Simon Mainwaring:
I’m really excited to introduce our guests today. It’s the founder of Jeni’s Ice Cream, Jeni Britton Bauer. And, I have to say, it’s a personal favorite of our family at home, but I’m especially excited because of what you’ve built as an entrepreneur, as a purpose led company. So Jeni, welcome to Lead With We and how are you?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I’m doing pretty great. It’s hard to say how are we right now. This is a crazy time to be alive, I guess. And there’s such great things happening. We’re all working together and there’s fellowship happening and whatever, but I think we’re all a little bit upside down. But it’s really cool to find ways to come together and have conversations and keep moving forward. So yeah, I’m okay. How are you?

Simon Mainwaring:
Pretty good. I have to say I’ve lost the ability to have a phone call. I’m so used to seeing people visually over Zoom now that you almost step on each other too often when you’ve got to do a phone call old school.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
That is so true.

Simon Mainwaring:
I think it’s an interesting time. How have you personally navigated the last few months? What’s life been like for you, in a personal capacity, but then we’ll talk about Jeni’s?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Well, I would just my being my in the world is so tied up with Jeni’s because I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t really separate them. And it’s really so emotional for me. And so seeing us having to put people on furlough and not seeing… Terrible leadership in the country. Leadership helps unite us toward a vision and we’re all just shattered into millions of pieces. We don’t know as entrepreneurs where the ground is going to actually solidify and we’re going to be able to figure out what we’re all marching toward. It’s challenging. And I think it’s challenging for all the leaders in my company and in every company just trying to figure out when the end is going to happen. And that’s scary.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
We’ve got people that we care deeply about. Companies aren’t divided from their, at least companies like mine and the companies that we are similar to, we are not divided from our people and our team. That’s just the word company means community. It means that we all together as one united on this idea. And right now it feels like there’s a real divide between… We’re really asking our entrepreneurs to make moral decisions, whether we open up or whether we keep people safe. And it just doesn’t feel right to any of us. And I feel personally, that’s actually really quite a difficult thing. I feel like I haven’t been hungry in like four months, which is when I know that I am in a place of deep stress, but also deep focus of trying to work through it.

Simon Mainwaring:
When you find that alignment between who you are and what you do on a daily basis, so much else falls into place. You’re not wasting energy on the wrong activities. You’re not wondering what other career you should be doing. You’re not sort of sometimes being envious of what other people are doing. How did it start for you? 19/20 years ago, how did you decide to start your own company and, more importantly, a purpose for one?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I grew up with a grandmother who is an artist. Actually, both of my grandmothers passed away two years ago, but they were both in their 90s and just amazing women, but one of them, Enid, was an art teacher and an artist. And the other one, Betty, was just this sort of scrappy just doer. And I think that it was a lot to do with them because I grew up making businesses. I grew up thinking that I could learn something from Enid, like for instance, how to make a basket out of weeds that we picked out of a ditch and dye them different colors and dry them in the sun, dye them, and then make them. And then at Betty’s we would literally make a dozen of them and sell them in the neighborhood. And so it was so much fun to think that I can make my own job. From the time I was in second grade, I remember just thinking, using that art thinking, to create almost freedom in my life. I was one of those kids that wanted to be grown up that basically thought I was grown up from the time I was born, probably. Having that lens my entire life of walking into any room and thinking, how can I make this better, and if I can do that, would people care?

Simon Mainwaring:
When you look at a category like ice cream, it’s so crowded, it’s so competitive. Often the bigger players want to squeeze out the smaller. So why ice cream and how did you navigate that?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Well, naivete is important, I think sometimes, in business too, because I felt like… I can get kind of in the weeds. But I think understanding yourself is a really important feature of an entrepreneur, knowing how you feel actually connecting with how you feel and how other things make you feel and why you’re feeling certain ways. Because I think if you do that, you can start to think, for instance I made my first ice cream and it was this beautiful rose petal from Bulgaria, and it was this gorgeous, really expensive, essential oil that I had. And I loved it. And I just thought, well, if I love it this much, there are other people who would love it. So you start saying, well, okay, first start with chefs. I think there are chefs in my town that might love a really beautiful, kind of rare, rose petal ice cream to go on that polenta cake or whatever. You start to think.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
And if I can do that, then maybe there’re some dinner parties that are like that. And you start to go out like that. Instead of this sort of data driven analysis pitch competition, that’s not how I did it. So it was that. And then it was literally like, hey, if Ben and Jerry’s, first of all, those two guys, awesome, love their product, they’re not smarter than I am. So if they can do it, I can do it. It was obviously way harder. And then that begins the adventure. And I had to learn how to do business, how to find our real space with customers, how to do it, and how to become something meaningful to people. But I think in ice cream, even more than maybe other things, you really do have to have a deep personality, even your customers when they come in, that’s what they’re there for to learn something about each other. Over time that was what we did was just slowly build our character.

