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

Summary

A Bit of Optimism: “A Rebel With a Cause (and a Cone)”

Host: Simon Sinek
Guest: Jeni Britton, Founder of Jeni’s Ice Cream & Flora Bars
Date: December 2, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the journey of Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni’s Ice Cream, as a creative entrepreneur who redefined her industry. Simon draws parallels between the craft of making a mixtape—a personal, time-consuming act of love—and building a business, arguing that both are deep acts of creativity, rebellion, and service. The conversation explores themes including the realities of entrepreneurship, the importance of purpose, creative risk-taking, servant leadership, resilience in adversity, and the enduring value of doing things differently.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Flavors, Creativity, and Discovery (02:03–04:00)

• Jeni’s Philosophy on Flavor: Cardamom as an underappreciated spice and flavor.
• Flavor Experimentation: Jeni and Simon swap surprising combinations (cinnamon on eggs, caramel and mint) that reflect their playful approaches to creativity.
  • Jeni: “People are actually afraid of cardamom… It’s so beautiful.” (02:10)
  • Simon: “Cinnamon on eggs… It is spectacular. It’s magical.” (02:47)

2. The Entrepreneur’s Journey: Rebellion and Resilience (04:00–11:03)

• Starting Out: Jeni explains her path from art student and perfumer to ice cream entrepreneur, emphasizing passion and ignorance as a blessing in business.
• Entrepreneurship Defined As Rebellion: Building something new is framed as an act of creative defiance.
  • Jeni: “Entrepreneurship is a rebellion. If you take money from someone, you work for them. You’re not an entrepreneur.” (09:24)

3. Bootstrapping vs. Venture-Backed Growth (06:39–11:03)

• Critique of Modern Startup Culture: Both discuss the problematic obsession with scalability and rapid growth, lamenting the decline of traditional, “start-small” entrepreneurship.
  • Simon: “Not every business has to be scalable.” (10:22)
  • Jeni: “It always is ready for a resurgence… Entrepreneurship is a rebellion.” (09:14)

4. Vision, Leadership & The Mission Beyond Product (12:41–15:44)

• Vision Takes Over: Exploration of what happens when a vision compels a founder forward.
  • Simon: “At some point the vision leads you as opposed to you following the vision.” (14:45)
  • Jeni: “Everything that you’re doing starts to lead back to or advance that vision.” (14:10)
• Jeni’s Mission: “Make better ice creams. Bring people together.” (23:56)
  • Jeni: “It’s always about being the sort of place for creative people to have conversations and spark conversations.” (24:07)

5. Service, Team, and Building a Culture (25:03–31:37)

• Servant Leadership: Ice cream as a metaphor for service—both literally and in business.
  • Jeni: “Service is a gift you give to the world. It comes back to you later.” (28:30)
• Teaching Dignity & Human Skills: Jeni describes the cultural DNA at Jeni’s, where service and attentiveness are art forms.
  • Jeni: “You adjust your emotion every time somebody new comes around… It’s an art.” (30:58)
• Youth and Service: On generational perceptions and teaching customer service to young employees. Gen X, music, and the “mixtape generation.” (31:37–35:29)

6. The Mixtape as Metaphor for Entrepreneurship (35:29–37:59)

• Simon’s Metaphor: Making a mixtape—laborious, personal, vulnerable, and an act of love—mirrors authentic entrepreneurship.
  • Simon: “The greatest metaphor for why you should start a business… there’s an act of love, a huge amount of effort, with a high probability of failure, but it’s worth it.” (37:03)

7. Resilience—Surviving Crisis & Learning Simplicity (45:46–51:18)

• 2015 Listeria Recall: How surviving a crisis reshaped the company’s operations and culture.
  • Jeni: “It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through and also the best... I would never go back to the day before. We shed everything immediately that was not important, which was actually like 90% of what we were doing.” (45:55)
• Letting Go of Complexity: Handing off some processes to experts and focusing on what made Jeni’s unique.
  • Simon: “Complexity breaks things... If you can strip out the unnecessary... all our lives get better.” (49:54)

8. Legacy, Purpose, and a New Chapter (38:14–45:35)

• Transition and Identity: Jeni discusses stepping back from Jeni’s and rediscovering her purpose, leading to her new venture, Flora, focused on fiber and health.
  • Jeni: “I didn’t have anything else... I was really trying to figure out who I am outside of that.” (38:53)
• Continued Mission: Creating “better” (this time with fiber), always anchored in togetherness, nourishment, and care.
  • Simon: “If people feel good, they’re better equipped to love others.” (42:43)

