Valuetainment - May 29, 2026


＂A Sh#tty Goal＂ - Ben & Jerry’s Founder CALLS OUT Founders Who Sell Their Companies


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

210.74

Word count

2,184

Sentence count

171

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ben and Jerry s co-founder Ben Cohen says selling his company is a bad idea, and now he wants to buy it back. What does that mean for the future of the Ben and Jerry's brand? And why does this matter to the rest of the world?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 Ben & Jerry's founder, Ben Cohen, whom I've had on, which, by the way, I actually liked him.
00:00:03.780 I don't like his policies, but I liked him.
00:00:05.340 We had a good time together. 0.92
00:00:06.640 He says, selling your business is a shitty goal. 0.83
00:00:09.700 What does this mean?
00:00:11.220 So Ben Cohen said, many founders wrongly treat selling their company as the ultimate goal.
00:00:15.880 Arguing businesses should instead focus on long-term purpose, profitability, and shared values.
00:00:21.740 Cohen spoke while promoting the free Ben & Jerry's campaign,
00:00:24.740 which urged current owner Magnum Ice Cream Company to spin off the brand to investors.
00:00:28.940 willing to preserve its local mission, social mission.
00:00:33.080 The campaign has gathered more than 130,000 petition signatures
00:00:37.440 and staged public protests, including a boycott Magnum demonstration
00:00:41.640 outside the company's annual meeting, why activism resonated with customers.
00:00:45.920 Cohen argued Ben and Jerry built unusually strong customer loyalty
00:00:48.940 because it connected with its customers through shared values, not just products.
00:00:53.180 He criticized corporations, focused solely on maximizing short-term profits
00:00:56.560 At the expense of workers, communities, and the environment, he said consumers are eager to support companies whose value align with their own, especially during what he described as the age of Trumpism.
00:01:07.580 Why Cohen opposed selling the Unilever?
00:01:09.960 Cohen said he opposed selling Ben & Jerry to Unilever in 2000 because he believed the company's values would not survive under ownership that did not share its mission.
00:01:18.300 He now sees the ongoing dispute with Unilever as proof that concern was justified.
00:01:22.160 He encouraged entrepreneurs to build meaningful businesses rather than aiming to eventually sell the company to the man.
00:01:29.000 Brand purpose must be ready, not trendy.
00:01:31.180 So, Tom, do you agree with them on this?
00:01:33.200 Because didn't they end up selling their company, Rob?
00:01:35.920 Yeah.
00:01:36.380 Yes, they did.
00:01:37.080 I thought they sold the company for a billion dollars, if I'm not mistaken.
00:01:40.460 They did.
00:01:41.000 Yeah, they sold it for a good amount of money.
00:01:42.660 They sold it for $326 million.
00:01:45.240 With one condition, the new owner broke it, and now the co-founder wants it back.
00:01:49.160 Tom, do you agree with Ben Cohen on this?
00:01:50.860 So, capitalists on Monday cashed a check from Unilever back to Liberal on Tuesday.
00:01:58.340 This guy is funny.
00:01:59.820 He was here.
00:02:00.500 He had the interview.
00:02:02.480 Ate ice cream together.
00:02:04.080 You guys did.
00:02:05.060 And that was really funny, and it was entertaining.
00:02:07.520 But really, I take issue with his position.
00:02:10.780 It's like, okay, you want to buy the company back because you don't think Unilever did a real good thing with it.
00:02:16.660 Are you going to give your original check back?
00:02:19.240 What are you going to do?
00:02:19.840 Are you going to help do that?
00:02:20.760 Do you want to buy it back? Use all the money that you've got to buy it back?
00:02:24.280 So I find it very ironic that on one hand they take the check, Pat.
00:02:28.820 But then on the other hand, he's criticizing capitalist system and then wants the brand back and things like this.
00:02:35.600 Look, you're not the first person that sold your company to private equity or someone and saw changes.
00:02:40.620 But once you've sold, the new owner has it.
00:02:43.800 You want to protect your employees. You want things to happen.
00:02:46.100 But for him to come out and say, oh, I don't like this because Unilever is coming out with spinning turd swirl, and I think that's against the values of the company.
00:02:59.220 Well, look, it's not your company anymore, and you sold it.
00:03:01.580 And so I see what he's saying, but you've got to remember, if you were this altruistic, why did you cash the check way back when?
00:03:08.040 Even if you say you were against it, why did you do it?
00:03:10.980 Yeah, they sold for $3.26.
00:03:12.460 Apparently, Ben got $40 million.
00:03:14.220 Jerry got $10 million because they had a very small percentage of it.
00:03:16.860 The companies today were worth $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion.
00:03:20.580 And, you know, now you're coming back saying it wasn't a good idea to sell it.
00:03:23.960 Jeff, where are you at with this?
00:03:25.000 I agree with Tom here, except I think it's a little more than it's sour grapes kind of a thing.
00:03:30.900 I mean, in many ways, Unilever, especially more recently,
00:03:33.920 has stifled some of the political activism that Ben and Jerry's The Brand was trying to undertake.
00:03:37.860 And you can understand why Unilever would do that because, I mean,
00:03:39.880 smartest thing in business is not to pick it off.
00:03:41.460 We don't buy it in our house because of this.
00:03:43.780 Exactly.
00:03:44.340 And Unilever says, look, we want to maximize our profits
00:03:46.340 and there's nothing wrong with doing so.
00:03:47.940 So we're not going to engage in political activism
00:03:50.100 and we're going to tamp that down.
00:03:51.200 So I think, you know, some of this has just been saying
00:03:53.440 we didn't think that was going to be the case.
00:03:55.860 And either he's lying about that or he's just naive.
00:04:00.000 I don't think he's the first on the list of people
00:04:01.780 that regret, you know, selling their businesses.
00:04:03.980 You know, the founder of Instagram that sold for $1 billion,
00:04:07.460 the company, what's the valuation?
00:04:09.520 Steve Jobs went through this, you know, after exiting Apple and then coming back.
00:04:15.000 And then again, there's different, there's no, like the way he put it, I think there's no wrong reason to start a company.
00:04:21.380 All right.
00:04:22.080 I think there's companies that they have your vision and what you want to achieve.
00:04:26.500 You want to build an institution for the future.
00:04:29.180 You want to build a way of thinking, a way of designing, a way of inspiring people.
00:04:34.140 That is pretty much what we're doing here.
00:04:35.920 But having a company and exiting, you know, having plans to exit at some point to build your dream business, you can't fault anybody.
00:04:43.820 I don't know what the main reason, the rule they broke, but it's probably the really bad ice cream collaborations they've done.
00:04:51.860 They gave Jimmy Fallon an ice cream flavor.
00:04:54.360 All right.
00:04:54.720 If they do that to my company, I'm out.
00:04:56.760 All right.
00:04:57.040 I'm going to try to buy them back.
00:04:59.260 Yeah, I think a part of it when you're buying a business
00:05:02.040 that has got this big of a social justice,
00:05:06.480 the buyers knew what they were dealing with.
00:05:08.660 The buyers knew what they were dealing with when they bought the company.
00:05:11.400 They knew these guys are socialists.
00:05:12.960 They knew these guys are hippies.
00:05:14.280 They knew these guys are not the traditional operator
00:05:17.280 that's selling the business.
00:05:18.800 And by the way, I don't know how old Ben is.
00:05:20.560 Rob, type in Ben Cohen age.
00:05:21.980 He's got to be in his 70s, maybe late 60s, early 70s.
00:05:24.580 Jerry Garcia.
00:05:25.680 75 years old.
00:05:27.580 and the guy is still out there.
00:05:29.280 So he has his beliefs that are core beliefs when he and I sat down and talked.
00:05:34.700 When you sell your business, there are certain things that happen
00:05:38.820 when you sell your business.
00:05:39.780 As the founder, you have the emotional touch.
00:05:42.920 You built the company.
00:05:44.180 The people miss the founder because there's safety with the founder.
00:05:48.440 The founder did certain things that you were protected of.
00:05:51.420 The new company now comes in, may make certain changes that you may
00:05:55.060 or may not like.
00:05:55.900 Now, typically, when you buy a business, the new owner can do whatever the hell they want to do.
00:06:00.860 They literally can do whatever they want to do.
00:06:02.460 Sometimes they do too much and the company collapses.
00:06:05.260 Sometimes they empower people to keep running the company, and that also continues.
00:06:10.400 But the founder coming back and constantly saying what went right, what went wrong, constantly needing that attention.
00:06:17.240 If you're at a phase, if somebody's watching this right now, they tell me they're 42 years old, they're 35 years old, they're 53 years old.
00:06:23.820 Man, I'm so excited about selling my company.
00:06:25.900 You know what's the first thing I ask him?
00:06:27.300 What do you think is the first thing I ask him?
00:06:29.240 What do you think is the first thing I ask him?
00:06:30.840 What are you going to do afterwards?
00:06:31.880 Exactly.
00:06:32.580 Yeah.
00:06:33.000 What are you going to do afterwards?
00:06:34.360 Same thing with retirement.
00:06:35.300 Yeah.
00:06:35.600 What are you going to do afterwards?
00:06:36.540 Go ahead.
00:06:36.840 You sold the company, got $60 million in the bank.
00:06:39.820 Go ahead.
00:06:40.320 What are you doing now?
00:06:41.380 How long do you think you can go golf every day?
00:06:44.000 How long do you think you can go golf every day?