Simon Mainwaring:
That makes so much sense. And you’re almost painting a portrait of what it means to be an entrepreneur. There’s got to be that healthy blend of being naive and that, get at it, attitude and just go for it and not question too much. But to go from that intention to action is the big step, to go out to those dinner parties, to start to put your shingle up and put your name out there. What motivated you to take that first step to actually make it real and formalize it?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I was in college, I was studying art. I was making pastries at a pastry shop and I was trying to figure out if I was going to open my own pastry shop or I was going to be an artist or an art teacher, or what I was going to do, and when I found ice cream I realized that it’s everything I want. It’s the stuff I wanted to do. It’s the stories that I wanted to tell. It’s making something and it’s entrepreneurship. And I also love American history, I love American culture, and so it was very American. And I felt like I could go into the future with that.

Simon Mainwaring:
Where did the impact piece come in? Because you can just start a business, you can just make money, you can grow the business and you’re done.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Well, it’s funny because I don’t know that you can do that in ice cream anyway. You have to have personality, you don’t necessarily have to have an impact business. But I started in an indoor public market that was 150 years old community of makers and growers and producers and artisans and wine merchants and cheese mongers. And it really was a sort of community.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I feel like a lot of what I’d learned came from that place. And I would just say that going back to being naïve, I believe that I built a business that you would build if you were 12 and you just did it the way you thought everybody did it. Because when you believe the marketing that you see on TV, you think everyone’s just really great. And so, I did that. I started my ice cream business wanting to make my ice creams from scratch. It took me not very long to realize that no one does that in ice cream. It just doesn’t … Especially in the 90s and early 2000s. Really only until maybe the last decade have people been making … Doing what I’ve been doing, which is making it from scratch.

Simon Mainwaring:
How long, Jeni, did take you to go from the idea to prototyping your first flavors to actually having a business you could take to market?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
In 1996, I left art school. That was really my experimental years. There were four years where I worked every single day and made all the ice creams. I bought everything from the market. I learned about everything that I now know today. It was all of the foundational stuff. It was about seasonality, about what grows well in Ohio, how the dairy industry works, cheeses that work well in ice cream, and a lot of failures, as well. I learned that I can’t just make every flavor that I want to every day and not have a regular lineup because people come back for the ones that they love. In fact, it’s the only reason that they come in.

Simon Mainwaring:
Right.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
And if you don’t have that there, then you lose their trust. And if you lose trust, you lose everything. In fact, you don’t have anything as a business, which is one of the reasons we weren’t successful. Once I did that, closed that company and started rethinking it and wrote a business plan … Realized what we did well, what people responded to and then solved the things they didn’t … Then we opened up back in the North Market again. $30,000 investment in this small little space. Bought an ice cream machine and a little scooping thing and we were successful from the beginning. In a way, it was like my education. We had a mission, a plan, an idea of the kind of ice cream we were going to make, the things people responded to. I had listened for four years over the counter and really started to get good at it, but I still had lessons to learn.

