Scaling a Food Safety Business Nationwide: Lessons from Dennis Keith

Summary

Dennis Keith shares his inspiring journey from a biology graduate and government health inspector to successful business owner of Respro Food Safety. Discover how relationships, resilience, and a passion for restaurants fueled his growth and how he's scaling his business nationwide.

Keywords

business transition, restaurant safety, entrepreneurship, scaling business, relationship building, food safety, Utah business, restaurant industry, leadership, growth strategies

Key  topics

Business transition from government to entrepreneurship
Relationship building in the restaurant industry
Scaling a food safety business across the country


Chapters

00:00 The Journey to Entrepreneurship
01:52 Building Relationships in Business
05:03 Transitioning from Government to Business Owner
07:45 Overcoming Challenges and Scaling the Business
11:01 The Importance of Support and Values in Business
14:08 Using Anger as Motivation for Change
20:10 The Leap of Faith: Transitioning to Entrepreneurship
23:51 Scaling Challenges: Overcoming Growth Obstacles
28:11 Hiring and Training: The Quest for the Right Talent
34:58 Lessons from History: Inspiration from Family Legacy
45:00 Connecting the Dots: Business and Personal Growth

Resources

Respro Food Safety - https://resprofoodsafety.com
Unreasonable Hospitality (Book) 

Guest links

Website - https://resprofoodsafety.com
Email - dennis@resprofoodsafety.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Grind Design Podcast. I am uh so happy about today's show, and uh along with my partner Mandy Henrietta Michael Walters, we do this show, and I have got a longtime friend we were just talking before the show started, 35 or more years. Um it just tells you how old we are. Um but i we always do uh this podcast with the business owner in mind, and I think today's show is gonna absolutely deliver on that because Dennis is somebody who's worked for um the owner and now is the owner, and um I'm excited to dive into that transition and that journey that has now led him to having a very successful business. So um, with that said, um, welcome my friend Dennis Keith to the show. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Thanks, Mike. It's uh my pleasure to be here. I'm super excited to uh join this podcast. Um, just to introduce myself, my name is Dennis Keith, obviously. I'm the owner and founder of Respro Food Safety. Um, so we provide uh brand standard food safety quality assurance programs for restaurant groups across the country. Um, obviously, we started here in Utah, and a lot of our clients are here in Utah, but right now we're growing and spreading across the country as a lot of our restaurants grow. Right right now, we work with about 300 restaurants across the country. Um, many brands you probably know here in Utah. Um and it's sort of evolved from you know many different things that I've done. We I think we talk about, you know, there's that old saying is that where you you know where you get yourself to be, you know, everything everything you've done in your life got you to this moment, right? I think we say that a lot, and I think that that is true in my case. Um, because I'm super happy that I was able to launch this business and get it to where it's been. Um, I launched Respro in 2008, uh, which is crazy because if you think about what's happening at the beginning of 2008, it was pretty much the world was in a major recession and businesses were going downhill. And what am I doing starting a business in January? Basically January 1st of 2008, I launched this company and immediately started getting some success. Uh, and it really just comes from my love of restaurants. I've always loved restaurants, I've always worked in restaurants from high school to college, and Mike, I think, didn't you work with me at the old spaghetti factory? Weren't you a server? So I was remembered that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yep. We're going back sometime, but yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Well, that was something we didn't talk about earlier.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

We didn't.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Uh but you know, I graduated from the University of Utah in biology, and when I did that, I had no idea what I was gonna do with it. And my family was like, what are you gonna do? You're a biologist, what does that mean? Are you gonna work in a lab now for the rest of your life? I'm like, I don't think so. Well, what does that mean? I'm like, well, I don't know. And I'm a restaurant manager in 2002 for the old spaghetti factory, you know, eventually made it to the manager, and I have a biology degree, which I'm like, okay. I mean, I love the restaurant business, and uh, you know, I got inspected from Salt Lake County. Salt Lake County Health Department came and gave gave me an inspection, and it was a pretty awful inspection, to be honest. It was really bad. But I was super excited about it. Like my bosses were like, that's a horrible thing.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

You were excited about your bad wait a minute. Isn't that a bad day if you're the manager?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yes, and my bosses were really mad about it, and I was like, and but it really opened my mind, my eyes to this whole new thing that you know, you kind of you you hear you hear about restaurant inspections and restaurant inspectors, and there's always people make jokes about them, and and you know, it's sort of this non-serious thing, or you know, there's sort of these science-y, quirky people. And so I I remember asking that inspector, I'm like, what do you need to be a health inspector? And he's like, You just need a science degree. I'm like, I got that. I have a science degree. Done. He's like, he goes, You're totally qualified. So uh three months later, I was working for Salt Lake County as a health inspector. Like, a job literally, like I watched their website that posted jobs I literally every day until one for a health inspector popped up. I applied for it, uh, went through these interviews. Or it was really funny because they're like, um, how are you dealing with like really angry people? I'm like, I'm a restaurant manager, I deal with angry people every day. What are you talking about? Like every answer I pretty much nailed. Uh, and I got the job. I beat out like 30 other people that had like these very advanced science degrees, you know, that they want to go into public health. And the um the guy that runs food protection is just like, look, I we hire science people, but they've never walked into a kitchen of a restaurant, and I knew we needed to find some people that had restaurant experience, and you you were the only one that had restaurant experience, and so I knew we had to hire you. And so I was off and running, I was like, I I couldn't learn fast enough. Like, I they gave me downtown, you know, and I started building relationships with squatters and red rock and Market Street Grill, and at the time Iggy Sports Grill was big, and you know, they're not around anymore, but they were one of my first clients, and uh just started building relationships with these restaurant owners. And um then I that was 2004 when I started doing that, and um, I spent four years really learning the regulation side of things because I already knew the operator side, and once I really understood the laws and regulations and how restaurants are being regulated and you know what the experience was like, just seeing it from the other side, I just felt like I could do a better job of this because there were there are companies that do what we do, much larger billion-dollar companies that do what I do. Uh, but I just felt like even what they were doing and their offerings and their services were not were not good enough. And they seemed like they were making enough money to not care about changing. So I felt that it was a perfect opportunity for me to start this business. Uh, I couldn't really quit my day job at the time because I had a baby on the way, literally. So um I was able to go work for Davis County. Uh, so I transferred to Davis County, and then I immediately went to these people that I had built relationships with, squatters and Red Rock and Market Street and the Iggy Sports School at the time, and immediately picked them up as clients, like on day one. Like uh, and sorry, because those brands didn't have locations in Davis County, so it wasn't a conflict of interest. So that's really how I started.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Uh, it's brilliant to be like, oh, I can't I can't go fishing in this pond unless I move this piece out of the pond.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Yeah, I mean it there was a almost like an element of chest, but what I really think is um super fascinating is you were and you've talked about the relationships that you were building even from day one. And whether you knew that you'd have your own business down the road, the relationships were what mattered, and that's what allowed you to have that business when the opportunity struck. And I mean, for people who are listening to this, um you know, I would say it doesn't matter what arena you're in, like build relationships because you never know when you're gonna have an opportunity to go back to that relationship. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

So anyway, I was super lucky in that um it's kind of funny. Squatters is was my very first client, and um their CEO at the time, Joe Lambert, um, who passed away a few years ago, um, he was really well known in the restaurant business. I actually worked for him in the early 90s when I was in college, because I don't know if you remember the restaurant that was down by the gateway called Thuggles. It was it was a uh bar restaurant, it didn't last very long, a couple years. It was part of the squatters restaurant group then. Uh but I was a server there for about a year or so, and and Joe was my boss. But then when I came back as their health inspector, he was the GM of that pub downtown, and now I'm his health inspector, which we both thought was super funny because I was his employee, now I'm his health inspector. So uh so I kind of already had that. Like I joke now with the squatters people because I tell them I'm really the longest-running employee they've ever had, and I'm there consulting for them. There's they do have one chef who's been there uh a couple years longer than when I started working for them in the 90s. Uh, but for the vast majority of their management leadership, like I've been working with the company far longer than all of them, so it's funny to talk about that. But um I when I sat down with them and said, This is what I want to do, do you think it'd be beneficial? Do you think it would help you if I came back and I'm coming in and helping you and doing these health inspections privately for you and helping the restaurant improve? And we do it on a monthly basis. He goes, Absolutely, he's like, I'm totally in. Like, this is awesome. Like, when can you start? You know? Uh, and then it's just kind of snowballs, you know. So now it's like I felt like I've built these great relationships that I mean, squatters is still a client. I mean, after what, 17 years? And um, I've never lost a client to bad service or they didn't like what we're trying to do. Like, I still hold on to all these groups that I mean, the ones that I don't have now have gone out of business. Like Iggy Sports Girl isn't around anymore. But um, and like New York, but New Yorker, if you remember that, they were a client and then they went out of business. But um my struggle now is how how do I expand nationally with groups that don't know me? Like this is my my struggle, is I'm trying to you know get meetings with people and and trying to you know get a sales associate and make these connections with people that don't know who I am and don't know what Respro is. And I'm and it's it's hard to kind of to do that. I I really envy salespeople on on the grind and working hard and you know constantly making phone calls and and just trying to get people on the phone. Like I just I it's something that I'm not good at. And so um I am headed to the National Restaurant Association show is next month, and I'm gonna come armed with you know all my merch and everything, and just that you know, I gotta get on the floor and just talk to people and tell them about what I do. But whenever I can get in front of somebody or I convince an owner, I'm like, just let me let me walk through your restaurant one time. You don't have I'll do it for free. I always can sell them, I can always show the value in what people we provide. We've helped every brand we've ever worked with, even the ones that I thought had a really good program, we always made it better. So I feel like I mean, we we there's really no limit to how high we can go if I can just get in front of the right people and show them what we do.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

