest. But so many companies now are venture backed or private equity backed, 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. And growth is the goal, not survival, right? Not great product, not something that can outlast the founders, just short-term growth.

• 8:29Simon Sinek?

  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. It's a great business, but it's not.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Well, nobody would have thought my idea was scalable.

• 8:44Simon Sinek?

  But they don't want to invest in 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. 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 of getting cash infusions to build a business. I'm wondering if that form of entrepreneurship is just going away.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  I think it is, but I think it always is ready for a resurgence because it'll be a rebellion. And that is actually what entrepreneurship is, is a rebellion, right? That is literally what it is.

• 9:24Simon Sinek?

  Say more.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  If you take money from someone, you work for them.

• 9:27Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  You're not an entrepreneur in my mind. Like, an entrepreneur is taking risks. They are rebelling against the system. They are saying, they're planting a flag and saying, I'm going to take a stand for something that doesn't exist. And I'm going to do it. And eventually, if you, 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. 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.

• 9:59Simon Sinek?

  It says on all your school reports, you know.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Literally.

• 10:01Simon Sinek?

  Jenny doesn't do as she's told.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  She's patient, she's kind, but she can't follow the rules.

• 10:04Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Which is like curiosity is just that, you know? So yeah, so I think that that's where it will come from. 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.

• 10:22Simon Sinek?

  Not every business has to be scalable.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Absolutely. 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're 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. It's hard to go to one location every single day. I did that for 10 years at Jenny's. It is hard. For me, I have to have a bigger vision. I like to be challenged in that way. But also, I started in a farmer's market and around me, there were, there was the flower lady, the poultry people, you know, the butcher. And all of those people had been there for years, decades, and they're still there now. Thirty years since.

• 11:03Simon Sinek?

  But that's part of the rebellion spirit, which is

• 11:04Speaker 00

  That's what they do, yeah.

• 11:06Simon Sinek?

  You're too confined in the farmer's market. It's like, I gotta break out of my little town.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:10Simon Sinek?

  You know, I gotta make it to Broadway, whatever, you know, whatever the ambition is.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  And I had this vision, I mean, literally, I saw Ben and Jerry's and I was like, okay, I can do that too. You know, 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 Steingarten used to write, the food there like came to visit because he, he was very interested in that idea. And the people from Haagen Dazs are sending their people and they're in their shirts that say Haagen Dazs. And I'm thinking like, well, if there was ever a validation

• 11:40Simon Sinek?

  Right. That Haagen Dazs is stealing your flavors.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, or just that we can grow. It's huge. It's salty, because mine was actually a mistake. Salted caramel is the way everybody makes caramel in America.

• 11:49Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  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 was, I would spend all the time in the library just reading about various places and like, a French chef from Brittany was like, to me, very heavy accent, the caramel is salty. And I thought he meant like Swedish licorice.

• 12:09Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Like, it was salted licorice. And so I started making caramel like that I thought was authentic.

• 12:15Simon Sinek?

  With lots of salt.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  With a little extra salt than what we were used to

• 12:19Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  in America, which is like just basically what would be a salted butter in France. So, so yeah.

• 12:24Simon Sinek?

  So it was basically his poor grammar.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:27Simon Sinek?

  You invented an entirely new thing.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, yeah. So when you go to France and get salted caramel, it's just beautiful. It's like this perfectly salted caramel, but you don't, the salt doesn't

• 12:37Simon Sinek?

  The salt enhances, you don't taste the salt.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  But in mine, you taste a little more.

• 12:41Simon Sinek?

  So I want to go back to this entrepreneurship idea. I love this idea of entrepreneurship is rebellion. And I think entrepreneurship has become a vehicle for wealth. Like, we've forgotten the source of it, which is invention.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Well, and also a vehicle for somebody else's wealth.

• 12:53Simon Sinek?

  And a vehicle for somebody else's wealth, which is the worst kind, right?

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 12:56Simon Sinek?

  So, there's a book, an old book, by Michael Gerber, called The E-Myth, The Entrepreneurial Myth.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:03Simon Sinek?

  And he wrote years ago, and it was really to challenge this idea that, like, I was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. You know, it was 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, 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 it's necessarily cracked up to be. So, I'm gonna regret this question. I don't even like the sound of the question coming out of my mouth when I'm gonna ask it. Is there a formula for who should and who should not start a business?

