October 26, 2021 • 56 mins
On serving your community and settling disagreements
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Okay, Well, as promised, I am back, and we're going
to continue on the topic of my Housewives trajectory and
what took me to this point and what I think
about things that are said about me and me going back,
and we're going to keep getting into it. So when
I left, I really left. I did not want to
go back. That was not where I wanted to be.
(00:35):
And I'm not you know, believe me, I'll rip somebody
like the best of them. It just wasn't what I
wanted to do. I didn't want to be doing the
gotcha And you know, Bravo and the production company and
all these people will say it's four months of work,
and it's a lot of money for the four months
of work, But anybody who's on the Housewives, no knows,
it's not four months of work. It's four months of shooting.
(00:56):
Then it's doing a reunion, but now out way more
than then. Then it was more like four months of shooting.
Now it's four months of shooting, eight months of defending yourself,
preparing for the for the fall, talking about editing, doing
press to promote it, doing press to protect yourself, doing
press to trash. Are the people doing you know, it's endless.
(01:18):
It's year round. You shoot the show, then you panic
for a while and finish doing what they call pickups,
which is doing those interview bites for a while, freaking out,
still hardbring resentment. Then the show. Then you have to
promote the show. So then you have to do all
the press to promote the show. And that's a whole
other ship show too. If you don't want to be
sitting down promoting the show with certain people, you want
to do it, you know, on your own or however,
(01:40):
that's a whole thing. And what shows people get picked for,
meaning I would get the Today's show, someone else gets this.
Why do I do? Ellen? Why don't we? You know,
that's a whole competition, and across the whole franchise. The
competition is fierce. Now okay, I'll get to that, but
I don't want to forget it all. Just say it.
It's fierce now. I have had people from all of
the different franchises say to me, oh, well, they sent
(02:02):
me to hear they sent me to another country to
promote it. They had me do it alone because I'm
the only one doing this. Just me and this person
are doing this. Cover It is cause It is competition,
like you can't believe. It is not women supporting women
at all. It is women supporting women on television, or
women saying they're supporting women, or women pretending they're supporting women.
(02:22):
It is every woman for themselves. It is this way
across the board. There are a few exceptions. I will
say that Tinsley happens to be a nice person who
literally like doesn't really like to be in the fray.
She's an operator. She's got her own game she's running,
and she's got her own brand of games she's running.
But she's not in there to like kill or be killed. Um,
(02:45):
that's just somebody who jumps off the page. I don't
know everybody from every other season. I know that on Atlanta.
I respect the fact that they will go fucking all
the way. It is not just the tip. They will
say whatever they want there are They do not edit themselves.
The things that they say behind your back are things
they'll say to your back. I respect that. I've always
(03:06):
respected that. The other end of the spectrum is the
Beverly Hills Housewives. They do the opposite. I've been in
a crossover episode. I was in that episode when Erica
came over to my house. They were all telling sending
me things ahead of time that she was in, sending
me sexy videos that she was in. They were telling
me about her rolling their eyes. That wasn't the caliber
of person they wanted for Beverly Hills. They also thought
(03:28):
she was boring. They brought her over to my house
and they hadn't said a single thing to her face.
They wanted me to be the person that said what
they were thinking. I got it, and I understood from
the why the producers wanted that as well. They tiptoe
the most. The Beverly Hills housewives are terrified to say
what they really feel. They have to say what is
politically correct and what will not be taken uh, you
(03:50):
know wrong. They are the most calculated in that regard
the opposite end of the spectrum of um Atlanta. They
have the big houses and the hair and the costumes
and the bags and the money. Porn that that's entertainment,
so they can get away with New York we had.
You know, most people have small, shitty apartments, so you've
(04:13):
got to really survive on you know, what's coming out
of your mouth. You don't have the same kind of
like money porn. Most people don't have the same real
estate porn, you know. And you have other cities like
Atlanta that do have real estate porn because their houses
are much less expensive by nature of the real estate
market there in the suburbs of Atlanta. So a two
million dollar house there could be eighteen thousand square feet,
(04:34):
where a two million dollar house in New York City
would be could be square feet. So like you know this,
these are the things that have to be balanced by
by by Bravo. You know, you've got to show big houses.
So in New York City that's not as easy. So
you have to have people that might be really witty
or willing to go there. And New York women are
(04:55):
pretty much will willing to go there, not quite to
the level that Atlanta will go there, and they're not
as restricted as as as as a group like Beverly Hills.
But I come from when people weren't weren't wearing costumes.
I remember Andy Cohen walking into my house. It was
gonna be like the eagles Hell freezes overtour. I was
(05:15):
never coming back. I never wanted to come back. I
didn't want to do it. I forgot what I was
doing I was doing my talk show, I was doing
other things. I just was happy with my life. I
was making money. I was being paid seven figures a
year just by my cocktail, even after selling it. You know,
like things were good. I was writing books. It was good.
You know, I'm not a person who I don't want
(05:35):
to do it. I don't want to take every dollar
off the floor. I just want to always have balance
and be happy. And we'll do another show on balance.
But um so I just didn't want to do it.
Andy Cohen came and he came to my kitchen and
I was pitching him another show, and he said, well,
I'm gonna pitch you this, and he wanted me to
come back. We didn't know about the ratings, and they
used to not tell us ratings. There were no ratings.
(05:56):
We had no idea what the ratings were. Once we
started to realize what the ratings were, we were finding
it out on our own. Bravo wasn't even telling us.
I used to send emails. I used to send emails
on everyone's behalf to Bravo, being like, we deserve to
know what the ratings are and if we do well,
we deserve to know that we've done well. You don't
want to hide the rate. They used don't want to
hide the ratings from us, So we want to know
(06:16):
how well we were doing so we wouldn't ask for
more money. And all the girls will will verify this.
You know. We used to talk about it and finally
they had to just tell us after years of me
emailing them said, we'll tell you that Bravo. I've got
the emails, I've got the receipt I used to be like,
tell us what the ratings are and when we do well,
we should be rewarded. But they won't. They won't admit
that that part. Um and he came into my kitchen
(06:38):
and he said to me, and this is something for negotiating.
He said to me, Um, come back and I said,
I'm coming to you with a number. And that's it.
There will be no negotiating. Now. You have to understand.
Any of the girls can also tell you what it's
like to negotiate with Bravo. They're not playing any games.
And too, I don't blame them because they are. Um,
(07:02):
I'm the I'm the one who come up with the terminology.
How Housewives of jelly Beans and a jelly Bean jar
there's a bunch of them, and you could. You know
when I was negotiating, when I was leaving after three seasons,
there was Jersey, there was Atlanta. Things were doing well,
and other they didn't. You know, I didn't have a
lot of negotiating power, and I didn't negotiate, and I
just took my last third season and said, fine, I'll
take whatever money I took. Because I also knew I
(07:24):
had a spin off, which, by the way, was at
the time the highest rated series premiere in Bravo history.
It was a very big success for three seasons, so
and I wanted that to do well. So negotiating with them,
you know, they've got all the leverage. All the girls
need the money and the relevance, so they really don't
have any leverage. They pretend they have leverage. I think
(07:44):
they have leverage. They fight to the end, then they
give Bravo and ultimatum. Bravo calls their bluff. The girls
say they're walking away, Bravo starts shooting. The girls crawl
back and repeat every season. Girls band together, then one
girl gets scared. She walks away from the other girls
she bandaged together with. Now she now everybody has less power.
They literally you could write a book on how terrible
(08:06):
Bravo talent is at negotiating, and Bravo will confirm this
as well. One season, one of the girls said, I
want to make one dollar more than Bethany is making
and or I'm not coming back, and Bravo laughed, folded
their hands as it fine, don't come back. Then the
girl came begging back because she had broken away from
her negotiating team and had no leverage. And Bravo knows
that they all need it. They need the money, they
(08:28):
need it, so it's just like the war. You could
do a course in Harvard on what not to do
about negotiating. But I said to Andy, I will give
you a number. There will be no negotiating back and forth.
That's my number. And actually I now know that I'm
twenty five thousand dollars lower than they would have given
me per episode for that negotiation. But I wanted to
(08:48):
not go back and forth. I don't negotiate like that
in general. I like to say what I need to
get paid, and they don't play games. I don't say
I want to give ten, but I'll want ten, but
I'll take it. I say the number I need. I
told the number I needed. They came back. A contract
was signed. A contract was signed in the way that
I could do it with regards to my excruciating, horrific
(09:09):
divorce as it pertains to my daughter I was making.
I was able to state the turns, their terms they're
needed to be. I came back to the house. I
was on different terms, not only legally with the other women,
because I ran into one of the girls at SOHO
House and she said to me, please say you're coming back.
I ran into one of the newer girls between Heather,
(09:30):
Carol and Kristen, and they said, please say you're coming back.
Because Sonja will admit She's the only one that will
actually admit that. She emailment to say, please say you're
coming back. Everybody was saying they are asking me to
come back because whether they loved me or hated me,
and most it was the ladder. The show had tanked
and they wanted good business. They wanted good business and
they wanted me back. That made me feel good. I
(09:50):
came back. It separated me. No one expected us to
be all paid the same, treated the same. It just
they just wanted a good show and it was it
for me personally and Lauren. Michael said it best when
he said to me, you have to sometimes make an
exit to make an end. You have to make an
exit to make an entrance. I didn't do any of
this on purpose, but it happened. I walked away. It
(10:12):
made me hire and demand they want to be back.
I came back. This was exciting, unexpected. Um, it may
seem funny to you. It's just so unique that I
would be so fascinated by their story. But wow, what
(10:34):
a fascinating story it is going to be. My guests
are Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Yes, the Ben and Jerry.
They share with me how a failed attempt at getting
into medical school and a failed pottery career led them
into the world of specialty ice cream in a way
that no one had ever seen before that continues to
this day. They started with just one small shop in Vermont,
(10:58):
and their famous ice cream is now sold all over
the world. I promised them we wouldn't do a gotcha interview,
but I still got the dirt on the only disagreement
they've ever had, and it's a dramatic one. Their success
has been built around one important thing, chunks. It's a
very chunky interview. I can't wait for you to hear it. Okay,
(11:25):
So who is Ben and who is Jerry? I'm Jerry.
It used to be that Ben had the beard, but
we switched several years ago. Okay, So you are childhood friends?
How old? Well we met in seventh grade, Jim class.
We were the two slowest fattest kids in class. We
met running around the track. Actually Jerry and I were walking.
(11:48):
And you have been actual best friends ever since. Hard
to believe. Huh. Unbelievable, like a like a lifelong marriage.
I mean it's unbelievable. Um. And what were where? Where
did you grow up? Brooklyn? Well, we were born in Brooklyn.
We grew up on Long Island in the town of Merrick.