9. Capitalism, Craft, and the Role of Collaboration (51:18–52:03)

• Collaboration Over Complexity: Embracing the Adam Smith model—engaging with others who have honed their craft brings about the best results for everyone.
  • Simon: “You don’t have to make the best strawberries, the best pralines… Somebody's obsession is the best praline... and what you get is the best ice cream.” (51:18)
  • Jeni: “That’s exactly right.” (51:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Entrepreneurship as Rebellion:
  “Entrepreneurship is a rebellion. That is literally what it is.”
  — Jeni Britton (09:14)

• On Vision Taking Over:
  “At some point the vision leads you as opposed to you following the vision.”
  — Simon Sinek (14:45)

• On Service:
  “Service is a gift you give to the world. It comes back to you later.”
  — Jeni Britton (28:30)

• On Resilience After Crisis:
  “It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through and also the best... I would never go back to the day before.”
  — Jeni Britton (45:55)

• On the Mixtape Metaphor:
  “The greatest metaphor for why you should start a business… there’s an act of love, a huge amount of effort, with a high probability of failure, but it’s worth it.”
  — Simon Sinek (37:03)

• On Health and Love:
  “If people feel good, they’re better equipped to love others.”
  — Simon Sinek (42:43)

• On Adam Smith, Capitalism, and Craft:
  “You don’t have to make the best strawberries, the best pralines… what you get is the best ice cream.”
  — Simon Sinek (51:18)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:03 — Cardamom, flavor experimentation, creativity
• 04:36–09:58 — Entrepreneurial journey, struggle, bootstrapping vs. VC
• 14:45 — Vision leading the founder
• 23:56 — Jeni’s company mission/vision
• 28:30–30:58 — Servant leadership, service culture, teaching young employees
• 35:29–37:59 — The mixtape as metaphor for entrepreneurship
• 38:14–45:35 — Transition from Jeni’s to Flora, purpose, health, and togetherness
• 45:46–51:18 — Surviving the recall, learning from crisis, focusing business
• 51:18–52:03 — Adam Smith/collaborative craftsmanship in business

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Final Thoughts

The episode is a resonant exploration of entrepreneurship as a creative, even rebellious act—driven not by financial ambition, but by curiosity, care, and the desire to make a positive mark on the world. Jeni’s story is as much about resilience and reinvention as it is about ice cream. Through personal anecdotes, reflective insight, and vibrant metaphor (“the mixtape generation”), Jeni and Simon articulate a timeless blueprint for meaningful work: build slowly, lead with love, serve joyfully, and—above all—embrace the art of doing things your own way.

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Listener Takeaway:
If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to start something new and meaningful—or why acts of care and creativity matter in both ice cream and entrepreneurship—this episode is an essential listen. It’s an act of optimism all its own.

Transcript

[Jenny Britton]

You know, whether it was, like, driving around listening to Metallica and just, like, getting revved up to go Metallica. I mean, I grew up in Ohio. Slayer, Metallica, all of that.

[Simon Sinek]

Oh, my God, it's changed my horse. Like this nice little, you know, Midwestern, absolute nonsense.

[Patrick Long]

You're.

[Simon Sinek]

You're heavy metal.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, all of it.

[Simon Sinek]

You know, I did, like, Def Leppard.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, well, yeah, sure.

[Simon Sinek]

Just Pyromania. Just the one album.

[Jenny Britton]

That was great. Yep. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've lost.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

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. 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. This. 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.

[Jenny Britton]

Thank you for saying that. I totally agree with you 100%. 100%. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

Everything. Yeah, 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.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Simon Sinek]

You want to go first or should I go first?

[Jenny Britton]

You go first.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay. I sprinkle cinnamon. Eggs. Fried eggs.

[Jenny Britton]

Interesting.

[Simon Sinek]

Fried eggs. Scrambled eggs. Just eggs. I sprinkle cinnamon, salt, pepper. Cinnamon on eggs.

[Jenny Britton]

Salt and pepper.

[Simon Sinek]

Salt and pepper. Because that's the base.

[Jenny Britton]

I like it. Okay.