You know, it's funny because as Dennis is talking, what's the uh what's the book that you gave me that we read? Um Unreasonable Hospitality. Like nobody else can do it better ever than what Dennis will be able to do face to face. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And have you ever have you read that book, Dennis? Unreasonable hospitality? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

You're local, right? Take one and deliver it.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I will.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

We have we have copies. You should read it. Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

So before we get into like your scaling of like where you're wanting to grow and and maybe some of the roadblocks that you're you're hitting now, I want to go back to okay, you're working at Davis County, you've got your other business, your personal business that you're building. Um where I think the the tipping point comes for a lot of people that are you know wanting to open up their own business and go all in is when was it? And and talk about what led up to okay, you're giving the middle finger to the corporate job and you're going all in on you.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah, I mean it's you say corporate, but it's really government, and I think there's a difference. Um and it's not a good difference, to be honest. I mean, to in my opinion, working for government is really where um dreams and innovation goes to die. And you know, maybe you know, some people in government would probably disagree with me on that, but for someone like me that I think I'm trying to dream big and I'm trying to um expand my career and and do great things, I just think that at least in my situation, I felt like there was no opportunity for that. And I was still being promoted. Like my bosses knew what I what I have and what I do, and they know that because I have to disclose any sort of possible conflicts, right? So they they know that I had this other business, but I mean I worked my ass off for 10 years. I spent 10 years um basically working at Davis County. Um, I leapfrogged everybody that were my peers all the way to the director of environmental health by was it 2014, 2015, and was running of the environmental health division, which was as high as I could go with a bachelor's degree. If I was gonna go beyond that, I needed a master's, I'm not going back to school. So that was as far as I could go. Uh managing 25 people, $2 million budget. Um, you know, and for most people in public health, that's like the pinnacle of their career, and they love it. They can spend 30 years doing that. Uh, but I really began to feel disillusioned with the people I worked for, meaning the people that were running the department. I didn't feel like uh their vision was my vision, and it really became apparent that it was time for me to go, and I really needed to get respro to where it could, you know. I mean, I'm I've got a mortgage and I've got cars and I got two kids in school. Like, well, I got responsibilities, right? So um I really grinded hard like from 2016 and 2018 and um trying to build the business as large as I could, but you reached that point where I'm not gonna get any bigger until I remove this conflict of interest of being the government employee in Davis County. And I needed to just as scary as it was, I got to the point where my wife, my wife, like you know, she was super supportive of the whole thing and really was pushing me and my biggest cheerleader, uh, which is great, uh, to have that support. So um it was really got to the point where I was able, I were able to the point where we financially we can make it work if I just maintained what I had at that point. And so I did that. And then it was really let's fall, let's see where the trips fall as they may, right? Like at the start of 2018. And it was really Apollo Burger was um the one that did it for me. And I really thanked them a lot because I cold called their office and the owner answered, and I'm like, look, I want to talk to you about food safety. And he's like, Yeah, you know, we we do surf safe. I'm like, well, that's great, but I'm talking about this program that maybe you've never heard of. And he's like, Okay, I'll talk to you next week. Wednesday at nine o'clock, come to our office. And so I did that. And I sat down, just talked to him for two hours, never talked to him before. And he's like, All right, let's see what you got. And then when I started producing, he's like, Wow, I had no idea that you had this, you know, service and how good it would be and the benefit was. And I still I, you know, I we still work hard with with Apollo Burger, and I'm still grateful for for that moment because that's what really got me over the edge. And that was really Halloween of 2017, and I was still at Davis County at that point. So, what I was able to do is I I said, We're gonna start this contract January 1st of 2018. And he said, Okay. So I knew basically for two months that I was leaving, uh, but I held on to that, like, because I wasn't gonna spend two months, you know, getting grilled on by these people that I couldn't stand working for anyway. So I gave them two weeks, which is what they deserve. What I did do though is I knew who my successor was gonna be, and I told them, I didn't tell anybody else in the whole building, but I told the person who was gonna take over for me, and I knew that she was gonna do that. And every decision that was made from that point forward for that two months, she made that decision, even though I made it as a director. We made the decision together because I didn't want to like leave her with a mess. So um just to get back to your question, it is super scary, and but I you've got to believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself and what you're capable of, then and and you're willing to work hard for it. Like you've got to be willing to like. I mean, owning a business or running a business, I know you guys know you guys know this and you heard this from other people. It's a 24-7 job, seven days a week. You know, there's no days off, there's no time off. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

