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Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges.
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All right, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is Jenny Britton.
She's the founder of Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams. Jenny, it's great to have you back on the show.
Hey, guy, it's so, so great to be back.
You were a guest on the show back in 2018.
We did a live show in Columbus, Ohio.
It was so fun. And by the way, guys, if you haven't heard that original episode, we will put a link in the episode description.
You, of course, started Jenny's.
Your first location was in a food hall, and then you opened your first scoop shop a few years later and I think most people know your ice cream.
I mean creamy, amazing, well weirdly wonderful flavors like powdered jelly donut, and Bramble Berry Crisp, and Texas sheet cake, and my current favorite I have to say, brown butter brittle.
That's my favorite.
Yeah, we have a pint and a half.
My son eats a pint of your ice cream like almost daily.
It's just really amazing when they're growing, how much ice cream they eat.
Yeah, well, I know that very well too.
My kids eat a lot of ice cream as well.
We are an ice cream family, of course.
But yes, that one's my favorite too and the one that I always, always, always have in my freezer.
It's so good. Today, your ice creams are sold I think in about 80, at least 80 scoops shops across the country.
That's right. 12 ,000 retail locations.
You built an incredible business.
Jenny, before we get to today's callers, I want to ask you a couple questions about your story.
I mean, when you were in college, you had this moment when you knew you wanted to make ice cream, basically for the rest of your life, and you dropped out of The Ohio State University to start what would become, Jenny's first called Scream Ice Cream.
Yeah. In 1996, I walked out of art class, literally.
I mean, yeah, you walked out.
And so a lot of collars have asked this in the past, which is how do you know that it was the right thing to do at that time?
Well, first of all, I didn't question it.
It wasn't something that I sat and thought, is this really right?
Is it not right? I just knew that I couldn't do art anymore.
And I had spent my entire life in art.
My grandmother's an art teacher.
My mother's an artist. And it just wasn't for me anymore.
I just wanted to be making ice cream and I wanted to be serving ice cream and I wanted to light people up in that way.
And I didn't know at all what I was doing.
And I just thought it was just gonna be, you make ice cream, you serve it, people love it.
And then you become Ben & Jerry's overnight.
And obviously that's not true.
That was just the beginning.
I think a lot of people assume that brands start in coastal cities, LA, New York, San Francisco.
But you started this in Columbus and built a national brand really on the sheer force of the quality of the product and the branding and the look of it.
Tell me why do you think Columbus turned out to be the perfect place for you to launch the business.
Columbus is a perfect place.
And these smaller markets are really perfect for a lot of reasons actually.
I mean, I was in Columbus and one of the reasons that I wanted to be an ice cream maker is because I drove by farms every day.
You go 20 minutes outside of downtown and you're driving by dairy farms. So, I knew that we were a dairy state because I saw it in front of me.
So, I thought, okay, great, it's awesome for ice cream.
And we forget that a lot of innovation can come from the middle of the country, whether it's in food, especially in food where we have ag states.
But also when you're in a smaller, small to mid -size city, the city gets behind it in a different way.
You know, you can really try things and also fail a lot and people still stick with you.
And I have noticed that in big cities everybody's trying new things, everybody's got something going on and it's really hard to stand out.
And, of course, the cost of doing business is lower, just the startup costs are lower in a place like Columbus versus Brooklyn, New York.
It would be impossible to do what we do at Jeni's.
All of our money would have been in rent and paying people and all the things that you have to do in Brooklyn that would be different from Columbus.
And here, we can put it all in the ice cream.
And that's just a huge difference.
Jeni, before we get to our callers, you have a new product that you've launched.
I think it's a completely separate company.
It is. called Flora.
And these are energy bars or bars but they're like high in fiber like 13, 14 grams of fiber per bar.
Tell me about this new like business that you've launched.
Yeah, it Flora is a fiber company.
We actually make fiber or pull fiber from produce trimmings.
So we are located actually inside of a 600 ,000 square foot produce processing company that makes cut produce for all your favorite grocers.
Like baby carrots or stuff like that?
Matt's apples, for instance.
And so we can take the apple cores and then make them into a paste which becomes the base of our bars.
