Family Passion on the Rise

There’s no doubt about it: Dave’s Killer Bread is absolutely killer, indeed. The cinnamon-infused Sin Dawg is the bomb. Most people who live in Portland are devoted fans of Dave’s many crusty creations, including Good Seed, Robust Raisin and Rockin’ Rye. Locals are also aware of Dave Dahl’s story; the formerly depressed, drug-addicted convict-turned-bread-guru businessman extraordinaire. Since his last and final release from jail at the end of 2004, and even several years before he officially became a free man, Dave has worked hard at staying true to himself, being honest and embracing his life-changing attribute of humility.

Like many who are successful in life, Dave has a combination of natural talent and passion, combined with a fair share of past mistakes and a certain fearlessness. It was this intrepidness that kept him going when others told him what they thought of his half-baked bread ideas during his early product development days. Dave was born into a family of bakers; it was at home that the earliest seeds of yeast, whole grains and fresh ingredients were planted. Dave’s father Jim started a small Portland bakery business in 1955 (now named NatureBake), where he and his older brother Glenn both worked from a young age on. While Dave diverged from the family business road for many years, Glenn remained at the helm of NatureBake.

2005 was a pivotal year for the Dahl family business. It was the year Dave came back to the bakery, after his final prison release, to work for Glenn. It was also the year Shobi, Glenn’s son, graduated from Willamette University and joined the bakery team. Dave started at the bottom, but his creative hunger for new product development, along with Glenn’s desire to expand the business, resulted in the first four Dave’s Killer Bread flavors: Blues, Nuts & Grains, Good Seed, and Rockin’ Rye. They were launched at the Portland Farmers Market that summer.

Since then, Dave’s Killer Bread has grown from 35 employees to 240, including 30 percent who are ex-felons (providing them with job opportunities is part of Dave’s way of giving back). Dave’s prepares, bakes and packages over 350,000 loaves a week. Though Glenn is semi-retired, he’s still involved with the business as board chair, while his under-30-year-old rock star entrepreneurial son, Shobi, is currently CEO and charting the way for the company’s future.

Meanwhile, Dave, as vice president, spends much of his time intimately involved in developing new products and managing the growth of Dave’s Killer Bread. But he is also a community-service junkie, openly sharing his story without shame or apology, to other convicts, wayward youth, drug-addicted souls and even high-level business leaders. Dave’s hope is that the authenticity and honesty of his story about depression, addiction, crime, punishment, humility, hard work and passion can positively influence the lives of others.

JANNA: Most people know and love your breads. What I hope people realize is that you are constantly engaged in so many meaningful activities beyond the baking — from community service to public speaking. Though it’s hectic and there’s always a lot going on, you seem happy. People spend their lives trying to figure out what makes them happy, sometimes traversing a less-than-happy or ideal road to get there…

DAVE: Indeed. For me, it’s a lot. Before Dave’s Killer Bread was ever around, I felt great about what I had at last discovered in life: humility. My entire life up until then, I didn’t even know what humility was. It sounded like something bad to me, like bowing down, or being somebody’s bitch. From prison time, it was necessary not to let anybody know your weaknesses. I wanted to kill myself. Then in prison I started to really change when I began to realize I needed and could get help. The best thing I could do was be honest with myself and everybody else that I needed help.

J: That must have been extremely hard to do, especially under the survival circumstances of jail.

D: Yeah, it’s extremely hard to do. It’s not normal or natural, at least where I had been. It’s like telling on yourself to the cops, “Oh, I just committed a crime.” You keep stuff to yourself, so I didn’t want to tell anybody that I thought about suicide. And when I did that, when I went and actually told the psychiatric nurse, something set me free. They counseled me and gave me some medication, and my life started to change. I don’t know which one was more important: the humility that it took to ask for help, the acceptance of not worrying about what other people thought anymore, the medication, or all combined.

J: Maybe you were also ready at that time, in that moment, to receive that type of emotional change. Some people spend years fighting demons and never reach the “ready” point. What’s interesting is that there are people who have terrible life situations and somehow miraculously overcome them. Then there are those who are handed everything yet still can’t find inner peace or happiness.

D: Exactly. That’s one of the things I want to point out. What changed my life was humility, acceptance, medication and education. Because it took me becoming humble enough to say, “Well, I’m going to give my life a shot.” I learned that I was smart … {laughs} at least smarter than I thought. And that I was capable of doing things besides walking around being a tough guy or a bad ass. When I realized, “Wow, this feels just right,” it was a big light bulb going on. I was 37 years old. Though there were another four years in prison, I might as well have been on the street, I was just so happy. It didn’t make a difference where I was because I was so happy I had figured this thing out. At that time I was going to school in there, then got interrupted about three years into a drafting program I was following and enjoying immensely. I had to go to an intense drug program which was going to get me out early.