(12:08):
I know Merrick because I lived in Rockettell Center. Merrick
was I think the first or second sushi restaurant in
Long Island in like the seventies. Yeah, there weren't no
sushi when we were there. I can tell you that
south Shore, Long Island you don't have the accent, no,
somehow or other. Uh. It seemed like South Americ people
had the accent. We were North American people. You were
(12:30):
North Americ people. Okay, was that um? Because in Great
Napa Long Island there's north and south and south was
it's still upper middle class or middle class, but it
was lower socioeconomics. So were you in were you both
of means growing up or uh? Struggling? I would not
scribe us as of means? Would you describe us as
(12:52):
of means? Jerry? Not particularly? But for us, the difference
between South America and North Merrick was the kids in
South America were the fast kids. They were like they
knew what was going on. They were hip, and the
kids in North Merrick were like clueless. That's that's where
(13:15):
Ben and I found ourselves and the clueless bunch got it.
Like in gym class, it sounds like did you grow
up in from similar families? Like did you have the
same sort of cultural messaging around you, meaning your parents
were driven? Did they say, you know, you have to
have a solid work ethic, you have to always have
a job, Like what about that? Well? Uh, let's see,
(13:35):
my father was a hard worker. He was a workaholic. Uh.
He was an auditor for the New York State Department
of Ordered and Control. Uh. He ordered it school districts
uh north of New York City. He found that, um,
(13:56):
the person who was stealing the money was usually the
little old lady who was watching the petty cash. Then
he became a um, you know, kind of general manager
of a direct mail printing and advertising and mailing company,
and you know, he used to he used to talk
(14:16):
about his business management issues at the kitchen table, and
that was kind of an education for me. Did you
want to be a business person? No? I of course
wanted to be uh, you know, a policeman or a
firement or a carpenter. And my parents really eventually I
(14:38):
think I wanted to be an electrician, and they explained
to me, no, you don't want to be an electrician,
you want to be an electrical engineer. You know. I
kind of like working with my hands. I liked photography.
I was very good at extracurricular activities. But I wasn't
very good at uh school. I mostly I had a
(15:00):
hard time motivating myself to do my own work. I
got it, I do get that. And so you were
the there's there's in my cocktail brand, skinny Girl. I
was the creative and the marketer and the vision and
my partner was the operations guy. So you, Ben were
the creative and not that you're both not creative, well
get into that, but you were the creative in your business.
(15:21):
I was the marketing guy and Jerry was the guy
who made all the ice cream. Oh, so Jerry was operations.
Ben is is is of course being a little modest.
He's incredibly creative and uh he he created everything. But
(15:41):
you know, and so going back to growing up, I
think education was important for me. And the message I
got from my parents was we don't care what you do.
As long as you're happy, We're going to support you
no matter what. You know. It was one of these
we love you no matter what sort of things and
very non directive, and that might have been a little
(16:03):
different from the message Ben was getting. Yeah, I think
the message I was getting was that you should be
a lawyer right today was so you put, your parents
are more financially focused, which is interesting. Your parents are
more financially focused, and you were the creative and Jerry's
parents were more just be happy and live free, and
you ended up being the operations guys. So that's that's
(16:23):
interesting to me. Um. I read something that one of
you worked at Saratoga Springs Race Track for those listening,
the oldest racetrack in the country. I grew up going
to Saratoga and this summer because I grew up in
a horse racing family. My father was a Hall of
Fame horse racer trainer. My my father was Bobby Frankel.
(16:44):
He was in the Hall of Fame as a trainer.
My stepfather, John Parris Ella, was also a very successful
horse trainer. So we spent every summer in Saratoga. To
a separate podcast on how that place has changed. But
I remember from being a kid, I guess I've always
been brand aware my whole life. I've always know everything
to this day. I noticed every restaurant, every sign, every font,
every menu, and I remember that bench on that corner
(17:07):
not far from Mrs London's, I think, in Saratoga at
Ben and Jerry's, and that was the first time I
ever saw the brand. And that was a thousand years ago,
and reading the reading today, I realized, if that was
early on in your brand. It started in Vermont and
that wasn't far behind, right, Yeah, I think that was
like the first or second franchise shop that we opened.
(17:30):
It was owned by a friend of ours from high school,
Jeff Durstuwitt's, and I was very involved personally in uh
in you know, helping to construct that um that shop
and design it. It was. It was in an old
(17:52):
gas station like our original and ben us Ben used
to work at Mrs London. It's a long time ago.
It was one of the many jobs he got fired from. Yeah,
you know, Yes, I was a pinkerton guard at the
Saratoga Racetrack. Uh you know. They gave me a holster
(18:12):
with no gun in it and a badge and a
whistle and uh my job was to guard the Traverse canoe.
You're probably people I've told this story too that is
aware of the Traverse canoe and travers is a big
race like the Kentucky Derby of of Saratoga on the
third Saturday in August. So they had this canoe painted
(18:37):
in the colors of the jockey's uniform who won the Traverse,
and it was located in a little man made pond
behind the toadboard. Well, you got to be a cop.
You wanted to be a cop, so you've got to
be a cop. So the two of you get together
(19:06):
and how do your roles? Well, First of all, how
do you come up with the idea for your business
and how do your roles get to find Because people
listening are working in businesses, running their own businesses, a
lot of them are interested in just the food space
and having an idea and it coming to fruition. I
just want to kind of understand your dynamic in the fruition,
the idea, how it came to fruition, and then how
does everyone fall into who they are in this building
(19:28):
of a brand. You know, it's it's funny, Bethany, because
when you describe it, you're making it sound like there
was a lot more thought and planning that went into
it for me, and nothing like that. I mean, we
we we started an ice cream shop because we were
failing and everything else we were trying to do. I
(19:50):
tried to get into medical school and got rejected from
all the medical schools I applied to. Ben was trying
to be a potter and nobody would buy his pot area.
And we just decided to open up an ice cream
shop because we had always liked to eat, and we
thought we would do something with food, and we just
picked ice cream. Got it could have been anything. It
(20:11):
could have We thought about other things. We thought about bagels.
It could have been bagels. We thought about a fond restaurant,
We thought about a rotisseary restaurant. Well, that's a great point.
I agree. I just wanted to have a lowcality margharita.
It wasn't all that deep, and then exactly could have
been ten other things that I care about. But do
you believe that UM had it been now, knowing who
(20:32):
you both are and how you both fell into business
and you didn't know you were entrepreneurs, and you're undeniably entrepreneurs,
and we'll get into that you did it in your
own caring, philanthropic way, we'll get into that. But do
you believe that if you had had a bagel store
or a fond store or whatever these other ideas were,
that it would have been successful? Now, knowing what you
know that it was ice cream, not not near a successful.
(20:54):
I think that UM America has a very deep love
affair with ice cream that's way beyond whatever they've got
with bagels, are fun due or rotisserie roasted foods or crepes,
Thank goodness for that, right, Ben? So there could have
(21:14):
been a luck. So that's a luck part. Look Oh yeah,
It's definitely definitely a bunch of luck. And we ended
up getting into an industry that was growing quite rapidly
at the time, the super premium ice cream industry, and
the way the way we got into our roles. You know,
Ben Ben was creating all the flavors and I was
(21:34):
making the ice cream. And it was because I think
Ben knew what he wanted in ice cream. Uh he
wanted big chunks of cookies and candies, and he wanted
very strong flavors. And I was very comfortable with routines,
(21:55):
you know, sort of making ice cream, doing the same
thing over and over. I'm not creative at all, and
so I think we just kind of fell into what
we were doing based on what we enjoyed. You know,
Jared keeps on saying he's not creative, But it was
Jerry who came up with our best promotion of all time,
(22:16):
which was pop Sidbiswe the penny off per celsius Degree
below zero Winter Extravaganza. The colder it gets, the more
you save forever degree below zero celsius, we would take
a penny off the cost of a cone, and you know,
at the time, a penny meant something you know. I
(22:37):
mean the cone cost fifty cents. When it was really cold,
you could get one. Forts It was a brilliant concept,
I think. I think the actual execution or success of
the program was it didn't live up to what it
could have been. For whatever, we were not streaming in
the door when it was twenty below zero. But at
(22:59):
least left you. I know you were still around when
it was twenty below zero and it was market. Yeah,
you should have been around for the big January white
sale that we had us off anything white we had
in the store, vanilla cream. That's hilarious. Um well, but
it was so you were the formulator. It sounds like
(23:20):
you were sort of the chemist. You were formulating and
then and then you were executing the duplication. It had
to be you know that that it was gonna that
it was gonna work. So you said premium ice cream
became a big thing. And sometimes I think people wonder
myself included. So I'm in the sala addressing category and
some people are wondering whether they should be baking cookies
and it's so crowded or salt stuff. You go to
the Food and Wine Show, there's fifty types of salsa
(23:42):
and olive oil. So how much is when things are
competitive in a market good and when it's too much?
Meaning you were noticing that the premium ice cream category
was becoming more relevant. But in some cases that might
scare somebody away because there's so much competition. But by
the same toe, can you want there to be to
be relevant and there to be a conversation to be
(24:03):
had in society? So how do people know how to
gauge that, like when to jump into a crowded category,
but there's room for more people, room for more products. Well,
we were certainly not jumping in with our eyes open.
I mean we were not aware that it was a
growing category at the time. I mean, I think you
(24:24):
just gotta do something that you're passionate about and that uh,
and that has a point of difference. Hopefully, the point
of difference is that it's really good unusual that that
it's a you know, you need to find a void
in the marketplace and let that be your niche. And
(24:45):
I think that in terms of kind of like least
cost stuff or stuff that's average, it's really hard for
a small company to compete with big companies in that area.
Big companies are always going to do be able to
produce stuff at a lower cost, but they have a
(25:07):
hard time producing really high quality stuff. How do you
honor the integrity of the brand, the initial culture of
the brand when it's growing, when you need to make
your margins, when you need to be competitive, how do
you both manage to do that? Or how have you
managed to that? How can people do that? I think
Ben is uncompromising when it comes to quality. Uh. I
(25:31):
remember in the early days when uh you know, when
we were this little company that had no resources, no money,
and if if the ice cream didn't come out perfect,
Ben would say, we got to dump it. And people
would go, we can't afford the dump it, Ben, and
we can't do that, And there was no question in
Ben's mind. Uh, you cannot afford to not be doing
(25:56):
your best. So there's that element, and then you know,
Ben Ben is awful, spoken very eloquently about the inexorable
drift towards the main street. Uh. How you know, everything
sort of pushes you to become more like everybody else
and for you to lose your difference and to lose
(26:18):
your quality not just around the quality of your product,
but around so many different things well, I hear every
day and all the different categories that I am, I hear, well,
this is trending, and we're seeing a lot of this
right now, and it literally makes my skin my hair
stand up on end because I don't want to do
what's trending and what you want to keep your own
clear point of view, and it's not that easy to
(26:39):
do because partners are scared, retailers are scared. Other people
want you to sort of just go with the flow,
and that's how you become a diluted version of yourself.