[Simon Sinek]

And then I add cinnamon to eggs. Yeah. It is spectacular. Doesn't make it taste like a pancake. Doesn't make it taste like anything else. It's just great because cinnamon can be on sweet things or on savory things.

[Jenny Britton]

It really can.

[Simon Sinek]

It's magical.

[Jenny Britton]

It is. And it's in, like, Cincinnati, Chile. I'm from Ohio, so it works. Yeah, definitely. Oh, I love that. I'm still going. I'm still on ice cream a little bit, because that's just my. That's the lens for me and my brain. But it'll get to other things. But I really. I will say one of the things. I always said that mint is hard to pair. Like, because it is hard to pair. Yeah. Because 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 discovered it, and then I. And 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 creme de menthe and cognac. It's called the Stinger.

[Simon Sinek]

Don't know it.

[Jenny Britton]

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?

[Simon Sinek]

Of course. It'll ruin everything. Yeah. So I guess we should probably get into serious stuff. Your journey is amazing. A lot of people want to start businesses. Not many people redefine businesses. And you sort of had a huge impact in the ice cream business, as a lot of people know, bringing crazy, experimental flavors to the. To the industry. What made you want to do it as a business? Business is hard, and food businesses, really hard. And I think a lot of people have entrepreneurial dreams and entrepreneurial ambitions, but it's. This is a very difficult business.

[Jenny Britton]

It's brutal. Business is brutal. It's a brutal place to exist. And there's a lot of. I Mean, I love it. You had the idea. It's really hard.

[Simon Sinek]

It starts with an idea.

[Jenny Britton]

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. 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, 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 was a really good thing because.

[Simon Sinek]

Define hard, hard, expensive, hard hours, hard. How do you figure?

[Jenny Britton]

Solve the problem. It's just survival, you know, it is get to the next day, you know, and especially, you know, I think that one of the reasons actually that I was good at it was because I could survive longer than anybody else off of less, you know, and I'm still that way, you know, I can still live off the land in a way that I think people think they're going to be rich right away or they're going to have. They're going to go raise money, make. You know, we make business all about raising money and not about customers.

[Simon Sinek]

Did you do it with a. With a Raise or did you bootstrap?

[Jenny Britton]

No, it was just the SBA getting loans and eventually I raised money, but not until at least 15 years in.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

You, you know, 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, if that is a dying breed.

[Jenny Britton]

I think it is. And I, I'm always out talking about start small and build entrepreneurship. That's what I call it. It's like one big bunch of words. But I still believe that in America, anybody can start where they're at and build anything they can imagine. And 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 they. But then people do it all the time without those things. And it seems like it's this miracle or something. It's just about one foot in front of the other. Literally one dollar and then another dollar and another dollar.

[Simon Sinek]

My sort of lamentation, I guess, is there was a time 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 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 got a great. And they're like, it's not scalable. It's a great business, but it's not.

[Jenny Britton]

Well, nobody would have thought my idea was scalable, but they don't want to.

[Simon Sinek]

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 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 all of these old fashioned ways of getting cash infusions to build a business. I'm wondering if that form of entrepreneurship is just going away.

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

Say more.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Jenny Britton]

You're not an entrepreneur. In my mind, like an entrepreneur is taking risks. They are rebelling against a 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, 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. And 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.

[Simon Sinek]

It says on all your school reports, you know, literally Jenny doesn't do as she's told.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Jenny Britton]

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 will come from. Yeah, absolutely.

[Simon Sinek]

Not every business has to be scalable.

[Jenny Britton]

Well, 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 are only open like, I don't know, they're not open three days a week. You know, 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, you know, the poultry people, you know, the butcher. And all of those people had been there for years, decades. And they're still there now, 30 years since.

[Simon Sinek]

But that's part of the rebellion spirit.

[Jenny Britton]

Which that's what they do. You're.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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 Steingart used to write the food there, like, came to visit because he. He was very interested in that idea. And the people from Haagenaz 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.

[Simon Sinek]

Right. That Wen Daz is stealing flavors.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

Or just salted caramel is now a thing.

[Jenny Britton]

It's a huge insult to eat because mine was actually a mistake. Salted caramel is the way everybody makes caramel in America.

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Jenny Britton]

It's just always got a little salt in it. But me not being able to travel. Listen, I was working at 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.