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know. I wanna 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 me. We all think that. Everybody thinks like, I mean, I started when I was 22. So, it was like, I was just gung ho and ready and excited and whatever. I thought everybody'd be like that. And it took me actually probably longer than it should have to realize, like, oh, yeah, other people have other lives.

• 14:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Sometimes, when you have a vision, you get really locked into it. And it starts to lead you. 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 wanna say you don't have any other choices, it's just like, that's how it is. 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?

• 14:46Simon Sinek?

  Your turn of phrase is so good. You know, we talk about following a vision. But I think it undervalues actually what happens. 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.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:57Simon Sinek?

  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.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:02Simon Sinek?

  And the vision will attract other people.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  That's right. And the vision is the one, everything else can change, but the vision doesn't usually change. It's flexible enough.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  But the, 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. And then everything else between that sort of is.

• 15:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. But you're right, there's the making the thing as well, right? Because what did Thomas Edison say? Vision without halluci- uh, vision without execution is hallucination.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right, yeah.

• 15:44Simon Sinek?

  We interrupt this podcast with an ad with authenticity. 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.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  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. It's about relationship. It's about being vulnerable and, and getting outside of your normal routine.

• 16:37Simon Sinek?

  It's funny, because as you're telling me the story, I'm sort of thinking about how my car connects me with other people and what people can learn about me. And it's really funny, like, when I'm with a friend in the car, I will literally say, listen to this, and I turn on the sound, you know, and I, and I say, I paid extra for this sound, you know, it's like the customization, I, that matters to me. But it says a lot about the joy that I want in the world, you know, 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've never thought about the car giving me that, that connection with my friends who just happen to be passengers when we're going somewhere.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  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 and life. And takes me back to being a child and being in the backseat with no screens or devices and what you see in the world and how these cars bring that connection. 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.

• 17:47Simon Sinek?

  You know, the old trick, you know, the old trick about sell this pen to somebody. Do you know this?

• 17:51Speaker 00

  No.

• 17:51Simon Sinek?

  It's a, it's a, it's a sales trick. It's a, it's a where you say to somebody, uh, sell me this pen, right? And almost every time people go, so I've got this new pen here. It's got, you know, uh, unsmudgable ink and it's got like, and it's really comfortable to use.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  The features.

• 18:09Simon Sinek?

  And it's really, and it's amazing how, how few people say, do you write?

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Oh, right. Exactly.

• 18:17Simon Sinek?

  Nobody asks, nobody asks any questions. They start talking about the pen and the good salespeople say, so when do you write?

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:25Simon Sinek?

  Um, 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 how many people start, you're to your point, which is go sell something, especially something you've come up with. And I agree, and I think even go sell an idea.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:40Simon Sinek?

  Because then a lot of people will be like, I don't know, you know, versus like, I love your idea, you know?

• 18:45Speaker 00

  And also everybody will say, will sort of be like, eh, not a great idea. You'll get a lot of that.

• 18:51Simon Sinek?

  I had a friend whose rule was if one other person likes your idea, you might have a thing.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  I agree with that. I a hundred percent agree with that. If you can get one person.

• 18:57Simon Sinek?

  And I also think this sort of starts to play into sort of what an entrepreneur is. And I, and I love your ideas of the rebel. Cause I think we have a misunderstanding of what entrepreneurs are, you know, uh, there's a difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner. A small business owner owns a small business.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, you could be dentist.

• 19:12Simon Sinek?

  And an entrepreneur solves problems and you'll find entrepreneurs in companies and very large companies, they're 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. 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.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, yeah, no, it's true.

• 19:36Simon Sinek?

  Simon, that's, that's just, I remember my boss asked me to do something and I, and I got it done. And then, you know, sort of a few days later, 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? 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, is I worked in a big company, but the rules, if I had a better way, then, then do it. That seemed to make sense to me.

• 20:21Simon Sinek?

  And so, the entrepreneurial venture, this is why I like your, your definition of entrepreneur is 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. And, 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.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  And it doesn't matter if you get in trouble.

• 20:49Simon Sinek?

  It doesn't matter if you get in trouble.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Even if, it just doesn't matter.

• 20:53Simon Sinek?

  In fact, those are badges of honor.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:56Simon Sinek?

  Where, how, how did you get in trouble? When you started Jenny's, so you, you're, you're this little ice cream shop.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  I mean, all the time. It was, I mean, everything from, you know, 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, you know, like, sort of generic, off the shelf ice cream base that a lot of dairies sell, with like, lots of ingredients in there that I didn't want to use. 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.