And so we also work with watermelon rines, we actually ferment the watermelon rines a little bit which opens up cellulose and pectin and prebiotic fiber there.
We work with honeydew, cantaloupe rines, mango skins.
These are really high in fiber and then 95 % of Americans are deficient in fiber and it's the cause of many chronic illnesses across America.
So I don't know, people are like, how do you go from ice cream to fiber?
And to me, it's just the same thing.
It's about making people feel better.
I learned after I was able to step back a little bit from Jenny's over the last five years, how important fiber is and how absent it is from our food system.
And we really need this to have a healthy microbiome.
So, yeah. So, flora exists to get people fiber every day.
That's so cool. Congrats on that.
It's really true. I mean, I eat so many vegetables And I still add psyllium husk to my morning smoothie.
I eat chia seed pudding every day.
We don't eat enough fiber.
And you have to work to do it.
You have to actually try.
It's really hard. Also, you know of course, there's this sustainability aspect because all of these ingredients were going into the landfill, but they are really good for you.
You should be eating them.
Yeah, for sure. Well, all right.
Congrats on that. I can't wait to try them.
Thank you. Back at the beginning!
Back at the beginning.
I love it. Let's bring in our first caller.
Or hello, welcome to the advice line.
You're on with me and Jenny Britton.
Welcome please tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business.
Hey guy, hey, Jenny.
My name is Jesse Konig.
I'm calling in from Washington, DC.
I am one of the co -founders of Jesse & Ben's.
And what makes our fries special is that we don't use seed oils or any weird ingredients.
It's just non GMO potatoes, healthy fats like grass fed beef tallow or avocado oil and salts and seasonings.
That's it, just real ingredients you could pronounce and none of the bad stuff.
Incredible, I love it.
Welcome to the show, Jesse, thanks for calling in.
So these are sold frozen in a bag that you would get at the grocery store in the freezer aisle?
Exactly, yep, they are frozen french fries you'd find right in the freezer aisle next to some of the big red bags you'd probably recognize from a long time they've been there.
And then you take them home and you just put them on a baking sheet and you bake them?
Yeah, exactly, right?
In the air fryer. Air fryer's great, people love their air fryers.
I like to make them in the oven too, they're great in the oven as well.
It's kind of like a twice fried Belgian style fry you get at a restaurant and we do the first fry and you're basically doing that finished cooking at home either in the air fryer or in the oven.
I got it, cool. Tell me a little bit about how you started the business.
Our background is actually in restaurants.
You say our, you've got a partner, that would be Ben.
That would be Ben, exactly.
I guess the Ben and Jessie and Ben's.
Yes, we're the guys behind the fries.
I'm one half of the equation being Jessie.
Ben and I, we met in college, we were friends.
We decided this brilliant idea that we were gonna get into the food industry with no experience, jumped right into it in DC in 2014 with food trucks and farmers markets and kinda running around the city.
What were you selling, what kind of food?
It actually started out with gourmet grass fed beef spiral cut hot dogs of all things.
It was very niche, funky thing.
Hand cut fries were a huge part of the menu from day one.
And we eventually pivoted the concept a little bit more into the burger space and building a better fast food concept.
We've had our best year ever in 2019, we signed our first lease, getting ready to open up in 2020.
And it was not the best time, as you might imagine, to be opening your first restaurant.
Yes, so we were building our restaurant in March, getting ready to open in May.
And that actually led us to this kind of idea for french fries because we were trying to solve a problem at our restaurant.
We were hand cutting fries for our food trucks and farmers markets and now this new restaurant.
And we thought, we need to survive, we don't know what we're gonna do.
What if we could use a frozen french fry?
But since it's always been a core part of our business from the earliest days we couldn't sacrifice the quality of our fries.
And we decided to make our own frozen french fries because the only one we could find that really worked.
And then we had these frozen fries and we walked the grocery store aisles and we just saw that sea of sameness we'd learned about from being longtime listeners of how I built this and realized there was a huge opportunity to just do something better and realized there was a real problem that needed solving.
Amazing. All right, just to clarify though, These are sold in stores, not direct to consumer, because it's kind of hard, I'm assuming, to ship these, right?
Yeah, we've had people all over the country trying to get us to ship French fries, which we've decided not to do for the time being.
