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

20:47Jeni Britton:And it doesn't matter if you get in trouble. And it doesn't matter if you get in trouble. And you can walk through, even if it just doesn't matter. In fact, those are badges of honor. Yeah, exactly. How did you get in trouble when you started Jenny's? So you're this little ice cream shop. 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 it, you know, like sort of generic ice 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.

21:24Jeni Britton: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 an 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. 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 going to be six months from now. And, of course, maybe it was three years.

21:56Jeni Britton: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, that's 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, 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.

22:27Jeni Britton: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 to 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 the company, 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. Makes a long time to become an overnight success. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. As I said, I think that we live in a day and age where there's a lot of talented entrepreneurs and there's a lot of great ideas and there's a lot of disruptors.

23:02And 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 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 the time. It would take the time and you'd have to prove the case because I don't think the VC would be rushing in if you're like, I have an idea of making, you know, extra salty caramel.

23:25Jeni Britton:I mean, Jenny's wouldn't pass a business school if it was your business plan in a business school. 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. It's too complicated. It's too complicated. And so it's an interesting question. Like, could that company ever exist today and 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 well our mission is make better ice creams bring people together two very simple things right but they can be unpacked forever and ever right yeah and the vision and the vision is what's the vision that you that well the vision that led me it's always about um being the sort of place for creative people to have conversations and spark conversations.

24:15Jeni Britton:We, 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? This is, this is the most interesting. I, I, I find this more interesting than the ice cream. Yeah. Cause it's not about ice cream. Cause 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. Um, what I, 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 the ice cream is a conduit and yeah 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 i don't know a little bit of both so i moved every year growing up so i didn't have my parents just moved a lot they were like across town it wasn't like just because you know they were kind of nomadic in that way okay and so i never had like a like a friend even longer than a year i mean my sister lucky i had a sister um 18 months here to me at home so we moved constantly yeah um 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 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 actually my first job was at an ice cream job 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 literally serving literally serving other people And I excelled.

26:03Jeni Britton: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 and getting other people's participation and trying to like get other people to like enjoy it and have fun doing it.

26:39So 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. You know, like nobody can be angry eating ice cream. No. You can't be depressed or angry. I have never seen it. But you can't be angry. Yeah, you can be depressed. 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. No. And so I love this idea that your inhibitions fall aside because you're learning this thing called servant leadership.

27:15I'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. So I guess what I'm scratching at here is because ice cream is now a metaphor, right?

27:26Jeni Britton: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. 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 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 give out 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.

27:59Jeni Britton: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 work 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 who don't really don't really get service. Well, 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 little things where you're kind of confused and you ask a question, and instead of somebody answering you, they point to something.

28:29Jeni Britton:Just little things. I think they're giving you the answer by pointing. Yeah, or they're actually literally annoyed by you because they feel that they are in servitude or something, that 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.

28:59Jeni Britton: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 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 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.

29:33Jeni Britton:That team is like 1 ,200 people now. And they're the most important thing in the company for us. because we learned, it's 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 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. You teach people this? They learn it. We talk about it.

30:07Jeni Britton:You can't really teach it. You have to experience it, you know? if you've worked at an ice cream shop for two summers and probably a coffee shop to any fast service kind of place you know 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 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 light and it's like interesting that'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 and be able to articulate this forward because it's important because it's it's an art i think a lot of people would uh complain about young people today yeah um a little bit of um obliviousness i don't know if it's the modern generation or young people.

31:10And 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 a variation across the country? Like, is it a myth 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.

31:37Jeni Britton: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. The forgotten generation. I'm September 29th, 1973, and I think you're October? October 9th. 9th, so happy birthday. 1973. 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. You weren't slackers. I know, well, we weren't. No, we were not slackers. We were absolutely not.

32:06Jeni Britton:No, I mean, definitely not. We just got to work and got stuff done and didn't complain or whine. 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. 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. Or, you know, we also just didn't feel important. I think our generation had success younger than our parents.