Simon Mainwaring:
You mentioned impact on your communities. And clearly, you learned a lot from the marketplace and the vendors about seasonality and so on. Why did community become so important to you? Why did you want to give back in that way? That’s not a must do. It’s not a requirement of business.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I think it might be personal for me and that is because I moved almost every year growing up and so I never had a strong community to fall back on. I never had a strong cultural push or understanding of my communities. And I didn’t have a very strong family, either. Once I got into The North Market, this place where there were 65 merchants in the market treating each other like family … Literally fighting, loving, gossiping … There’s so many beautiful nuances in that place.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Most of the time, if you ever walk into a public market, a farmer’s market, usually we’re all there as customers during a time when it’s the busiest. It’s Saturday morning or after work on your way home or whatever and there’s people getting food and stuff for the week. But the rest of the time, which is really most of the hours at the market, nobody’s there. Customers aren’t there. Merchants are walking around, they’re preparing, they’re creating inventory, they’re cutting the meat, they’re baking the bread, and then they’re chatting and talking with each other. And it’s a really interesting place. And I feel like that, really, for me, was the beginning of my understanding that this is my community. It follows me wherever I go and I need to build that to be what I want it to be. And I have that chance to do that. And Columbus is a great place to do that, as well; where we can really be impactful in what we do.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I also believe … And I believe somehow from the very beginning, I think, because of The North Market … I’ve started nonprofits and I know that that is just such a pain in the ass. You’re reliant on other people, too. You’re constantly writing for grants and other things and looking for money. Whereas in a business, you’re doing something that customers love and they give you their money for it. And when you get that dollar, how you spend it is one of the most powerful things you can do. Giving it directly to another human being is one of the most powerful things you can do, and so how you do that is what creates that social change.

Simon Mainwaring:
And let’s talk about that. Your mission is, “Making better ice creams and bringing people together.” What does that mean to you? Where did it come from? How did you define that?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
It really wasn’t something that we sat around and crafted. It was just sort of like, “Well, at the end of the day, this is what we’re here to do.” It’s always about getting better, not about being perfect. And that is really cool, too, because it puts everyone in motion versus trying to live up to someone else’s idea of best and our idea of best. It’s just let’s just commit to getting better all the time. That’s about listening, that’s about growing, that’s about trying things and taking risks.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
And then, if we can do that in a way that bring people together … Well, the reason people get ice cream in any ice cream shop is because they want something to do with another human being almost always. We’re out with our friends, we’re out with our family, we’re out with our grandparent and we’re going to get to know each other a little bit better. Ice cream, in general, brings people together. But we thought what if we could do that behind the scenes, too? That just became part of our mission. Who we are behind the scenes is who we are in the front. For us, it’s this tiny mission that can be unpacked, I think, for miles. It’s sort of the what we do and why.

Simon Mainwaring:
You’re idea of community is much more than just the brand, you and customers out there or consumers. It really is upstream. It really is the whole community of producers and suppliers and growers and so on. Is that right?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Absolutely. I love the word fellowship. People ask me what my favorite business book is a lot. My sort of joke, but actually it’s not a joke, is that it’s the Lord of the Rings movies. I can go back to fantasy and sci-fi for every lesson that I have in business. And fellowship, for me, is from The Lord of the Rings. It’s The Fellowship of the Rings. It’s that we are all bringing in our awesomeness and together we make something greater than the sum of our parts. We’re just this incredible force for good. That means our whiskey distiller, who is the expert at whiskey and can make a whiskey for us that’s lower in alcohol but really beautiful flavor from Ohio red wheat so we can make our whiskey ice cream. Our strawberry grower we’ve worked with for years and years, now they’ve staggered the strawberries so that we can get them over six weeks instead of just two in Ohio and make our strawberry ice cream.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
They’re bringing their awesomeness in and together we’re making this incredible ice cream in service to each other and then our communities. That’s that idea of fellowship for me, which I love so much.

Simon Mainwaring:
It’s a powerful idea because the more you invest back of house with your suppliers and growers, the greater benefits to the consumer out there. And therefor, they become more loyal. What do you say to somebody who says, “It’s hard enough out there to start a business, especially with COVID and everything else that’s going in. Isn’t purpose a nice to do? Why do I need a mission? Don’t I just look after the bottom line? Because it’s hard enough to go to market.”