When I spoke to Cameron Diaz, she and her partner
were saying that in their relationships at home, if something
is really important to one person, then the other person
goes in that direction. So I'm wondering if that applies
(26:59):
to business. Have you two butt heads or you literally
just have always had this copasetic kumbay our relationship. I mean,
if one of you is really serious about something like
throwing away the batch and it's really important, does the
other one just fall in because it's that much more
important to that person. It's amazing you bring that up,
because that was how we've operated. We we always and
(27:21):
it was it wasn't unspoken. It was absolutely agreed that
if somebody felt really strongly about something, they would get
their way. I can't even think of times, well maybe
one time, uh, where we both felt strongly about something,
but by and large, it was extremely rare when we
(27:46):
when we butted heads. You know that the big disagreement
we've had that that we always talked about was the
size of the chunks in the ice cream. Done one well,
Ben one First, he was right in retrospect. It's easy
to say that in retrospect hindsight right or even even better.
(28:07):
But yeah, and and this comes back to being the
creative person that Ben was, and this comes back to
me being the operational person who was making the ice cream.
Ben wanted big chunks of cookies and candies in the
ice cream. He always said, uh, people don't care if
they get a chunk in every bite, as long as
(28:30):
they know there's a big chunk coming. And I would say, no, Ben,
we need a much better distribution of smaller chunks. That's
you know, so people know it's in there, and you know.
At the same time, I was the guy making the
ice cream, and I can tell you it is a
lot harder putting big I was thinking about that the
(28:50):
machinery for to get through the like extrusion process or something, right,
I mean, Bethany, we've been making ice cream at Ben
and Jerry's for over forty years. You know the hallmar Well,
one of the hallmarks is these big chunks of cookies
and candies. And there's still no the other ice cream
company putting in big chunks. It's that hard to do that,
(29:11):
Ben So. And back in the old days when I
was doing it, you know, yes, I thought, yeah, people
want more smaller chunks. But at the same time it
was making my life really uh, it wasn't. Hell. I
don't know what do you think, Ben, Is it more
(29:31):
expensive putting in big chunks? It's not more expensive unless
you put in more of them. Okay, I got you.
The original discussion was about should we have a larger
amount of smaller chunks or a smaller amount of larger chunks,
And eventually what we agreed on was the larger amount
(29:54):
of larger chunks. So these are the little This is
the you know, this is the weeds that you sometimes
get into. And it sounds like you could have your
The advice could be the same for a marriage as
it is for your business marriage. If it's important to you,
it's important to me. So it sounds like Ben Ben
used to go around saying a chunk is not a
chunk unless it's a chunk. And you know that on
(30:19):
the surface, it doesn't seem like there's a lot there,
but I can tell you there's a lot lurking there.
I love that. Okay, you are still both involved in
the brand on sort of advisory levels, right. I think
what we like to say is where we're employed at
Ben and Jerry's, were not involved in management or operations.
(30:41):
But if they do well, you still both do well. Actually,
it's not like that at all. We I don't think, uh,
we do any better. Whether the company sells a lot
of ice cream or not much ice cream, we kind
of do the same. So do you think that um
has the brand been preserved in the way that it
initially was um incubated and does it feel like the
(31:02):
culture is still there and the quality and the way
that you envisioned it. So Ben and Jerry's was acquired
by this larger company, Unilever, a little over twenty years ago. Uh,
and Unilever is this very large consumer brands product that
has all sorts of personal care brands and food brands.
(31:23):
So they make Hellman's mayonnaise, Dove soap. Uh. You know.
We always like to joke that on the same day
they bought Ben and Jerry's, they also bought slim Fast,
So you know, they've got a really good sense of humor. Uh.
You know. So it's been twenty years. I would say
for the first half of that time, it was really difficult.
(31:45):
I think Unilever and their leadership did not understand Ben
and Jerry's. They didn't really appreciate what made it what
it is. And then, you know, probably about ten years ago,
there was a great CEO at Unilever, Paul Pullman, who
retired just a few years ago, and he was very
committed to sustainability. He understood the values of the company,
(32:10):
and I think at that time, Uh, Ben and Jerry's
started to thrive again, both in terms of the product
and in terms of the social mission. Uh. You know.
And one thing we haven't really talked about Bethany is
the social Mission company. But but and the only reason
(32:30):
I mentioned is because the success of the company is
attributable at least as much to the social mission of
the company as it is to the quality of the product,
and and the flavors and the chunks themselves that you
can't really separate them. They're all they're all part of
(32:52):
the mash. Well, I agree, because it's not just because
there are obviously two names attached, but there's a feeling
to the brand where you feel like the brand has
a soul and not every single person knows the mission
and all of the philanthropic work you've done and how
you treated your employees, which we can get into, and
the culture, but there's something about the vibe of the
(33:13):
brand that indicates that that it's sort of like a
feel good, nice person, good person, not capitalism brand. It
just always felt like that, and I just think that
came through in some of the flavors, and you know,
just the sort of the deadhead vibe and just giving
back and the campaigns and all that. You know, a
(33:34):
lot of that was Ben too, you know Ben Ben uh.
You know, so the company started out very countercultural because
I think Ben and I were kind of countercultural. But
the other thing about Ben is he's completely anti authoritarian,
which is part of his chure, and I think, you
know that was that was built into the company very
(33:56):
early on. How do you be non entrepreneur real type
people and change with not only the times, but like
you know, you have to be more corporate, more hr more.
You need to grown up in the room who's smarter
than you to just have these conversations that are not
you're not naturally inclined to have, which I've read about
both of you, and it sounds like you went through that.
(34:18):
So how do people navigate these growing pains? Your ice
cream makers? You're doing well, You're making money. People like it, Like,
so how did you navigate that arc? Yeah? You know,
I I think the way you're talking about it is
exactly the way to do it. I mean, so for
Ben and myself, I think it was recognizing the things
we were good at, and almost so that means recognizing
(34:41):
the things we were not that good at. Uh. You know,
Ben and I are wonderful, caring, creative people, etcetera, etcetera.
We're not managers. We were not good with policy and procedure,
and and so we needed to bring in great people
and a team to do that. And I think that
(35:05):
one of the critical aspects of that is finding people
not just who have those skills, but people who share
the values and the culture that you bring. And I'm
sure you could talk a lot about that, and you know,
it's got to be a fit. So both of you
are not quote unquote uh managers or those type of
process oriented people, although you're more process oriented, but um
(35:28):
do you both have a very serious work ethic, like
get it done and work you know, as long as
it takes to get it done. Very serious. You know.
In in the early days, we were living and sleeping
and eating uh at the ice cream shop we were
we were sleeping on top of the freezers in the
(35:49):
back room. So it was seven day a week, you know,
ten or twelve hours a day. Well, I guess that's
kind of on the shore side, but that's what I'm saying.
And Jeffrey Katzenberg said on here, and he got into trouble.
I think about this comment he made years ago. This
is not literal, but he said, if you don't if
you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in
(36:10):
on Sunday, you know. But that's a true entrepreneur. And
I just don't like to sugarcoat things to entrepreneurs because
everybody now is about you know, thinking about all the
time that they have off and getting our breaks and
all that. You know, there's a whole new you get,
you know, cancelation culture for everything not being totally perfect
and in a square box of human resources. Well, that's
(36:31):
not what I experienced coming up. And the people that
I know that are the most successful, that's not what
they experienced either. So however, you all want to get
it done. I'm just saying true entrepreneurs work their asses
off because someone else is willing to work there as well,
you know, the nice the nice thing for Ben and me, uh,
you know, doing it together. And I think, well, I
(36:51):
can speak for myself. A lot of the reason I
was working so hard was I wanted to keep up
my end of the bargain with Ben. I knew what
he was still, I knew he was killing himself and
I didn't. I didn't want to be the guy letting
things down. So yeah, that's the way it was for
both of us. I mean, we were both trying to
work as hard as the other guy. You know, people
(37:12):
say how hard it is, you know, working with friends
or whatever. I think the experience we had was completely
the opposite. I mean, we felt so lucky and still
do to be working with each other because I mean,
you have that trust and you have that personal commitment
to your your friendship, your relationship that I think for
(37:37):
us goes much much deeper than the business, And um,
how do you think that someone is supposed to determine
whether they're really supposed to have a partner or be
on their own, Because it's a very different dynamic. For me,
it was never a question about it. There's I mean
even today we're bet and I get to doing stuff together.
My first thing to Ben is, yeah, I'll do it
(37:58):
if you want to do it with me, but I'm
going to do it on my own. There had to
be a time when you didn't really have the money
(38:19):
to get the management that you needed to take this
thing to the next level and to scale it. How
did you how do you deal with that? And did
you know you were going to scale it? Like? What
are you thinking in that weird purgatory time? You know,
I think uh, Ben and Jerry's was always under resourced
in terms of money or whatever until it popped off
(38:40):
and you got bought. Yeah, but you know, at that point, uh,
you know, there was we weren't running it. I mean,
we weren't running it well before then, but you owned it.
You had someone else running it well before then, but
you owned it had you sold off apart to that person.
I don't think it's bad to not have all the
resources you think you need. You find ways to do it,
(39:05):
You find smarter, less expensive ways to do things, and
you make it work. It. It makes you think smarter
about what you're doing. And uh, it certainly keeps you focused, right,
I mean, you're you don't get unfocused when when you're
trying to figure out how to get something done that
(39:25):
you don't really have the resources to do. How do
you know when to hold them? And went to fold them,
went to sell someone to let go? Like what? Because
I had my own reason for those decisions that evolved
things that are not sexy, like intellectual property versus money,
and street cred versus money, so or just not getting
sued versus money. You know, what are the decisions when
(39:46):
you're saying should we sell? We didn't want the company
to be sold even at the point it got acquired.
But what had happened was Ben and Jerry's was a
public company. The company started in nineteen seventy as this
little homemade ice cream parlor, and the company had a
(40:08):
stock offering just within the state of Vermont. Why I
don't I just don't understand why. Uh, well, the company
needed to raise some money, and Ben found this, uh
kind of obscure law in the state of Vermont that
said you could sell stock in the company to vermonts.
(40:28):
And the reason we wanted to do that was to
give people in Vermont who had been supporting the company
an opportunity to become owners of the business. And uh,
you know, that way, the company would be owned by
essentially the local community, so that as the business prospered,
(40:51):
the owners the local community would automatically process. Wow, that
is interesting and very on brand for you guys culturally. Okay,
that's right. And and and then a couple of years
after that, the company had a national public stock offering,
so that was in about It's interesting that you say
we were on brand for the company's culture. We weren't
(41:15):
trying to be on brand. We were just trying to
be what we believed in. We were trying to use
this need for cash, you know, they were there was
a bunch of venture capitalists that were coming to us
saying we want to invest in your company, and we
(41:36):
we instead of I mean, essentially, the way we saw
that was it was essentially a bunch of people who
already had a whole lot of money. You wanted more right,
you would you want to do like a co op.
We wanted people wanted to share the wealth. We wanted
to spread the wealth. We wanted people who did not
(42:00):
already have a whole lot of money to have a
chance to get in on the ground floor. But that
was the rose that I had pedal and Thorn's because
that one move made you end up having to do
the I p O, which made you end up having
to sell. So it was like a weird journey that
you didn't necessarily want to be on. I don't I
don't think that one move required us to have the
(42:23):
I p O. I mean, you know, the the national
I p O. Uh. You know, eventually we did. And
you know, I think that if we had been a
little smarter, uh, we would not I've been forced to
to sell the company. But you know, interesting we live
(42:46):
and we learned, don't we wow? So is that I
usually ask later in the conversation, is that your rose
and your thorn, or that was not a rose at all?
Was that a rose at the time? And you're high
and you're low. Well know, one out of every hundred
Vermont families bought stock and Ben and Jerry's uh totally rosy.
(43:09):
So I don't know, I mean what you're I mean,
so you're talking about roses and you're talking about Thorn's
what you want to talk about? What was? What was?
What was bad? Or you're you're trying to sit not
meaning like a daily fight or like the thing of
your careers. I usually ask it later, but it sounds
like this is a complicated thing that went down. So
(43:32):
usually the roses like the high of the career, and
then you know, the thorn is the low of the career.
You know, I think the low is when the company
got sold. Uh, you know, both Jerry and I tried
to keep it independent. And I think that's good for
people to hear because people always think when they read
the headlines, somebody sold that that is like their big
pay day and everybody's all excited. And there are many
(43:54):
things that make people have to do things their intellectual
property issues that go on with certain people that they
end up losing their name and they don't even realize it.
There are issues like this that you're talking about, where
things get out of your hands and people say to me,
if I sold half my business, now I have a
bigger dog collar on my neck, a different person to
aunt driving this sleigh. Like, So, just for entrepreneurs at home,
(44:17):
what would you say, Like, what's the message behind all
of this? You can help other people because people all
want a big event, you know, a big financial event,
and they may be careful what you wish for. You know,
It's funny you ask about the highs and the lowest.
When I think about Ben and Jerry's Uh, the greatest
thing for me is not that the company got successful
(44:40):
or made a lot of money or that it Uh.
The greatest things for me that I think about are
the experiences, the relationships. It's all about that. It's it's
not that, uh. You know, at one point the company
sold X number of dollars of ice cream, owns or whatever.
(45:01):
It's it's never about that. One of the house for
us was scooping ice cream Occupy Wall Street, Uh in
New York. I mean I I felt like, you know,
being able to help support that movement by giving ice
(45:24):
cream to people and by just lending the credibility of
Ben and Jerry's to it. UH to me was a
real high point that I felt like this, this was
why we created, this is why Ben and Jerry's came
to be. It's truly I say this all the time.
(45:45):
The people that I speak to you are truly successful.
Nobody is about the money. You can't. I once knew
a girl who said, I have to find a product
to sell. I need to find white space. I'm looking
for white space. And I thought, what a moron. It's
inside of you. You know what I mean? Inside you
is what are you passionate about? What do you love,
what do you not like? What's bothering you? It's aggregated
(46:07):
whatever it is like. That's what true entrepreneurialism is to me,
and that's what we're saying. Paul Pullman, who is the
former CEO of Unilever, just came out with a book
called net Positive, and it is about how corporations, businesses,
(46:30):
what they need to do in our new world is
to meet the needs of the society, to deal with
the issues of racial injustice, to deal with the issues
of economic injustice, and the environment, and that it is
(46:51):
by using the power of their businesses and integrating those
values into their business that they end up becoming successful,
high profit businesses. So it's a win win. You're saying,
your whole entire business was about what you truly felt,
and the values were coming through in the brand and
(47:12):
the products. So it was based. That's a good foundation.
That's a house that's built on a solid foundation, is
what you're saying. You know, it's it's it's a really interesting, uh,
facet of the human experience that as you give, you receive. Yes,
as you help others, you're helped in return. As you
(47:33):
authentically give, business supports the community, the community supports your business.
I mean, it's nothing more really than uh the golden rule.
But you know, you you can't prove it. You can't
prove that, well, we we did all this stuff to
(47:54):
support the community, and that is why we've become more profitable.
But I can tell you that we did do all
this stuff to support the community. We did take all
these social and political stands, and the company kept on
getting more and more profitable. Well that's an amazing construct.
(48:16):
But also from what I've read, you also did that
internally in your business, like externally in the community, but
in your internal community it was a great workplace. You've
made that a serious priority. Whether you're good to quote
unquote managers or not. You managed to make sure that
the your employees were happy. You know, our company started
in seventy eight. Uh. In the eighties, Uh, we were
(48:41):
giving healthcare benefits to domestic partners. We had a compressed
salary ratio so that the highest paid person didn't get
more than five times with the lowest paid person got.
I don't know, I just cared about that stuff. I think.
I think part of it for Benning me was we
(49:02):
had no business training. We we you know, we didn't
go to business school whatever. And and the other thing was, uh,
we didn't really see ourselves as bosses. We had much
more of a of a worker mentality because we'd always
worked for other people and we wanted to run a
(49:24):
company the way we would want to be treated. Right.
I mean that just kind of makes sense. Right. That's
amazing for people listening, because it makes people think no
one's an expert on I think, which you weren't and
which I wasn't. Do you have any I guess you
kind of said your regrets, but any regrets are big
mistakes that people could learn from what what you could
(49:44):
have done differently, that they would do differently. Well, I
think we we used to and continue to make mistakes
all the time. You you just referenced it yourself that
you know, you have to be trying new things, you
have to be taking risks, and some sizeable percentage of
those things don't work, they fail, and you have you
(50:05):
were Ben you wrote a book right above the Indeed,
I did to write a book. Uh, it's about what
Jerry and I are focused on right now, which is
the campaign to end qualified immunity. Uh. You know, there's
a there's a loophole in the law whereby if police
(50:27):
officers break the law, they get off scott free. They're
immune from prosecution. And that's the reason why you see,
uh these situations where rogue cops will be brutalizing or
murdering on armed black people and they get off with
(50:49):
a slap on the wrist or a lot of times
they're they're not prosecuted. It's because of this particular legal
doctrine that needs to be overturned. So we are part
of a coalition now of over two dozen organizations including Uh,
the a c o U and Americans for Prosperity and
(51:13):
the Cato Institute and the n a CP Legal Defense Fund,
that all understand that this is not just. And you know,
I think the thing that we've been thinking about lately
is that, you know, so many people look at this
as a black problem, that it's black people that are
(51:34):
getting murdered and abused, but the reality is that it's
a white problem. That we live in a white society.
It's a majority white culture. The police who act in
our name and with our money are people that we
white people put in power, and when they go and
(51:57):
screw up, we need to take responsibility and hold them accountable.
And so that's that's what we're working on. Fabulous. And
are you both in relationships? I don't. I didn't read
anything about your personal life. I don't know if that's intentional.
You don't have to tell me about you guys. You
have kids? What a wife? I got a daughter, I
(52:19):
got a granddaughter. Okay, what about you? Ben? I would
say that we're very, very happily married, both of us,
not to each other, but to to our beautiful wives.
And uh, we we both have grandchildren. Were are your
wife's friends. Yeah. In fact, we uh Ben and some
(52:40):
other friends and his beautiful wife were over her brunch
on on Saturday and we hang at we're all members
of the fifty one club. Are you probably not familiar
with the tift one club In Vermont, Bethany, there is
a club called it. No, it's it's people who go
(53:00):
to visit all two hundred and fifty one towns in
the state of Vermont. It's the Vermont to Oh that's cool.
I thought it was like that. I thought, I thought,
because you guys have in Vermont. It was that like
the pot smoking time that's that day. I don't know
what it is a time. It sounded like, God, I'm
such so stupid. Well, all right, well you're getting your
(53:23):
number twenty vermonttown. My beautiful wife and I are actually
going on a two fifty one club tour through southern
Vermont UH starting at the end of this week Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Will be visiting UH near Burlington, the big city near Banton, Okay,
(53:48):
because I love Stows, such a good mountain not that
far away. And you know what's on the wage Stow,
don't you don't? But it's the Ben and Jerry's Factory
in Waterbury, the number one tourist attraction in Vermont. I'll
now I can bring my daughter and tell her that
I know you guys, and you can get me ahead
to jump the line with brand for ice cream. Yeah,
we're going to take really good care of you and
(54:10):
your daughter when we come. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna take
our road trip to go to the Ben and Jerry.
That's amazing. I'm so excited. I was like, I think
your name is probably still pretty valuable around there. Um. Wow,
what an interesting conversation. I know we had some back
and forth ahead of time. Wait before I just want
to tell you when you come visit the factory, Bethany,
you can go visit the flavor Graveyard. You can go
(54:32):
visit some of the dearly departed flavors that are buried
right there on the ground. White what Russian who was
resurrected a couple of times, but they came back from
the dead Halloween. It's perfect thing for you guys to
do around Halloween, bring bring bring flavors back from the dead. Right,
(54:55):
such a good conversation, and I appreciate you trusting me.
So it was a pleasure. Yes, thank you for interesting conversation.
Thank you. I'd like to I'd like to hear more
about your ventures sometimes and then drink Skinny Girl. Yeah,
they certainly can. Again, I don't. I I sold off
the Skinny Girl. I owned the Skinny Girl intellectual property
(55:17):
except for in cocktail, so I kept all the I
P So imagine if you kept Ben and Jerry's in uh,
you know, lip gloss and makeup and every genes and
everything else. That's what I did. Uh yeah, we we
we don't have any intellectual property. All we have is ourselves.
We have the real Ben Jerry. Awesome, Thank you, have
(55:38):
a great day, by bye. That was incredible. It's so
great when you have a conversation where it goes so
well and at the end you could tell Ben and
Jerry were so happy because they're probably not having conversations
like this, And that's what I want this to be,
(56:00):
if you can have an entertaining takeaway conversation without being
about just hawking products or trying to catch somebody in something.
So they were amazing. I now knowing what I know,
the fact that it almost didn't happen this interview, I'm
so happy that I pushed through to make everybody feel comfortable.
You know that I'll say, this will be the best
(56:21):
conversation you're ever going to have. Just have it, and
people love it. So I'm so thrilled and I'm so
grateful to you, and we keep going and it's so successful,
and I just want you to keep rating, reviewing, and
subscribing because UM obsessed loving these conversations.
Okay, Well, as promised, I am back, and we're going
to continue on the topic of my Housewives trajectory and
what took me to this point and what I think
about things that are said about me and me going back,
and we're going to keep getting into it. So when
I left, I really left. I did not want to
go back. That was not where I wanted to be.
(00:35):
And I'm not you know, believe me, I'll rip somebody
like the best of them. It just wasn't what I
wanted to do. I didn't want to be doing the
gotcha And you know, Bravo and the production company and
all these people will say it's four months of work,
and it's a lot of money for the four months
of work, But anybody who's on the Housewives, no knows,
it's not four months of work. It's four months of shooting.
(00:56):
Then it's doing a reunion, but now out way more
than then. Then it was more like four months of shooting.
Now it's four months of shooting, eight months of defending yourself,
preparing for the for the fall, talking about editing, doing
press to promote it, doing press to protect yourself, doing
press to trash. Are the people doing you know, it's endless.
(01:18):
It's year round. You shoot the show, then you panic
for a while and finish doing what they call pickups,
which is doing those interview bites for a while, freaking out,
still hardbring resentment. Then the show. Then you have to
promote the show. So then you have to do all
the press to promote the show. And that's a whole
other ship show too. If you don't want to be
sitting down promoting the show with certain people, you want
to do it, you know, on your own or however,
(01:40):
that's a whole thing. And what shows people get picked for,
meaning I would get the Today's show, someone else gets this.
Why do I do? Ellen? Why don't we? You know,
that's a whole competition, and across the whole franchise. The
competition is fierce. Now okay, I'll get to that, but
I don't want to forget it all. Just say it.
It's fierce now. I have had people from all of
the different franchises say to me, oh, well, they sent
(02:02):
me to hear they sent me to another country to
promote it. They had me do it alone because I'm
the only one doing this. Just me and this person
are doing this. Cover It is cause It is competition,
like you can't believe. It is not women supporting women
at all. It is women supporting women on television, or
women saying they're supporting women, or women pretending they're supporting women.
(02:22):
It is every woman for themselves. It is this way
across the board. There are a few exceptions. I will
say that Tinsley happens to be a nice person who
literally like doesn't really like to be in the fray.
She's an operator. She's got her own game she's running,
and she's got her own brand of games she's running.
But she's not in there to like kill or be killed. Um,
(02:45):
that's just somebody who jumps off the page. I don't
know everybody from every other season. I know that on Atlanta.
I respect the fact that they will go fucking all
the way. It is not just the tip. They will
say whatever they want there are They do not edit themselves.
The things that they say behind your back are things
they'll say to your back. I respect that. I've always
(03:06):
respected that. The other end of the spectrum is the
Beverly Hills Housewives. They do the opposite. I've been in
a crossover episode. I was in that episode when Erica
came over to my house. They were all telling sending
me things ahead of time that she was in, sending
me sexy videos that she was in. They were telling
me about her rolling their eyes. That wasn't the caliber
of person they wanted for Beverly Hills. They also thought
(03:28):
she was boring. They brought her over to my house
and they hadn't said a single thing to her face.
They wanted me to be the person that said what
they were thinking. I got it, and I understood from
the why the producers wanted that as well. They tiptoe
the most. The Beverly Hills housewives are terrified to say
what they really feel. They have to say what is
politically correct and what will not be taken uh, you
(03:50):
know wrong. They are the most calculated in that regard
the opposite end of the spectrum of um Atlanta. They
have the big houses and the hair and the costumes
and the bags and the money. Porn that that's entertainment,
so they can get away with New York we had.
You know, most people have small, shitty apartments, so you've
(04:13):
got to really survive on you know, what's coming out
of your mouth. You don't have the same kind of
like money porn. Most people don't have the same real
estate porn, you know. And you have other cities like
Atlanta that do have real estate porn because their houses
are much less expensive by nature of the real estate
market there in the suburbs of Atlanta. So a two
million dollar house there could be eighteen thousand square feet,
(04:34):
where a two million dollar house in New York City
would be could be square feet. So like you know this,
these are the things that have to be balanced by
by by Bravo. You know, you've got to show big houses.
So in New York City that's not as easy. So
you have to have people that might be really witty
or willing to go there. And New York women are
(04:55):
pretty much will willing to go there, not quite to
the level that Atlanta will go there, and they're not
as restricted as as as as a group like Beverly Hills.
But I come from when people weren't weren't wearing costumes.
I remember Andy Cohen walking into my house. It was
gonna be like the eagles Hell freezes overtour. I was
(05:15):
never coming back. I never wanted to come back. I
didn't want to do it. I forgot what I was
doing I was doing my talk show, I was doing
other things. I just was happy with my life. I
was making money. I was being paid seven figures a
year just by my cocktail, even after selling it. You know,
like things were good. I was writing books. It was good.
You know, I'm not a person who I don't want
(05:35):
to do it. I don't want to take every dollar
off the floor. I just want to always have balance
and be happy. And we'll do another show on balance.
But um so I just didn't want to do it.
Andy Cohen came and he came to my kitchen and
I was pitching him another show, and he said, well,
I'm gonna pitch you this, and he wanted me to
come back. We didn't know about the ratings, and they
used to not tell us ratings. There were no ratings.
(05:56):
We had no idea what the ratings were. Once we
started to realize what the ratings were, we were finding
it out on our own. Bravo wasn't even telling us.
I used to send emails. I used to send emails
on everyone's behalf to Bravo, being like, we deserve to
know what the ratings are and if we do well,
we deserve to know that we've done well. You don't
want to hide the rate. They used don't want to
hide the ratings from us, So we want to know
(06:16):
how well we were doing so we wouldn't ask for
more money. And all the girls will will verify this.
You know. We used to talk about it and finally
they had to just tell us after years of me
emailing them said, we'll tell you that Bravo. I've got
the emails, I've got the receipt I used to be like,
tell us what the ratings are and when we do well,
we should be rewarded. But they won't. They won't admit
that that part. Um and he came into my kitchen
(06:38):
and he said to me, and this is something for negotiating.
He said to me, Um, come back and I said,
I'm coming to you with a number. And that's it.
There will be no negotiating. Now. You have to understand.
Any of the girls can also tell you what it's
like to negotiate with Bravo. They're not playing any games.
And too, I don't blame them because they are. Um,
(07:02):
I'm the I'm the one who come up with the terminology.
How Housewives of jelly Beans and a jelly Bean jar
there's a bunch of them, and you could. You know
when I was negotiating, when I was leaving after three seasons,
there was Jersey, there was Atlanta. Things were doing well,
and other they didn't. You know, I didn't have a
lot of negotiating power, and I didn't negotiate, and I
just took my last third season and said, fine, I'll
take whatever money I took. Because I also knew I
(07:24):
had a spin off, which, by the way, was at
the time the highest rated series premiere in Bravo history.
It was a very big success for three seasons, so
and I wanted that to do well. So negotiating with them,
you know, they've got all the leverage. All the girls
need the money and the relevance, so they really don't
have any leverage. They pretend they have leverage. I think
(07:44):
they have leverage. They fight to the end, then they
give Bravo and ultimatum. Bravo calls their bluff. The girls
say they're walking away, Bravo starts shooting. The girls crawl
back and repeat every season. Girls band together, then one
girl gets scared. She walks away from the other girls
she bandaged together with. Now she now everybody has less power.
They literally you could write a book on how terrible
(08:06):
Bravo talent is at negotiating, and Bravo will confirm this
as well. One season, one of the girls said, I
want to make one dollar more than Bethany is making
and or I'm not coming back, and Bravo laughed, folded
their hands as it fine, don't come back. Then the
girl came begging back because she had broken away from
her negotiating team and had no leverage. And Bravo knows
that they all need it. They need the money, they
(08:28):
need it, so it's just like the war. You could
do a course in Harvard on what not to do
about negotiating. But I said to Andy, I will give
you a number. There will be no negotiating back and forth.
That's my number. And actually I now know that I'm
twenty five thousand dollars lower than they would have given
me per episode for that negotiation. But I wanted to
(08:48):
not go back and forth. I don't negotiate like that
in general. I like to say what I need to
get paid, and they don't play games. I don't say
I want to give ten, but I'll want ten, but
I'll take it. I say the number I need. I
told the number I needed. They came back. A contract
was signed. A contract was signed in the way that
I could do it with regards to my excruciating, horrific
(09:09):
divorce as it pertains to my daughter I was making.
I was able to state the turns, their terms they're
needed to be. I came back to the house. I
was on different terms, not only legally with the other women,
because I ran into one of the girls at SOHO
House and she said to me, please say you're coming back.
I ran into one of the newer girls between Heather,
(09:30):
Carol and Kristen, and they said, please say you're coming back.
Because Sonja will admit She's the only one that will
actually admit that. She emailment to say, please say you're
coming back. Everybody was saying they are asking me to
come back because whether they loved me or hated me,
and most it was the ladder. The show had tanked
and they wanted good business. They wanted good business and
they wanted me back. That made me feel good. I
(09:50):
came back. It separated me. No one expected us to
be all paid the same, treated the same. It just
they just wanted a good show and it was it
for me personally and Lauren. Michael said it best when
he said to me, you have to sometimes make an
exit to make an end. You have to make an
exit to make an entrance. I didn't do any of
this on purpose, but it happened. I walked away. It
(10:12):
made me hire and demand they want to be back.
I came back. This was exciting, unexpected. Um, it may
seem funny to you. It's just so unique that I
would be so fascinated by their story. But wow, what
(10:34):
a fascinating story it is going to be. My guests
are Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Yes, the Ben and Jerry.
They share with me how a failed attempt at getting
into medical school and a failed pottery career led them
into the world of specialty ice cream in a way
that no one had ever seen before that continues to
this day. They started with just one small shop in Vermont,
(10:58):
and their famous ice cream is now sold all over
the world. I promised them we wouldn't do a gotcha interview,
but I still got the dirt on the only disagreement
they've ever had, and it's a dramatic one. Their success
has been built around one important thing, chunks. It's a
very chunky interview. I can't wait for you to hear it. Okay,
(11:25):
So who is Ben and who is Jerry? I'm Jerry.
It used to be that Ben had the beard, but
we switched several years ago. Okay, So you are childhood friends?
How old? Well we met in seventh grade, Jim class.
We were the two slowest fattest kids in class. We
met running around the track. Actually Jerry and I were walking.
(11:48):
And you have been actual best friends ever since. Hard
to believe. Huh. Unbelievable, like a like a lifelong marriage.
I mean it's unbelievable. Um. And what were where? Where
did you grow up? Brooklyn? Well, we were born in Brooklyn.
We grew up on Long Island in the town of Merrick.
(12:08):
I know Merrick because I lived in Rockettell Center. Merrick
was I think the first or second sushi restaurant in
Long Island in like the seventies. Yeah, there weren't no
sushi when we were there. I can tell you that
south Shore, Long Island you don't have the accent, no,
somehow or other. Uh. It seemed like South Americ people
had the accent. We were North American people. You were
(12:30):
North Americ people. Okay, was that um? Because in Great
Napa Long Island there's north and south and south was
it's still upper middle class or middle class, but it
was lower socioeconomics. So were you in were you both
of means growing up or uh? Struggling? I would not
scribe us as of means? Would you describe us as
(12:52):
of means? Jerry? Not particularly? But for us, the difference
between South America and North Merrick was the kids in
South America were the fast kids. They were like they
knew what was going on. They were hip, and the
kids in North Merrick were like clueless. That's that's where
(13:15):
Ben and I found ourselves and the clueless bunch got it.
Like in gym class, it sounds like did you grow
up in from similar families? Like did you have the
same sort of cultural messaging around you, meaning your parents
were driven? Did they say, you know, you have to
have a solid work ethic, you have to always have
a job, Like what about that? Well? Uh, let's see,
(13:35):
my father was a hard worker. He was a workaholic. Uh.
He was an auditor for the New York State Department
of Ordered and Control. Uh. He ordered it school districts
uh north of New York City. He found that, um,
(13:56):
the person who was stealing the money was usually the
little old lady who was watching the petty cash. Then
he became a um, you know, kind of general manager
of a direct mail printing and advertising and mailing company,
and you know, he used to he used to talk
(14:16):
about his business management issues at the kitchen table, and
that was kind of an education for me. Did you
want to be a business person? No? I of course
wanted to be uh, you know, a policeman or a
firement or a carpenter. And my parents really eventually I
(14:38):
think I wanted to be an electrician, and they explained
to me, no, you don't want to be an electrician,
you want to be an electrical engineer. You know. I
kind of like working with my hands. I liked photography.
I was very good at extracurricular activities. But I wasn't
very good at uh school. I mostly I had a
(15:00):
hard time motivating myself to do my own work. I
got it, I do get that. And so you were
the there's there's in my cocktail brand, skinny Girl. I
was the creative and the marketer and the vision and
my partner was the operations guy. So you, Ben were
the creative and not that you're both not creative, well
get into that, but you were the creative in your business.
(15:21):
I was the marketing guy and Jerry was the guy
who made all the ice cream. Oh, so Jerry was operations.
Ben is is is of course being a little modest.
He's incredibly creative and uh he he created everything. But
(15:41):
you know, and so going back to growing up, I
think education was important for me. And the message I
got from my parents was we don't care what you do.
As long as you're happy, We're going to support you
no matter what. You know. It was one of these
we love you no matter what sort of things and
very non directive, and that might have been a little
(16:03):
different from the message Ben was getting. Yeah, I think
the message I was getting was that you should be
a lawyer right today was so you put, your parents
are more financially focused, which is interesting. Your parents are
more financially focused, and you were the creative and Jerry's
parents were more just be happy and live free, and
you ended up being the operations guys. So that's that's
(16:23):
interesting to me. Um. I read something that one of
you worked at Saratoga Springs Race Track for those listening,
the oldest racetrack in the country. I grew up going
to Saratoga and this summer because I grew up in
a horse racing family. My father was a Hall of
Fame horse racer trainer. My my father was Bobby Frankel.
(16:44):
He was in the Hall of Fame as a trainer.
My stepfather, John Parris Ella, was also a very successful
horse trainer. So we spent every summer in Saratoga. To
a separate podcast on how that place has changed. But
I remember from being a kid, I guess I've always
been brand aware my whole life. I've always know everything
to this day. I noticed every restaurant, every sign, every font,
every menu, and I remember that bench on that corner
(17:07):
not far from Mrs London's, I think, in Saratoga at
Ben and Jerry's, and that was the first time I
ever saw the brand. And that was a thousand years ago,
and reading the reading today, I realized, if that was
early on in your brand. It started in Vermont and
that wasn't far behind, right, Yeah, I think that was
like the first or second franchise shop that we opened.
(17:30):
It was owned by a friend of ours from high school,
Jeff Durstuwitt's, and I was very involved personally in uh
in you know, helping to construct that um that shop
and design it. It was. It was in an old
(17:52):
gas station like our original and ben us Ben used
to work at Mrs London. It's a long time ago.
It was one of the many jobs he got fired from. Yeah,
you know, Yes, I was a pinkerton guard at the
Saratoga Racetrack. Uh you know. They gave me a holster
(18:12):
with no gun in it and a badge and a
whistle and uh my job was to guard the Traverse canoe.
You're probably people I've told this story too that is
aware of the Traverse canoe and travers is a big
race like the Kentucky Derby of of Saratoga on the
third Saturday in August. So they had this canoe painted
(18:37):
in the colors of the jockey's uniform who won the Traverse,
and it was located in a little man made pond
behind the toadboard. Well, you got to be a cop.
You wanted to be a cop, so you've got to
be a cop. So the two of you get together
(19:06):
and how do your roles? Well, First of all, how
do you come up with the idea for your business
and how do your roles get to find Because people
listening are working in businesses, running their own businesses, a
lot of them are interested in just the food space
and having an idea and it coming to fruition. I
just want to kind of understand your dynamic in the fruition,
the idea, how it came to fruition, and then how
does everyone fall into who they are in this building
(19:28):
of a brand. You know, it's it's funny, Bethany, because
when you describe it, you're making it sound like there
was a lot more thought and planning that went into
it for me, and nothing like that. I mean, we
we we started an ice cream shop because we were
failing and everything else we were trying to do. I
(19:50):
tried to get into medical school and got rejected from
all the medical schools I applied to. Ben was trying
to be a potter and nobody would buy his pot area.
And we just decided to open up an ice cream
shop because we had always liked to eat, and we
thought we would do something with food, and we just
picked ice cream. Got it could have been anything. It
(20:11):
could have We thought about other things. We thought about bagels.
It could have been bagels. We thought about a fond restaurant,
We thought about a rotisseary restaurant. Well, that's a great point.
I agree. I just wanted to have a lowcality margharita.
It wasn't all that deep, and then exactly could have
been ten other things that I care about. But do
you believe that UM had it been now, knowing who
(20:32):
you both are and how you both fell into business
and you didn't know you were entrepreneurs, and you're undeniably entrepreneurs,
and we'll get into that you did it in your
own caring, philanthropic way, we'll get into that. But do
you believe that if you had had a bagel store
or a fond store or whatever these other ideas were,
that it would have been successful? Now, knowing what you
know that it was ice cream, not not near a successful.
(20:54):
I think that UM America has a very deep love
affair with ice cream that's way beyond whatever they've got
with bagels, are fun due or rotisserie roasted foods or crepes,
Thank goodness for that, right, Ben? So there could have
(21:14):
been a luck. So that's a luck part. Look Oh yeah,
It's definitely definitely a bunch of luck. And we ended
up getting into an industry that was growing quite rapidly
at the time, the super premium ice cream industry, and
the way the way we got into our roles. You know,
Ben Ben was creating all the flavors and I was
(21:34):
making the ice cream. And it was because I think
Ben knew what he wanted in ice cream. Uh he
wanted big chunks of cookies and candies, and he wanted
very strong flavors. And I was very comfortable with routines,
(21:55):
you know, sort of making ice cream, doing the same
thing over and over. I'm not creative at all, and
so I think we just kind of fell into what
we were doing based on what we enjoyed. You know,
Jared keeps on saying he's not creative, But it was
Jerry who came up with our best promotion of all time,
(22:16):
which was pop Sidbiswe the penny off per celsius Degree
below zero Winter Extravaganza. The colder it gets, the more
you save forever degree below zero celsius, we would take
a penny off the cost of a cone, and you know,
at the time, a penny meant something you know. I
(22:37):
mean the cone cost fifty cents. When it was really cold,
you could get one. Forts It was a brilliant concept,
I think. I think the actual execution or success of
the program was it didn't live up to what it
could have been. For whatever, we were not streaming in
the door when it was twenty below zero. But at
(22:59):
least left you. I know you were still around when
it was twenty below zero and it was market. Yeah,
you should have been around for the big January white
sale that we had us off anything white we had
in the store, vanilla cream. That's hilarious. Um well, but
it was so you were the formulator. It sounds like
(23:20):
you were sort of the chemist. You were formulating and
then and then you were executing the duplication. It had
to be you know that that it was gonna that
it was gonna work. So you said premium ice cream
became a big thing. And sometimes I think people wonder
myself included. So I'm in the sala addressing category and
some people are wondering whether they should be baking cookies
and it's so crowded or salt stuff. You go to
the Food and Wine Show, there's fifty types of salsa
(23:42):
and olive oil. So how much is when things are
competitive in a market good and when it's too much?
Meaning you were noticing that the premium ice cream category
was becoming more relevant. But in some cases that might
scare somebody away because there's so much competition. But by
the same toe, can you want there to be to
be relevant and there to be a conversation to be
(24:03):
had in society? So how do people know how to
gauge that, like when to jump into a crowded category,
but there's room for more people, room for more products. Well,
we were certainly not jumping in with our eyes open.
I mean we were not aware that it was a
growing category at the time. I mean, I think you
(24:24):
just gotta do something that you're passionate about and that uh,
and that has a point of difference. Hopefully, the point
of difference is that it's really good unusual that that
it's a you know, you need to find a void
in the marketplace and let that be your niche. And
(24:45):
I think that in terms of kind of like least
cost stuff or stuff that's average, it's really hard for
a small company to compete with big companies in that area.
Big companies are always going to do be able to
produce stuff at a lower cost, but they have a
(25:07):
hard time producing really high quality stuff. How do you
honor the integrity of the brand, the initial culture of
the brand when it's growing, when you need to make
your margins, when you need to be competitive, how do
you both manage to do that? Or how have you
managed to that? How can people do that? I think
Ben is uncompromising when it comes to quality. Uh. I
(25:31):
remember in the early days when uh you know, when
we were this little company that had no resources, no money,
and if if the ice cream didn't come out perfect,
Ben would say, we got to dump it. And people
would go, we can't afford the dump it, Ben, and
we can't do that, And there was no question in
Ben's mind. Uh, you cannot afford to not be doing
(25:56):
your best. So there's that element, and then you know,
Ben Ben is awful, spoken very eloquently about the inexorable
drift towards the main street. Uh. How you know, everything
sort of pushes you to become more like everybody else
and for you to lose your difference and to lose
(26:18):
your quality not just around the quality of your product,
but around so many different things well, I hear every
day and all the different categories that I am, I hear, well,
this is trending, and we're seeing a lot of this
right now, and it literally makes my skin my hair
stand up on end because I don't want to do
what's trending and what you want to keep your own
clear point of view, and it's not that easy to
(26:39):
do because partners are scared, retailers are scared. Other people
want you to sort of just go with the flow,
and that's how you become a diluted version of yourself.
When I spoke to Cameron Diaz, she and her partner
were saying that in their relationships at home, if something
is really important to one person, then the other person
goes in that direction. So I'm wondering if that applies
(26:59):
to business. Have you two butt heads or you literally
just have always had this copasetic kumbay our relationship. I mean,
if one of you is really serious about something like
throwing away the batch and it's really important, does the
other one just fall in because it's that much more
important to that person. It's amazing you bring that up,
because that was how we've operated. We we always and
(27:21):
it was it wasn't unspoken. It was absolutely agreed that
if somebody felt really strongly about something, they would get
their way. I can't even think of times, well maybe
one time, uh, where we both felt strongly about something,
but by and large, it was extremely rare when we
(27:46):
when we butted heads. You know that the big disagreement
we've had that that we always talked about was the
size of the chunks in the ice cream. Done one well,
Ben one First, he was right in retrospect. It's easy
to say that in retrospect hindsight right or even even better.
(28:07):
But yeah, and and this comes back to being the
creative person that Ben was, and this comes back to
me being the operational person who was making the ice cream.
Ben wanted big chunks of cookies and candies in the
ice cream. He always said, uh, people don't care if
they get a chunk in every bite, as long as
(28:30):
they know there's a big chunk coming. And I would say, no, Ben,
we need a much better distribution of smaller chunks. That's
you know, so people know it's in there, and you know.
At the same time, I was the guy making the
ice cream, and I can tell you it is a
lot harder putting big I was thinking about that the
(28:50):
machinery for to get through the like extrusion process or something, right,
I mean, Bethany, we've been making ice cream at Ben
and Jerry's for over forty years. You know the hallmar Well,
one of the hallmarks is these big chunks of cookies
and candies. And there's still no the other ice cream
company putting in big chunks. It's that hard to do that,
(29:11):
Ben So. And back in the old days when I
was doing it, you know, yes, I thought, yeah, people
want more smaller chunks. But at the same time it
was making my life really uh, it wasn't. Hell. I
don't know what do you think, Ben, Is it more
(29:31):
expensive putting in big chunks? It's not more expensive unless
you put in more of them. Okay, I got you.
The original discussion was about should we have a larger
amount of smaller chunks or a smaller amount of larger chunks,
And eventually what we agreed on was the larger amount
(29:54):
of larger chunks. So these are the little This is
the you know, this is the weeds that you sometimes
get into. And it sounds like you could have your
The advice could be the same for a marriage as
it is for your business marriage. If it's important to you,
it's important to me. So it sounds like Ben Ben
used to go around saying a chunk is not a
chunk unless it's a chunk. And you know that on
(30:19):
the surface, it doesn't seem like there's a lot there,
but I can tell you there's a lot lurking there.
I love that. Okay, you are still both involved in
the brand on sort of advisory levels, right. I think
what we like to say is where we're employed at
Ben and Jerry's, were not involved in management or operations.
(30:41):
But if they do well, you still both do well. Actually,
it's not like that at all. We I don't think, uh,
we do any better. Whether the company sells a lot
of ice cream or not much ice cream, we kind
of do the same. So do you think that um
has the brand been preserved in the way that it
initially was um incubated and does it feel like the
(31:02):
culture is still there and the quality and the way
that you envisioned it. So Ben and Jerry's was acquired
by this larger company, Unilever, a little over twenty years ago. Uh,
and Unilever is this very large consumer brands product that
has all sorts of personal care brands and food brands.
(31:23):
So they make Hellman's mayonnaise, Dove soap. Uh. You know.
We always like to joke that on the same day
they bought Ben and Jerry's, they also bought slim Fast,
So you know, they've got a really good sense of humor. Uh.
You know. So it's been twenty years. I would say
for the first half of that time, it was really difficult.
(31:45):
I think Unilever and their leadership did not understand Ben
and Jerry's. They didn't really appreciate what made it what
it is. And then, you know, probably about ten years ago,
there was a great CEO at Unilever, Paul Pullman, who
retired just a few years ago, and he was very
committed to sustainability. He understood the values of the company,
(32:10):
and I think at that time, Uh, Ben and Jerry's
started to thrive again, both in terms of the product
and in terms of the social mission. Uh. You know.
And one thing we haven't really talked about Bethany is
the social Mission company. But but and the only reason
(32:30):
I mentioned is because the success of the company is
attributable at least as much to the social mission of
the company as it is to the quality of the product,
and and the flavors and the chunks themselves that you
can't really separate them. They're all they're all part of
(32:52):
the mash. Well, I agree, because it's not just because
there are obviously two names attached, but there's a feeling
to the brand where you feel like the brand has
a soul and not every single person knows the mission
and all of the philanthropic work you've done and how
you treated your employees, which we can get into, and
the culture, but there's something about the vibe of the
(33:13):
brand that indicates that that it's sort of like a
feel good, nice person, good person, not capitalism brand. It
just always felt like that, and I just think that
came through in some of the flavors, and you know,
just the sort of the deadhead vibe and just giving
back and the campaigns and all that. You know, a
(33:34):
lot of that was Ben too, you know Ben Ben uh.
You know, so the company started out very countercultural because
I think Ben and I were kind of countercultural. But
the other thing about Ben is he's completely anti authoritarian,
which is part of his chure, and I think, you
know that was that was built into the company very
(33:56):
early on. How do you be non entrepreneur real type
people and change with not only the times, but like
you know, you have to be more corporate, more hr more.
You need to grown up in the room who's smarter
than you to just have these conversations that are not
you're not naturally inclined to have, which I've read about
both of you, and it sounds like you went through that.
(34:18):
So how do people navigate these growing pains? Your ice
cream makers? You're doing well, You're making money. People like it, Like,
so how did you navigate that arc? Yeah? You know,
I I think the way you're talking about it is
exactly the way to do it. I mean, so for
Ben and myself, I think it was recognizing the things
we were good at, and almost so that means recognizing
(34:41):
the things we were not that good at. Uh. You know,
Ben and I are wonderful, caring, creative people, etcetera, etcetera.
We're not managers. We were not good with policy and procedure,
and and so we needed to bring in great people
and a team to do that. And I think that
(35:05):
one of the critical aspects of that is finding people
not just who have those skills, but people who share
the values and the culture that you bring. And I'm
sure you could talk a lot about that, and you know,
it's got to be a fit. So both of you
are not quote unquote uh managers or those type of
process oriented people, although you're more process oriented, but um
(35:28):
do you both have a very serious work ethic, like
get it done and work you know, as long as
it takes to get it done. Very serious. You know.
In in the early days, we were living and sleeping
and eating uh at the ice cream shop we were
we were sleeping on top of the freezers in the
(35:49):
back room. So it was seven day a week, you know,
ten or twelve hours a day. Well, I guess that's
kind of on the shore side, but that's what I'm saying.
And Jeffrey Katzenberg said on here, and he got into trouble.
I think about this comment he made years ago. This
is not literal, but he said, if you don't if
you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in
(36:10):
on Sunday, you know. But that's a true entrepreneur. And
I just don't like to sugarcoat things to entrepreneurs because
everybody now is about you know, thinking about all the
time that they have off and getting our breaks and
all that. You know, there's a whole new you get,
you know, cancelation culture for everything not being totally perfect
and in a square box of human resources. Well, that's
(36:31):
not what I experienced coming up. And the people that
I know that are the most successful, that's not what
they experienced either. So however, you all want to get
it done. I'm just saying true entrepreneurs work their asses
off because someone else is willing to work there as well,
you know, the nice the nice thing for Ben and me, uh,
you know, doing it together. And I think, well, I
(36:51):
can speak for myself. A lot of the reason I
was working so hard was I wanted to keep up
my end of the bargain with Ben. I knew what
he was still, I knew he was killing himself and
I didn't. I didn't want to be the guy letting
things down. So yeah, that's the way it was for
both of us. I mean, we were both trying to
work as hard as the other guy. You know, people
(37:12):
say how hard it is, you know, working with friends
or whatever. I think the experience we had was completely
the opposite. I mean, we felt so lucky and still
do to be working with each other because I mean,
you have that trust and you have that personal commitment
to your your friendship, your relationship that I think for
(37:37):
us goes much much deeper than the business, And um,
how do you think that someone is supposed to determine
whether they're really supposed to have a partner or be
on their own, Because it's a very different dynamic. For me,
it was never a question about it. There's I mean
even today we're bet and I get to doing stuff together.
My first thing to Ben is, yeah, I'll do it
(37:58):
if you want to do it with me, but I'm
going to do it on my own. There had to
be a time when you didn't really have the money
(38:19):
to get the management that you needed to take this
thing to the next level and to scale it. How
did you how do you deal with that? And did
you know you were going to scale it? Like? What
are you thinking in that weird purgatory time? You know,
I think uh, Ben and Jerry's was always under resourced
in terms of money or whatever until it popped off
(38:40):
and you got bought. Yeah, but you know, at that point, uh,
you know, there was we weren't running it. I mean,
we weren't running it well before then, but you owned it.
You had someone else running it well before then, but
you owned it had you sold off apart to that person.
I don't think it's bad to not have all the
resources you think you need. You find ways to do it,
(39:05):
You find smarter, less expensive ways to do things, and
you make it work. It. It makes you think smarter
about what you're doing. And uh, it certainly keeps you focused, right,
I mean, you're you don't get unfocused when when you're
trying to figure out how to get something done that
(39:25):
you don't really have the resources to do. How do
you know when to hold them? And went to fold them,
went to sell someone to let go? Like what? Because
I had my own reason for those decisions that evolved
things that are not sexy, like intellectual property versus money,
and street cred versus money, so or just not getting
sued versus money. You know, what are the decisions when
(39:46):
you're saying should we sell? We didn't want the company
to be sold even at the point it got acquired.
But what had happened was Ben and Jerry's was a
public company. The company started in nineteen seventy as this
little homemade ice cream parlor, and the company had a
(40:08):
stock offering just within the state of Vermont. Why I
don't I just don't understand why. Uh, well, the company
needed to raise some money, and Ben found this, uh
kind of obscure law in the state of Vermont that
said you could sell stock in the company to vermonts.
(40:28):
And the reason we wanted to do that was to
give people in Vermont who had been supporting the company
an opportunity to become owners of the business. And uh,
you know, that way, the company would be owned by
essentially the local community, so that as the business prospered,
(40:51):
the owners the local community would automatically process. Wow, that
is interesting and very on brand for you guys culturally. Okay,
that's right. And and and then a couple of years
after that, the company had a national public stock offering,
so that was in about It's interesting that you say
we were on brand for the company's culture. We weren't
(41:15):
trying to be on brand. We were just trying to
be what we believed in. We were trying to use
this need for cash, you know, they were there was
a bunch of venture capitalists that were coming to us
saying we want to invest in your company, and we
(41:36):
we instead of I mean, essentially, the way we saw
that was it was essentially a bunch of people who
already had a whole lot of money. You wanted more right,
you would you want to do like a co op.
We wanted people wanted to share the wealth. We wanted
to spread the wealth. We wanted people who did not
(42:00):
already have a whole lot of money to have a
chance to get in on the ground floor. But that
was the rose that I had pedal and Thorn's because
that one move made you end up having to do
the I p O, which made you end up having
to sell. So it was like a weird journey that
you didn't necessarily want to be on. I don't I
don't think that one move required us to have the
(42:23):
I p O. I mean, you know, the the national
I p O. Uh. You know, eventually we did. And
you know, I think that if we had been a
little smarter, uh, we would not I've been forced to
to sell the company. But you know, interesting we live
(42:46):
and we learned, don't we wow? So is that I
usually ask later in the conversation, is that your rose
and your thorn, or that was not a rose at all?
Was that a rose at the time? And you're high
and you're low. Well know, one out of every hundred
Vermont families bought stock and Ben and Jerry's uh totally rosy.
(43:09):
So I don't know, I mean what you're I mean,
so you're talking about roses and you're talking about Thorn's
what you want to talk about? What was? What was?
What was bad? Or you're you're trying to sit not
meaning like a daily fight or like the thing of
your careers. I usually ask it later, but it sounds
like this is a complicated thing that went down. So
(43:32):
usually the roses like the high of the career, and
then you know, the thorn is the low of the career.
You know, I think the low is when the company
got sold. Uh, you know, both Jerry and I tried
to keep it independent. And I think that's good for
people to hear because people always think when they read
the headlines, somebody sold that that is like their big
pay day and everybody's all excited. And there are many
(43:54):
things that make people have to do things their intellectual
property issues that go on with certain people that they
end up losing their name and they don't even realize it.
There are issues like this that you're talking about, where
things get out of your hands and people say to me,
if I sold half my business, now I have a
bigger dog collar on my neck, a different person to
aunt driving this sleigh. Like, So, just for entrepreneurs at home,
(44:17):
what would you say, Like, what's the message behind all
of this? You can help other people because people all
want a big event, you know, a big financial event,
and they may be careful what you wish for. You know,
It's funny you ask about the highs and the lowest.
When I think about Ben and Jerry's Uh, the greatest
thing for me is not that the company got successful
(44:40):
or made a lot of money or that it Uh.
The greatest things for me that I think about are
the experiences, the relationships. It's all about that. It's it's
not that, uh. You know, at one point the company
sold X number of dollars of ice cream, owns or whatever.
(45:01):
It's it's never about that. One of the house for
us was scooping ice cream Occupy Wall Street, Uh in
New York. I mean I I felt like, you know,
being able to help support that movement by giving ice
(45:24):
cream to people and by just lending the credibility of
Ben and Jerry's to it. UH to me was a
real high point that I felt like this, this was
why we created, this is why Ben and Jerry's came
to be. It's truly I say this all the time.
(45:45):
The people that I speak to you are truly successful.
Nobody is about the money. You can't. I once knew
a girl who said, I have to find a product
to sell. I need to find white space. I'm looking
for white space. And I thought, what a moron. It's
inside of you. You know what I mean? Inside you
is what are you passionate about? What do you love,
what do you not like? What's bothering you? It's aggregated
(46:07):
whatever it is like. That's what true entrepreneurialism is to me,
and that's what we're saying. Paul Pullman, who is the
former CEO of Unilever, just came out with a book
called net Positive, and it is about how corporations, businesses,
(46:30):
what they need to do in our new world is
to meet the needs of the society, to deal with
the issues of racial injustice, to deal with the issues
of economic injustice, and the environment, and that it is
(46:51):
by using the power of their businesses and integrating those
values into their business that they end up becoming successful,
high profit businesses. So it's a win win. You're saying,
your whole entire business was about what you truly felt,
and the values were coming through in the brand and
(47:12):
the products. So it was based. That's a good foundation.
That's a house that's built on a solid foundation, is
what you're saying. You know, it's it's it's a really interesting, uh,
facet of the human experience that as you give, you receive. Yes,
as you help others, you're helped in return. As you
(47:33):
authentically give, business supports the community, the community supports your business.
I mean, it's nothing more really than uh the golden rule.
But you know, you you can't prove it. You can't
prove that, well, we we did all this stuff to
(47:54):
support the community, and that is why we've become more profitable.
But I can tell you that we did do all
this stuff to support the community. We did take all
these social and political stands, and the company kept on
getting more and more profitable. Well that's an amazing construct.
(48:16):
But also from what I've read, you also did that
internally in your business, like externally in the community, but
in your internal community it was a great workplace. You've
made that a serious priority. Whether you're good to quote
unquote managers or not. You managed to make sure that
the your employees were happy. You know, our company started
in seventy eight. Uh. In the eighties, Uh, we were
(48:41):
giving healthcare benefits to domestic partners. We had a compressed
salary ratio so that the highest paid person didn't get
more than five times with the lowest paid person got.
I don't know, I just cared about that stuff. I think.
I think part of it for Benning me was we
(49:02):
had no business training. We we you know, we didn't
go to business school whatever. And and the other thing was, uh,
we didn't really see ourselves as bosses. We had much
more of a of a worker mentality because we'd always
worked for other people and we wanted to run a
(49:24):
company the way we would want to be treated. Right.
I mean that just kind of makes sense. Right. That's
amazing for people listening, because it makes people think no
one's an expert on I think, which you weren't and
which I wasn't. Do you have any I guess you
kind of said your regrets, but any regrets are big
mistakes that people could learn from what what you could
(49:44):
have done differently, that they would do differently. Well, I
think we we used to and continue to make mistakes
all the time. You you just referenced it yourself that
you know, you have to be trying new things, you
have to be taking risks, and some sizeable percentage of
those things don't work, they fail, and you have you
(50:05):
were Ben you wrote a book right above the Indeed,
I did to write a book. Uh, it's about what
Jerry and I are focused on right now, which is
the campaign to end qualified immunity. Uh. You know, there's
a there's a loophole in the law whereby if police
(50:27):
officers break the law, they get off scott free. They're
immune from prosecution. And that's the reason why you see,
uh these situations where rogue cops will be brutalizing or
murdering on armed black people and they get off with
(50:49):
a slap on the wrist or a lot of times
they're they're not prosecuted. It's because of this particular legal
doctrine that needs to be overturned. So we are part
of a coalition now of over two dozen organizations including Uh,
the a c o U and Americans for Prosperity and
(51:13):
the Cato Institute and the n a CP Legal Defense Fund,
that all understand that this is not just. And you know,
I think the thing that we've been thinking about lately
is that, you know, so many people look at this
as a black problem, that it's black people that are
(51:34):
getting murdered and abused, but the reality is that it's
a white problem. That we live in a white society.
It's a majority white culture. The police who act in
our name and with our money are people that we
white people put in power, and when they go and
(51:57):
screw up, we need to take responsibility and hold them accountable.
And so that's that's what we're working on. Fabulous. And
are you both in relationships? I don't. I didn't read
anything about your personal life. I don't know if that's intentional.
You don't have to tell me about you guys. You
have kids? What a wife? I got a daughter, I
(52:19):
got a granddaughter. Okay, what about you? Ben? I would
say that we're very, very happily married, both of us,
not to each other, but to to our beautiful wives.
And uh, we we both have grandchildren. Were are your
wife's friends. Yeah. In fact, we uh Ben and some
(52:40):
other friends and his beautiful wife were over her brunch
on on Saturday and we hang at we're all members
of the fifty one club. Are you probably not familiar
with the tift one club In Vermont, Bethany, there is
a club called it. No, it's it's people who go
(53:00):
to visit all two hundred and fifty one towns in
the state of Vermont. It's the Vermont to Oh that's cool.
I thought it was like that. I thought, I thought,
because you guys have in Vermont. It was that like
the pot smoking time that's that day. I don't know
what it is a time. It sounded like, God, I'm
such so stupid. Well, all right, well you're getting your
(53:23):
number twenty vermonttown. My beautiful wife and I are actually
going on a two fifty one club tour through southern
Vermont UH starting at the end of this week Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Will be visiting UH near Burlington, the big city near Banton, Okay,
(53:48):
because I love Stows, such a good mountain not that
far away. And you know what's on the wage Stow,
don't you don't? But it's the Ben and Jerry's Factory
in Waterbury, the number one tourist attraction in Vermont. I'll
now I can bring my daughter and tell her that
I know you guys, and you can get me ahead
to jump the line with brand for ice cream. Yeah,
we're going to take really good care of you and
(54:10):
your daughter when we come. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna take
our road trip to go to the Ben and Jerry.
That's amazing. I'm so excited. I was like, I think
your name is probably still pretty valuable around there. Um. Wow,
what an interesting conversation. I know we had some back
and forth ahead of time. Wait before I just want
to tell you when you come visit the factory, Bethany,
you can go visit the flavor Graveyard. You can go
(54:32):
visit some of the dearly departed flavors that are buried
right there on the ground. White what Russian who was
resurrected a couple of times, but they came back from
the dead Halloween. It's perfect thing for you guys to
do around Halloween, bring bring bring flavors back from the dead. Right,
(54:55):
such a good conversation, and I appreciate you trusting me.
So it was a pleasure. Yes, thank you for interesting conversation.
Thank you. I'd like to I'd like to hear more
about your ventures sometimes and then drink Skinny Girl. Yeah,
they certainly can. Again, I don't. I I sold off
the Skinny Girl. I owned the Skinny Girl intellectual property
(55:17):
except for in cocktail, so I kept all the I
P So imagine if you kept Ben and Jerry's in uh,
you know, lip gloss and makeup and every genes and
everything else. That's what I did. Uh yeah, we we
we don't have any intellectual property. All we have is ourselves.
We have the real Ben Jerry. Awesome, Thank you, have
(55:38):
a great day, by bye. That was incredible. It's so
great when you have a conversation where it goes so
well and at the end you could tell Ben and
Jerry were so happy because they're probably not having conversations
like this, And that's what I want this to be,
(56:00):
if you can have an entertaining takeaway conversation without being
about just hawking products or trying to catch somebody in something.
So they were amazing. I now knowing what I know,
the fact that it almost didn't happen this interview, I'm
so happy that I pushed through to make everybody feel comfortable.
You know that I'll say, this will be the best
(56:21):
conversation you're ever going to have. Just have it, and
people love it. So I'm so thrilled and I'm so
grateful to you, and we keep going and it's so successful,
and I just want you to keep rating, reviewing, and
subscribing because UM obsessed loving these conversations.
Host
Bethenny Frankel
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