There's all there's all these memes out right now that sh there are people like, yeah, this is what it's like being self-employed, and they're you know, everywhere in the world on a phone at all times, they're constant, you know. I think there's a lot of truth to that, right? You don't ever even when you're not at work, you're thinking about it, right? Your brain is constantly plugged into that idea.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, the idea of unplugging, I mean, there it's a different definition if you know, if you're have your own business versus you're working for somebody.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah. Um I one thing that you you said, and I think it's super important to just are to highlight is you know, yes, it was your decision, but you made this with your spouse too. And to have have that support and that buy-in.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Like I man, it is I mean And not every spouse will go, sure, leave that secure item that is paying the bills for us.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

And right, it was it was paying the bills, it had health insurance, I had a pension, I had a nice pay. I actually gave up a lot for but it but obviously it paid off in the end, but still.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

But it but it was a partnership, right? Yeah. I think the other thing that you said that um just made my antennas go up was how like your decision really came because of you know your values and maybe being misaligned with the people that you were working with. And um you know, we just we just spoke to somebody earlier that would talk about that exact thing. Yeah, that like who you're in business with matters, and you've got to be aligned and you know, not just aligned in thought, but values.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah, and I and I would say one thing I didn't really touch on with this that is a key factor in this, um, because there's a lot of people that will stay working for people that they don't like or a job that they don't like just because of what we talked about. Maybe the benefits are good and the money's good. But the fact is, I got I was super angry. I got very angry, and it's not a bad thing to get angry about things because what it did to me was I was able to channel my anger into grinding this out to where I could leave the job, you know. Like I use that anger, you know, I would come out of meetings, I'm like, this is this is bullshit. Like, I'm I need to get out of here, you know. And um how am I gonna do it? Right? Like I need to figure out my plan here, like because I can't just coast, because it's easy to coast. And I decided that I couldn't just coast. I had to I had to push past this barrier that I was at because things were comfortable, other than I got super angry with the people that I was working for, and I needed to use that to to get to leave and push past this point that I was at.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

The discomfort becomes really useful when you need to make a leap of faith, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

So all right, let's get caught back up because I I I just wanted to catch that story of the the decision, because there are so many people out there working for somebody else that have bigger ambitions and dreams to go do something. Yet whether it's fear or you know, the confidence or lining up their dominoes, I mean, whatever it is. A lot of times it doesn't happen. And one of the things you and I have always talked about is having this show be about, you know, and for those people who want to make that transition.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Or on the tipping point, yeah. Singing the tipping point, and they can't figure out how to make that next leap. Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

It's really a leap of, I mean, I hate to say it, it's like a leap of faith, right? Like, but it's a faith in yourself. And I had met with other business owners, you know, who all and you read online, like you're trying to absorb like content and everything, and you're like, um, you you see like people say, well, once I once I remove, once I got rid of this other job, and you know, some people have two or three jobs and they started the business, but it's like once I got rid of this these distractions and other things, like I grew what 30, 40, 50 percent, whatever it is. Um, and so I had to kind of kind of keep holding on to that where maybe I don't know exactly where that path is, but I feel like there's still an opportunity, like I should still grow. Uh, and here we are. I mean, that was we started at 2018, this is seven years. I mean, we're six times what we were when I was able to go full time and push the business. We're six times as big as we were then. Uh so it was bigger than what. I mean, I I had ideas of well. if I can get to this point I'll be super happy and this and everything. Uh but we keep growing.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