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Jenny Britton]

Like, it was salted licorice. And so I started making caramel like that I thought was authentic with lots of salt, with a little extra salt than what we were used to in America, which is like, just basically what would be a salted butter in France. So.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, so it was basically his poor grammar.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah, exactly.

[Simon Sinek]

You invented an entirely new thing.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So when you go to France and get salted caramel, it's just. Just beautiful. It's like this perfectly salted caramel. But you don't. The salt doesn't.

[Simon Sinek]

The. The salt enhances. You don't taste the salt, but in.

[Jenny Britton]

Mine, you taste a little more.

[Simon 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.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Right. Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

So there's a book, the. An old book by Michael Gerber called the E. Myth, the entrepreneurial myth, he wrote years ago. And it was really to challenge this idea that everybody's like, I want to be an entrepreneur. And he's like, he kept meeting people who were working double the time and making half the salary than if they had a job. And he's like, why are you doing this? 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 going to regret this question. I don't even like the sound of the question coming out of my mouth, but I'm going to ask it. Is there a formula for who should and who should not start a business?

[Jenny Britton]

Well, I don't know. I want to say it's for anybody, but I also think that there are people who love to step into a team, do their part, and go home. When I was young, I thought everybody would think, like, we all think that. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Jenny Britton]

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 want to say you don't have any other choice. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

You know, your turn of phrase is so good. You know, we talk about following a vision, but I think it undervalues actually what happens. And you said there's a switch that happens at some point where you come up with this vision. At some point, the vision leads you as opposed to you following the vision. It still starts with you, but when the vision leads you, it's now starting with the vision. And the vision will attract other people.

[Jenny Britton]

That's right. And the vision is the one. Everything else can change, but the vision doesn't usually change. It's flexible enough. But the big vision is something that should come together because you know so much about whatever it is you're doing that you understand who you serve, who benefits, what the world looks like, you know, at the end, and then everything else between that sort of is mountain.

[Simon Sinek]

But you're right. There's the making the thing as well, right? Cause what did Thomas Edison say? Vision without execution is hallucination.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Simon 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. They're 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.

[Patrick Long]

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 getting outside of your normal routine.

[Simon 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. 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 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 never thought about the car giving Me, that connection with my friends who just happen to be passengers when we're going somewhere.

[Patrick Long]

And I see and feel your energy and how it makes you so passionate and it lights you up. And being the receiver of that, when you're in this small, confined space and you're going somewhere, like, strip it back and think about the windshield as your picture frame in life. And takes me back to being a child and being in the 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. And that's what I love about these cars. They're emotional.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

No.

[Simon Sinek]

It's a. It's a. It's a sales trick. It's a. It's a. Where you say to somebody, sell me this pen. Right? And almost every time people go, so I've got this new pen here. It's got, you know, unsmodable ink and it's got like. And it's really comfortable to use. And it's really. And it's amazing how few people say, do you write?

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, right. Exactly.

[Simon Sinek]

Nobody asks. Nobody asks any questions. They start talking about the pen. And the good salespeople say, so when do you write? Yeah, I keep a journal. What do you write in that journal? How often do you keep your journal? And then the pen becomes the. But it's amazing how many people start to your point, which is go sell something, especially something you've come up with. And I think even go sell an idea. Because in amount of people who be like, I don't know, versus like, I love your idea, you know, and also.

[Jenny Britton]

Everybody will say, will sort of be like, eh, not a great idea. You'll get a lot of that at some point. You have to.

[Simon Sinek]

If one other person likes your idea, you might have a thing.

[Jenny Britton]

I agree with that. I 100% agree with that. If you can get one person.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah. Dentist.

[Simon 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 think that's really true. I started out in a big company and all my performance reviews were, simon, you have to do things the way that we, we do them. And I would always say, but your way sucks and it doesn't work.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh my gosh.

[Simon Sinek]

That's just. I remember my boss asked me to do something and I got it done. And then sort of a few days later and he comes and knocks on my door and he goes, I need to have a conversation with you about the thing you did. That's not how we do things here. And I said, did anybody complain to you? He said, no. I said, did I break any rules, any laws? No. I said, are you happy with the results? 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, I worked in a big company, but the rules, if I had a better way than do it, that seemed to make sense to me. The entrepreneurial venture. This is why I like your definition of entrepreneur's rebel. Because you can have rebellion inside companies and there's entrepreneurial things that happen inside companies. And it's about seeing things or vision or problem solving. All those magical things where the rules say you can't, you shouldn't. That's difficult, that's impossible. 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.