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I think it would be much harder to build a business the other way. Once people get to a certain level in their lives, they realize it’s not money that makes people happy. It’s mission. We have been able to attract the most incredible people on all levels, actually in our company. They know and they believe in what we do. And we are united by our values. And values end up being the thing that truly makes happiness; values and commitment to people. I would just say you’re going to get a higher level of talent, of commitment to your cause, of work, of work ethic and all of that by creating a company that means something to people in addition to sales. Because it’s the same thing. The same thing is true for customers.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I think when you ask customers, if you stood in our shop, “Why are you here?” Many of them might say, “I just feel good when I’m here. This is the best ice cream I’ve ever had.” But a lot of them are going to say, “I really believe in the values of this company.”

Simon Mainwaring:
It’s a very, very powerful business driver, for sure. But as an entrepreneur, you’ve got that passion. You’ve got the personality. You had that journey. How do you pass that on to the people who work for you? How do you make sure they not only buy into it themselves, but they kind of maintain it over time, especially when they’re like seasonal staff or they’re casual staff who may come and go?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Well, I think that’s almost the easy part. It’s fun to join our company, and it’s actually really funny too, because our front line team, who work at the shops, I mean, there’s like a thousand of them. They’re awesome, and they want to know everything. They take training very, very seriously.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I’ve been much more casual about it. I love everybody’s unique personalities and kind of how people approach it, but they literally have created tests and you have to get a 100% on the tests in order to get on the front line, and it is that purpose driven.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
So when you come to our store, what you’re seeing and what you’re feeling is that they’re taking all of the amazing work that went into us making an ice cream. It might be a 100 people that it took, and because the people working the counter believe in and understand what happened to bring that to that moment, they’re passing that energy onto our customers. They may not pass the entire story on, but the pride that they feel in giving you that scoop is really palpable.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
You can feel it when our photographer is really proud of what we’re doing, and the same lighting, the same photo, feels a little bit lacking when there’s not pride there, and I know it. And so, sometimes I’ll see it, and I’ll say, “The luster’s not here. What are you missing about this flavor?” And I’ll talk to Erica about it, and like, “Who made it? What’s going on?” She may not have gotten the entire story. And all of a sudden, it shines with personality.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
So I do think that it is about pride. Everyone in the company feels that pride, and that starts with trust. Then there’s this one plus one equals magic.

Simon Mainwaring:
And we would all love to create that special spirit inside our own companies, that secret sauce of all the things you do with your 800 plus employees. What’s one thing that has really kind of struck a note with everyone, so that we can learn from some of the things that you’re doing?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I wrote a little book called Flavor Notes. It’s not just like what we do at Jeni’s. It’s like, this is kind of the secret to life. If you ever read the book, the Four Agreements, if you just kind of do this, you’re good.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I want people who work in our company, especially in the front line, who start there, to understand how to take that experience forward in their lives, to articulate it to college admissions or to your next job. And it’s not just, “Hey, I scooped ice cream at Jeni’s for a summer. It was really fun.”

Jeni Britton Bauer:
It’s teamwork. It’s understanding empathy, but like on a very deep level and quickly. When people come in, you’re changing, you’re sort of melding with emotional energy with a customer, and you’ve got like two minutes with them, and then you’re on to a totally different personality.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
There’s all sorts of Jedi skills that you build working the counter, and I want people to know what that is, so that they can articulate that forward in their lives, wherever they end up going, either in our company or beyond.

Simon Mainwaring:
There’s never been a more important time for business to show up and walk their talk and live their values, especially in the context of COVID-19 and the cost to human health and economic health, and also issues like the important protests around Black Lives Matter. So how do you balance talking about the joy of ice cream with these really critical social issues?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Well, I think that business can be a powerful force for good in the world, for change, for creating the world that we want to live in. And so, I think in a way, it’s just a part of what we do every day. For me, for Jeni’s, it starts with education. I mean, it starts with our leaders really understanding the issues, so that we’re not just talking about them or creating programs that are surface level, but that we understand them deeply, and we can get involved and actually create meaningful change.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
And actually, again, what we do behind the scenes is way more than what we’re actually going to show you, but that’s what informs how we talk about it openly externally.

