Valuetainment - May 31, 2026


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


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

208.66

Word count

2,267

Sentence count

184

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen says selling his company is a bad idea, and he wants to buy it back. Does he have a point? Guests: Producer Jeff Perla ( ) Producer Tom Brolley ( ) Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times Magazine Ben Shapiro ( )

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 .
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00:00:30.000 Ben & Jerry's founder, Ben Cohen, whom I've had on, which, by the way, I actually liked him.
00:00:33.880 I don't like his policies, but I liked him.
00:00:35.420 We had a good time together. 0.92
00:00:36.700 He says, selling your business is a shitty goal. 0.83
00:00:39.760 What does this mean?
00:00:41.280 So Ben Cohen said, many founders wrongly treat selling their company as the ultimate goal.
00:00:45.940 Arguing businesses should instead focus on long-term purpose, profitability, and shared values.
00:00:51.800 Cohen spoke while promoting the free Ben & Jerry's campaign, which urged current owner Magnum Ice Cream Company
00:00:57.360 to spin off the brand to investors willing to preserve its local mission, social mission.
00:01:03.160 The campaign has gathered more than 130,000 petition signatures and staged public protests,
00:01:09.160 including a boycott Magnum demonstration outside the company's annual meeting,
00:01:14.040 why activism resonated with customers.
00:01:16.000 Cohen argued Ben and Jerry built unusually strong customer loyalty
00:01:19.000 because it connected with its customers through shared values, not just products.
00:01:23.240 He criticized corporations, focused solely on maximizing short-term profits at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment.
00:01:29.820 He said consumers are eager to support companies whose value align with their own, especially during what he described as the age of Trumpism.
00:01:37.640 Why Cohen opposed selling the Unilever?
00:01:40.040 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.
00:01:48.360 He now sees the ongoing dispute with Unilever as proof that concern was justified.
00:01:52.220 He encouraged entrepreneurs to build meaningful businesses rather than aiming to eventually sell the company to the man.
00:01:59.040 Brand purpose must be ready, not trendy.
00:02:01.240 So, Tom, do you agree with them on this?
00:02:03.280 Because didn't they end up selling their company, Rob?
00:02:05.980 Yeah.
00:02:06.440 Yes, they did.
00:02:07.160 I thought they sold the company for a billion dollars, if I'm not mistaken.
00:02:10.520 They did.
00:02:11.060 Yeah, they sold it for a good amount of money.
00:02:12.720 It sold it for $326 million.
00:02:15.300 With one condition, the new owner broke it, and now the co-founder wants it back.
00:02:19.240 Tom, do you agree with Ben Cohen on this?
00:02:20.940 So, capitalists on Monday cashed a check from Unilever back to Liberal on Tuesday.
00:02:28.400 This guy is funny.
00:02:29.880 He was here.
00:02:30.560 He had the interview.
00:02:32.400 He ate ice cream together.
00:02:34.060 You guys did.
00:02:35.120 And that was really funny, and it was entertaining.
00:02:37.600 But really, I take issue with his position.
00:02:40.860 It's like, okay, you want to buy the company back because you don't think Unilever did a real good thing with it.
00:02:46.720 Are you going to give your original check back?
00:02:49.320 What are you going to do?
00:02:49.900 Are you going to help do that?
00:02:50.840 Do you want to buy it back? Use all the money that you've got to buy it back?
00:02:54.200 So I find it very ironic that on one hand they take the check, Pat, but then on the other hand he's criticizing capitalist system and then wants the brand back and things like this.
00:03:05.660 Look, you're not the first person that sold your company to private equity or someone and saw changes.
00:03:10.700 But once you've sold, the new owner has it.
00:03:13.880 You want to protect your employees.
00:03:15.220 You want things to happen.
00:03:16.160 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.
00:03:29.300 Well, look, it's not your company anymore, and you sold it.
00:03:31.680 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?
00:03:38.120 Even if you say you were against it, why did you do it?
00:03:41.040 Yeah, they sold for $3.26.
00:03:42.520 Apparently, Ben got $40 million.
00:03:44.280 Jerry got $10 million because they had a very small percentage of it.
00:03:46.920 The companies today were worth $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion.
00:03:50.660 And, you know, now you're coming back saying it wasn't a good idea to sell it.
00:03:54.040 Jeff, where are you at with this?
00:03:55.200 I agree with Tom here, except I think it's a little more than it's sour grapes kind of a thing.
00:04:00.080 I mean, in many ways, Unilever, especially more recently,
00:04:04.000 has stifled some of the political activism that Ben & Jerry's, the brand, was trying to undertake.
00:04:07.940 And you can understand why Unilever would do that because, I mean,
00:04:09.940 And the smartest thing in business is not to pick it up.
00:04:11.540 We don't buy it in our house because of this.
00:04:13.880 Exactly.
00:04:14.400 And Unilever says, look, we want to maximize our profits,
00:04:16.460 and there's nothing wrong with doing so.
00:04:18.160 So we're not going to engage in political activism,
00:04:20.160 and we're going to tamp that down.
00:04:21.260 So I think some of this has just been saying we didn't think
00:04:24.920 that was going to be the case.
00:04:25.820 And either he's lying about that or he's just naive.
00:04:29.980 I don't think he's the first on the list of people that regret
00:04:32.400 selling their businesses.
00:04:34.080 You know, the founder of Instagram that sold for $1 billion,
00:04:37.540 the company, what's the valuation?
00:04:39.580 Steve Jobs went through this, you know, after exiting Apple and then coming back.
00:04:45.060 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.
00:04:51.440 All right.
00:04:52.140 I think there's companies that they have your vision and what you want to achieve.
00:04:56.560 You want to build an institution for the future.
00:04:59.240 You want to build a way of thinking, a way of designing, a way of inspiring people.
00:05:04.220 That is pretty much what we're doing here.
00:05:06.000 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.
00:05:13.900 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.
00:05:21.920 They gave Jimmy Fallon an ice cream flavor.
00:05:24.420 All right.
00:05:25.000 If they do that to my company, I'm out.
00:05:26.840 All right.
00:05:27.100 I'm going to try to buy them back.
00:05:29.120 Yeah, I think a part of it, when you're buying a business that has got this big of a social justice,
00:05:36.540 the buyers knew what they were dealing with.
00:05:38.720 The buyers knew what they were dealing with when they bought the company.
00:05:41.480 They knew these guys are socialists.
00:05:43.040 They knew these guys are hippies.
00:05:44.340 They knew these guys are not the traditional operator that's selling the business.
00:05:48.880 And by the way, I don't know how old Ben is.
00:05:50.640 Rob, type in Ben Cohen age.
00:05:52.040 He's got to be in his 70s, maybe late 60s, early 70s.
00:05:54.720 Terry Garcia.
00:05:55.840 75 years old.
00:05:57.660 and the guy is still out there.
00:05:59.440 So he has his beliefs that are core beliefs when he and I sat down and talked.
00:06:04.760 When you sell your business, there are certain things that happen
00:06:08.900 when you sell your business.
00:06:09.860 As the founder, you have the emotional touch.
00:06:12.980 You built the company.
00:06:14.240 The people miss the founder because there's safety with the founder.
00:06:18.500 The founder did certain things that you were protected of.
00:06:21.480 The new company now comes in and makes certain changes that you may or may not like.
00:06:25.980 Now, typically, when you buy a business, the new owner can do whatever the hell they want to do.
00:06:30.940 They literally can do whatever they want to do.
00:06:32.520 Sometimes they do too much, and the company collapses.
00:06:35.340 Sometimes they empower people to keep running the company, and that also continues.
00:06:40.480 But the founder coming back and constantly saying what went right, what went wrong, constantly needing that attention.
00:06:47.320 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.
00:06:53.900 Man, I'm so excited about selling my company.
00:06:55.980 You know what's the first thing I ask him?
00:06:57.360 What do you think is the first thing I ask him?
00:06:59.280 What do you think is the first thing I ask him?
00:07:00.900 What are you going to do afterwards?
00:07:01.940 Exactly.
00:07:02.640 Yeah.
00:07:03.060 What are you going to do afterwards?
00:07:04.420 Same thing with retirement.
00:07:05.360 Yeah.
00:07:05.660 What are you going to do afterwards?
00:07:06.600 Go ahead.
00:07:06.900 You sold a company, got $60 million in a bank.
00:07:09.880 Go ahead.
00:07:10.380 What are you doing now?
00:07:11.440 How long do you think you can go golf every day?
00:07:14.040 How long you can go travel?
00:07:15.880 I'm going to go on a 90-day cruise with my wife. 1.00
00:07:18.780 By the eighth day, you guys want to kill each other if you go on a cruise.
00:07:23.260 You think it's going to be like every day having a blast when you retire and sell your business?
00:07:27.400 No.
00:07:27.820 So half the battle is if you don't yet know what you're going to do after you sell, do not sell.
00:07:34.360 Now, does timing go into it?
00:07:36.460 Of course.
00:07:38.120 We felt, Tom and I, when we sat through when we sold the business, we sold June 27th of 2022.
00:07:46.020 When we were in Monaco, we felt we sold at the most perfect time.
00:07:51.040 We knew what we want to do later.
00:07:52.300 I had already moved to Florida.
00:07:54.200 We already knew we were going to build a media company and a consulting firm.
00:07:57.420 So there was a transition from the day I sold to the day before and the day after.
00:08:02.140 Tom and I talked, and Jennifer, Tom, you'll remember this.
00:08:04.260 Me, you, Jenna, and Maral and Tikran, we talked.
00:08:07.120 We said, listen, guys, when we sell the business, we're going to go get a yacht in Monaco,
00:08:11.500 and we're going to be on it for 90 days.
00:08:13.800 You know, until today, we haven't done that yet.
00:08:16.280 We said a few other things.
00:08:17.600 We haven't done that yet.
00:08:20.000 We're not going to talk about that one.
00:08:22.300 Okay, so what's the point?
00:08:24.440 The point is the day we sold, the next day I was at the office,
00:08:27.200 same time I was the day before.
00:08:28.440 There wasn't a difference because we already know what we're going to do next.
00:08:30.640 So I think he's playing a little bit politics,
00:08:32.740 but I think he's also got a touch with the brand.
00:08:35.020 His name's in the brand.
00:08:36.440 Yeah, but there's one last point here.
00:08:37.680 I mean, it's capitalism for me, socialism for these.
00:08:41.180 True, yeah. 0.99
00:08:41.800 It's the total hypocrite here, right? 0.98
00:08:43.100 It's I'm going to get rich being a capitalist, and then I'm going to argue. 0.99
00:08:45.620 Well-deserved criticism to him.
00:08:47.460 It's well-deserved criticism.
00:08:48.980 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.
00:08:59.280 And often it ends up costing you a ton of money.
00:09:02.660 Rob, go ahead and play this clip.
00:09:04.200 So the average bad hire a small business owner makes costs the company $17,000.
00:09:08.220 The worst hires could cost you $240,000.
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00:10:16.140 There you go.
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