Dry ice, it's hard. So where are they sold?
How many grocery stores are you in right now?
So we just launched into retail in June of last year.
So June 2024, and by end of the year, early 2025, we're in about 400 grocery stores.
And we're actually launching nationally with Sprouts Farmers Market soon.
So we've got a lot going on this year, and we're just trying to figure out one step at a time of what to do next.
All right, what's your question for us today?
Yes, my question is related to just how we should focus our marketing efforts.
I know we're a small business, we don't have the budgets of the big guys, and we're getting ready for this nationwide launch in Sprouts, and we're trying to think about as we get into these new places, how should we be allocating our resources, and our time, and our budget?
On one hand, it seems like there's a good case to be made to go and find the people that are already removing ultra processed foods and seed oils from their diet, because they kind of get it.
They can be those early brand evangelists.
On the other hand, it kind of seems like it could make sense to go find people who are buying lots of fries and don't even know about this problem, and if we can educate them and get them to know, hey, these fries not only taste better, but they might be better for you and your family, too.
So we're just trying to figure out how we should really focus our effort when it comes to marketing as we're rolling into new places.
We'll get to your question in a moment.
I want to bring Jenny in.
Jenny, you may have some answers to this question, but you may have questions of your own before we get to it.
Hi, Jesse. Hello. Congratulations on your business.
Thank you. I mean, how cool.
It's amazing. I feel like there's like a problem with like french fries right now.
You guys identified it inside your company where it's like you can't actually buy decent French fries, but making them is actually really hard too.
And if you're feeling it, I think the consumer is feeling it as well.
Right. So, I would love to know, where are you manufacturing?
How are you manufacturing these?
So we make all of our own French fries ourselves.
We actually just opened a brand new 6000 square foot facility in Rockville, Maryland.
Because we are doing grass fed beef tallow and avocado oil and we think we have a very true to form process for these hand cut Belgian style fries, we don't really think there is an option elsewhere to do co -manufacturing.
We kind of like controlling that part of the process.
So we do it all. that's actually kind of what Ben's specialty is.
And what are your, I mean, your established businesses?
Are people just sort of super excited about the fries?
You know, I mean, it's that something that, I mean, it sounds like it, but in addition to your burgers and the dogs and everything?
Yeah, at the restaurant level, I think for us, we were able to execute on making a fry that tastes as good as any french fry you ever had but the sort of magic behind the scenes for us as operators is that we just open up a bag of our Jesse and Ben's fries, drop them into the fryer and we've got a great French fryer right there.
And we actually do sell fries to other restaurants.
It's kind of a sneaky wholesale business that we have that helps us grow our business and run our manufacturing plant profitably.
Hopefully, that's the idea at least. Easier said than done.
Totally. It's really interesting.
Jesse, can you give me a sense of what your sales are right now with the fries?
Are you guys, have you broken through $200 ,000 in sales?
Yeah, so in our first 12 months in business, we've done into seven figures in sales.
So, it's been going pretty quick.
Incredible. Let me take a crack at your question, because I think there's a parallel with what Jenny's done.
And you mentioned this is the idea of a higher quality version of something that you were used to, right?
There's a lot of awareness on social media about seed oils and people are getting weirded out about using them.
And there's still some disputes about whether that's accurate or not.
but what I think that most of the people that you want to appeal to aren't really gonna care about that as much yet.
I still think it's new.
I think most of the people are just gonna like your product because it's delicious.
It's a higher quality product and you can taste it.
What do, do you think there's something to that Jenny or do you disagree?
I really do. If you go super deep on the seed oil thing, that science has not reached consensus yet, so it can be fad -like right now.
And so you don't wanna just be known for that.
people who follow that will find you they'll see tallow they'll see avocado oil and they'll find you but I will say there is another component or an element that you that that to think about which is you know, you're not just moving people from one fry company to another and Jenny's it was the same way because Your customer when you're in grocery is not their customers It's the buyer and what the buyer wants to see is yeah, sure, you can split some votes.
That's okay Are you bringing new people to the category?
And so the new people that you're bringing, sure it's some of the seed oil people, it's some of the health -conscious people, it's also just people who love fries, who just don't think you can get good fries in the grocery store and you can't make them at home.