Simon Mainwaring:
What are some of the things that you’re doing that demonstrate your values?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I went to Norfolk State University to learn directly from scholars of the 1619 project about reframing the American narrative. It was a two day symposium that covered so much. It was just amazing. But it was the best two days that I’ve ever spent, hearing it from the people who are uncovering the genealogy, uncovering new archeology, and connecting people through technology, and what they’re able to do then is like nothing else.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
But additionally, I heard directly from scholars looking into the future and looking into systemic racism in this country, and I feel like that informed me, then I informed my team, but it’s also we share books as a leadership team, but also wider in the company. But having these conversations behind the scenes openly and also creating a company that we want to see, that’s not an easy task.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I mean, thinking about the idea of diversity versus equity, and it’s something we’ve talked about for a really long time and tried to make happen at Jeni’s. We realize that we’re not perfect at it, but deciding to do it is the first thing. You’re being intentional about it. And obviously, educating yourselves and your team about all of the issues.

Simon Mainwaring:
One of the challenges for any young purpose led company is to be accountable, to withstand the scrutiny that’s placed on all companies right now, supply chain, how they treat their employees, what products they’re taking to market. How else are you walking your talk? What are the ways that you’ve built the building blocks, in a sense, of your values?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
This is actually a good chance to talk about COVID too, because we’re in a place right now where I believe that our entrepreneurs, our founders, our businesses, are actually being pitted against our teams. We’re having to make moral decisions that we haven’t had to make. Whether we open and survive and make people come to work when they don’t feel safe, these are really big important issues that are sort of almost dividing us.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
And so, even behind the scenes, we’re having these conversations about what can we do now? You have to be open with your team about this, because in a normal year, somebody might call us out on Instagram and it’ll be a light bulb moment, and we’ll be like, “Thank you. We can do this.” Or they’ll call us out internally, and like, “Let’s make this happen.”

Jeni Britton Bauer:
But now, it’s almost like you can’t win. This is a moment when communication and love, starting with love and caring and openness and being human, we want to support you.

Simon Mainwaring:
Do you look to your purpose or mission at times like this? What role does it play?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Very much. In fact, I think sometimes when you can’t find the words around a problem or your path forward, you can fall back on your values. And so that, to us, is really important. So if your values are community, it’s also communication, and it’s just coming together and loving each other and explaining what’s going on and what we’re going to do about it, and listening to what other people are feeling, whether it’s our logistics team, who is coming to work every day, because our eComm is skyrocketing right now, whereas our stores are down more than 50%, and listening to their challenges and their fears of coming to work during this time, and how can we keep them safe?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
And that’s obviously been our number one priority. We’ve not had anybody test positive for COVID from work or at work yet, and I assume that will eventually happen, but we really go to the ends of the earth to keep everybody safe within our shops and everywhere.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
But by listening to them, and by creating open dialogue, I feel like it’s the best you can do, and then at the end of the day, during this kind of time, where we don’t have strong leadership in the country to help everybody say, “Look, we all agree to go this direction,” you sort of have to fall back on your values, and our values are always listening and love and working together and fellowship.

Simon Mainwaring:
What is one lesson that you’ve taken away from these extreme circumstances for any business owner? COVID has put so much stress on everybody and also forced these choices, these difficult choices that you just described. What have you learned in the last three months as a sort of mission driven company?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I think that every company should practice crisis. I think you should go through a what would it mean for us to have a recall? What would it mean for us to lose our stores for three months or whatever? So going to the exercise, one of the first things that we do when we get into this is we create sort of a council. And we meet every single day for half an hour and just talk about anything we can talk about so that we can activate where we need to activate, whether it’s me going and having a conversation with other people, or whether it’s us moving resources from, let’s say, production from buckets, because now we’re not doing scooping, to pints so we can do delivery. So it’s all of those things and all the ideas on the table. But again, it, to me goes back to fellowship and you got to get tight during times of crisis. And I think we have done it better even this time than we did it last time. And it’s been interesting to see. So we’ve met every single day for the last four months.

Simon Mainwaring:
And what has it taught you as a leader, as someone who’s got to be a figurehead for a thousand employees under very difficult circumstances. What has it sort of surfaced in you?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I feel like I have learned a lot about what good leadership is by watching what’s happening in Washington. We are rudderless. I mean, we really have no way of knowing where to put our resources and how to stretch them and how long to stretch them as organizations. And I think everybody’s feeling that right now across the country. And so I feel like seeing that play out in such a massive and devastating level has helped me understand how important it is to be a leader who makes decisions and helps people sort of see the future and feel confident in that. And they’re part of that, they’re part … they’re a piece of the fellowship of the puzzle. I feel like I’ve done a lot of thinking about that recently.