• 21:34Simon Sinek?

  Give me an example.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Well, just this ice cream, like not being able to go with small farms, not being able to make it with specifically my recipe. 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, and I think it's going to be six months from now, and of course, maybe it was three years. But there were a whole bunch of those things. But what happens was it was about getting better every day. So then that locks in this sort of, this is how I do things, that's how we do things at Jenny's 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. And so then it's about honestly, like just constantly finding that good trouble of like,

• 22:19Speaker 00

  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, all of the details of that. It's our product and quality. And as we grow, we can actually get now vanilla beans direct trade from a specific one farm and support them. Two, leadership, I mean, just like, how do you survive even like learning how to be a leader over time? Because founders are weird people and like over the time in their companies, you know, you're shaken up all the time over the trajectory. And I was, you know, I built Jenny's for 26 years, that was all I did every single day.

• 22:50Simon Sinek?

  Takes a long time to become an overnight success.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 22:54Simon Sinek?

  As I said, I think that we, we live in a day and age where there's, look, there's a lot of talented entrepreneurs and there's a lot of great ideas and there's a lot of disruptors.

• 23:02Simon Sinek?

  And I'm just curious what the world would look like if not everything was so growth, money and VC obsessed. 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.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  It would take the time.

• 23:17Simon Sinek?

  It would take the time and you'd have to prove the case because I don't think the VC would be rushing in and be like, I have an idea of making, you know, extra salty caramel.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  I mean, Jenny's wouldn't pass a business school if you had, if it was your business plan in a business school.

• 23:28Simon Sinek?

  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, you wouldn't pass muster.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  It's too complicated.

• 23:39Simon Sinek?

  It's too complicated. And, and so, and so it's an interesting question, like could that, could that company ever exist today? And what's the social value of, of this old school entrepreneurial bootstrap?

• 23:52Simon Sinek?

  Because there's a word in your vision. What's the vision that you have? What, how do you define your vision?

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Well, our mission is make better ice creams. Bring people together. I mean, two very simple things.

• 24:01Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  But they can be unpacked forever and ever.

• 24:03Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:04Simon Sinek?

  And the vision?

• 24:05Speaker 00

  And the vision is...

• 24:06Simon Sinek?

  What's the vision that you, that led you?

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Well, the vision that led me, it's always about being the sort of place for creative people to have conversations and spark conversations. I mean, you know, 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 and like creating that space in America?

• 24:25Simon Sinek?

  This is, this is the most interesting. I, I, I find this more interesting than the ice cream.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it's not about ice cream.

• 24:31Simon Sinek?

  Because it's not about ice cream, but even in the mission statement, like you happen to make ice cream. It could have been anything, right? What I, and I love that in the mission statement, it's, you know, we, we make great ice cream to bring people together. Like, it's a human mission. The ice cream is a conduit.

• 24:46Simon Sinek?

  And I'm curious, like, where did that come from? 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?

• 25:03Speaker 00

  I don't know, a little bit of both. So I moved every year growing up.

• 25:06Simon Sinek?

  Why?

• 25:06Speaker 00

  So I didn't have, my parents just moved a lot. They were like across town. It wasn't like...

• 25:10Simon Sinek?

  Just because?

• 25:11Speaker 00

  You know, they were kind of nomadic in that way.

• 25:12Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  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 younger than me at home. So we moved constantly.

• 25:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  And I think I craved community. 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, I just was an introvert. I liked 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 at an ice cream, actually, my first job was at an ice cream shop, of course. I always knew I would be in ice cream. But, um... 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 like literally serving other people.

• 26:01Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, like let me give you a scoop of ice cream.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  And I excelled. 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. 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 getting other people's participation and trying to like get other people to like enjoy it and have fun doing it too.

• 26:39Simon Sinek?

  So the idea of servant leadership was very literal, which is

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Literal.

• 26:43Simon Sinek?

  I'm 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.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:54Simon Sinek?

  You know, like

• 26:55Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 26:56Simon Sinek?

  Nobody can be angry eating ice cream.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  No.

• 26:58Simon Sinek?

  You can't be depressed or angry.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  I have never seen it.

• 27:00Simon Sinek?

  But you can't be angry.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can be very, you can be depressed.

• 27:02Simon Sinek?