I I picked up some really great clients um and that are keep growing and it's just I mean things things work out for me in in respect of that and I I feel like if if people you know if they have if they really believe in what they're doing they believe in themselves they can do it you know I I truly believe that we we talk about this with people all the time Dennis in the like what you're saying of like when is it enough right and and the thing that we keep running into and finding about people who are entrepreneurs is there isn't there isn't like the end point where suddenly we reach the the goal or the pinnacle and then we're happy about that. We actually are really happy in the building of the thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

So once we reach the one thing we just go we just set a new a new peak right and we run into that a lot there's I there's something about the wiring of people who are self-employed yeah and so you know you you're six times bigger or six times more revenue or profits than you were when you started you know seven years ago but in order for you to get six times more profitable or more revenue than you have now is sort of what you we were talking about earlier, which is the whole scaling process, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:21

And and so as you look you know out over the next you know three to five years like how well maybe not so much how, but like what do you see as the biggest obstacles for you hitting your growth targets and as we're talking about it like how do you anticipate having to um tackle those because it's one thing to know it's another thing to start having a plan to how are you going to become that we're already talking about this now like um my wife is a marketing expert and she still has a full-time job but she's still my director of marketing and you know my son uh who's 19 you know he obviously is really entrenched in social media and and he's in charge of my Instagram for the business and so I I had a meeting this morning with that team in my own house and said we need to post more on Instagram. How are we going to do that? Like this is what I want to see what we should be posting every day you know but my biggest obstacle and I kind of mentioned this earlier was uh people restaurant group station why don't know who we are and I have to change that narrative um they need it's not only just knowing who we are but what we do and there are basically three companies that do what I do that are huge and everybody knows who they are uh but they only they don't care about small restaurant groups they just care about the huge ones like McDonald's and the Darden restaurant groups like they want the thousand unit um brands and I'm not going for that like I don't even think of a competition uh they they don't have services that even compare to our services but um we we right now I'm my perfect my sweet spot of restaurant groups we're looking for are any from anywhere from like 10 or 20 units up to 200 units and there's nobody that does what I do that we do that's going after that that market base and I feel like we can dominate that marketplace uh it's just that those groups are smaller and they can be localized in certain areas like right now we're really kind of focused in Houston I was in Houston all last week we picked up five restaurants there um and got those set up uh but you know I've I've been trying to get meetings with like some of these groups that have like 40 units you know in the Midwest or in the south and like you know trying even just to get like a Zoom meeting with them where we can present our program and it's really hard to you know they're like oh who's this respro guy you know and uh so I have to change that. How do I change that? I got I need to go and and you know I'm going to the restaurant show where I can really meet and push some palms of some restaurant owners no matter where they are in the country and uh trying to you know make a connection with them and say hey I I mean I I'll go anywhere in the country and and do and perform our services in their restaurants for them for free. Another obstacle and another challenge for me is once we set these restaurants up, we do like regular inspections like we they're basically third party inspections, right? Kind of like the health department but really it's a brand standard. We build brand standard programs for restaurant groups and then we do audits on these restaurant groups and all their locations against that standard so that an owner can see how well are our standards across all our locations no matter where they are in the country right but I need to find people to do those audits and I need to train those people. So part of my growing pains even from the very beginning like when I left Davis County and I was going on my own and you start growing before I was doing everything myself. I was doing all the audits myself because they're all in Salt Lake County or they're all there and I had the time to do it and I think I felt like this was how it was going to always be because you can't duplicate yourself. You can't clone yourself how do you find people that think the way you do that believe in the same things you do that are going to do things the way you want them to do them and I got to trust that they're gonna do it in a different state where I'm not even watching them. You know I got to trust that they're gonna do what I need them to do. They're gonna produce a report that I look at and then all I have is you know looking at this is how they did the report this is how I documented it looks good.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

You know I go out and meet these guys and ladies wherever they are in the country in a market like it might might be Dallas it might be Houston it might be San Antonio and I meet them and we do autos together and I got to really like look into their soul you know are they really the right person but I got a little bit of that as an executive working for Davis County where you know I hired and fired all kinds of people and you think that when you hire somebody that they're who you think they are that you think that oh I kind of know that person and sometimes you get you get surprised you know and I know you guys know that the manage people right so yeah well it's actually one of the hardest things right I think it's the hardest yeah the recruit the selection the training and the accountability is I mean I think it's the most challenging and I think it takes well I know it takes the most amount of time yeah in a leader's role.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah for sure so like what I'm like fourth person in Houston now when I went down there like I was even talking to another guy today where I've had to go down there four or five different times and train another person uh I mean Houston's huge it's probably the biggest market right now for me for restaurants but um I mean it's crazy like how you think you think someone's gonna do things a certain way and then they don't and then you're like well damn so I'm gonna have to find somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

So I have a question about that Dennis because I because I have a theory about that. When hiring if if you're in that position where you have somebody you're like shoot that is not what I thought I was hiring right or this isn't playing out the way that kind of the table was set or we expected at the beginning did you have a gut instinct though that there was something just not quite right like maybe maybe I had some reservations when I hired them sure uh yeah because not everybody's exactly who you want um I'm not I don't think I've ever been totally blindsided like I think that there's all even now like I don't take for granted even now the people that work for me even though like there's some that I just hired within the last few months that you know once once they start like producing reports and meeting deadlines like I I don't know for sure until they've started to do that. So I think every bad hire I've had Dennis every single one of them I was like oh I should have trusted my gut but I would rationalize or justify because I needed the the spot filled yeah like I needed the right and every single one of the ones that I've been in that with I'm like I I sort of knew better. Yeah I just didn't want to admit to myself that I knew better.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

So do either I mean I don't know how you hire but I'll ask the question to both of you do you guys either one of you or both use any type of you know hiring um you know profile like I I mean a disk analysis or a disk assessment is one but any one of those types of things to help you in the assessment of set hires?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

What do you mean by that? Are you like a special program or something? Like a like an assessment disc assessment like a disc assessment.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Personality assessment personality assessment anything like that. I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

No I mean I I look for qualifications I scour LinkedIn for people in certain areas I've used Zip Recorder Recruiter um that's actually worked out for me I was surprised by you know about that but for me I think my biggest indication that someone is a good hire is I can usually tell in the first 10 minutes of an interview. Because I I've live literally interviewed a thousand thousands of people at least from my restaurant days to working at the health department to doing what I do now. I mean I I tried to think about the other day it's it's got to be at least over a thousand and there was a time when I felt like I knew every personality and I could pinpoint it. Like I used to be really good at like oh that's that's that kind of person and this is kind of what they need to be successful and operate. I know how to motivate this person and sometimes there's someone that pops in there that poses as one personality and then there's something different. Like sometimes sometimes that happens and it surprises me it hasn't happened for a while but um but I I have a pretty good gut as you said the gut thing some but I have to gamble I mean sometimes you have to gamble and I understand the the idea of you need to fill a spot and that's true um because I've I've had reservations about other people that have turned out really well that have turned out to be some of my best that's true. So it's like you can't you can't really it's both sides right you really just gotta like I mean I lay it out to them I'm like look this is what I need you to do and if you don't do it then I'm gonna fire you like I don't say it like that. I don't say I'm gonna fire you but I'm like oh please say it like that Dennis that's way more fun although I but it's like I have to you have to lay out the expectations but it takes time to get there right like in the beginning it's like hey you know I need to do these kind of things and I hope you can do it but now it's like look this is these are the expectations and if you can't do it then I can find somebody else because I've got five other people that just applied for the same position but I really like you and you're really doing a great job and I think you do a great job for us. I really want you to do this so let's see how it goes.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

So yeah I was gonna say just the whole how do we how do we assess talent right like yeah um the side note in my corporate back in my corporate retail days my very best employee this is a true story um was a um was a felon and I'm I'm not talking like a like white collar and he was my very best employee I have I have my current best employee that like I my team will tell you like I will protect this this particular employee to my grave uh there's also we had a period of time early on where I thought I was gonna end up firing her there were discussions about that right and so so interesting because you're right sometimes it just takes the right coaching and it kind of all comes together and but yeah yeah I mean you have to coach though like if you it's like what I said before you can't clone yourself but you can sure try like you you have to be constantly coaching which is when you talk about businesses and you talk about people having offices I'm sure you guys see the people that work for you right on a daily basis weekly basis whatever it is that you have contact with them.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

I have 35 it's harder with the remote because I have some remote it's hard Dennis I have 35 people that work for me across the country and I have to rely on very few data in terms of they get their job done and they produce the reports they need to carry themselves in a certain way while they're in a restaurant working with a manager so sometimes something comes back well your auditor did this why did they do that you know and so then I have like well I had one that was you know they made some pretty bad accusations about my auditor and then when I upon and this is an auditor that works in Miami I've got eight restaurants in Miami and I don't want to fly out to Miami. Miami's a beautiful place but there was a time where I had to go to Miami every quarter and drive around to like eight to ten different restaurants between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. I do not need to go back to Miami. So uh but I found a really great guy this older guy that um you know has been doing food safety for a long time and um really liked him really nice but then this review came back well your auditor was really mean and he was throwing stuff around and yelling at us whatever yada yada yada and I talked to him he's like it it didn't happen I didn't do that like the inspection was bad and they were doing this and that and then um their parent company who was really my client uh so I had to go to them and kind of talk to them about it. So it turns out that this brand really was mad at the parent company and the parent company was hiring us to do those QA audits. So it was really baggage that came from this other really and they and my the parent company was my client they're like look we've had other issues with this brand and they can't really produce any evidence like there's the thing now that I tell my auditors you have to assume you're being videotaped at every second that you're in these restaurants. So you need to wash your hands you need to do this and that don't be stupid treat people with respect. I mean all these things that you tell people that should be reasonable and common you still have to have these conversations right but my biggest my biggest fear is I'm gonna have somebody go into a restaurant and do something really stupid and it's gonna be on videotape.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

That hasn't happened yet but that's my better knock on wood right now.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Yeah I mean that's that's a big like you know please please carry yourself in a responsible manner especially when you're representing our company so yeah well I think you know I I think you know as we look you know two three years down the road we'll uh I would love to have you back and talk about the the bridge right like what has happened because um it's so fascinating what you're talking about is is not um it's not immune to or it's not just you it is everybody who's trying to scale is going through some iteration of what you just described so I look forward to hearing your journey um because for you to scale the way you want to scale it you're gonna you're gonna have to get over that right you know that um yeah okay anything else before we key up what when is your restaurant the what when's the next restaurant convention Dennis the the National Restaurant Association shows in Chicago in um about four weeks well we're gonna touch base after that I'm curious how that goes to go try to like make connections and relationships in a very short finite time yeah to open some doors I'm not the best at making small talk that's one of my issues like my wife is great at it and that's why beautiful so bring her along yeah yeah fantastic yeah so that's something I gotta work on like I would just go right into hey I need to be in your restaurant doing like let me show you a quality control programming anyway. Bring your wife as your wingman Dennis you'll be fine yeah oh so um the one thing we always ask our our guests before we you know wrap up the show is we we know that as business owners we're always either consuming you know whether it be YouTube or podcasts or reading and so Dennis you'll I'll just tee it up to you if there's been some form of content that either you're currently reading or maybe have in the past that has stuck with you in terms of how you approach your business.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

So yeah I mean there's a number of stuff obviously right now I'm consuming a lot of things restaurant wise and social media that's super current and recent just to try and stay current but if I really want to look at something that's pushed me the entire way I I would say that um and I'm not sure if we talked about this before Mike but my grandfather was in World War II and he was a paratrooper. Have I talked about this?

SPEAKER_01 39:07

So well yeah when we had coffee you told me your story but go go for it.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

Yeah so um it still drives me because it drives it's it's an insane story um he was really in world war two from the very beginning because he was in the army from 1940 uh so he was already um a staff sergeant even when world war iI when America um entered into world war iI which means he went to North Africa that's how early in World War II he was in so he trained in Tunisia and actually was part of the very first invasion of Sicily when the the the 82nd Airborne jumped into Sicily and took the island of Sicily and then they fought all the way through Italy and then he went to England and trained for six months and was part of D-Day. He was one of the only paratroopers that dropped into D-Day that actually had paratrooper experience before D-Day. The majority of those guys had never jumped out of an airplane before into behind enemy lines except for my grandfather and his the 505 82nd Airborne division uh and he was captured on D-Day uh and was a POW for um better part of seven or eight months he escaped from his POW camp and and traveled across Poland and Russia and made it to Odessa and got on a boat to be repatriated back to America um forces in Egypt. So um early on nobody really knew my grandfather's story they just knew he was a paratrooper and that he was a POW they didn't really know the details and so now there's you can research all that so I so back really in 2016 I started to really I had this intense pull to research his story and find out what I could find out and my my family my father and my uncle um ants and uncles had no idea that he actually jumped into what dropped out of an airplane into Sicily and fought Germans in Sicily and he actually took a grenade um took a grenade where it killed his two best friends and actually injured his leg and he survived but I found all this information not only from um records that I was able to get but I actually helped a book author who I found a guy who was writing a book about my grandfather's unit that his father was in and he had all this information interviewed all these guys and it was my grandfather's story and it was amazing. So I actually helped this book author finish this book with all this other information that I knew and there's this amazing part of it where this book author shows me this picture of these four guys and it's in Egypt after they had got back from the POW camp from jumping on D Day to the POW camp going through Russia they made it back to Egypt and there's this picture of these four guys. He goes we don't know who this guy is and I show that to my uncle and he goes that's my father I know it I know it's my father and I'm like okay but we figured it was him just because the guys that he was with he we knew he was with them through the entire part of the war from um paratrooper training in North Carolina all the way through um North Africa and Sicily there were these two guys I'm like he he's always with these two guys so I fit I figured it was him you know you look at him you're like it could be him you know but um I was going through a box I was helping my father move out of his house in Portland um like what a few years like well I can't remember when this was maybe in 2020 or so yeah it was right before COVID hit and this box was in there that had a bunch of like childhood stuff of my dad's right like they had given him like when my grandmother passed away 10 years ago he they everyone gave my dad this box was like oh it has Paul's stuff in it childhood stuff we're kind of going through it my dad just thought it was junk we're going through it and I'm like wait a second like I see this picture it was a postcard picture it was the exact picture that that book author had shown me the exact picture and I'm like he had his own copy and it just completely blew my mind I'm like everybody put the boxes down I need to go through these boxes I find this picture I found a couple other pictures of North Africa that he was in I found a map of Germany and Poland that he had written on there with a pencil where he was in the POW camp and where he needed to get to he was trying to get to Warsaw Poland. That's what he drew this line and he knew where he needed to go this map that I thought was amazing. So back to that question of I mean from 2016 to 2018 it it really consumed me other than my business but at night this like this researching what my grandfather had done consumed me at all hours that I wasn't doing other working or my business. It just amazed me that he had done that and it kind of gave me you know like the strength to like I can do This too, you know. I'm not going to go to war, but I think I can do this because my grandfather went through this like amazing experience, and you know, he fought the Nazis and he made it back from POW camp. And there, like all these things could have happened that would have led to his death, and somehow he survived. Like I can survive this, you know. So it was really, I still I still feel like you know, like I'm a I'm a researcher still. Like I just got a book um that someone just wrote about the 82nd Airborne on D-Day. Um, because there's still a lot of stuff that I don't know centered around like his um capture and being a POW. Uh because my grandfather died in um 1955 from a brain aneurysm in the middle of the night. So that's why we didn't we didn't know a lot about his story because he didn't have a chance to really tell it, you know. Yeah. So anyway, that's that's what still drives me, but there's still some social media in there because I still find stuff like I still research online, I still read books about paratroopers and 80 seconds airborne and D-Day and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Yeah, that whole idea of like what what your grandfather had to go through and and the tenacity and all the other attributes for him to do what he did, and what I'm taking from this is that how you apply that to your approach as a business person, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Yeah, it kind of gives me the strength to like keep pushing forward and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Yeah, we haven't had that before. No, yeah, that's awesome. That's what a story. Um okay, so before we wrap up, we always want to, I mean, people are gonna want to heck people may have questions about the 82nd airborne, and you're like the subject matter expert, but in all reality, too, they may have questions about um how you made that jump from you know working in the government to running and owning your own business. Um, where where can they find you? Where do you want them to find you?

SPEAKER_00 45:56

So you can um you can go to my website, resprofoodsafety.com, or you can email me at Dennis at ResproFoodsafety.com. So you can just spell my name, D-E-N-N-I-S at Respro R E S P R O, you know, foodsafety.com. I'm pretty easy. Even if you go to my website, my cell phone number is on my website. Like I don't, I don't, you don't get pushed to some 800 number or some other like calling service. I put my phone, I put my phone number on my business cards, and I put my phone number on my website. My wife thinks I'm crazy. I get some spam calls. I thought I thought I would get more, but I don't. So it's actually really easy to get a hold of me.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Awesome. Awesome. Anything else?

SPEAKER_02 46:37

No, but thank you for taking time out, Dennis. I do want to circle back and see how you know how that event goes for you and how you traverse making some new relationships so that you can branch out across the country.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

So my my main goal for the rest of this year is can I get a couple, can I pick up a hundred restaurants um in our service by the end of the year that are not in Utah? That's so if I can go through one brand that has a hundred stores like on the East Coast, great. If I can do it between like five different brands that have 20 stores, great. But my goal is if can I get a hundred more stores that are not in the city of Utah? That's what I'm really looking for.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

We will be circling back to see how that's going. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

All right. Well, if this yeah, if this show resonated with you, um go follow Dennis. Go uh look at his website and like, share, and follow um our uh our sites. You can find us at uh the Grind Design on everywhere social media.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

So Dennis, thanks for making time. Great catching up, and uh best of luck for the rest of this year. We'll look forward to catching up with you and seeing how everything goes. Thank you.