Simon Mainwaring:
I think every leader in every capacity has been forced to kind of lean in even further, as you say. And in terms of bottom line, brass tax, balance sheet, reality, how has being deeply committed to your purpose, your mission, delivered value to the business?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
I just think that that’s where all of our loyalty comes from. We’ve seen competition come and go over many years and people who will sort of make it look like they’re Jeni’s-esque. We kind of created this market for artisinal ice cream in the country and there’s a lot of people who are kind of jumping in. And we’ve never been perfect at anything, but the one thing that’s constant is our values and the people who come into this world that we’ve created know that, and they don’t leave it. One thing people ask me a lot is, “Could you ever have imagined this kind of success in the business?” And my answer to that usually is, “Well, how do you think we got here?” You know what I mean? Because it is that imagining and then marching slowly toward that every day that’s sort of why you ended up getting there.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
But I will say the one thing I never could have imagined, never would have imagined, is how deeply committed our customers are to our company and to our brand. And when I go to do store openings, which I go to every one of them. Now we’re in COVID, so I haven’t been able to do that, but we’ll get 700 people show up there. And I will listen, whether it was, “I ate your ice cream right after I gave birth to my baby, or my mother passed away last year and your ice cream kept her alive for two more days while my sister drove in.” Literally, I mean, these are the stories I’m hearing. Or crying, “I met my husband, we went on dates, and then we had your ice cream at our wedding.” Just over and over and over again, and it’s just like this energy and love that happens. It’s remarkable. And that’s something I never would have presumed to dream of I think, just to think that that could ever happen.

Simon Mainwaring:
So Jeni, I know you’re deeply invested in the next generation of entrepreneurs. Any advice you’d give somebody who wants to build a purpose-driven company?

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Well, my advice would be start small and build. And we don’t talk enough, I think, about the SBA, the Small Business Administration and bank loans. When you take out small loans from the bank to grow slowly, it is painful because you’re not building your giant beautiful whatever. You’re scrappy and you’re building. But what happens is that you own your company and you’re creating your company alongside your customers over time. And so by the time you kind of expire your bank loans and run out of that and go to get private equity or VC funding or whatever your next source of funding is, you’ve created a brand that they don’t want to ruin and would never ruin because that would ruin their own investment and why they’re attracted to your company. And so that was what we did. We were already a B Corp before we took private equity money.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
We already had all of these values sort of really part of our DNA. And that is so important, I think, because you can really show that this can create a meaningful company and be a great investment for someone. But I think you have to get it off the ground in your own way first. Otherwise, and I honestly think this is true for just entrepreneurs in general, when you take money too early from somebody else, it’s no different than working for another company, right? You have a boss. And I think true entrepreneurs, we don’t really want to have bosses. We want to do this on our own and create our own worlds, right? So I would just say, let’s start talking about the SBA again. Let’s start talking about bank loans and being scrappy and you can do that.

Simon Mainwaring:
Fantastic. Thank you, Jeni. Congratulations on your success and for your time today and for the insights. And if you want to find out more about Jeni’s ice cream, go to jenis.com. Thanks so much, Jeni.

Jeni Britton Bauer:
Thank you so much. It’s been great being with you.

Simon Mainwaring:
Thanks for listening to Lead With We, where I was talking to Jeni Britton Bauer, the founder of Jeni’s Ice Cream, who revealed how you go from the spark of an idea to being a sustainable purpose-led company, and why values and community is so critical to the value of your brand, and how you build a company culture with your employees that drives growth and impact over the long term. If you’d like to learn more about how you can build a purpose-led company, check out our website at wefirstbranding.com, where you’ll find more resources and case studies. Thanks for listening to Lead With We. And please share it with your friends and colleagues.

Simon Mainwaring:
You can find us on Apple, Google, Spotify, or our website, and we’d love you to write and review. See you next week on Lead With We.