  You can be depressed. You go through pints of ice cream if you're depressed. But you can't be angry eating ice cream. It just doesn't exist.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  No.

• 27:09Simon Sinek?

  You know? And so I love this idea that your inhibitions fall aside because you're learning this thing called servant leadership, which 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.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:20Simon Sinek?

  And so I guess what I'm scratching at here is, because ice cream is now a metaphor, right?

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Oh, it's a lot of metaphors, yes.

• 27:27Simon Sinek?

  So, so ice cream is now a metaphor for service to bring some betterment to someone's life, some joy, some sweetness, whatever it is. 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, come follow your vision with you?

• 27:45Speaker 00

  At Jenny's, you know, we all get endless tastes. 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, and working with, like, high school kids, starting, because that was the beginning of the company for a very long time. They were very young people.

• 28:11Simon Sinek?

  Who don't really, don't really get service.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  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.

• 28:20Simon Sinek?

  For example?

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Going to a coffee shop, like, you know, little things where you, you might, you're kind of confused and you ask a question instead of somebody answering you, they like point to something. You know, just little things, somebody, you know.

• 28:31Simon Sinek?

  I think they're giving you the answer by pointing.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, or they're actually literally annoyed by you, because they feel that they're, like, in servitude or something, that they're, they don't really want to be there. So at Jenny's, 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, service is a gift you give, it comes back to you later, and us as a team too. But you keep giving that and keep generating that in the world. Think about what you're, what you're creating for you. And we, we talk about that a lot. And so we would get high school kids who were,

• 29:14Speaker 00

  I have goosebumps just even talking about it, 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. But they, they really set the tone for who we would 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 learned, like, me being on the front line. I was on the front line for 10 years, that's how I learned everything. And it's not just like the specifics, Americans like caramel better than any other flavor. It's, 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.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Emotion every time somebody new comes around.

• 30:04Simon Sinek?

  You teach people this?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  They learn it. We talk about it. You can't really teach it. You have to experience it, you know? If you've worked in an ice cream shop for two summers, and probably a coffee shop too, any fast service kind of place, you know, you're like looking at the third person down 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. And that is actually how people do these fast services. 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 let it up. And it's like interesting, it's like, it's so new, it's so atomic, almost.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  And so we talk about like, whatever you go on and do in your life, remember this and, and be able to articulate this forward. Because it's important, because it's, it's an art.

• 30:58Simon Sinek?

  I think a lot of people would complain about young people today.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:04Simon Sinek?

  A little bit of obliviousness. 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, and service. Is it a midwestern thing that you, or have you noticed a variation across the country? Like, is it, is it a myth that, that young people today are sort of, you know, struggling to serve? Is it just sort of old people complaining about young people? Or have you noticed a trend that your store is actually helping give these young people a skill that their friends don't have?

• 31:37Speaker 00

  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 and I found it.

• 31:44Simon Sinek?

  Forgotten generation.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  I'm September 29th, 1973, and I think you're October.

• 31:48Simon Sinek?

  October 9th.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  9th, so happy birthday.

• 31:49Simon Sinek?

  1973.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  So, Gen X.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  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.

• 32:00Simon Sinek?

  We weren't slackers.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  I know, well, we weren't.

• 32:02Simon Sinek?

  No. We were not slackers. We were absolutely not slackers.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  No, I mean, definitely not.

• 32:07Simon Sinek?

  We just got to work and got stuff done and didn't complain or whine. It's why, it's why this, I get a kick out of this, which is there are books written about the greatest generation who served in World War II. 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.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  It's so small. It's a small group. We just didn't care.

• 32:28Simon Sinek?

  We just got to work and got stuff done and like, there you go. Here we are.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Or, you know, we also just didn't feel important.

• 32:33Simon Sinek?

  I think our generation had success younger than our parents. So like, you know, our parents' generation, you know, they made vice president in their late 40s, you know? And our generation was making vice president in our late 30s. We grew up in very good times. I mean, the 80s were awesome.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  They were.

• 32:51Simon Sinek?

  They were awesome. It was a kind of gentler Cold War. Like, we weren't practicing hiding under our desks for nuclear war. You know, it's not the 60s. And, and we just kind of like graduated school and got to work and got jobs and worked hard and just like...

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Okay, this is interesting to me too, because the music we were all listening to. We were all united by that. And I was listening to some Bruce Springsteen, some Tom Petty the other day, coming back from Montreal. And, and I think about this every once in a while, 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.