And you have a story that can back that up and that's going to bring new people into the category.
And I think the buyers are going to really want to have you on the shelf.
What are you guys doing for sampling?
I mean, do you have air fryers set up in some of these grocery stores and just handing out a hot French fry while you're shopping for groceries.
I mean, my God. We've done it a couple of times.
We actually just were jokingly serious but joking about this idea of like, what if we just got a giant food truck and drove it down the East Coast and had a French ride tour bus and just did cool activations.
But I think tasting definitely is believing.
We've had a lot of success just finding these really influential people online and on social media, seeding out the product, having them give honest reviews and giving their experience.
And that's been really effective, but I think you're right.
When you put an air fryer out and you give somebody a couple French fries in the grocery store, it's very hard to keep them on the shelf.
We're selling out stores that way, definitely.
Yeah, and you go right to your customer in the grocery store.
I mean, it's a really great way.
Sir Kensington's actually did a really cool thing.
You should partner with them.
They sent a truck out and they did French fries, but it was to sell their condiments.
And they had this cute like container and I happened to catch it at my Whole Foods and they had their mayo and their ketchup.
And so you would go up and you would get that.
And it's like, I've been a huge fan of Sir Kensington's sins.
Yeah, I mean you're like, as Jenni said, like when people would ask her to describe the flavor, she would say we packed more as much chocolate into this pint as we could possibly get.
When you have people, trained people, who are sampling Jesse and Ben's at Sprouts or wherever it is, then they can say, and it's made with avocado oil or beef tallow and, you know, whatever the pitch is.
I mean here you go, it's gonna change your mind about oven fries and it's available in the freezer section just right around the corner.
I love that, that was a pretty good pitch too, guy.
We have to hire you to do some samples.
I love selling other people's products for them.
I think it's so great.
And, in fact, it's a good thing to do to listen to how other people talk about your products because you'll talk about it one way but listen to what other people are saying.
And then also, when you're thinking about your pitch, think to your customers, think about what do I want them to say to other people?
And talk to them the exact way because what you say, they often sort of say in your words to somebody else.
And that word of mouth is going to be everything.
I think that's great advice.
I really appreciate the help.
Jesse Koenig, the brand is called Jesse and Ben's.
Thanks for calling in.
Good luck man. Good luck.
Thanks so much. We really appreciate you guys.
Great having you. Yeah, I love french fries.
And Jenny, you know, french fries, and a great steak for me, is like one of the greatest moments ever.
Oh, same. I'm really excited about this tallow and sea salt though.
And I agree, like I know a lot of people are talking about tallow, but you know, like we're just going back to like some first principles of like, how do you make great french fries?
I know I'm in the Midwest, so I'm hoping that my stores carry them.
OK, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge.
I'm Guy Ross, and we're answering your questions right here on the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
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Welcome back to The Advice Line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz and my guest today is Jenny's splendid ice cream's founder Jenny Britton.
Jenny, why don't we take another call.
Okay. Welcome to The Advice Line.
You're on with Jenny Britton.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hello, nice to meet you.
My name is Casey White and I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts and I'm the co -founder of Jaju Perogi and we specialize in high -quality Polish dumplings.
They're producing high quality Polish dumplings at scale, using our grandfather's recipes to grocery stores throughout the country.
Amazing. Well, thanks for calling in Casey and so Perogi's dumplings, these are, I think most people know they are stuffed with potatoes and cheese cheese, and I think you can even get it with meat.
You can put anything you want inside pasta dough, right?
So, we make a bunch of different flavors from potato and cheese, kielbasa, which is a pork sausage and red bell pepper, a sweet potato, caramelized onion, jalapeno cheddar, you name it, we can put it inside.
Yeah. So, this sold frozen in bags in the grocery store and, like, you just heat it up in the oven?
Yeah. So, we boil them and freeze them so you can air fry them, you can bake them.
My favorite is sauteing them with some butter oil for about 8 to 10 minutes on the stove.
You could even microwave them if you wanted to, so just reheating them.
And tell me how you started the business, tell me the story behind it.
Yeah. So, my sister and I grew up on our grandfather's pierogi.
