YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Dahl

lines on the record: 94
first: 2019-07-01
most recent: 2019-07-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Knowing that, what do you remember about that? Oh man, it was great. I'll never forget it. It had a great fullness to it, a great beauty to the shape. And the blue cornmeal was just made it like no other bread before it. It was beautiful. And I took it out of the oven. It was five loaves and tasted it pretty quickly. And I was like, oh God, this is good. It fits my flavor profile, you know what I want. And then I gave a loaf to our maintenance guy. And I think we had like 25, 30 employees at the time, but the maintenance guy, he took one home and he came back the next day and he just couldn't stop raving about it. And I eventually got, you know, more people were starting to say, Hey Dave, that's a good bread. Really good bread.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inside and out. And every bread that I made pretty much I named first and then I created it. So I remember thinking I want to make a loaf of blues bread. One of my varieties is going to be called blues because I love the blues. Blue bread. And then I was like, well, the other one was always killer bread. I always wanted to make a variety called killer bread. And the biggest difference in it was that it was made with nuts and seeds rather than just seeds and grains.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had always wanted to make a bread with great texture. And one of the things I love is natural whole grain cereal that's not beat up too much. It's got to have some good chewiness to it. And it doesn't matter. It could be wheat, oats, whatever. So I made a soaker where you take the cracked grains and you make them soft enough to make bread out of them, but not too soft. So it was texture that I was aiming for. Plus, I was going for sort of a brown sugary flavor without brown sugar. So I used organic cane juice and molasses for that flavor. And I wanted to be like a masterpiece of art too. And I didn't call it Kill of Bread right away, called it blues bread, the first one, and it was... Had a beautiful blue color to it like I was aiming for.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing I think the coolest thing that my brother did was to kind of just let me do my thing. He said, well, you know, learn what's out there and stuff. And because of my experimenting with, as a drafter, that's what you do. You replicate and then you make it better, right? Yeah, sure. And that's what I did. I would replicate other varieties of other kinds of bread that were popular out in the market.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. I mean, Glenn, he could see the writing on the wall, like the big companies were coming in, undercutting, I mean, they were probably, their costs were far lower, and nature baked bread wasn't selling. You had to do something in order for this business to grow. And PA sort of kind of tasked you to kind of look around. Figure this out”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the priority, was Brad. Bigger thing was the marketing is how can we appeal to younger folks? We were getting eaten up by the big guys who had figured out ways to sell bread that was more popular.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way I remember it is that I asked him if I could come back, you know, because I'd been thinking about how I think I could make a difference in the company. And so he gave me that opportunity. I mean, I had to prove myself at the very low, at the very lowest point, $12 an hour.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he had managed to keep the business going various ways, but because he was a hard worker and smart and somehow they managed to become contract manufacturers for Trader Joe's, which was really the bread and butter for the business before I got out.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're out. No. No, I think that he'd seen a difference in me, but he was still wary. But he had to see what was going on when I was doing the drafting and things and just the whole deal where I stopped blaming people. I took accountability. I didn't blame the system, the judge. It was all look, I did this and I'm the one who's got the power to change it. I think my brother was a little bit put off by my energy. It was a little bit too much.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't be a criminal anymore. Obviously, this is not working. I am not good at that. That's one thing we can definitely say.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're in prison, you're taking this drafting, computer aided, drafting course and design course. You are on antidepressants. You'd spent most of the previous fifteen years of your life in and out of prison, but it sounds like you sort of woke up one day and you're like, I'm almost 40. My perspective is changing.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At first, I was just scared to death of it. I was like, computers and drafting. I have no idea what they're talking about. But this time I didn't give up. So I had a great time. I just started. Within a couple weeks, I was having a blast in there. And that changed my life.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of the placebo effect. Yeah, I think it might have been partially a placebo effect, but I think the drug did help. It worked. And I had been on a waiting list for a computer-aided drafting program, which was a vocational training opportunity, very rare, a very rare and great opportunity I found out.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a big deal because it's like you're telling on yourself in there, you know. The last thing you want to do is tell the authorities what's on your mind. But that was the wrong advice. The right advice was, yes, let down your guard and get some help. And it wasn't long after that I got called in. And, you know, I didn't tell him everything. I didn't say I was suicidal because I didn't want to get in more trouble. But he said, Well, look, we've got this stuff called Paxil. You want to try it? And I said, hell yeah, let's give it a shot. And they say it takes quite a while to take effect, but it was fairly quick with me. Sometimes I don't know how much of it was just the humility and the whole deal that it took to make that happen. That changed my...”