• 33:27Simon Sinek?

  Too shy to shy, how shy do I?

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, it just...

• 33:31Simon Sinek?

  Karma, karma, karma, chameleon.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. Culture Club. I absolutely still...

• 33:34Simon Sinek?

  But like, we had music where the lyrics literally made no sense.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  But they made you...

• 33:38Simon Sinek?

  There wasn't even words.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  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. 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 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.

• 34:04Simon Sinek?

  Did you listen to Metallica?

• 34:05Speaker 00

  I mean, I grew up in Ohio, Slayer, Metallica, all of that.

• 34:07Simon Sinek?

  My god, this changed my whole age. It was like this nice little, you know, midwestern absolute nonsense. You're heavy metal.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  All of it, you know?

• 34:16Simon Sinek?

  I did like Def Leppard.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Oh, well, yeah, sure.

• 34:18Simon Sinek?

  Just, Pyromania, just the one album.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  That was great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, that was fun.

• 34:23Simon Sinek?

  You realize there's a whole generation that was just tuned out of what we're talking about now.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  I know. And it's, yeah, it's interesting. You know, we were, somebody, I read, somebody did a speech on the mixtape generation and what it took to create a mixtape.

• 34:35Simon Sinek?

  It was work. It was an act of love.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  You put yourself into it.

• 34:38Simon Sinek?

  An act of love.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  And I was like, this is such a beautiful thing. It makes me so happy that to have been a part of this.

• 34:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, you had to play and record on two different.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  But sort of bring it all back anyway, because like entrepreneurship, I think, is ready for a comeback. This new idea of entrepreneurship where it isn't working for somebody else. It is more of 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 and then, you know, be a unicorn. Like, go be a unicorn. But there's also, 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.

• 35:29Simon Sinek?

  You have just summed up the best metaphor of what true entrepreneurship is, which is the mixtape.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:38Simon Sinek?

  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.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  No.

• 35:56Simon Sinek?

  But like five or six dates in, or like when you're dating somebody and they're your girlfriend, like the way you say I love you is you make a mixtape. And if you make a two-sided mixtape. I mean, that's hardcore.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a lot of songs.

• 36:09Simon Sinek?

  That's a lot of effort and it takes days.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  And if somebody gives you a mixtape.

• 36:12Simon Sinek?

  If somebody gives you a mixtape.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Repeat.

• 36:14Simon Sinek?

  It's an act of love.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  And you're listening to it.

• 36:16Simon Sinek?

  An act of love.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Like non-stop.

• 36:18Simon Sinek?

  Non-stop and, and, and you don't even like every song. But you love the reason it's there.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  Because they loved it.

• 36:23Simon Sinek?

  And there's a vision that has to be there, which is I want to tell somebody something. I want to show the world something. I'm going to put my stamp on it and do it my way.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  And I'm going to give a little of myself, you know, it's, you're getting to know somebody through this.

• 36:35Simon Sinek?

  And even though the songs exist, like everybody knows the songs.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  In this order?

• 36:40Simon Sinek?

  In this order with these lyrics or these melodies or these.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  And then you write the.

• 36:44Simon Sinek?

  And you write the notes and like real love is like the design and you've, and like if you get a real mixtape, the whole thing is filled in with words, not just what is, what's on there.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:53Simon Sinek?

  That's right, because you got to write the, the, and I think this is, this is the greatest metaphor for why you should start a business.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  I think that's exactly right.

• 37:03Simon Sinek?

  Which is, I want to, I want to tell somebody something and I, I'm, there's an act of love. I'm going to put in this huge amount of effort with, with a high probability of failure. But it's worth it.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:15Simon Sinek?

  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 becoming an accountant or a doctor or a lawyer, but instead you decided to become an entrepreneur. Because it's so time consuming.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:29Simon Sinek?

  And you have to have a little bit of organization because we can tell when a mixtape is done.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:32Simon Sinek?

  Badly because it's just whatever was on the radio, right? Versus thoughtfully.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  No, I totally, totally agree. Like what is driving you to do this? Like what is so powerful, so important that's driving you to do this? Like understanding that is, is it? Because that's where you take the risk. That's where you take the effort, you put the effort in.

• 38:00Simon Sinek?

  How do you go from ice cream to fiber? How do you go from protein to roughage?