So, Jaju is our brand name and that's the phonetic spelling of grandfather in Polish.
So we grew up on his pierogi and always had them like in the freezer like our Kraft mac and cheese.
Like that was our snack our go to thing.
All of our friends would ask, Hey, where'd you get those?
Like I can't find handmade dumplings anywhere.
And we're like, really, because we always have them.
So we just assume that everybody had to Yeah, yeah.
So we actually drove back to our grandfather store and found his handwritten recipes in the back of the store.
and just started tinkering on our kitchen table and kind of like that small business story, right?
It started going to pop ups, farmer's markets.
We started doing this around the time when breweries were like really hot and new.
So, pierogi and beer is like the perfect combination.
So we would hop around and do that and quickly realize that yeah, people could not find pierogi anywhere.
People were like driving from neighboring states to come to our events.
it was crazy, but it was awesome.
So we kept going with it once we saw that demand.
Wow, that's super cool.
All right, so you're not sold direct to consumer, or you are?
We do sell direct to consumer on our website.
We don't do, it's not a large part of our business because as you said before, Frozen is pretty expensive.
It's challenging, yeah.
Not easy to do, but we do offer it.
But most of our business is to grocery.
So now we're in about 2 ,700 stores throughout the country.
Whole Foods, Sprouts, a lot of stores on the natural channel.
And then we still do have a big event part of our business that we still operate mostly in the summer months, like music festivals and stuff like that.
Right. And give us a sense of your sales right now.
So last year we finished at 2 .5 million.
That's great. This year we should do almost four because we're actually getting into Costco, which is exciting.
Oh wow. Alright, so before we dive in with more questions, what's your question for us?
So my question is how does a company sustainably grow in the CPG industry without raising a ton of capital or is raising a ton of capital just part of the equation?
Alright, big question and Jenny, I know you've got a lot of thoughts on that.
Jenny, questions for Casey?
Hey Casey. First of all, congratulations.
What an accomplishment!
I mean, to have 2 ,700 -plus stores is...
I mean, I know, from my experience at Jenny's, this is a slog that is not easy to do and I just applaud you.
Thank you. I guess when I think of bringing capital, I think the first thing I think of is that entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs for a reason, and that's because we like to do things our way and differently, and we like to explore and discover and all of that.
And when you bring in outside capital, you lose all of that.
And so, you know, who is on your team?
who how many people do you have are you ready to sort of like let go of that kind of control yeah that's the hard part right because it's like we're a very small lean team still even very methodical and our growth like we've been around for nine years and so a lot of people right they say oh like nine years like maybe you should be in 10 ,000 stores or whatever and we say like well we've just methodically grown because we didn't want to take you know outside investment and stuff like that and so it's kind of just like that point like okay, if we want to get into the club stores, the big, you know,
the bigger guys, like, we need some upfront money to do packaging.
Like, just all the logistics and all of that piece of it.
And so that's what I struggle with.
Because it's like, right, I don't want to give away control.
I want to be able to still make the big decisions, but also, like, where do I get the money from?
To do so? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and that's, that's always that sort of catch -22 or whatever, you know, where you're trying to grow and you need the money to grow.
Have you looked into like SBA and like the sort of SBA and bankless because I think, you know, the thing is we don't really ever talk about that and it can be such an incredible resource, especially, you know, the first answer is you're doing it.
This is how you do it.
This is actually how you raise a company in the best way because you have control and you're growing and you're doing it.
And that's another question too for you is like, what would you do with the money?
I mean, if it's just packaging and getting into a store, you might be able to get a loan for that.
Have you looked into bank loans?
And is that something that you would consider versus bringing in a partner?
Yeah, open to all options.
We have taken some bank loans, the SBA.
COVID was a great time to get federal money.
So that really helped us.
So there's definitely that avenue.
It's just funny like being in the industry, the CPG industry, I don't know if it's because you're just surrounded by people who are always like, I raised X and I raised this and this round series ABCDE.
It's like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing?
But I agree with you.
It's like you can get creative with how you need to front load anything.
If it's just packaging, in this case, most of it is.
It's just accomplishing the execution of a new store.
then why give you know 25 % of your business away to someone who does is never gonna care as much as I do.
