Jeni Britton 0:00 

Are we there for we're there to serve our customers. If we serve our customers, and, of course, our team too, then everything will fall into place when we get that out of when we start serving spreadsheets, when we start serving the bottom line, or whatever, then we lose track, and the customers can tell you, David,

David Novak 0:26 

Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. Now if you've had your share of Turkey and stuffings and six kinds of casserole than allow us to take care of dessert. That's because my guest today is Ginny Britton, the founder of Ginny's ice creams. Ginny started making ice cream by hand in Columbus, Ohio, more than 20 years ago. Today, Ginny has sold 10 million pints of ice cream and more in wildly creative flavors, like, are you ready for this iced molasses, Gingerbread bay leaf cheesecake and my personal favorite, Bramble berry crisp. Ginny describes herself as naturally quiet and introverted, which is not always the personality we associate with leadership. But in my experience, some of the best leaders are built that way. They have rich and vibrant interior lives with an endless source of inspiration and a highly developed sense of intuition. That's how Jenny leads, and I know it's going to inspire you to get more attuned with your own instincts and creativity, and yeah, it's gonna make you hungry for some ice cream. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to the yours. Ginny Britton,

Jenny, I have to tell you, ice cream has to be the happiest product in the world. And I got to ask you, how much joy does it give you? Being an ice cream savant, I

Jeni Britton 2:15 

would say just an immense, I mean, really an immense amount of joy. I sometimes actually pause and and thank this sort of very young version of myself when I was 22 I mean, I really do that. She had the courage to walk out of university and set off on this ice cream journey. It has been so, so beautiful. And the thing that makes it beautiful, of course, is the people that we get to interact with, and, of course, telling stories, and, you know, making flavors and just seeing people's reaction. It's, it's been great, just wonderful.

David Novak 2:50 

I've got a story for you. Jenny, I just had my birthday and, and so every year my daughter, she she'll make me an apple pie. And of course, we always have ice cream, and this year was the best birthday I've ever had, on that front, because we had six pints of Jenny's ice cream. And let me tell you your Bramble berry crisp flavor was a huge, huge hit. Tell us a story behind creating such a unique flavor like that. I'd never had that in ice cream.

Jeni Britton 3:24 

This is one of my stories. So when I was a kid, I was I grew up in Peoria, Illinois, and we had forest land. My grandmother was an artist and an art teacher and and we just loved being in the forest, so we were out there all the time. We had a little cabin that we built. We had multiple gardens, and we would also forage for berries. And so my grandmother called any berries that grew on thorns like a thorny vine. She called it a bramble Berry. And I think that's just what her grandmother called it. And that was just, that's the vernacular that, you know, she grew up with. And so we would pick those, gather them all, and then she would make it into like a crisp, a bramble berry crisp, and that was what she called it. And of course, we served it with vanilla ice cream. And so when I started making ice creams, actually this, this flavor came out, I think, in 2008 and it was actually inspired by all of these wild foraged ingredients that we found in Appalachia. And the one of the other ones was black walnut. So we had all these beautiful flavors that were sort of wild foraged, and it was just the runaway hit from that collection. And so we kept it, and this is kind of how we do things at Jenny's like when we put out a new flavor, if it's just like a runaway hit, and if it is two years in a row, it can become a signature flavor. And so that's it's almost like our customers vote on their flavors. Well,

David Novak 4:44 

well, my family voted, and we liked all of them. They were all delicious, but the bramble berry crisps took the cake, or, should I say, took the pie. You're a very, very interesting person, and, you know, I understand. You also spend time at the race track and you race cars. You know? What has that taught you about leadership?

Jeni Britton 5:09 

Well, it's taught me a lot, actually, and I just have to caveat that by saying I've, I've only raced officially once, it was for a whole weekend, so many times over that weekend, an autocross race with Camaros in Indiana. I learned a ton racing. I also came in last every single race, but my time got better every single time, but to the point that the announcers were like urging everyone to cheer me on, because and I could hear them out the window as I was coming in for the finish. It was great. But one of the things, I mean, there's a lot of metaphors in in performance driving, one of them that I really love is just that you know the car and your body, with the car as one machine, will go where your eye is. So you look pretty far off into the future, into the future, into the distance, and you're and you will, on instinct, almost you'll get there. And I drive, I like to drive on this sort of curvy sort of tracks. I drive at Mid Ohio a lot, and that's and so. So even with the curves, when you're looking far out in advance, your body, your brain, your system, in the car will take you there. You don't have to overthink it in the exact moment. And in your body, it's interesting. So I sort of think about this a lot as we're raising companies that we know the way we have to keep our eye on, not the super distant future, but sure that's way out there, but but pretty far in the future, and then we have to get there. You

David Novak 6:41 

know, you mentioned that the announcers cheered you on. How much did that recognition mean to you? And how do you use recognition in the world of business?

Jeni Britton 6:52 

It meant a lot to me. I first of all, you know, it's embarrassing to come in last every time. I mean, of course, I was a woman out on the track. There were a lot of cool veterans, which I love, who I love to hang out with. And you know, there were a couple other women who were much better than me, and so I had a lot, sort of, whenever I showed up, I sort of felt like, oh my gosh, everybody expects me to fail. And of course, I'm going to but I'm not going to give up. I'm just going to keep coming out here, and my time is going to get better. And it did them cheering me on was, was absolutely huge. I just started to feel like I can't give up now, you know, I can't walk away any of those races. I could have just been like, Yeah, this is it. I'm done. But I kept showing up because I felt they were on my side. And I absolutely agree in leadership and in in on our teams, we have to recognize that, first of all, every every failure leads to better. Time you know you're going to get better. And I think I've worked with some people who sort of see failure as you know. And of course, you have to, you know, it's all you know. You have to, kind of, you know, decide for your company, but, but failure is exactly how you learn. Failure is how you get there. Failure is how you make a good leader at some point. And so recognizing the talent that's on your team and encouraging them, and also, I think, helping your team expand into something that even they didn't know or didn't believe about themselves. I have also worked with leaders who do the opposite, they sort of almost bring people into a smaller space. And I think as leaders, our job is to bring them into a bigger space, a space that maybe they didn't even realize they could get to. And I learned that, of course, from people that I worked with who did that for me.

David Novak 8:34 

You know, since you founded the company, you've sold more than 10 million pints of ice cream. And I'm curious, when did it hit you that this was going to be your your love, your passion, your vocation? It

Jeni Britton 8:46 

hit me very early on. And so what I was doing in in I got into Ohio State University, but, you know, because I appealed when they declined my my application, so I was grateful that they let me in. I can't, I couldn't believe that they did. But when I got there, it's such a massive University. It's such a beautiful place there. You can literally learn anything under this and then anything that's ever been learned, you know, in human existence is at Ohio State University, 80,000 people. It's an incredible place. So I was just going wherever my heart wanted me to go. I was taking all these classes on fine arts, of course, because I had grown up with art, I was taking classes on art history. I was taking classes on history anthropology, cultural anthropology, all these other things. And I was even thinking I had a friend who was studying something about scent, like perfume. So I was really thinking about how to use scent in art. And I was also working at a French pastry shop, and I loved all of that. And in a weird way, when I started making ice creams. The first time I made ice cream, the idea was, can I make something that's a scent into something that's a different experience? Can I use scent in art? And so then I used my I decided that I was going to use ice cream to carry scent. And so I mixed some rose petal into a vanilla ice cream. Hmm, and it was that moment. And what happened is I thought about this a lot. I knew, because I was like, this is just so cool. Ice cream can be so much more. All ice cream is about scent, even an inexpensive synthetic vanilla, a peppermint, a chocolate, a coffee, it's all about scent. And because I'd been studying scent, I knew that ancient perfumers used like fats that were solid at room temperature but melted on contact with the skin. I knew that butter and butter fat was like that because my grandmother had always said, don't put the butter the onion next to the butter. It'll start to smell like, like, like the onion, tastes like the onion. And I knew that that butter and melts at that temperature, and so, so I just, like, immediately knew a lot of things because I'd been studying all these weird things, but all of them came together for me in ice cream in that moment. And I knew that ice cream was my path, because I could do something like pastry, but it was ice cream that I could tell stories through these flavors, and that it had something to do with art, with creating, with scent. And I was really into scent, so it like ticked all the boxes for me and I, and it was like I could easily see the future. The interesting thing is, when I was studying all these things, none of it made sense to any of the people who were giving me advice at the time. So any of the counselors or whatever, you know, it didn't seem like I was on a track to get somewhere. And it's sort of a lesson, I think sometimes, as parents and I'm a 17 year old and a 15 year old, you know, we want to keep them safe and keep them on a specific track, but actually what they kind of need to do is open up and expand and explore all of the stuff that they're interested in, and find their unique path where all those things sync up and where they can use that to create value in the world. And that was for me. I mean, I just knew it immediately at that moment. At that moment, I knew that there was going to be nothing else

David Novak 11:45 

for me. That's, that's amazing to have that happen to you at 21 and ice cream, it sounds so simple. And, you know, I remember making ice cream when I was a kid, homemade ice cream, and we'd sit there and get the ice and the salt, and, you know, we'd make the ice cream. And my, my grandmother, had a great recipe, you know, so, you know, you could make ice cream back then, I kind of thought it was sort of simple. Was it harder to learn the business side and how to make ice cream and how to commercialize it was, was that harder than what you thought it was going to be going into it?

Jeni Britton 12:19 

Yeah. I mean, it was brutal. It was nothing like what I thought it was going to be. There are so many aspects to this, because I wanted to make, you know, one of the, one of the sort of points in my sort of calculus, or whatever, of figuring out that this was a good idea, is that I lived in Ohio. I live in Ohio still, and we are surrounded by agriculture. We have, we're top five dairy states. So for me, I thought it's going to be really easy to just go out and get really high quality dairy. We're going to get all these farm ingredients. It's going to be really beautiful. And actually, the dairy is a pretty closed industry now, especially it's all been kind of consolidated. You can't just go in and say, I want to work with one farm or five farms. You really have to be a much bigger company, which we eventually became, for that reason, it kind of, you know, but, but all of it, so I mean, just the wanting to take, to not use stabilizers and ice cream or high fructose corn syrup, or corn syrup at all emulsifiers, to just make a really pure, really beautiful product. It's actually really, really complicated. And so just learning how to navigate the system and not giving up when I couldn't make it happen, and just keep keeping going. So I was making ice creams that wasn't up to the standard that I knew I would get to eventually in the beginning. And I think some people get stuck on those early standards, this idea the big idea, but we couldn't be that. It took years to get there, but the resources that our customers gave us, we were still making great ice creams we were able to apply over time and and actually get there. And so, so that, in itself, was just incredible, let alone learning all of the other intricacies of, you know, teamwork and business and, you know, everything else.

David Novak 13:53 

How do you dig down deep when, when you get stuck and come out of it and keep going. It's

Jeni Britton 14:01 

interesting. It's kind of kind of funny. I've always been like a very quiet, introverted person. I wouldn't think of myself as a, you know, an overconfident person. I mean, growing up, probably, people thought I was not very confident, very shy. But somehow I always knew that I could do or be whatever I wanted to do or be, and that I was the lucky I always felt like the luckiest person on earth. My grandparents taught me this because I was born in America, and especially in the Midwest, and in that place, you can you can do whatever you want, you can be whatever you want. And I really believe that very much. I still believe that. And so I guess I always believed in the idea even more than I believed in me. So I would say, Well, I didn't get it right this time, but I'll get it right next time. The idea is always the vision was always still solid, and I always kept marching toward that. And I guess I didn't worry about the failures, because I felt like, you know, like I would get it. It was just enough success that I. Felt like, Okay, well, next time, I'll do this, and it'll be better, you know, and so you just so anyway, I don't know, but the idea of just, I wouldn't, I wouldn't get super stuck. I would just kind of try the next iteration. It's

David Novak 15:10 

funny that you say that, you know you were quiet and shy, but as I understand it, your first ice cream shop was called scream. Now, how in the heck did you come up with that name? Was that? Yeah, I mean,

Jeni Britton 15:26 

you know, I just thought it was cute. I had left art school to make ice cream, so I thought it was a represent, a good representation of what I was trying to do. And, yeah, it kind of fit what we were, what the ethos of the company was. And the idea, the idea of Scream, was that I would make ice creams every day depending on what was in the market, or what I was thinking about, or what was in pop culture, what movies were coming out, or whatever. So, you know, every day or every week, the lineup would change depending on the market, the season, pop culture, whatever whim I was on. And so that was kind of this idea of Scream. And I thought it was just, I mean, you know, when you're young, you know. And, you know, I just, I mean, I thought it was just a such a brilliant idea, you know. And, and, of course, like, there are so many things that are wrong with that that I've that I noticed that it took me a long time to realize it

David Novak 16:12 

certainly would get your attention, you know, you know, before we get into the you founding Jenny's, you know, I want to shift gears a minute and take you back. You know, what's a story from your childhood that that really shaped the kind of leader you are today?

Jeni Britton 16:28 

Well, well, there are many stories. I think. I think one story or one sort of, yeah. I mean, it's just that I I moved almost every year growing up. So I think even though I won't do that to my own children, they've been in the same school since they were, you know, started school. I moved almost every year. I started new schools every year, I had to, you know, adapt to that. And I think that it, it made me very malleable, very adaptable, and even probably pretty good at compromise, you know. I mean, I think being a leader is about, sort of, in a way, you know, finding that sweet spot of compromise. I think there's an idea, especially when you're young, that leadership is uncompromising. And I think people think that about me at Jenny's as well. But I actually think it's, it's not that. I think the idea that I moved every year, that I could reinvent myself, I could try things, and I really thought about it a lot every time I would move, because there was so much hope involved. Every time you make a move, it's like, oh, these things are going to change. This is going to be better. This is going to be, you know, whatever. And so you get really excited about that next thing. And there's, there's an adaptability, even though I was a quiet, sort of shy kid, of learning to walk into a room anyway, you know, no matter what you're feeling, and kind of push yourself into that but, but also to read the room and be able to kind of adapt to what the new environment is. I think there's something to that that really formed me as a human being and a person and definitely a leader.

David Novak 17:55 

You know, it's interesting, because when I was a kid, I lived in 23 states. By the time I was in seventh grade, my we we moved every every three months. And I would, I would definitely share that, that observation, you kind of have to go in and figure out who you're going to hang with and how you're going to get along. And you said you learned how to compromise. But you also mentioned that you're, maybe I misunderstood this, but you also mentioned that your your team members might not see you as a compromiser. Say more?

Speaker 1 18:24 

Oh

Jeni Britton 18:24 

yes. So not not my team members, but I think people outside of the company think of me as like an uncompromising having very, very high standards of quality and service and all of these elements and and while, yes, I do, I also understand that it's a it's a journey, and we can't do everything. It's a garden that we're tending. And sometimes you got, you know, this part of the garden is lush and green, and this part of the garden is kind of wilting over here, and you're just kind of moving resources around, knowledge. You can't be perfect in any company, in any one time. And I think, and I think that sort of idea of like, well, actually, the ability to compromise is how to you move forward. So even though I think that, you know, people outside of the company might see me as this sort of artist, this, like, uncompromising standards inside the company, I think people understand that we're going to do the best with the resources we have right now. We're going to figure out what that is and and some things aren't going to make it this year, and we're gonna let those go until we can get to them next time.

Koula Callahan 19:23 

Hey everyone, it's cool. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app. In the app every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead download the how leaders lead app, and start your day every. Day with two minutes of leadership wisdom, it'll take 20 seconds go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead.

David Novak 20:12 

Well, thankfully for all of us ice cream lovers, you started Jenny's in 2002 in Columbus, Ohio and and I heard you talk about getting into character when you launched Jenny's say more about that.

Jeni Britton 20:27 

One of the ways that I kind of dealt with my introvertedness, I really wanted to get a job, let's say at 15 I wanted to, and actually an ice cream shop opened up in my neighborhood, within walking distance. And I had always known that I wanted to work in an ice cream shop as my first job, and so I knew that knew that this was the right thing for me and and yet I was really afraid. And my mother said, so the first day comes and and I was pacing, and my mom said, you know, Meryl Streep is really shy, too, and like, what she does is she just puts on a character, like when she's acting, and then she can be whoever she wants or whatever she needs to be for the for the scene, and she's not shy anymore because she's playing that character. And so I walked to work, and I was like, Well, what character Am I playing? I'm playing, you know, the best ice cream scooper in the world. And I was 15, I go to work and and I had this character. And I realized in that time, when I was 15, I felt more me than I had felt out like in my real self. I realized that I was probably hiding parts of me that that I wanted to express, but I just didn't think, were, you know, you know, valuable or something you know, I don't know. And when I started to work, I could put all of my anxieties aside, all of my fears, and I was just serving people, and I was in the flow, and I loved it so much that I liked it better than school. I wanted to work every single day, and I did. I worked a lot, and then I moved to the French pastry shop, and that was another character. So when I closed scream, scream, I had been like a pink hair kind of punky art kid making ice creams every day, whatever I wanted, and that was my character, and that was authentic to me. When I closed scream, I realized, okay, I have enough. I probably have one more shot at this. When I open Jenny's what character Am I playing this time? You know, because it didn't work last time. So I got rid of the pink hair. I actually dyed my hair like Brown, too brown, you know, it's like, my pictures aren't very cute from that era. I thought, Okay, well, what is, what does this character look like? She's a shopkeeper. She's an ice cream maker. Who do I want to buy ice cream from? She's probably wearing a white shirt. She's kind of tailored, she's very clean. She's not wearing nail polish. She's like, you know? And I had this like idea, you know, she's working. She's not sitting and reading a book like I might have done it screen when we weren't busy, you know, she's giving the impression that we are waiting for a big rush of customers. So, you know, she stands with her shoulders back, and she looks directly at people. She's like, you know, I had the whole character in mind. She's a shopkeeper. She's here to do this work and like, it really changed a lot for me. I think, you know, the local food critic who really didn't like scream at all, he was really critical of it. Really loved Jenny's, and it was the exact same ice cream. It was the exact same ice cream. The thing that had changed was, I mean, a little bit of our of our model, or a business plan, or how we kind of did things, but the ice creams were the same and that. And I was wearing a white shirt, and I was ready to succeed. You know, I was there to succeed. I wasn't there just to, you know, express my artsy self. I was there to help customers, to represent ice cream and flavor, to tell those stories and to inspire and activate people. And it was, and it really made all the difference. I still put on characters. I say put on characters. I mean, these are characters that live inside of me already, and I can expand into them, and I just put some thought into it. So I even, you know, I struggle with, like, public speaking. Still, I can't believe how much public speaking I do, but I, but I, this is not something I ever thought I would do. And even now, when I go into a speech, I will say, Well, who am I showing up as today? And it really helps me. So I think this idea of we contain multitudes, find the character inside of you for the task that's in front of you is also a very authentic way to encounter the world.

David Novak 24:15 

That's very interesting, because it's a classic phrase, you become what you think you are, and you saw the success that you visualized what it would look like and and you played the part that's, that's really great. What was your biggest break? I mean, you know, we all have those moments where you kind of feel like, oh, okay, this is gonna gonna work. You know? What was that for you?

Jeni Britton 24:38 

Well, we were on the Food Network in 2004 so Jenny's opened in 2002 we were in the North Market, which is our sort of indoor public market, the farmers market. It's the oldest public market in the Midwest. It's a beautiful space, and we had a shop in there. And and the Food Network heard about our ice cream, so they came out. Actually, it was the Roker. On the road show, if you even remember that, and and they came out, and they spent a couple days with us, and I thought, oh my gosh, when this hits, we are gonna have, we got, we had, like, six months before it aired. We are gonna have, we need to have our website up and running. We need to know how to ship ice cream, because we, other people, aren't gonna be able to get to Ohio to have our ice cream. So we need to be able to ship. We got to have a website open so my brother in law, who was working with us, took that on, figured out how to ship ice cream, and we, we set up a website me. We were rushing to do it, get it. Get all the return on, let it like the day before this goes live. And we had a party when the episode aired. And we were like, you know, watching on the computer, just waiting to see all the orders that were gonna start rolling in. And we got one order. The whole thing, that was all we got, after all of those, without waiting, after all of the Roker on the road. After all, we got one order. But the address was like, number one, Central Park West, so it was an important address. I mean, just really like and in New York, and after that, we were, like, the bell of New York media for a cons, like, even now, I would say, you know, we just started to get all of these really cool, this really cool media attention. And it was because people in New York could buy our ice creams now from our website, and so the New York Times could write about us. And at the time it was, there was a great kind of blog called Daily candy that everybody was excited about. They were breaking all the new products and things. So that was really our big break. And then media really starts to get behind us. Because, you know, we're in Ohio, I think what happens when you're in Ohio, for us is that I was trying to make ice creams that lived up to what I believed New York or London or Paris or wherever would would be would be inspired by and so I was probably going. I was probably doing more than what would ever be expected of any of even in those cities, I was just, you know, I had never been, I had been to New York, but not really. And so I was really trying to make ice creams that lived up to my imagination of what this like World's Greatest, you know, the greatest ice cream the universe might be like. And, and I think that was really impressive in this very humble, beautiful humility sort of way to to the writers of like the New York Times and and another places. I mean, it was actually really beautiful. We were on then the Food Network several more times. And then we had this big write up in 2005 in Food and Wine Magazine, and and then, really 2007 2007 was a huge write up. And then we start to get competition, kind of stealing our idea, or like, kind of like, not not stealing it, but just like, jumping on board. Like, now we now, we start to see like, this has become a big trend. And now across the United States, people start to to open up shops that are kind of, you know, in our model

David Novak 27:56 

Well, given your creativity and the uniqueness of your flavors and the uniqueness of your brand. I'm sure you did have competitors, you know, rip you off. I mean, you know, how'd you feel about that? I mean, did you get indignant, or did you, you know, what was, what was your thinking?

Jeni Britton 28:13 

I don't really get indignant, but I was, like, I was, I was, it's um, it's a, you know, it is um. It feels very violating at first, but then you realize pretty quickly that one brand, one company, can't create a movement. Can't create a trend, a long lasting trend, that you really do have to have several important players in the in the market, in the field. You can't do it by yourself. You're not really, really creating a movement, if it's just you. And so what we wanted, and what I always wanted, was just really good competition, and there were a couple that were really sort of aggressive, and they're no longer here, and those went away pretty quickly. And so that was, um, so that ends up being the truly the other thing is, it made us a better company in every single way. And that is, it happens really fast. Once somebody starts to, like, take, you know, kind of look like what you're doing, you then feel like you have to get a little bit better. You have to do something better, you know. And and it, and I really think that competition does make us so, you know, you it's frustrating. It's really hard. It can be just, just very difficult, but also pretty quickly. You see the benefits of it, of competition and and even, sort of, you know, even, even when it's like, normally, people who steal the whole thing, which there was a company that did that, they don't last very long because they don't have new ideas. And so, you know, those companies that were the most frustrating, those went away very quickly.

David Novak 29:45 

Did you have a competitor? Or do you have a competitor that you learned the most from?

Jeni Britton 29:52 

Well, I mean, to be very honest, I learned the most from Ben and Jerry's and Haagen Dazs. That's where I'm going. That's, you know, that's. That's the, you know what, when I, when I watch kind of how they did things early on, and they're in there, like a Ben and Jerry's story. And when I see sort of what Haagen Dazs is able to do and to keep kind of on top and to make, you know, good ice cream, given the fact that, even that they're a massive, massive, massive company, you know, those are the those are the people. Those are the companies that I'm really looking at as as the ones that are making Jenny's better. Now, you know, I know you and we ending up become our competitors. I mean, they weren't, but now they really are. It's

David Novak 30:34 

nice to have them. It's nice to have them see you as a competitor. You know, that's which is great. And you know, I know you also love to learn from from customers. You know, set the stage and tell us a story about the best idea you ever got from one of your customers. Oh,

Jeni Britton 30:51 

I mean, honestly, just so many, so many things I am a like. My way of leading is just always on the front. I need to be very close to customers, listening to customers directly, because I don't want to hear it. They're like through a third party or through a survey or something that. Sure that too, but I want to hear it. I like to stand in line. I like to listen when people don't even know I'm listening. And I really like to serve and have an interaction with people. And so every I really think of Jenny's as a co creation act of co creation, our customers and my sort of passion sort of merged, and that's what Jenny's is, but, but really, even everything like, like we used to do Sundays in our stores, which I loved very, very much. I love, literally, Sundays on Sundays. I like to go to an ice cream shop on a Sunday and get a Sunday. And I was pretty committed to it, but our customers really told us, both in sales and also directly, that they're just more interested in ice cream on a cone or in a cup. In our stores, our ice cream flavors are so interesting that that's really all they want. And so it's almost like editing. You know, they always say, you know, a good writer is, can be judged by what's in the garbage, you know, what's on the cutting room floor, because that's all really great stuff, but it doesn't apply here. And so that that sort of art, we let our customers help us sort of edit. And they were very clear, like, you know, the Sundays are good, but we're just here for our favorite flavors. And so, so those are, those are the kinds of lessons that I've learned. And of course, every flavor we put out, I love to listen to what people what people say.

David Novak 32:27 

You know, the you talked earlier about vision, you had this place where you you knew you were going to go, and you're still working at it, and you know, you're going after this, this, this vision that you've created it, what would be the three biggest strategic decisions that you made that that's taken the company to where it is today?

Jeni Britton 32:52 

Let's see. I think one is, of course, the website, starting the website right away got us a lot of media attention, as we've already covered, and that enabled us to sell a lot of ice from online, and then to figure out where, over time, where we had pockets of customers, where we could then expand into those cities. We still use that today, where we have pockets of customers. Were going there first that that being omni channel. So by 2007 we were really beginning our wholesale and grocery strategy, and I think that was really, really, really important, and it was always a part of the plan. But I think that's, that's, that's kind of, you know, just ultimately, that's, that's going to be the sort of thing that lives, I think, the longest, and then probably bringing on a financial partner. Those the group that we worked with, really helped us. They helped us tighten the company. They helped I learned a ton, still learning from the sort of they helped us with the C suite. They came, you know, I we grew. We went from being a company with kind of just kind of going on instinct, which I think is important to learn and to do in the beginning, to a company that like had these really strong leaders who could bring in their awesomeness, and they're just so much smarter at what they do than anybody else at the table. And so we can all work together as this kind of fellowship to move the company forward. I found that to be exciting and thralling. I felt like it pushed me. I needed to do whatever I could to earn my space at the table and and, of course, that that really like that that enabled the company to continue to do what it's doing. And that's, of course, the company we still are today. That happened in like 2016

David Novak 34:42 

you make a distinction about company and business explain, I

Jeni Britton 34:50 

do. I think of business as the sort of linear kind of machine of of the endeavor, whereas the word. Company means you're not alone. It refers to the human beings who are making this go so I kind of think that the business is the business, the business and business is the company, or the company. You know, it's like you all the reason that the business, part of it exists is because of the company, and the company has to come first. That's your customers, your suppliers, your team, the communities you serve. And when all of that kind of kind of works, and you got the right people around the table and you've got the right intentions, then the business side of it also works. So for me as a leader, I put all of my effort really into making sure that the company is right. That's I like, I like to some people ask me what my favorite business book is, and I always like to joke. And it's not really a joke, actually, that it's the Lord of the Rings movies, because I really like the idea of fellowship. It's not, it's the same, you know, in building a company, it's this idea that you bring all these amazing people together, you become this fellowship, everybody's around the table, and together, you make something greater than the sum of its parts. And how we work together is really everything, and that will take care of all of the business parts of it, if you've got the right people around there. So that's just sort of the the what it's all about to me. And then, of course, you know, what are we there for? We're there to serve our customers. If we serve our customers, and of course, our team too, then everything will fall into place when we get that out of when we start serving spreadsheets, when we start serving the bottom line, or whatever. Then we lose track, and the customers can tell. And so we always have to keep our focus on customers with with this idea that we have to protect our resources as well otherwise, you know, but the right people are on the table, and, you know, should be able to to manage all of that. We'll

David Novak 36:54 

be back with the rest of my conversation with Jenny Britton in just a moment. Jenny built her ice cream empire through a lot of iterations, trying something, listening to customers, learning and then trying something else. That's why Waze co founder URI Levine says it's okay to launch before something's perfect. You gotta get that feedback early if you want to improve. So

Uri Levine 37:17 

the biggest enemy of good enough is perfect. You don't need to be perfect. In order to win the market, you need to be good enough. And so in that sense, I would say, look, launch way before you think it's ready, as soon as you can actually demonstrate any value to your customers, it doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't even need to be good enough. But what you really want is the initial feedback. And the initial feedback, when you listen to it is the one that is going to make you more successful.

David Novak 37:44 

Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Uri, episode 129, here on how leaders leave. You know, Ginny, as I've learned, you know more about you. Just as we got ready for this, this conversation we're having right here, you really impressed me, because you have this incredible combination of of artistry and and science. Do you tend to hire more right brain people or left brain people?

Jeni Britton 38:13 

No, that's a great question. I think for me, yes, I think I'm kind of a middle brain thinker, really a combination. I mean, I think, I think for me, having a balance of of, sort of, I would say, like linear thinkers, more emotional thinkers, and then people who are in the middle. I mean, that's kind of a boring answer, but I honestly think that a great organization would be like a third, a third and a third, kind of both, you know, because you really do need both sides. And you need people who are, you know, that are linear sort of thinkers at Jenny's and also at flora, are really great, like they and they have to stay in that. You know, the mathletes we call them, you know, even the people who are making the ice creams, or who are helping us formulate the ice creams, I mean, the way that they think so that they can get this idea to market is in a very linear fashion. But then, of course, we have the whole sort of marketing effort. I mean, sales, marketing, this is all very emotional. And, you know, we're out having dinners with our buyers at Whole Foods or wherever. You know, we have to have that really highly emotional, emotional IQ part of the company too, and then we need those people in the middle who are basically become the leaders in a way.

David Novak 39:28 

You say that a human being can't be a brand. What do you mean by that?

Jeni Britton 39:35 

Oh, you've really gone deep. That's interesting. No, I really well, because I, I have kind of teetered on that. I mean, as my name, of course, is on everything we do. And of course, also, I watched as the sort of social media began to really talk about 10 or 15 years ago about your personal brand, and that people were brands, and that you're supposed to brand yourself. You know, on your social media to. Don't know to whatever you get a job or to become an influencer and all of that. And I really, really, highly disagree with that. I think human beings that brands are static for a reason. For the most part, we brands will change, but they change very slowly, you know, because we're serving people, because we need to be a place where, when our customers come back to us, they know what to expect, and we're delivering that promise, and it doesn't change. Humans are nature. We are nature. We have nature inside of us, and, of course, outside of us, and we literally are nature. And so we have to accept that we are flowing and changing and shifting. And everything that comes into our life is changing us. Every human being we meet is changing us just a little bit and so, and also, you know, as as somebody who could have easily become a brand, just even in my personal I want to make sure that I protect this ability for people to see me as somebody who's going to be changing and expanding every day, so that nobody holds me to whoever I was two years ago, you know that, but, but allows me to expand. And we see this all the time, and in famous people, where, where they try to hold on to, you know, whoever they were in the past, because that was maybe the most successful version that they see, or something, or the people that it's really what other people expect of them, you

David Novak 41:17 

constantly have to be making new memories, and and, and, you know it, speaking of that, it let's move off ice cream and move on to another subject, which I know is dear to your heart. Take me through how your curiosity about watermelons has led you to launch this new business, Flora and company. So