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 38:05Simon Sinek?

  How do you go from really sweet and lovely to no taste at all?

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Yes, well, it's, you know.

• 38:11Simon Sinek?

  Just curious how you made that transition. Like, what act of love was that?

• 38:14Speaker 00

  I was with Jenny's, you know, I was, I was 100% in, 150% in, too much in.

• 38:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:51Simon Sinek?

  Your identity was tied into your business.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Everything, yeah. It was the world that I created. So that I 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.

• 39:11Simon Sinek?

  To the literal forest?

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Literal forest.

• 39:13Simon Sinek?

  Not the metaphorical forest.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  10 miles a day or more sometimes and just hours out there every day. And I started to feel really good and I, 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, forest. I was like, it was like I was just becoming part of the forest and I was just like eating things, I don't know. 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 outside, but it ended up being fibre that I was eating. And I started to read a lot of books about fibre and realised that like, when you get diverse fibres, you actually change how you feel. And that, you know, 60% of Americans have one or more chronic illness and it's related to fibre and 95% of us are deficient. And it was like, you know, just, it was like reading all these books and, and, you know, peeling back that onion and, and then. I was helping another entrepreneur just for fun.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  And he and I were working with other founders 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 going out. Well, what if we could take it? And what if we could figure out how to make it into a flour or 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.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  And it was like, it, it was that sort of like the light, it's just the path just started to light up.

• 40:49Simon Sinek?

  Where's the togetherness?

• 40:50Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 40:51Simon Sinek?

  Where's the togetherness? Cause according to 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, a, a restaurant, that's fine. And somebody says, how was your dinner? We're like, it's fine. It's fine. It's good. It's fine. And that's it. And what defines a great restaurant is not that, is, is two things.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yes, I see what you're saying.

• 41:13Simon Sinek?

  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 was the ice cream? It's good. It's chocolate ice cream. It's good. Right? That people are talking about it when they're done. They're talking about it the next day.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  They'll cry.

• 41:32Simon Sinek?

  They, they, it's like, like a great restaurant. It wants to create a conversation. And to your point that, that ice cream is simply the, 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.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting because it's, 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, in that it's a chance for me to make people feel better. You know, but it's just a different kind of better. And I believe so much that there's like nature inside of you, nature outside and, and you know, all of this. And to me, it's just all, it's all one.

• 42:26Simon Sinek?

  Can I propose a logic?

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:28Simon Sinek?

  It's not a marketing thing.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Yes, please, yeah.

• 42:30Simon Sinek?

  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 are much better equipped to, to give love if you feel good.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  That's true. That's exactly right.

• 42:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. If you're, if you're unhealthy, and I mean that in physically unhealthy, mentally unhealthy, like all the unhealthies. 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.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  That is exactly right.

• 43:04Simon Sinek?

  By giving them love. And, and I think you're right. This is a very, very simple and oft forgotten component of health. But if people feel good, they're better equipped to, to, to love others.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  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.

• 43:33Simon Sinek?

  No kidding.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. So then I must have a very fibered diet. I was like, and there's a whole bunch of things, you know, um, mental clarity, but also like it affects your emotions. It's really like, it's not even your second brain. It's like your first brain.

• 43:45Simon Sinek?

  It also reduces the glucose spike you'll get from ice cream.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Yes. So eat your fiber first, then eat the ice cream. Make sure you get your fiber, you know, whatever in the morning, before you, before you have your cone.

• 43:57Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  You know, so we were thinking about that, we're like, wow, I mean, if we could just wave a magic wand and, 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.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  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.

• 44:21Simon Sinek?

  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 all this stuff. And I'm like, okay. And so I would have like kale with every meal or spinach with every meal. And then I read a thing recently that I have to eat thirty different types of fruits and vegetables per week.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, thirty, well, thirty plants. So that can also be like spices and herbs. So I count those.

• 44:43Simon Sinek?

  But they have to be different.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Plants, I mean, sorry, legumes, beans, nuts. It's actually not.

• 44:48Simon Sinek?

  But it's not thirty portions of kale.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  No, it's thirty different. You have to have diversity.

• 44:54Simon Sinek?

  That the thing that really freaked me out. Thirty is a lot.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  It is, and that's why flora 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 variety in your diet, just by like, it's all right there.

• 45:09Simon Sinek?