00:06:45.700 I'm going to go on a 90-day cruise with my wife. 1.00
00:06:48.780 By the eighth day, you guys want to kill each other if you go on a cruise. 0.82
00:06:53.200 You think it's going to be like every day having a blast
00:06:55.880 when you retire and sell your business?
00:06:57.340 No.
00:06:57.740 So half the battle is if you don't yet know what you're going to do
00:07:02.240 after you sell, do not sell.
00:07:04.440 Now, does timing go into it?
00:07:06.580 Of course.
00:07:08.060 We felt, Tom and I, when we sat through when we sold the business,
00:07:11.420 we sold June 27th of 2022 when we were in Monaco.
00:07:17.580 We felt we sold at the most perfect time.
00:07:21.000 We knew what we want to do later.
00:07:22.240 I had already moved to Florida.
00:07:24.140 We already knew we were going to build a media company and a consulting firm.
00:07:27.360 So there was a transition from the day I sold to the day before and the day after.
00:07:32.060 Tom and I talked, and Jennifer, Tom, you'll remember this.
00:07:34.180 Me, you, Jenna, and Maral and Tikran, we talked.
00:07:37.020 We said, listen, guys, when we sell the business, we're going to go get a yacht in Monaco,
00:07:41.440 and we're going to be on it for 90 days.
00:07:43.740 You know, until today, we haven't done that yet.
00:07:46.200 We said a few other things.
00:07:47.540 We haven't done that yet.
00:07:49.940 We're not going to talk about that one.
00:07:52.240 Okay, so what's the point?
00:07:54.380 The point is the day we sold, the next day I was at the office,
00:07:57.140 same time I was the day before.
00:07:58.380 There wasn't a difference because we already know what we're going to do next.
00:08:00.560 So I think he's playing a little bit politics,
00:08:02.680 but I think he's also got a touch with the brand.
00:08:04.960 His name's in the brand.
00:08:06.380 Yeah, but there's one last point here.
00:08:07.620 I mean, it's capitalism for me, socialism for me. 0.99
00:08:11.120 It's the total hypocrite here, right? 0.98
00:08:13.040 It's I'm going to get rich being a capitalist, and then I'm going to argue. 0.99
00:08:15.560 Well-deserved criticism to him.
00:08:17.380 It's well-deserved criticism.
00:08:18.920 Folks, if you're running a business and you're hiring people, there is nothing more annoying than when you hire people and it doesn't go your way.
00:08:29.220 And often it ends up costing you a ton of money.
00:08:32.600 Rob, go ahead and play this clip.
00:08:34.140 So the average bad hire a small business owner makes costs the company $17,000.
00:08:38.160 The worst hires could cost you $240,000.
00:08:41.020 Why?
00:08:41.260 It's not just losing the employee.
00:08:43.040 Many times you lose them.
00:08:44.700 They're sitting next to somebody.
00:08:46.020 They've already infected the negativity on them.
00:08:47.920 they draw that person out. Imagine that person was with you for two years. And many times you
00:08:52.160 knew this was not a good fit. You knew this wasn't going to be somebody that was going to work with
00:08:56.080 you culturally, but you look the other way. You didn't have a system on who to hire. You didn't
00:08:59.400 have a system on what questions to ask. Your calibration wasn't in place. So one of the best
00:09:03.100 things we're going to do this year at the Vol Conference, live in front of 12,000 people,
00:09:07.480 we're going to bring a few of our employees up there and show you how we calibrate quarterly
00:09:12.380 on how we score people on five different metrics and why this has helped our company's retention
00:09:17.700 go higher as well as grow exponentially in ways we've never experienced before.
00:09:22.040 And this will only happen at the Vault Conference that we host once a year.
00:09:26.120 12,000 people from 60-plus countries will be attending the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas
00:09:30.700 August 31st through September 3rd, going through this 296-page manual together.
00:09:36.520 And if you haven't yet registered, click on the link above or below.
00:09:40.020 Get registered.
00:09:40.900 You may want to bring your team with you.
00:09:43.440 It'll be a very special event this year.
00:09:44.960 Looking forward to seeing you there.
00:09:45.920 There you go.
00:09:46.500 Go to vault2026.com.
00:09:48.760 Again, vault2026.com.
00:09:51.580 Speaker, Stephen Bartlett from the Diary of the CEO.
00:09:53.920 He'll be there.
00:09:54.440 Logan Paul will be there to talk about how to create a brand.
00:09:57.780 Then we'll have Joe Montana and Jerry Rice simultaneously interview on how to find a running mate.
00:10:02.400 When you get a running mate, what happens to you?
00:10:04.200 And last but not least, Dan Martell, author of Buy Back Your Time, who has exited multiple companies.
00:10:09.800 We'll discuss how to leverage AI today.
00:10:11.920 Go to vault2026.com.
00:10:13.580 Get registered.
00:10:14.200 Cannot wait to see all of you guys there.
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