Jeni Britton 41:39 

it's kind of interesting in that I wasn't intending to start a new business. I was actually, you know, I had been through such a long, beautiful adventure, but also quite brutal. I mean, entrepreneurs, we don't take care of ourselves very well. So, you know, I was so into the company. I had two children. So between my company and my children, those were my only two things in my life, I didn't have really a community outside of that. And so I when I sort of, I was able to kind of step back from Jenny's around COVID time. I'm still kind of, I think of myself as kind of a support now, of course, anytime they need me, I'm there, and I mean regular contact with our beautiful and wonderful CEO. But when I did that, it was really brutal for me. It was very, very hard, because you can think of like when you've built a company for so long, for 26 years. It was a world that I built, that I lived in. It was almost it felt like my shadow had been cut off. And so I needed to figure out, speaking of, you know, this idea that people can't be brands, I needed to figure out who I was outside of Jenny's. And I say all this because what I was sort of in this place where I was really lost, and the way that I solved that, or attempted to solve that, is to go help other entrepreneurs. So I thought, Okay, I'm gonna go try to use things that I've learned to go help other entrepreneurs, and I also was working on my own health, and I'd been working on making sure that my microbiome was, you know, that I was eating the right foods and that fiber and all of these things, and I'd seen a lot of really incredible growth from that. I mean, I became healthier than I've ever been in my entire life after I left Jenny's. And it's sort of interesting to me. So I was helping this other entrepreneur. We were touring a massive produce company not far from here. I'm in New York City, and 600,000 square feet. This was too big for her. We needed to find her a produce a produce company that was bigger than the farmers market, but smaller than this, so it was too big for her, but what I saw was the watermelon being hand cut with a bit like a machete, because you have to hand cut it off the watermelon. But then the rinds were going up and out into the landfill. And I asked the the owners of this company, you know, where, where, what landfill? What are you doing with them? And they were like, yeah, yeah, right. Now, all of our waste goes into the landfill. We don't, we don't have anything to do with it. At the moment, we're trying to work on that. Moment, we're trying to work on that. And I had already read that watermelon rind, and a lot of these rinds are actually high in, super high in prebiotic fiber. And apple cores too, super high in prebiotic fiber, which is exactly the fiber that feeds your microbiome. And if you know anything about the microbiome, it's complex. You really need to be eating prebiotic fiber, not just, you know, the sort of, you know, your granddad's fiber, sort of the metamucils of the world that too. But you really need to be eating a diverse array of prebiotic fiber, and those are found in things like watermelon rind. So I already knew all of that, and I thought, Well, can I, you know, because I'm an ice cream maker, maybe I'm the right one to see if I can make that ingredient, which would be basically free for us into something tasty. And it was just like, you know, you get this like idea to spark. And then it became, like my all consuming passion to try to take these ingredients, which I know we should be eating, which are really good for you, and turn them into something that that everybody will love, so that we can then, um. I've closed the fiber gap in America, and there is a major fiber gap. 99 or 95% of people, 98% if you're a guy, are fiber deficient by at least 50% and it's causing almost all the chronic illness

David Novak 45:13 

in America. Wow, wow. So tell me about the product. Well, so

Jeni Britton 45:16 

we spent the lab. We spent the last two plus years inside the that produce company. They gave us a room. They became our business partner. They're amazing. And we and my partner Mark, actually moved from LA to Vineland, New Jersey right away and set up shop inside the produce company. Learn how to ferment, dehydrate, and then mill these ingredients into flour, or, in the case of apple cores, make them into something like an apple sauce, and reduce it into almost like a paste, so they can be the kind of, the sort of base we make bars now. And you know, we started over these last couple of years, we've made so many beautiful things. We made an incredible pancake mix. We made a beautiful chocolate cake mix, just to prove we could do something. We started with the easy stuff, and then we and then we decided that we needed to make something that would be something every people will eat every day. So we say every day for everybody. So what can we make that somebody will be be likely or inclined to actually reach for every single day? So we are now making this beautiful, like fruit bar. It's kind of like, if you would think of like a fruit smoothie in a bar form and a and then we make that into bites. So we package them into little three bite packs and and they're really beautiful. And we're making them in flavors that, of course, we've done at Jenny's like Bramble Berry, lavender, but those are our first product. We're just now launching the company we've been I mean, it's really, we're just scrappy. I loved the idea of starting small and building we have spent this entire year kind of building a small community so we can listen again to our customers and get a lot of feedback. And that's helped us a lot. And so now we're going to relaunch again January, do a bigger launch in January. But we we're just, I mean, back, back at the beginning, learning again.

David Novak 47:00 

I feel your passion because you just light up, you know, you are lit up on this, this opportunity, which is fantastic. I love it. You know, this has been so much fun, Jenny and and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this?

Jeni Britton 47:16 

Okay, I'm horrible at Lightning Rounds, but let's see. Well, we'll see.

David Novak 47:19 

Well, that's because you're, you're very thoughtful and you're very reflective. I mean, you know, and so, but you're gonna have to put on your new you gotta, you gotta be a different person right now. Okay, so let's give it a go. What? What three words best describe you,

Jeni Britton 47:35 

patient, bold and I'm gonna say kind I think that that's one that I that I people say a lot about me and I, I hope I, I am.

David Novak 47:52 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?

Jeni Britton 47:56 

I would be, oh, I mean, definitely Cleopatra. I'm gonna go back in time. Do I need to have? Is that okay? Is that breaking the

David Novak 48:04 

rules? That's perfect. Yeah, that's perfect. What's your biggest pet peeve? I

Jeni Britton 48:08 

guess, messiness. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not super meticulous. But at the same time, you know, I just like, Yeah, I just kind of need, I need to be able to think in my space, and I like it to be kind of tidy.

David Novak 48:21 

Who would play you in a movie? Let's

Jeni Britton 48:24 

see who you know. I used to say somebody asked me that before, and I thought it was the perfect answer. Annette Bening. I just love her so much, and I feel like she has a similar energy. So maybe I'll go with that.

David Novak 48:35 

What's your most prized possession?