32:36So 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. In the 80s were awesome. They were. 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 we just kind of like graduated school and got to work and got jobs and worked hard and just like...

33:05Jeni Britton: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 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. Too shy to shy, how shy shy do I? Yes. I mean, it just karma, karma, karma chameleon. Oh, my gosh. Ultra club. I absolutely still. But like we had music where the lyrics literally made no sense.

33:37But they weren't even wasn't even words.

33:39Jeni Britton: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 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. You listened to Metallica? I mean, I grew up in Ohio. Slayer, Metallica, all of that. Oh, my God. It's changed my whole image of me. It was like this nice little, you know, Midwestern absolute nonsense.

34:13You're heavy metal.

34:15Jeni Britton:Oh, all of it, you know. I did like Def Leppard. Oh, well, yeah, sure. Just Pyramania. Just the one album. That was great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, that was fun. We've lost. You realize there's a whole generation that was tuned out of what we're talking about now. I know. And it's interesting. Somebody did a speech on the mixtape generation and what it took to create a mixtape. It was work. It was an act of love. You put yourself into it. It was an act of love. And I was like, this is such a beautiful thing. It makes me so happy to have been a part of this. Yeah, you have to play and record on two different - But so to bring it all back anyway, because entrepreneurship, I think, is ready for a comeback.

34:52Jeni Britton:this new idea of entrepreneurship where it isn't working for somebody else it is more of a not a not that sort of um heroic it is though it's 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 yeah like go be a unicorn but there's also like this kind of entrepreneurship is very um humbling you're always like you know um I kind of am 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. You have just summed up the best metaphor of what true entrepreneurship is, which is the mixtape.

35:37Jeni Britton: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, it's, yeah. 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. Yeah, that's a lot of songs. That's a lot of effort and it takes days.

36:11You can't even do it in one sitting.

36:12Jeni Britton:And if somebody gives you a mixtape. If somebody gives you a mixtape. Repeat. It's an act of love. And you're listening to it. An act of love. Like nonstop. Nonstop. It's emotional. And you don't even like every song. But you love the reason. But because they loved it. 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 want to put my stamp on it and do it my way. And I'm going to give a little of myself. You're getting to know somebody through this. And even though the songs exist, like everybody knows the songs. In this order.

36:40In this order with these lyrics or these melodies or these. Oh, and then 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's on there. Yeah. That's right. Cause you got to write the, the, the, and I think this is, this is the greatest metaphor for why you should start a business. I think that's exactly right. Which is, I want to, I want to tell somebody something and I, I'm going to, there's an act of love. and put in this huge amount of effort with a high probability of failure, but it's worth it.

37:15And 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. Yeah. And you have to have a little bit of organization because we can tell when a mixtape is done badly because it's just whatever was on the radio, right? Versus thoughtfully. No, I totally, totally agree.

37:40Jeni Britton: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 it. Because that's where you take the risk. That's where you take the effort. You put the effort in. So good. How do you go from ice cream to fiber? How do you go from protein to roughage? Right. Right. How do you go from really sweet and lovely to no taste at all? Yes. Well, it's, you know. I'm just curious how you made that transition. Like what act of love was that? I was with Jenny's, you know, I was 100 % in, 150 % in, too much in. Yeah. For 26 years.

38:22Yeah.

38:23Jeni Britton:And it was, I was probably in too long, actually. COVID was about to happen. And 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. Your identity was tied into your business. Everything, yeah. It was the world that I created so that I didn't have to be in this one, honestly.

38:58Jeni Britton: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 went, not the metaphorical forest, 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.

39:28Jeni Britton: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 it. But it ended up being fiber that I was eating. 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, you know, 60 percent of Americans have one or more chronic illness and it's related to fiber and 95 percent of us are deficient. And it was like, you know, just it was like reading all these books and, you know, peeling back that onion. And then I was helping another entrepreneur just just for fun.

39:59Jeni Britton: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 in 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 it was like, there's all of this waste going on. 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?

40:34Jeni Britton: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 we just started. And it was like, it was that sort of like the light is just the path just starts to get lit up. Where's the togetherness? What's that? Where's the togetherness? because according to everything you're doing, and the thing that I love, so 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? They'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 two things.

41:13Yes, I see what you're saying. 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's the ice cream it's good 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 yeah they stick you it's like like a great restaurant you 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 conversation well it's interesting because

42:00Jeni Britton: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 um 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 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 are much better equipped to give love if you feel good.

42:41Jeni Britton:That's true. That's exactly right. If you're unhealthy, and I mean that in physically unhealthy, mentally unhealthy, like all the unhealthy, it's very hard to give love when 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 them love. 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 love others. And I think that that's something that we definitely felt at Flora. I read books, 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.

43:33No kidding.

43:35Jeni Britton:so once i read that i was like and there's a whole bunch of 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 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 in the morning before you before you have your crown yeah you know 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 people back to eating enough fiber and diverse fibers every week, it would have a huge impact on all of the challenges that we have right now.

44:16Jeni Britton: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 all this stuff. And I'm like, OK. 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 count those. But they have to be different. Plants. I mean, sorry, legumes, beans, nuts.

44:47Jeni Britton:It's actually not. But it's not 30 portions of kale. No, it's 30 different. You have to have diversity. city that the thing that really freaked me out 30s a lot it's 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 which is probably which is probably why this is a thing because yeah 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.

45:21Right. And so we have to go, unfortunately, recreate

45:24Jeni Britton:the 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, 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 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 had a big event in 2015 that was game-ending for the company. And it was actually the worst thing I've ever been through and also the best thing I've ever been through.

46:10Jeni Britton:I would never go back to the day before. I mean, it was really the end, and it was also reputational, and it took me years to get through it. The pint of ice cream, right? 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, 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.

46:41Jeni Britton: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 were like united by our values. We thought we were like talent, hustle, and guts. And I don't know. We had all these things we said about ourselves. 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 it down to what are we here to do?

47:13Jeni Britton: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 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.

47:49Jeni Britton:Like we were doing everything in our kitchen to the point of like cutting the strawberries. 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. So we kind of restructured everything and it made us just tighter and better as a company. So instead of making your own pralines, you could buy the pralines from somebody who makes pralines better than you. Well, we could give them my recipe. Or you can give them your recipe and they'll make them for you even better.

48:14Jeni Britton: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 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. The problem with scale is scale breaks things. And you said it, which is everything was becoming more complex.

48:44And it's likely that it's that level of complexity that 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. You know this. When it comes to food, great food is not how complex you make it. It's really high-quality ingredients simply prepared, 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 with low-quality food.

49:24And then we have to add tons of chemicals 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 with you is filled with metaphors, which is your listeria in a pint 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 listening, and if we just become friends and take care of each other, all of our lives get better.

50:06Jeni Britton:And you'd never, so you would never wish that kind of crisis on anyone. Of course not, yeah. 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 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, within the week that it happened, we were going to come out of it better. 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 an investor, but rather giving a customer something magical, bringing people together.

50:53It'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 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, the best cream. If you have 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.

51:27Jeni Britton:That's exactly right. Yeah. That is what Adam Smith envisioned, what capitalism is supposed to be. And the customer is always the winner 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 flora too so it's just always trying to i don't know you know play the infant game i guess amen 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.

52:12Jeni Britton: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 eat your heart out and do a taste test. Because that's the fun. I know when I go, when I bought your ice cream from the supermarket, 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. Yeah, and then you want to try them together. And then they're all open and we're all sitting there with spoons. That's what it's about. And it really, it is really, it is, you know, for depression, you eat Haagen-Dazs and for joy, you eat Jenny's.

52:48Jeni Britton:Yes, exactly. I love that so much. It's so true. 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 Devin Johnson Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts And if you want even more cool stuff Visit simonsynic.com Thanks for listening Take care of yourself Take care of each other