[Jenny Britton]

And it doesn't matter if you get in trouble and you can walk through.

[Simon Sinek]

Even if it doesn't matter if you.

[Jenny Britton]

Get it, it just doesn't matter.

[Simon Sinek]

In fact, those are badges of honor.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah, exactly.

[Simon Sinek]

How did you get in trouble when you started Jenny's? So you're this little ice cream shop.

[Jenny Britton]

I mean, all the time. It was, I mean, everything from, you know, I wanted to use grass pastured 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. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

Give me an example.

[Jenny Britton]

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 gonna 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. 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 and 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 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 their 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 takes a long time.

[Simon Sinek]

To become an overnight success.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[Simon Sinek]

As I said, I think that we live in a day and age where there's a look, there's a lot of talented entrepreneurs and there's a lot of great ideas and there's a lot of disruptors. And I am just curious what the world would look like if not everything was so growth money and VC obsessed. 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.

[Jenny Britton]

It would take the time.

[Simon 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 if you're like, I have an idea of making, you know, extra salty caramel.

[Jenny Britton]

I mean, Jenny's wouldn't pass a business school if it was a. Your business.

[Simon 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. So.

[Jenny Britton]

Too complicated.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Jenny Britton]

But they can be unpacked forever and ever.

[Simon Sinek]

Right?

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

And the vision.

[Jenny Britton]

And the vision is.

[Simon Sinek]

What's the vision that you. That led me?

[Jenny Britton]

Well, the vision that led me. It's always about being the sort of place for creative people to have conversations and spark conversations. 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?

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Because it's not about ice cream.

[Simon 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. 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?

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay.

[Jenny Britton]

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. And I think I Craved community. 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 people 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 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 other people. Literally serving other people.

[Simon Sinek]

Let me give you a scripture.

[Jenny Britton]

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 just, 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 to do. So my whole life ended up being that, especially that beginning. Like, I realized like, I needed so much help and so I would start just helping other people and then they would come help me. So it was like, it was always about almost like an act of co creation, just serving and helping and, and getting other people's participation and trying to like, get other people to like enjoy it and have fun doing it too.

[Simon Sinek]

So the idea of servant leadership was very literal, which is literal. Literally serving you ice cream. And because I don't have to, all my insecurities fall away. Because we're really talking about ice cream. I mean, it's the happiest substance on earth. Yeah, you know, like that's true. Nobody can be angry eating ice cream. No, you can't be depressed or angry.

[Jenny Britton]

I guess I've never seen it.

[Simon Sinek]

But you can't be angry. You can't be angry.

[Jenny Britton]

You can be very. You could be depressed.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

No.

[Simon Sinek]

You know, and so I love this idea that like, your inhibitions fall aside because you're learning this thing called servant leadership. 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. So I guess what I'M scratching at here is because ice cream is now a metaphor, right?

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

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 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, come follow your vision with you At.

[Jenny Britton]

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. 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. Cause that was the beginning of the company for a very long time. They were very young people who don't really.

[Simon Sinek]

Don't really get service.

[Jenny Britton]

Well, you would. They get taught terrible service. And they often come in with what they believe because that's how they've been treated. For example, going to a coffee shop, like, you know, little things where you. You might. You're kind of confused and you ask a question instead of somebody answering you, they, like, point to something. You know, just little things.

[Simon Sinek]

Somebody, you know, they're giving you the answer by pointing.

[Jenny Britton]

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 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. That team is like 1200 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. 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, 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 gonna 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 servers. You know, you're gonna 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. And it's, like, interesting. This. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

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

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

[Simon Sinek]

October 9th.

[Jenny Britton]

Night. So happy birthday. So Gen X, I 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. We weren't slackers. I know. Well, we weren't.

[Simon Sinek]

No, we were not slackers. We were absolutely not slackers.

[Jenny Britton]

No, I mean, definitely not.

[Simon Sinek]

We just got to work and got stuff done and didn't complain or whine. 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.

[Jenny Britton]

It's so small. It's a small group.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon 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. In the 80s.

[Jenny Britton]

I was really very good.

[Simon Sinek]

Awesome.

[Jenny Britton]

They were.

[Simon 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.