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like that. My own form of God, I guess. I experienced enough adversity and enough time where I couldn't run away. I was either going to take myself out. I was going to find a way because I really had decided there's no reason why I should be alive. But being at the end of my rope like I was, I finally did something that they talk about in AA. I surrendered. And I said, well, I'm going to let these authorities who may be able to help me, I'm going to give them a chance to help me.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had started to want to talk to my dad, but I wasn't quite to the point that I got to later where I really wished that I could have had that final, some time with him.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very long. I have a suicidal many, many times in my life. I had been suicidal when I put that needle in my arm. And so, you know, you got to understand that. I was back against the wall, nothing to lose when I did it.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so. With everything. Yeah, I think looking back now, I think my dad had similar problems that I had, you know, to mine. He was probably bipolar like me. I saw him angry and I saw him depressed. I saw him angry and I saw him depressed.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Growing up, there was a lot of anger in my family. That's one thing that came with the territory, the bakers, all the bakers in the family. We were all angry. Just angry”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, because by that time I had almost come to the conclusion that I was eventually going to go to prison, and that would be a good learning experience for me. And I didn't like prison, don't get me wrong. I hated it. But I also looked at it as sort of a badge of who I was now.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we had fences. I would work with guys who had a little bit more experience at this, and they would find ways to offense the things. And, you know, I would feel guilty at times when I was robbing someone to see the fear that they had. I would feel that guilt. And I remember actually saying, I'm sorry to one person. But it didn't matter, I still had to do what I had to do.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and the last thing in the world I want to do was be a baker. I didn't want to be what my dad was. I didn't want to be what my family was. I didn't want to be this guy. I always thought being a baker was a sissy thing, you know. But I didn't know what else to do. Eventually, it was unsustainable. And so I lost that job and I started doing car burglaries, then eventually business and house burglaries. Pain for the dope.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I do. It was my first transformation in life. It was the first time that I saw that my life could be a lot better, at least in my thinking at the time. And of course, we called it crank in those days. And I'd always been warned that crank was only for the lowest of the low. But at that point I was like, well, I am kind of the lowest of the low. Why don't I embrace it? And I did the very first time that I did the math put it in my arm. And I was instantly happy and ready to go and kick ass. And it made me just forget all the things that were messing me up. And I kind of just left the world that I was in this bummer world that I was in and went to a world where I was happy. The problem would be when I would run out. And that happened a lot.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All those things. And then I would smoke weed and then I would do acid. And almost always it was a terrible result because your mind, you can't go into a trip like that and have a mind that's all torn up. It just gets worse and it makes you nuts.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I couldn't listen to anything, and that's another problem I had in the Marine Corps. I couldn't listen, and I also refused to wear glasses, and I was supposed to wear glasses. So I couldn't see the chalkboard. I mean, I was just like, a lot of stuff was converging there and a lot of bad stuff. And I was low self-esteem, depression. And my thought was always, well, who wouldn't be depressed with a life like mine, you know?”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that's exactly it. I mean, at that time I had no perspective on you can go out and learn to become, to create a life for yourself. But I didn't know that. I didn't see that. And I just thought, well, I was born to lose. I don't know anything. Everybody else knows more than I do. Everybody else is more built for life. And myself, I had such ADD. And even though nobody would have called it ADD in those days, and I didn't have anyone that could diagnose me like that, I couldn't focus on a conversation. Like what we're having right now, there's no way I could have done that.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wasn't too long after that that I ended up getting married. It was just another crazy idea. And I met my first daughter's mother, and we got married, and I was drinking. And at this point, I probably started doing the cocaine. I was just doing cocaine, but I wasn't at a level, a serious addiction level. It was just a recreational level.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was just one more grass is greener on the other side, kind of an idea. And a friend of mine went into the Marines. He was another misfit like me, another, you know, we would call ourselves losers, I guess. He went to the Marines and it was just, he came back transformed. It's the first transformation I ever saw in my life. And I thought, wow, you know, they can make a man out of me too, right? But I went in the Marines and I wasn't ready for that. I just got hell. I got hell from those drill instructors. And I couldn't take it. I wasn't built for it in those days. I didn't have a thick skin at all. And I eventually took off Ran from”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always was like, I always wanted to throw myself into situations and see what happens. And so I was 17 and I took off on this trip and I was about as naive and green about life as you could get. And it started sort of a lifelong thing of running away from things and going somewhere and having to run away from there. Everywhere I went, I was running away, but there I was every time.