  Which is probably why this is a thing, because we are born of nature and we ate from nature and 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. And so we have to go, unfortunately, recreate.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  But we have this.

• 45:25Simon Sinek?

  The diversity of nature through a bar.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  And we are not processing thirty vegetables and fruits and things in our kitchens anymore. And so. But you should, you can.

• 45:35Simon Sinek?

  I have to ask you a couple. We do, we do. I don't want to end, but this is a shame. Where are the, so here we go. I have a few questions that I'm, that I'm supposed to ask you.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  Okay, great. We'll see if I can answer.

• 45:48Simon Sinek?

  Jenny's splendid ice creams almost didn't recover from a recall in 2015. What did surviving the cataclysmic event teach you?

• 45:55Speaker 00

  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 to get through it.

• 46:18Simon Sinek?

  A pint of ice cream, right?

• 46:19Speaker 00

  One pint of ice cream with listeria in it. And that's something that you work really hard to prevent.

• 46:24Simon Sinek?

  Just one pint?

• 46:25Speaker 00

  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 a, 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 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, 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 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.

• 47:08Simon Sinek?

  For example?

• 47:09Speaker 00

  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 more difficult to run and potentially even a safety issue. 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 than we are. Like, we were doing everything in our kitchen to the point of like cutting the strawberries.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  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 as a company.

• 48:07Simon Sinek?

  Instead of making your own pralines, you could buy the pralines from somebody who's making pralines better than you.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Well, we could give them my recipe.

• 48:12Simon Sinek?

  Or you can give them your recipe and they'll make them for you even better.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  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. 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 and 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.

• 48:37Simon Sinek?

  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 had, you sort of misunderstood what artisanal 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 pint got contaminated. And if it was always simple. It may never have happened.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 49:04Simon Sinek?

  You know this, when it comes to food, like, great food is not how complex you make it. It's really high quality ingredients.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:11Simon Sinek?

  You know, uh, simply prepare it.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 49:15Simon Sinek?

  And that makes great food. And we live in a world now where we've industrialized and taken the taste out of high quality food and made it low quality food. And then we have to add tons of chemicals to make the qual- 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, this conversation with you is 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

• 49:58Simon Sinek?

  at problem solving, my friend who's better at listening, and if we just like, become friends and take care of each other, all of our lives get better.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  And you'd never, so you would never wish that kind of crisis on anyone.

• 50:10Simon Sinek?

  Of course not, yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  And it's the best thing that can happen to you because you will never cut that much out of your life without crisis.

• 50:21Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  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, you know, within the week that it happened, we were going to come out of it better.

• 50:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. 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 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, you know, the, the, the baker is driven to make the best bread and the cheesemaker is driven to make the best cheese and the farmer's made driven to make the best ham. And so what you get is the best sandwich. And so you don't have to make the best strawberries, the best pralines, the best this.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 51:18Simon Sinek?

  You don't have, if you have some, somebody's obsession is the best praline and somebody else's obsession is the best milk. And you combine those, what somebody gets is the best ice cream.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. Yeah.

• 51:28Simon Sinek?

  That is, that is what Adam Smith envisioned, that what capitalism's supposed to be. And the customer is always the winner at the end of that, at the end of that equation.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  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, that 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 Flora too. So it's just always trying to, I don't know, you know, play the infant game, I guess.

• 52:02Simon Sinek?

  Amen.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 52:03Simon Sinek?

  Jenny, you're the best.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Well, likewise. Thank you so much. This is so great.

• 52:06Simon Sinek?

  And for anybody who hasn't tried Jenny's ice cream, I mean, you're missing out.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Get your spoon.

• 52:13Simon Sinek?

  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.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Eat your heart out.

• 52:21Simon Sinek?

  And eat your heart out and, and do a taste test, because that's the fun, I, I know.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  That is.

• 52:24Simon Sinek?

  I know when I go, when I've bought your ice cream from the supermarket, and I, and I really hate you for this. I go to buy one pint and I end up buying three, because I'm like, ooh, we really should try this one.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then you want to try them together.

• 52:37Simon Sinek?

  And then they're all open and we're all sitting there with spoons.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  That's what it's about.

• 52:40Simon Sinek?

  And, and it really, it is really, it is, you know, for, for depression, you eat Haagen Dazs. And for joy, you eat Jenny's.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. I love that so much. It's so true.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  So true. I love it. Thank you.

• 52:56Simon Sinek?

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