[Jenny Britton]

Okay, this is interesting to me, too, because the music we were all listening to, amazing. We were all united by that. And I was listening to some Bruce Springsteen, some Tom Petty the other day, come back from Montreal, and. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

Too shy to shy, huh? Sha.

[Patrick Long]

Shy.

[Simon Sinek]

Do I?

[Jenny Britton]

Yes. I mean, it just.

[Simon Sinek]

Karma, karma, karma chameleon.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, my gosh. I mean, it's like Ultra Club I. Absolutely.

[Simon Sinek]

But, like, these, like, we had music where the lyrics literally made no sense. But they wasn't even words.

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

[Simon Sinek]

My God, it changed my whole image of, like, this nice little, you know, Midwestern, absolute nonsense. You're. You're heavy metal.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, all of it.

[Simon Sinek]

You know, I did, like, Def Leppard.

[Jenny Britton]

Oh, well, yeah, sure.

[Simon Sinek]

Just Pyromania. Just the one album.

[Jenny Britton]

That was great. Yep. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've lost.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

I know. And it's in. 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.

[Simon Sinek]

That was work.

[Jenny Britton]

And you put yourself into it.

[Simon Sinek]

An act of love.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah. You have to play and record on two different.

[Jenny Britton]

But so to 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 a. Not that sort of heroic. It is, though. It's a Frodo funnel 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 humbling. You're always like, you know, I kind of, you know, embarrassed. You kind of, like, putting yourself out. You're taking risks, and it's never comfortable. In search of this vision, I guess, or whatever.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon 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.

[Jenny Britton]

No, it's.

[Simon 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.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah, that's a lot of, that's a.

[Simon Sinek]

Lot of effort and it takes days.

[Jenny Britton]

You can't even do it. If somebody gives you a mixtape.

[Simon Sinek]

If somebody gives you a mixtape, repeat act of love.

[Jenny Britton]

And you're listening to it.

[Simon Sinek]

An act of love, like nonstop, non stop. It's emotional and you don't even like every song. But you love the reason it's there.

[Jenny Britton]

Because they loved it.

[Simon 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. And even.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

And even though the songs exist, like everybody knows the songs in this order. In this order with these lyrics or these melodies or these.

[Jenny Britton]

And then you write the, and you.

[Simon Sinek]

Write the notes and like real love is like the design and you. And like if you get a real mixtape, the whole thing is filled in with words, not just what is. What's on there. Yeah, that's right. Because you got to write the. And I think this is, this is the greatest metaphor for why you should start a business.

[Jenny Britton]

I think that's exactly right.

[Simon Sinek]

Which is I want to, I want to tell somebody something and 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.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon 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 coming an accountant or a doctor or a lawyer, but instead you decided to become an entrepreneur because it's so time consuming.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

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.

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah. Right.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yes. Well, it's.

[Simon Sinek]

You know, I'm just curious how you made that transition. Like, what act of love was that?

[Jenny Britton]

I was with Jenny's. You know, I was. I was 100% in. 150% in. Too much in. Yeah, 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, 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.

[Simon Sinek]

My entire world, your identity was. Was tied into your business.

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

I mean, I walked to the literal forest.

[Jenny Britton]

Literal forest.

[Simon Sinek]

I went, not the metaphorical forest, 10.

[Jenny Britton]

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 don't know. It's 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 all day, but it ended up being fiber that I was eating. And I started to read a lot of books about fiber and realized that, like, when you get diverse fibers, you actually change how you feel. And that, you know, 60% of Americans have one or more chronic illness, and it's related to fiber, and 95% 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, 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 realize 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 we just started, and it was like. It was that sort of like, the light is just the past just starts to.

[Simon Sinek]

Togetherness.

[Jenny Britton]

What's that?

[Simon Sinek]

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's your dinner? Like, that'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 too.

[Jenny Britton]

Yes, I see.

[Simon 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's 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. It's like a great restaurant. It wants to create a conversation. And to your point, that ice cream is simply the mechanism for people to smile and have a conversation, even if they hate it. Oh, my God, I hate that one. Right. But at least you have an opinion about it, right? How does the bar fulfill your goal in the world of creating togetherness and conversations?

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

Can I propose a logic?

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

It's not a marketing thing.

[Jenny Britton]

Yes, please.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, 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.

[Jenny Britton]

That's true. That's exactly right.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

No kidding.

[Jenny Britton]

So once I read that, I was like, and there's a whole bunch of things, you know, 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.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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 cone.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Jenny Britton]

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 back people back to eating enough fiber and diverse fibers every week, it would have an, a huge impact on all of the challenges that we have right now. Not just chronic illness, that's diet related and physical, but also how we treat each other.

[Simon 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 30 different types of fruits and vegetables per week.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah, 30. Well, 30 plants. So that can also be like spices and herbs. So I count those.

[Simon Sinek]

But they have to be different plants.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

But it's not 30 portions of kale.

[Jenny Britton]

No, it's 30 different. You have to have diversity. That.

[Simon Sinek]

The thing that really freaked me out. 30 is a lot.

[Jenny Britton]

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 varieties in your diet just by, like.

[Simon Sinek]

Which is probably. Which is probably why this is a thing. Because we are born of nature and we ate from nature and we. We evolved from nature. And it makes sense that our bodies adapted for the worlds that we grew up in, which is not the world we have now.

[Jenny Britton]

Right.

[Simon Sinek]

So we have to go, unfortunately, recreate.

[Jenny Britton]

But we have this.

[Simon Sinek]

The diversity of nature culture through a bar.

[Jenny Britton]

And we are not processing 30 vegetables and fruits and things in our kitchens anymore. And so. But you should. You can.

[Simon Sinek]

I have to ask you a couple. We do.

[Jenny Britton]

We do.

[Simon Sinek]

I'm doing. I don't want to end, but I. This is shame. Where are the. So here we go. I have a few questions that I'm. That I'm supposed to ask you.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

You had to contaminate a pint of ice cream, right?

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

Just one pint.

[Jenny Britton]

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 farm farms and soil and things like that. But it was interesting because it really made us as a company. Like, it made us. I mean, we had all these values before we had. 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, for example. So we got. We got it down to, you know, what are we here to do? Like, what do we do that nobody else does? And that was really the question that we were asking. And so do we actually have to make all of these pralines, or is somebody else better at it than we are? Like, are we being led by this idea of artisanal? But it's actually not serving us, but it's making us more complex and 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. 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. And there's. So we kind of restructured everything and it made us just tighter and better as a.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Well, we could give them my recipe.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny 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 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.

[Simon 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. 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 compl 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, like great food is not how complex you make it. It's really high quality ingredients, you know, simply prepared, and that makes great food. And we live in a world now where we've industrialized and taken the taste out of high quality food and made it with low quality food, and 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. 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 like become friends and take care of each other, all of our lives get better.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

Of course not. Yeah.

[Jenny Britton]

And it's the best thing that can happen to you because you will never cut that much out of your life without crisis. And it's so freeing. And as an organization and as a human, that was. That was like, that was it for me. I mean, it took years to get out of it and to get beyond it, as personally and also in the company and also I knew the day that, you know, within the week that it happened, we were going to come out of it better.

[Simon 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 an 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 baker is driven to make the best bread and the cheesemaker is driven to make the best cheese and the farmers made driven to make the best ham. And so what you get is the best sandwich. And so you don't have to make the best strawberries, the best pralines, the best. This the best.

[Jenny Britton]

That's right.

[Simon 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.

[Jenny Britton]

That's exactly right.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah, 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.

[Jenny Britton]

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.

[Simon Sinek]

Amen.

[Jenny Britton]

There you go.

[Simon Sinek]

Jenny, you're the best.

[Jenny Britton]

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

[Simon Sinek]

For anybody who hasn't tried Jenny's ice cream, I mean, you're missing out. Get your spoon, get your spoon and do it with someone. Go try two different flavors. Even if you get them at the supermarket, go get two different flavors and.

[Jenny Britton]

Eat your heart out.

[Simon Sinek]

And eat your heart out and do a taste test because that's the fun. I know when I go, when I've bought your ice cream from the supermarket and I really hate you for this, I go to buy one Pinterest and I end up buying three because I'm like, ooh, we really should try this one.

[Jenny Britton]

Yeah. And then you want to try this.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

That's what it's about.

[Simon Sinek]

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

[Jenny Britton]

Yes, exactly. I love that so much. It's so true. So true. I love it. Thank you.

[Simon Sinek]

So fun, Jenny. Thank you so much. A Bit of Optimism is a production of the Optimism Company, lovingly produced by us, our team, Lindsay Garbinius, Phoebe Bradford and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsinek. Com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.