Yeah and they're gonna have a lot of opinions on how you do things.
And I mean you look and to be frank it is a we've talked about this on the advice line before.
It happens to be a more challenging environment to raise money especially in food and CPG businesses now.
You know what I'm hearing from investors right now in the food space is they're waiting they're really looking for brands to hit 50, really 100 million dollars in sales.
You know, a couple of years ago, it was 20.
If a brand hit 20 million dollars in sales, it was a target for acquisition.
You know, that being said, I mean, you have some friends and family who have invested in the business, right?
Right. Yep. And so, I mean, is there talk or thought about maybe going back to them and if that's something that you need?
Is that an option? Yeah, that's also that's part of my plan of attack, right.
It's like, when we did that round, I learned a lot about myself and my connections, right?
Like, people want to help you, whether they're giving you money or not, they want to help you and they give you the advice that kind of leads you to the next person that might, you know, write that check, who believes your company has been seeing us grow it for years, right.
So that's kind of my first plan of attack, it's like okay, look at my network, the people that I trust and have believed in this product, tap them first, because I was pleasantly surprised the first time.
So I probably will be pleasantly surprised the second time I do this.
But just to get to this other this other point that you're making, which is like it does feel like and I felt like this at Jenny's too, it does feel like even now like, like, your success as an entrepreneur is not whether you're actually selling or creating value for your customers.
It's about whether you've gotten...
what round of funding you're in, and I'm so fundamentally against that.
I mean, I think that it has to be, as entrepreneurs, it has to be about our customers, really creating value for people.
And honestly, I think the best way to do it is this—I talk about this to Jennies all the time but like, start small and build.
Just keep building.
Jennies took on partners in 2015, but that was when we started in 2002.
I love that business from 1996.
You know, I was learning that whole time.
I built my brand so that when we brought in a private equity firm who were still with and we love, and we're very lucky on that front, but when we brought them in, the brand was established enough that I still had power, you know, to put it frankly.
Do you have a board of advisors or a board of some people that you lean on?
We do. We have a few.
We haven't fully built out a board, which I think we need to do.
I have found that very helpful.
I found – I thought that was helpful at Jennie's.
when we brought in the private equity firm in 2016, actually, we organized a board. And that just made us kind of prepare for, you know, we had to sort of tell everybody what we're doing every month, we had to get prepared for that meeting, and we had to, you know, but it also helped us just organize together as a team.
They were so helpful to us.
So I have a new company, now, Flora, and we've already formed a board, and we went out and found people who are real experts there.
And I think there are a lot of people who would want to help you because you're already out proving it.
Yeah. And then also when you get to that point, if you do, a little later want to go for funding, you already got your board established.
So that gives you a little extra leverage.
Right. I think that's I think that's great advice.
Casey white, the brand is called jaju perogi.
Good luck. Good luck.
Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, Jenny, do you know, obviously, it's a like, it's a different time environment to raise outside capital and food right in the food business.
But it was important, right?
I mean, it really helped you kind of super scale your business.
Yeah, and we looked for partners and in doing this at floura to we look for partners who could be to add more value to the company could really help us mean, we were just a scrappy team.
And when they when they came in, we sort of formed an executive team of professionals who understood how to do it.
And that was a game changer because there are methods that we just you just have to know you have to learn.
Yeah. What are you hearing?
I mean, if anything about fundraising for especially for food brands right now?
Well, it's funny you should ask because I'm literally in the middle of it.
I've been doing this for the last, you know, I've been building this company for two years, really scrappy, and we've gotten some angel investors for early stage, just to get us kind of figure out what we're doing.
And now we're kind of going after the bigger funding, but we are finding Yes, of course, it's very tight, very, very tight.
And I think you have to have a massive opportunity where I'm hearing people say that, you know, they're looking for companies who can become a billion dollar company.
Yeah. If you think about food, that's massive.
Massive, you know, I mean, that's just that's just global scale almost They're throwing around that b -word a lot Yeah Stay with us because after the break we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level I'm guy Roz and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending.
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Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Jenny Britton, founder of Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams. Jenny, let's get back into it and take another call.
OK, sure. Let's go.
Hello, welcome to The Advice Line.
You're on with Jenny Britton.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.