Jeni Britton 48:38 

Well, I'll tell you. I've gotten a couple of coins from veterans. And I don't know, I mean, I really, I really feel very proud of that and, and I think from that, yeah, I think that those are just really, really special to me, and personal. The one,

David Novak 48:57 

what's the one thing you do, just for you, just for Jenny Britton,

Jeni Britton 49:02 

I go to the forest as many times a week as I possibly can, every day if I can, and I just when I'm out there, I atomize my I'm not it's like I'm not even me anymore. I'm just like a spirit in the forest. I'm one with the forest. And really honestly, my best ideas come from that place. And when I'm not thinking about it,

David Novak 49:21 

if I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear?

Jeni Britton 49:24 

You might hear some 1990s Greek pop music that I know by heart, even though it's in Greek, and I don't speak Greek. That's true.

David Novak 49:35 

You might have just answered this, but what's something about you few people would know? Well,

Jeni Britton 49:40 

I mean one, I mean just staying on music really quick. I had a whole year that I only listened to foreigner, and so it was just kind of a fluke, and I it was a great year. I only listened to foreigner. The whole year, I was just, I loved them. That was not very long ago either.

David Novak 49:57 

What's one of your daily rituals? Something that. You'd never miss

Jeni Britton 50:01 

in the morning, I like to I usually light some incense and I listen to something beautiful. I like to show pants, not turns, even though it was music written for the evening. I think it's perfect morning music, and I turn that on. I've done this for a year and a half or so. I just love it so much, and I almost always listen to that in the morning.

David Novak 50:21 

What last question here? What's your your go to Jenny's flavor?

Jeni Britton 50:27 

Ooh, that's an easy one. I love the brown butter almond brittle. It was inspired by Roald Dahl and his favorite flavor when he was a kid growing up, but he wrote about it as an adult in Norway. He grew up in Norway, and I read his essay and made the ice cream from that. And so it's actually this Norwegian specialty. So it's kind of a cool, almost collaboration with Roald Dahl.

David Novak 50:48 

I wish I would have had this podcast with you before I wrote my book about how leaders learn, because you are you. I could put you in almost every one of my chapters. You're great. You know, I've heard you say that every few months you go through a different era. Which era are you in right now?

Jeni Britton 51:07 

I am definitely in my goddess era. I think there's something that happens to women when they when they sort of walk through the portal of turning 50 years old. We I just feel like I've had, I've had, I actually feel like I'm, like, 350 years old and and I've had such a long, long, long life, and I'm at a place where I feel just the most strong and the most capable and the most healthy and the most present. So I would call that my goddess era.

David Novak 51:36 

What's one? What's one piece of advice Jenny, that you got from somebody else that really had the biggest impact on how you think

Jeni Britton 51:46 

when something I got from someone else? Well, I'll tell you, somebody told me one time never burn bridges. And I did that for a long time, and then I realized that sometimes you actually do have to burn a bridge. So I it almost like it did have a big impact on me, because, like, and I don't like to create struggle or tension between people, but, but sometimes you do have to walk away and really make that clear and sever their their business is not an easy world to exist in, and you want good people around you, and you have to be pretty brutal about that. I mean, I think that that has actually been very impactful in my life, both his advice and then my sort of walking away from it, in a way. I mean, I still pronounce it burn bridges, but I understand that sometimes it's okay if there is someone you have to actually sever ties with.

David Novak 52:41 

It. Last question here, you know, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

Jeni Britton 52:50 

Without question, it's it's really to get to know your feeling, your instinct, how your body that you know we're smart, our brains work really well, but actually, our brains are interpreting what's happening in our body and our feeling, our sense of feeling, and you almost always know the way. If you listen, you know, listen to your gut, listen to your instinct, your your your that part of your system is so ancient that it knows how to put together patterns in a way that your brain can't keep up with. So this is why I go to the forest to get tuned to that part of me that knows that, seeing pattern that's almost like atomic patterning, paying attention to how you feel and actually taking care of yourself so that you can get there is is, to me, extremely important, because most of the decisions we make, we already know the right answer, but Sometimes our brain will start to mess with us a little bit, because it starts to lay out so many of the of the trouble that might come with that, or whatever. So getting in tune with your sense of instinct and feeling,

David Novak 53:52 

I've just loved this conversation. Jenny, I want to thank you so much for taking the time, and I appreciate everything you're doing to create fun in the world with your ice cream, and also to make the world a better place with your Flora products as well. They sound like you're really onto something there. And I wish you, wish you good luck with that. And if you can make these things that, based on my experience, if you could make these things that are definitely better for you taste good, you will definitely have a home run, and you're pretty damn good at that, so I would be betting on you.

Jeni Britton 54:27 

We're gonna try. Thank you so much, and it's been so much fun, such a pleasure, to be on your show.

David Novak 54:38 

Making decisions is a big part of every leader's job. Yes, you've got to be dialed into the data and analysis, but stay attuned to your instincts too, because your gut can take you places your brain can't imagine. Jenny understands the power of intuition, and listening to her today, it's clear if. You want to trust your instincts, you've got to hone them. Get more attuned to your instincts, and you'll feel more comfortable trusting them as you make decisions this week, try Jenny's habit of finding time to be still. Get out into nature if you can, or do what you can to find that quiet time you need. That practice of reflection is a big part of how you learn to listen to that intuitive voice inside of you, and it's a habit I see time and time again in the very best leaders. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders stay in touch with their instincts. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Doug Hirsch, founder and former managing partner of Seneca, capital and co owner of the Arizona drive professional pickleball team. Look, you've

Doug Hirsch 55:49 

got a choice. You're often confronted with a choice between discipline and regret, and you if you're after excellence, the choice is easy,

David Novak 56:01 

so be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. You.