Building for the Future: 2023 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion MVP

Name: Antonio McBroom
Title: CEO, public speaker, consultant, developer
Company: Primo Partners
Units: 15 Ben & Jerry’s
Age: 36
Family: Wife, Katie, 2 children, Nia and Nox
Years in franchising: 15 as a franchisee, 4 as a scooper and shop manager
Years in current position: 15

Antonio McBroom is the 2023 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion MVP (Most Valuable Performer), awarded for demonstrating exceptional commitment to the promotion of diversity, eqiity, and inclusion in their organization.

There were two men in Antonio McBroom’s life—his uncle and his barber—who encouraged him to think like an entrepreneur when he started his business career as a 15-year-old ice cream scooper at a Ben & Jerry’s. Two decades later, McBroom has accomplished a lot: Big “O” Operator of the Year and two-time Global Social Impact Award Winner for Ben & Jerry’s; Triangle Business Journal 40 under 40 Award; and Black Enterprise Magazine Franchisee of the Year. His company owns 15 Ben & Jerry’s.

McBroom is now providing the kind of encouragement he received in his youth. “It’s been rewarding work being able to develop young leaders, sometimes into business ownership, sometimes onto other career paths. That’s what I love to do. It doesn’t feel like work,” he says. 

For McBroom, building his business is a way to accomplish additional goals. “In 5 years,” he says, “we want to be a 30-plus unit, $25 million-plus operation with owner-occupied real estate, team-level ownership mentality and benefits, and a community impact strategy that leverages $250,000+ in annual reinvestment into racial equity and criminal justice reform work in our communities. In 10 years, we want to be a 9-figure MUMBO with partnerships with three best-in-category brands, three to five owner-occupied properties, and financial literacy, education, and planning through a full-time, seven-figure social impact fund.”

“Our journeys are connected,” says McBroom. “I bring that to any endeavor I take on.”

MVP QUESTIONS

Why do you think you were recognized with this award? Because of the longstanding commitment to pushing the envelope for inclusion and equity in business. It starts with how I run and lead my own, and it includes the expectations and conversations I have with key partners I invest with.

How have you raised the bar in your own company? By pushing for world-class hospitality in our business endeavors. Primo has a double meaning. In Spanish, it means cousins, which my partner Eric and I are, but in Black urban culture, it means top-shelf, crème de la crème. From how we treat our guests to how we treat our team members, we push Primo.

What innovations have you created and used to build your company? The Primo Kulture Lab is our tried and proven way to create authentic culture at scale in a business. The PrimOS is a business operating system to help businesses with cash management, strategic planning, and tactical execution. It all falls under the PrimoWay: the full set of tools that will change Black business forever!

What core values do you think helped you win this award? Servant leadership.

How important is community involvement to you and your company? Community involvement and impact are at the core of what we do. We develop diverse businesses, communities, and leaders by creating growth opportunities for people like us to close the financial achievement gaps that exist.

What leadership qualities are most important to you and your company? Hospitality. Servant leadership. Vision. Fun. Passion.

PERSONAL

Formative influences/events: Morehead-Cain Scholarship to the University of North Carolina. Teach For America. Finding Christ and joining New Hope Church in Durham.

Key accomplishments: Big “O” Operator of the Year and two-time Global Social Impact Award Winner for Ben & Jerry’s; Triangle Business Journal 40 under 40 Award; Black Enterprise Magazine Franchisee of the Year; keynote speaker for Morehead-Cain Scholarship Final Selection Weekend; and keynote speaker for BlueCross BlueShield Day of Service with special guest Martin Luther King III.

Next big goal: Fusing real estate more with our business model through developing owner-occupied locations while expanding into additional flagship Ben & Jerry’s locations across the Southeast.

Hardest lesson learned: “Your main thing is to keep your main thing the main thing.” I learned the importance of focus early in my entrepreneurial journey when I was so focused on the season weakness of my business and invested in a co-brand to combat it. It failed quickly, and it taught me to refine my strategy of focusing on strengths. Instead of trying to drive revenue in a college town in the winter when all the students aren’t even in town, focus on how to maximize the season they are there.

Best advice you ever got: The journey is the prize.

Favorite book: Twelve Pillars by Jim Rohn.

What’s your passion in business? Leadership development. The process of coaching and servant-leading others from where they are to where they want to be gives me the most energy, enthusiasm, and fire to grow and get better.

MANAGEMENT

Business philosophy: Lead people and manage systems.

Management method or style: Servant leadership. Meet others’ highest priority needs first and the business will take care of itself.

Greatest challenge: The constant journey of self-mastery and improvement. Overcoming false, negative, and limiting beliefs that are often subconscious.

How close are you to operations? I come from an operations background having started as an ice cream scooper and spending some years in the scoop shop operation. As we’ve begun to scale, I’m not as hands-on with operations since I have other key roles as the CEO and culture champion. However, I keep a very close relationship with my leadership and management teams who operate the business.

How do you hire and fire, train and retain? Based on our core values of passionate, fun, servant leadership, resourcefulness, and knowledgeability. We look for candidates who align with these values and can be culture champions, and we fire when a team member is not meeting our bar in relationship to showing these values day in and day out. We train these values through our Primo Fundamentals, which are 30 key behaviors that show these values in action, and we retain by recognizing and rewarding team members based on these values and fundamentals.

COVID-19

What have been the biggest impacts of Covid-19 on your business? It actually propelled us from good to great by showing our true measure during a time of crisis. We doubled down on our #1 resource, our human capital, and invested in world-class training and development while we were quarantined. In addition, we looked for unique opportunities to grow our footprint that weren’t there before.

BOTTOM LINE

Annual revenue: $12.5 million to $15 million.

2023 goals: Celebrate 15 successful years in business; win the great game of business by developing an overall critical number that our entire team is incentivized to hit; grow our organizational and cultural health; and improve in our process mastery at all levels of the organization.

Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? Growth is one of our three pillars (hospitality and servant leadership are the other two). Key ways we measure this are through our leadership development program participation and graduates, our annual sales, EBITDA, community partner impact and investment, and the diversity of our team.

Vision meter: Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10 years? In 5 years, we want to be a 30-plus unit, $25 million-plus operation with owner-occupied real estate, team-level ownership mentality and benefits, and a community impact strategy that leverages $250,000+ in annual reinvestment into racial equity and criminal justice reform work in our communities. In 10 years, we want to be a 9-figure MUMBO with partnerships with three best-in-category brands, three to five owner-occupied properties, and financial literacy, education, and planning through a full-time, seven-figure social impact fund.”

What are you doing to take care of your employees? We promote The EOS Life for our team of doing what you love with people you love, making a huge impact, and being compensated appropriately with time for other passions. We play the great game of business with our team to share the business success and align our interests as an organization.

What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? We’re building a multi-unit, multi-brand, multi-generational privately held business, so the exit strategy is in developing key team members, leaders, and succession planning.