J: Considering how tumultuous your life had been, did you feel like with schooling you finally had a path of stability, or certainty which gave you confidence or inspiration?  

D: When they told me I had to go into the drug program, I thought, “No, I don’t want to go, I have three  to four years left and I’m cool right here,” But I knew I didn’t have a choice, that I’d be losing the continuity and vision I had of getting out and working as a drafter or in engineering. But because of the change I had, and humility I discovered, I realized it was really another opportunity and made the most of it. During this time I learned a lot about how I think, the mistakes I made and that when I lied to other people I was really lying to myself.

J: You once mentioned in another article that the new-found humility also became apparent when it came to your family and facing them once you got out.

D: I actually asked my brother Glenn, another humble thing I had to do, I broke down and said, “Can I come back, start at the bottom and see what I can do?” He was like, “Okay.” He knew what had happened with me all those years and I knew how he felt about it. I know for him to trust me or help me couldn’t have been easy because I had been screwing up all my life and not making his life any easier. So I got back with my brother and in the bakery.

It was very challenging to start at the bottom, but I was just so excited. I hit the ground running. I felt like I was right back in that creative mode again, like I felt when I was in drafting. It felt so good. I felt like, “Wow, I can do this now, no matter what happens, whatever hits me.” One of the dreams I used to have was that somebody would come and get me, and say I did something I didn’t. With my record, it would have been pretty easy to blame me for something and automatically be believed to be guilty and have everything taken away.

It was things like this that I’d fear, but when I started at the bakery I felt that no matter what came, I’d be able to deal with it, and that was the difference between the old me and the new me. If I fell, I’d get right back up and take off where I left off.

J: How do you pick yourself back up?

D: I’m just built for it now. I take it as a lesson. Everything is a lesson. If you make a mistake, it’s just part of the process. Instead of like, “Man, I’m a jackass because I did that,” I realize that I make mistakes all the time. I embrace my mistakes. It only starts to bother me when I make the same kind of mistake again, when I feel as if I should have learned the lesson last time. But overall, I just embrace it and it makes me stronger. I get up and just do it.

It’s kind of like when I got out and started making bread, people didn’t take me seriously because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to create, though. I was working a regular job in the bakery, on the line. But I was moonlighting as a product developer. That’s what I was doing. I would pull these racks of bricks to the backroom and I was basically making garbage. I had to learn. But in a very short time I started getting a feel for everything good bread would need, people stopped laughing at me and started taking me a bit more seriously. The whole time the secret to this was I didn’t care what they thought. I was on a path, I had vision and I was going to get there.

G: Do you ever look to people that work hard, are doing things they love and are successful at it even if it’s not related to what you do, like athletes, dancers, successful business people or even the guy who joins the circus…

D: It’s the same thing. It’s the same story. It’s the same sort of secret to life that you find with everybody that might have a different part of the same story. There’s a certain thread that is common. I would always look at people, at how they did what I do now with realizing a dream, and seeing and thinking I’m never going to be able to do that. I would never be able be that strong. And yet, it was and is the humility that made me strong, which is …

J: Like a paradox?

D: It is.

J: When you have something you want to do, you go against your own grain, or your own intuition or truth for lack of a better term. But when you give in, surrender, go with your own flow…

D: Some say you can surrender because you’re weak. But sometimes you have to be weak to get strong. You have to accept your weaknesses to get to where you’re going. My weaknesses were that I was lying to myself and there was a lot of it. I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of failure. I was afraid that I would fall down. I didn’t want anybody to know the weaknesses I had. So I didn’t do anything risky, per se. I mean, I did a lot of risky things. But there was a certain thing I wouldn’t do: I wouldn’t let people know my weaknesses inside or who I was. And now, {laughs} everybody knows who I am. I’ve made a business out of it. So it’s the ultimate “In your face, this really does work.”

J: How do you stay true to yourself outside of the business? Sometimes the things we do are extensions of who we are. But sometimes it can also consume who you are, and your business has grown so much. You are always doing so much to give back to the community. Yet, you seem balanced.

D: The thing is that I’m not balanced enough. I’m working on it. I didn’t want to be balanced for the first five years of Dave’s Killer Bread. I was just too excited. I had my work cut out for me. People don’t get this opportunity too many times in their life. I’m going to take full advantage of it. I don’t care if anybody thinks I’m unbalanced. I’m going to enjoy it.

But now I still do that to myself and it’s time for me to calm down. Over the last several months I couldn’t tell you how many groups I’ve been speaking to. Because of my past and my experiences, groups from everything related to crime reform, homeless shelters, business leaders, drug centers, juvenile facilities, educational communities — they all contact me. I’ve loved it all and it’s been a great experience. I am taking life as it comes, continuing to work hard and always remembering where I’ve been and the humility it took, and still takes, to get me to where I am at this day.

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Category: 2012_January, All in the Family, Articles, Business, Comeback Kid