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I took off on a trip on the second day of my senior year, took off cross-country, got stuck in Nebraska, and turned around, came back.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I drank a little. I think I was 14 when I first drank some beer and smoked some weed. Eventually it got to be more and more of that. None of it really agreed with me. It didn't do me any favors. But at this point, I was trying to find my way outside of the Adventist world. And I was finding other misfits.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It must have been about 11 or 12, probably 12 by the time I started looking at things as like, well, I don't believe this stuff. And I, you know, I read the Bible. I started, I was very sincere about it. I made a decision when I started having doubts that I would just read the Bible and hopefully God would Tell me what I need to know. It didn't work. I mean, it just gave me more doubts. And so I started being more and more, you know, fighting with my dad, mom. By the time I was 13, 14. And my mom was just really bummed out about it. She tried everything she could to try to help me, you know, to get back to the faith. And my dad was just mad. He was just angry.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not at all. No, we worked for our little bit of money. I remember starting at 25 cents an hour. And part of that money, part of that 25 cents went to paying for my school unclothes.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right, yeah. But Sundays were wide open. It was often our biggest day of work. And, you know, the Adventists, that was their day of recreation, was Sunday. And so I was a little bit, I became more and more resentful at that young age that I wasn't able to go to these to be a part of what my peers were doing. But yeah, we worked our butts off on Sundays.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mainly we had one of these cookie machines that had two rollers that would dispense cookies and we were making natural cookies for these hooky places and we didn't work on Saturdays because we were seventh day afternoon. Right.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, some of the earlier more standout memories were maybe going and visiting my dad where he was working because he had to be a certain age and a certain size to be able to work in the bakery. You had to be able to get your hands up over the work table. And I was nine years old when I was able to start working. Of course, I couldn't wait to start working.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, he had to like them because they were keeping him, you know, in business But there was, he just didn't, you know, he was basically for, he was kind of a Nixon Republican.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a funny thing because my dad was the opposite of a hippie. He did try to go with more of a liberal, sort of a liberal mindset for a while, but he couldn't stand hippies. He would just get so upset that these hippies when he would go.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, because of their religious sort of views, he's thinking, I'm going to start making healthier whole grain breads, which must have been kind of a hippie-dippy thing in the late 60s, early 70s, right?”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they were bakers, and my dad was a hardworking man. We did lots of different jobs, odd jobs, until he was able to muster up enough money to buy a bakery that was failing. And that's where he started back in the 50s. And so they did a lot of birthday cakes and donuts even and all that stuff. But at some point my dad decided that he wanted to do more whole grains and no animal fats that were it was revolutionary at the time. But that was definitely the Seventh-day Avenue's influence.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom was very religious. My dad was a believer. They were very strict and we were expected to be honest. We were taught to be truthful. We were taught not to fight. You know, everything was about getting ready for the afterlife for heaven.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And his story has more struggle than probably any story we featured on this show so far. In his 20s, Dave Dahl was a pretty messed up guy, a misfit, a loser. Those are actually his own words, and he spent a lot of time in prison. At times, Dave thought he might even die behind bars, but eventually he transformed his thinking. And when he was released from prison, he went home to his family bakery, and he started making bread, really good bread, and people loved it. And the family bakery grew pretty quickly. Seven years on, they were selling Dave's killer bread across the Northwest, doing over $50 million in sales. But we'll get there. Dave was born in Portland, Oregon in 1963, where his family ran a small bakery. His mom and dad were seventh day Adventists. It's a denomination known to practice a really healthy diet, no alcohol, no caffeine, and lots of grains.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they go on. I'm Guy Razz, and on the show today how Dave Dahl, after years of prison and drug use, turned his life around by baking loaves of healthy whole wheat bread, Dave's killer bread.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It just hit me that, wow, I'm either something really good or I'm something really bad and I'm really bad. I'm a big problem. And look what I've done. I've let down all these people, all these employees, all these investors, all these people who believed in me. And I just couldn't live with that.”
2019-07-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT