Food Safety Voices: Communicating Effectively in Challenging Times (LinkedIn Live) | Episode 106
DEP E106
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Media Experiences
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: And I know I guarantee all of us have talked to the media at one point or another, and does anyone have the experience that I have? The person who contacts you is rarely someone who has any idea of what they're talking about.
I'm the new person and the editorial desks assigned me to this. And so has there ever been a recall or an outbreak in the past?
Right. Uh, yeah.
Matt Regusci: Right. I couldn't, you know, get into the low end of the fashion side of things, so they gave me food safety instead. I'll work myself up to fashion, right?
Francine L Shaw: I guess you're right.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
intro: Everybody's gotta eat, and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points, from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans Francine L. Shaw and Matt Regusci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils [00:01:00] down to one golden rule.
Don't. Eat. Poop. Don't eat poop.
Welcome to Food Safety Voices
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: Welcome everyone. This is food safety voices communicating effectively in challenging times. This is intended to be a critical discussion about discussing food safety in public and professional arenas. I'm going to be acting as a host, but I want to acknowledge the fact that we're on the Don't Eat Poop! Podcast platform.
And let's go ahead and quickly introduce our speakers.
Introducing the Panelists
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: I have to admit, this is six of the most recognized voices in food safety. We have a panel today of industry leaders, advocates, and educators who have spent literally decades, and we should add up our total number of decades to see what we are up to, but decades shaping food safety through policy, education, and corporate leadership, and to quickly run down this, I can't even do justice to the credits and the, um, credentials of these individuals, but we have Francine Shaw, co host of Don't [00:02:00] Eat Poop! author of Who Watches the Kitchen? A Health Inspector Uncovers the Dirt on Her Way to Food Advocacy, also with Food Savvy and there's so much more. So everyone, welcome Francine Shaw.
Francine L Shaw: Thank you.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Next, we have Matt Regusci, also co host of Don't Eat Poop!
And if I'm correct, CEO of Ellipse Analytics.
Matt Regusci: Correct.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Welcome, Matt. Bryan Armentrout, host of Food Safety Chat - Live!, author of The New Manager Mindset and founder of The Food Leadership Group. Welcome, Bryan.
Francine L Shaw: Snap, snap, snap, snap.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Tia Glave, co founder of Catalyst LLC, co host of Real Talk Food Safety and founder of Black Professionals in Food Safety and Quality.
Welcome, Tia. With her Jill Stuber, also co founder of Catalyst, co host of Real Talk Food Safety. She's a speaker and a coach and a culture shaper. Let's [00:03:00] welcome Jill. By the way, if I don't forget, Catalyst is hosting a virtual Leadership Summit for People in Food, Wednesday, April 2nd, it's a virtual event, free parking.
Check that out. Also, I'm in the last position here. I'm Dr. Darin Detwiler, host of PEP Talks, author of Food Safety Past, Present, and Predictions. I'm a professor and a columnist, and you might have seen me on TV or quoted somewhere. Yay, Darin! Yay! So quickly, we're going to be focusing on strategies for food safety communication.
And, uh, our panelists are going to share their experiences, perhaps expose communication failures and present solutions that can transform the way we discuss food safety. Again, in public and professional arenas, we have a growing list of participants on the LinkedIn live here. I'm seeing everyone from my good friend, Elena Montoya and Marina Molo.
Hello. And please. Drop a [00:04:00] line, tell us where you're from. And if you have questions, we can't read your questions if you don't post them. So please feel free to post questions on the live LinkedIn platform. Hello, Mariana from Brazil. While you are watching and you're posting questions, let's go ahead and transition to our first panelist, Francine Shaw.
Francine Shaw on Media Relations
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: Welcome Francine.
Francine L Shaw: Thank you Uh, so I'm going to talk about media and how to work well with the media and things that you may or may not experience. My first experience with the media was when I was seven or eight years old. I wrote a letter to Santa and that letter was published in the newspaper And when my mom showed me that letter there were many misspelled words, I was devastated because when I gave that letter to Santa there were no misspelled words and I was explaining this to my mother and I was crying.
[00:05:00] These words were misspelled and they shouldn't have been. And my mother said to me, that's what people expect to see.
That's why they misspelled the words when they printed it. And I was not a happy camper because I didn't misspell it when I wrote that letter and everybody's reading this paper and thinking that I can't spell.
So I was, I was devastated. Fast forward. I'm 25 years old, general manager of a national brand. We open a store in a very small community. This is a big deal. We are the only national brand for 40 miles. We are, I'm telling you, we are a big deal. Local paper comes to interview me. He's been hanging around the whole time we did the build out.
This guy's hanging around. We've gotten to know him. He's [00:06:00] friendly. He does an interview when we open the store, and the interview goes very well, he puts all of his stuff away, and we're finished, and we're just chatting. He says to me, when you go out to eat, is this where you bring your family? And me, in my typical witty fashion, says to him, are you kidding, I just crap all week!
That got printed. I nearly lost my job. The national brand was not very happy. If you know me, you know my sarcasm. Yeah. So I did get him to print a retraction. He apologized and I got to keep my job. So nothing's ever off the record. Don't assume when you're talking to a reporter that things are off the record because since then I've gained a lot of experience.
[00:07:00] I've done a lot of interviews, both in print and live. So I want to give you some tips right now when you're, for when you're working with the media. Always be prepared. It doesn't hurt to do some research on the journalist that's going to interview you. Anticipate potential questions. What might they ask you?
What's your topic? Research those topics. If you can, ask for the questions in advance. Sometimes they will send you those questions in advance if you ask for them. Be honest. Always be honest and be authentic. And if you don't know the topic, don't do the interview because they're going to know, and everybody that is watching or listening to this interview is going to know that you don't know what you're talking about.
Ask for final approval of the product, whether it is video or streaming, ask for final [00:08:00] approval. Wasn't too long ago that I did an interview that I was super excited about this interview, Matt, you know, I'm talking about. I was very excited about this interview and the interview portion lasted probably 45 minutes.
And when it aired, it was horrible, absolutely horrible. Over 20 million people listened to this interview. I was, again, at 60 years old, 60 plus years old, devastated. There was nothing I could do about it. And Darin, you and I have talked about this. It's sometimes, you know, you read the interview and you... in the paper in the magazine, and it's like, that's not at all what I said, or you listen to it.
And it's like, that isn't contextual. That's not how we discussed it. So you want to ask for the [00:09:00] final cut, if you can get it, because if you don't sometimes until it's edited, and it's a 20 minute segment. It doesn't sound like what was really discussed. So those are my tips. Finally, Darin, thank you for doing this and thank you for moderating.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: You're welcome. And I admit, Francine, you were the first person I talked to in terms of, we need to do something because the conversations around food safety, it was weird because at the near last year, it was, I was inundated with journalists, with writers, freelancers, freelancers, freelancers. Are recalls getting worse or outbreaks getting worse?
And it's like, well, how do you quantify this? Because, you know, there's different ways of qualifying it in different information you're going to get. And there were some people saying, no, it's not getting worse. We're just finding more or no, it's getting better. It's okay. Well, depending on how you look at it, there's a lot of changing parameters.
But we still need [00:10:00] to make sure we're communicating this and yeah, the media is a interesting experience. And I know I guarantee all of us have talked to the media at one point or another. And does anyone have the experience that I have? The person who contacts you is rarely someone who has any idea of what they're talking about.
I'm the new person and the editorial desk's assigned me to this. And so has there ever been a recall or an outbreak in the past? . Yeah.
Matt Regusci: Right. I couldn't, you know, get into the, the low end of the fashion side of things be so they gave me food safety instead. I'll work myself up to fashion. Right. . Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: And words aren't synonymous that they, and they think sometimes that they are, and you know, they'll change a word that you said and it's like, no, that does not mean the same thing.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, they don't have to change a word, particularly with you and I, Francine, all they have to do is wait long enough for us to say something provocative [00:11:00] and then that's all they'll grab is that one provocative line.
Jill Stuber: So, if they do their homework, they know to wait.
Matt Regusci: Right?
Tia Glave: Mm-hmm .
Dr. Darin Detwiler: I'm quoted by the Daily News or the Daily Mail in the UK all the time, and they use different words, and so literally at one point I was ex FDA Chief.
I'm like, no, what, where did we get this kind of thing?
Matt Regusci: Congratulations, Darin. There's been a lot.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Yeah, I know. LinkedIn says, congratulations on your promotion. You're like, what promotion? What new job? Now, Francine, in your book, Who Watches the Kitchen? Unlike your media experience you're sharing, you had ultimate control over this.
Was that a difference in your approach?
Francine L Shaw: Oh, 100%. 100 percent a different approach, even though I had, I worked with editors throughout the process. I had total final say about what went into the book and what didn't go into the book. And [00:12:00] if I didn't like the way it was... in fact, I fired my first editor because she changed the entire tone of the book.
When she was finished, it was like, that's not my tone. Matt's laughing at me.
Matt Regusci: I'm actually laughing at the comments of you and I talking. The people are hilarious.
Francine L Shaw: That's not my, those aren't my words. That's not my tone. And you've taken away my voice. She took away my entire voice. That's your voice, not mine.
And I want this to be my voice because this is my life. These are my experiences. And it cost me a couple grand, but I fired my first editor and hired a new one.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Wow. Well, congratulations on your book.
Francine L Shaw: Thank you.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: I think I have it around somewhere. We're going to talk more about two different forms of writing, but let's go ahead and move on, Matt.
Matt Regusci on Storytelling in Food Safety
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: Now you have some other experiences you've shared in the past. What comes to mind when you start thinking about how to communicate in terms of food safety?
Matt Regusci: [00:13:00] So I'll give some examples of how to communicate with food safety. It's all wrapped around stories, right? So, so many people in the food safety world really like to talk about facts and figures and standard operating procedures and logs and retraining and all that stuff and the retraining and the training is all about here's the procedure and it's a paragraph and explains what needs to be done for like bloodborne policy.
People don't think like that. Language can come back to us sitting around fires telling stories. So we listened to Francine before she dived into the checklist of things to think about with talking to the media about food safety. She told two very good stories that explain what was going on. And I like to tell this with a story of my own.
I have hundreds, if not thousands of stories just embedded in my head. And when I was in the certification body world, I'd be talking to clients about what [00:14:00] makes us different than other types of CBs. I would tell this story. When I first started in my career about 20 years ago, I went to the LA terminal market, the Alameda street terminal market.
We had lots of terminal markets that we worked with at Primus, all of them about 17 years ago, food safety was like this thing that people kind of knew that they may need to have in the future because some of their retailers were telling them that they may need to have an audit. So everybody was trying to figure out what this thing was.
Cause I mean, the FDA just wrote the Guidelines for Good Manufacturing Practices and Good Agricultural Practices in 1998. So like early 2000s, people were just figuring this out. And, uh, the family spends the first half hour of our four hour meeting about how to get their facility up to GMP Expectations the first half hour of it was telling me about how food safety is a farce.
Nobody's really killed anybody. It's just made up and all this stuff. So basically just telling me that [00:15:00] my career was a scam, right? I'm a scam artist. But this dude was not legitimate. We go to the facility because they don't have any guidelines or anything like that. We start walking around and before we get in there, this guy puts a wad of, this is the owner's son, so he's an owner too, puts his wadded chew in his mouth before we start walking into the facility.
And I'm just, I'm really curious of where this is going. He's not holding the cup. He doesn't have coffee in his hands. And we walk into his facility and then we're walking around and I'm literally thinking like, how long Is this guy going to be holding his chew before he spits and where is he going to be spitting what's going on?
And he's all the stuff about the facility all i'm thinking about is that chew in that dude's mouth and then he then spits on the floor, and he looks at me and he says, where do you think we need to start in order to get food safety? There was no certification back then, but get an audit from you guys that we could pass that we can send over to our retailers.
And I looked at him and I [00:16:00] said, yeah, you need to start with new ownership. Needless to say, I was kicked out of that facility, which is fine because I didn't want the risk. But I love telling that story to clients ever since then, because it tells a lot of things. It tells the history of my past in food safety from like the very, very beginning.
It also tells that I'm not interested in working with people who aren't interested in food safety. It tells people that I'm willing to, at a very young age, tell an owner off that he's not willing to do that. And in that one story, I was able to portray a whole lot of messages that if I had just said those things to them, It wouldn't have gone the same way. Does that make sense?
And so, with us as food safety professionals, we should really be thinking in stories. Because if we can memorize tons and tons of stories, when we're listening to people talk about things, we can relate that to some sort of story. And relating to [00:17:00] stories creates a much longer impact in the human brain than telling them a list of things that they should be doing and a list of things that they should not be doing.
It just, it pushes, it pushes the point further down the line. Right now, my current career with Ellipse Analytics and Clean Label Project. We talk a lot about heavy metals and I love to talk about not just Flint, Michigan, and what happened with lead there or WanaBana and what happened with lead in WanaBana, but also the individual stories of individual people that were affected by that, the families where their kids now have lower scores in Flint, Michigan, then multiple cities across the United States. Not because their kids started off poorly in terms of their genetics. No, no, no, the city itself poisoned these children and now for the rest of their lives, they're going to be affected by that. That same poisoning could happen within your [00:18:00] facility.
So that's where like Francine and I, I think the reason why our podcast is has done so well is we're telling stories within stories that just leave an impact. And so I like to end with this because a lot of food safety people think that they can't do it. Most people understand or know who Temple Grandin is.
If you don't know, you should go check out Temple Grandin. She's an amazing person. There's a movie about Temple Grandin. She has autism and she basically founded the, our current version of animal welfare in the meat industry. Temple Grandin became very, very successful. That the cattle industry that literally was trying to push her off, telling her what she was doing was like voodoo science.
They started asking her to do all these big presentations, and when she went to go do these presentations, they fell super flat. Why? Because she's autistic, and she didn't know how to relate to people. But she knew that in order to do this, she would have to learn how to relate to people, at least within that one to two hour talk.
So what did she do? [00:19:00] She kept learning stories, taking all the comments that people would write about how terrible she was and not be offended by that, but use them to learn from it. And so if Temple Grandin, someone who is extremely autistic, can learn to relate to people in terms of stories and change a whole entire industry.
So too can everybody else.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Great point. Great point. And I know we all tell stories. And I think that one of the things that we probably all six of us capitalize on, if you will, is that they're not stories that we're just like, Oh, I read this in a book necessarily. We're really trying to use stories from our own experience and our personal connection to these stories. And the perspective that we bring to these stories. We all bring different perspectives in these stories. And what's crazy is we can take a story. We can take our perspective of the story, but it's also, okay, but how is it going to relate to the audience, a situation, and [00:20:00] there are some stories I've told multiple times, and if you listen to whatever, all eight times I've told that story, depending on the audience, you've got a different version of it because it wouldn't work for that scientific audience or that chamber of commerce audience, it's the same way.
Kind of a deal. Yeah.
Bryan Armentrout on Effective Communication
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: Bryan. Now you also not only have your book, The New Manager Mindset. But your Food Safety Chat Live! is a different way that you package and present a conversation around food safety. What are some observations or some key ideas that you have learned and want to share?
Bryan Armentrout: Yeah, absolutely.
And I kind of feel like I'm in the Brady Bunch, like it kind of like, you know, turn
like that look around thing they do at the beginning. Yeah. So, I mean, with that and to Matt's point, which is really good, right, is storytelling. And that's with my book, that's what it is, is a collection of stories over my career. And I did it that way on purpose, right? [00:21:00] Bottom line is most of the people that we talk with in our day to day existence aren't food safety professionals, right?
They're working in marketing or another function. They could care less that SQF version 9 2. 1. 7. 2 subpart who doesn't matter, right? But that false belief that all I have to do is point to a piece of paper and then say, you have to do this, that people are going to do it, right? That's completely false. I think part of it, too, with the storytelling piece of it that Matt and Francine are talking about as well, is we're worried sometimes that, oh, jeez, I've already told that story and people have already heard it.
Yeah, that's fine. Repetition is really important. And so part of this, and this is something I talk about quite a bit, too, Darin, is I want people to be able to predict me. I want that. I want them to say this is how Bryan is going to react in this situation. And when you work in food safety and quality, these are very important attributes to have to maintain that authority in what that we're doing.
And communicating across different platforms and different methodologies to your [00:22:00] point, Darin, extremely important. You don't talk to a company where you have everybody in a big meeting the same way as you do the technical team. And if you try and have the technical conversation, you're going to lose them, guaranteed, you're going to lose them.
They're going to say, well, that was a crappy talk. I didn't like that at all. They don't understand the context. And one of the contexts that we were talking about as we were preparing for our get together here today was, How do you communicate under pressure? And that is the worst situation. And number one with this is you have to practice.
These are not natural skill sets for us. Right. And so being on the chat or other live streams where we're doing these types of things, this is a learned skill. And to Francine's point when you're dealing with the media, I'm sure we've all done this as well is you take courses on this and you learn how to communicate with the media and okay, fine.
They're asking questions. That's great. But what's your message? What is it that you need to get out? And what do you want that conduit of the media personnel to convey with that? Because part of this too, what's [00:23:00] their objective is to get clicks, right? They want that headline that says, well known food safety expert says restaurants are crap, right?
And that, Ooh, people go, Ooh, and they clicked on the story. That's what they want. That is not the message we want in that situation. So you need to be very clear. And if you're in a situation where you have a recall and you're trying to communicate this information. Is that training is going to be extremely critical.
And also then understanding something. I think it's very important, which makes us as technical people, a little uncomfortable is guess what, in a crisis situation, you're going to have very limited information. You're going to get reports from the field that there's some people that are sick. You're going to have a little bit of information from the plant.
The CEO is online and wants an update. FDA is getting ready to come visit your plant and people are asking for you to make a decision at that point in time. And you may have to. That's okay. You have to then figure out how to correctly craft that messaging around that of how you're going to keep that information and understand that in the [00:24:00] future, as you get more information, as you're going through a high pressure situation, that information is going to change.
And sometimes it's okay to say, okay, well, here's the new update and here's what we know now. A little different than what we knew before, but this is an evolving situation. And often you'll hear this in governmental communication. If you have a major development in the world and the spokespeople come out.
They'll say, here's what we know at this point in time. And that helps them to set that stage for that communication on that framework. I took a media course one time and the trainer was teaching us how the media will deliberately try and frustrate you. So, they may be interviewing you, Francine, and say, Oh, I understand, Francine, you've been in the industry for quite a while, and they have the microphone, and they're interviewing you.
And then they'll throw you a loop, and they'll say, Well, you're a woman, why are you working in this industry? You shouldn't even be in this. This is a man's world. Right? Just to throw you off. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you're like, what are you talking about? And now you're off your game and that's, they're trying to do their own purpose.
And when you're under those [00:25:00] pressure situations, it's even worse.
Francine L Shaw: And you brought up something really important. When you take these courses, they will teach you that there are ways to maintain control of the interview and you want to maintain as much control over that interview as you can when you're the one being interviewed and there are ways to do that but when they throw you off course, if you're not careful, you've just lost all control of that interview.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Yes. Yeah. You know, I have to admit this is gonna sound like one of those really you're gonna question whether I really do this or not but I actually volunteer I go around to the local cities and there's a Rotary Club. There's a Kiwanis Club. There's a Chamber of Commerce and they usually have a breakfast meeting or a lunch meeting or whatever.
And they're always looking for speakers. And I will volunteer to go speak at these events because it's like, I'm testing myself, I'm trying to have a different audience and I don't know them. I don't know the location. I've got a time constraint. It's really pushing some stress on me in terms of how [00:26:00] can I pull this off?
I'm going to try literally like some new approach to talking about food safety or food safety leadership. And I use those opportunities to help me be better when I'm in front of my more desired audiences, which is, you know, industry and, and different events. And it really does put me under a different kind of stress and pressure to help me sometimes it's just to be overcoming the nerves quite honestly, if I can get past it with this group, then it's, I'm closer to getting over it with this next group.
Does anyone else do stuff like that? Like how do you...
Matt Regusci: Yeah, that's why I have so many children. Cause then I could practice everything on them. And they're brutal. Every day. They're brutal. My wife is brutal. I love it.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, I tell people, look, I used to be a high school and middle school teacher and you have 30 students every five times a day or whatever.
Those are harsh audience. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone else, what do you do to get over the practice and the nerves, that kind of stuff?
Bryan Armentrout: I, [00:27:00] I think a good tip for me has always been that when you're speaking with a group, you're really not speaking to a group. You're speaking to individuals within that group. And so what I always consciously do when I'm speaking to a large group is I will pick out people in the audience to speak to and I'll meet their gaze for a period of time and speak to them.
And then move to someone else and someone else, which is also a fantastic way to build engagement with that audience. Because if you're on the receiving end of that, you're like, whoa, the speaker's speaking to me, right? And that brings you in more into that conversation.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Except when you get to that point where that one person you keep, for whatever reason, looking at, they're like, yes, yes.
And then the next time you try to do that, that person's like, why do you keep looking at me?
Matt Regusci: The other thing too, is to your point, Bryan, is when you're giving presentations as well, like again, I've been doing this for a very long time and we all have, and so you can remember like the early two thousands.
For me, I was trying to do food safety with farmers. So [00:28:00] not exactly the most interested in change and food compliance is a huge change. So I would go to these meetings where there'd be hundreds or thousands of farmers and I'd be the guy who would talk about food safety and they would always have me because they'd always have that presentation. The beginning is like in front of everybody.
So hundreds of farmers and their wives all there in the room and I'm talking about food safety and at the end of it, there was always this one guy, at least one, sometimes a handful that were like, you know, I've been doing this for 40 years. My dad did this for 40 years. My grandpa did this for 40 years.
We ain't killed anybody. Why do we have to do this crap? And then it just felt like I was just getting beat up, but it beat up. So I don't know, three years later, after getting beat up, I was like, I'm going to pinch this at the end. And so I would have frequently asked questions and I would put this and I would mock it.
Some of you may think you've been doing this for 40 years and your dad did this for 40 years and you guys have been doing the same thing. And you haven't killed anybody yet. That's we all know that's BS [00:29:00] because if you guys are doing the same thing as your dad and your grandparents did, then you wouldn't be in business anymore.
You guys are all smart business people. You have different seed, you have different irrigation, which means also, we have different science for food safety and I would already go. So obviously you're smart enough to keep up with the times. So now it's time for you to change food safety, blah, blah, blah.
And so I'd mock it and make fun of it. And always I would see the audience looking at the four different guys that would be that guy. And I would know who those people were. And so the next frequently asked question where I'm mocking something that they would usually do, I would look at them individually and then the crowd would actually start laughing because they knew exactly what I was doing.
And at the end of it, I would say, Okay, now that I've answered all the frequently asked questions, does anybody else have any questions? And then it would end up being that I would get really good questions, because the other people now knew that they didn't have to bow down to these bullies, they could actually ask the legitimate questions because I already did.
I took the [00:30:00] bullies out at the kneecap right before they had a chance to do anything. And so now that they spoke up, they look like an idiot. And so that's how you could use humor and really looking at those individuals and just pound them.
Tia Glave: Yeah, nice idea. That's a good idea.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, Tia, I'm sure you have a lot of great ideas in terms of how you communicate food safety.
The Power of Storytelling in Leadership
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Tia Glave: Yeah, and I want to build off of what Francine, Matt, and Bryan have been talking about because we talk a lot about like storytelling, that's a huge way of how we like to influence and it is an influence style. It falls underneath inspiration, right? We tell stories to inspire people so that they will act.
But I want to go even a little bit deeper on why storytelling and just why inspirational either speakers or inspiration, depending on who your audience is most effective when you are communicating.
Understanding Your Audience's 'Why'
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Tia Glave: And it really comes down to the why of [00:31:00] your audience. And I know we talked a little bit, even as Bryan was talking, on who is your audience.
And we brought this up earlier. As technical leaders, we focus on data, right? And we've been telling ourselves in the industry, tell them the why. Tell them the why. And that is important. If you look at the data, rational persuasion, which is really where data falls in, is a part of how you can inspire people to move forward.
But it's not the only one and it's not the most effective when we are trying to communicate and inspire people to move. It's not really telling them the why, it's understanding their why. Because my why might be different than Jill's why, might be different than Darin's why, right? There's six people on here, there might be six different why's on why we are doing very similar work, right?
Or why we are working in this space.
Building Trust Through Relationships
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Tia Glave: And so I really want to encourage people that instead of just telling them the why, connect with them to [00:32:00] understand what are their values, what are their assumptions, what are their beliefs. And how does it tie into the work that they do? Now, that's hard, right? And Bryan brought this up.
We need to learn these skills because we do not get these skills in school. Most of the time, depending on your organization, you do not get these skills as you are a technical expert in your organization. Many, many times we do not get it when we become first managers. And the reason why I say to start there is because in times of crisis, in times where you need to know what they think about your new policy, or the direction of the organization, or insert the thing you're trying to do, you need to hear their true thoughts around it.
Their true beliefs, their true values, right? Their true assumptions. And if you do not have relationships with people, if they do [00:33:00] not feel safe talking to you about these things, if they do not trust you, you will not get those answers. So me, when I worked in facilities, my whole goal was to build relationships with key champions throughout the facility or throughout the organization, because I wanted them to trust me so that they will tell me things that I needed to hear, but also things that I didn't even know I needed to hear.
Right? Things that were happening on the floor, relationships that were building, processes that people were going around. If I didn't have those relationships, I won't be getting some of the information that other leaders got, which was very top line of like, yeah, it's okay. Yeah, we're going to do it, but don't.
You get the real information when you have those relationships where people feel like that they can trust you in safe spaces so that they will share. And so that's the learning part of gaining those skills to be able to do that. And for many people, we [00:34:00] say, Oh, just build relationships. Just tell people your trusted source or.
We love this one. We have an open door policy. Anyone can come to my office and talk to me at any point. Well, we know that does not work, right? We have to go out and build those relationships and gain those skills. As the reason why Jill and I created Catalyst Food Leaders is because we know that we do not have these spaces in food where we are focusing on those leadership skills and connecting it to the technical work that we need to do.
And so that's one piece. And then I want to bring up the other point that Bryan actually brought up is around practice.
The Importance of Practice and Reflection
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Tia Glave: And so for myself and Jill, we are certified coaches and we use coaching techniques to help you practice and reflect on the skills you're building. Many times training, right? Like training is super important to this industry.
We don't do that other work that's [00:35:00] outside of training. We just take the train and say, yep, I've done it. Check. But we do have to practice and reflect on what went well and what did not go well. How do I shift? And that is not easy to do. And it's time consuming to do. And it's different for every person you are leading.
So as this is what makes leadership so hard is because each person, how they build relationships, how you create a safe space with them, how you build trust could look differently. So you have the skills, you build the skills around relationships, safe spaces, trust, right? You're practicing, you're reflecting, and that's how those skills become competencies for you.
Now we talked a little bit about how do you even have these conversation, especially in the heat of the moment, right? Things are going wild around you, or maybe you're just I to have those conversations or shy [00:36:00] away from those conversations and practice is definitely a part of that, but looking for those opportunities along the way to practice.
It doesn't have to be. I'm going to set up time to just practice building relationships. No, when you have a conversation with someone where there's a one on one. or in a project meeting or over lunch. Those are times to practice having those conversations. And they're actually, I would say, less chaotic, right?
There's not much at stake when you're building relationships over food, right? Over lunch. Versus if I'm trying to build a relationship during a challenging time or chaos, you're probably behind. You're behind the ball, right? Like, you need to make sure you're building these things ahead of the chaos.
Connecting Values to Work
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Tia Glave: And then the last point is connecting those values that you've learned about, those beliefs, those assumptions, connected to the work you are doing.
Very hard to do. Sounds [00:37:00] simple, but why is this value of why I show up to work every day? Why I do this work? How is that connected to the work you are doing in food safety?
Influence Through Personal Stories
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Tia Glave: And so let me tell you a story about this. I'll tell you actually two stories since we're talking about stories. The first one is I had a maintenance tech who everyone said he does not care about the work that we do here.
He doesn't care about his job. He doesn't care about these things. When I hear someone says they don't care, my ears perk up because that means we really don't truly understand this person's values, beliefs, and assumptions. And so I've seeked him out and I had conversations with him and we walked the line and I just asked him questions.
And one of the things I learned is that he cares so much about the product that we make because his granddaughter eats the product. Now I'm like, there's [00:38:00] his value. This is why he is a squeaky wheel here. He values what he, he is doing because his granddaughter eats this product. So the next time we had a conversation about changing gaskets.
Right. I related it to what if a gasket was in this product that your granddaughter was eating and for him, he actually came to me and said tell me why we have to change these gaskets right now Like they're not broken down. They're good But we have to change them every I don't know three months six months whatever it was and what I told him is we don't know when it's gonna break down but if it breaks down in the product, it's gonna end up there and your granddaughter might end up getting it and we don't want her to eat that gasket.
It just clicked for him. Oh, that makes so much sense. I never had to talk to him. No one ever had to talk to him about changing gaskets again. I connected the work that we did to his values. Now, the second story is around money, because people always bring this up. Well, [00:39:00] they only really care about the money, or they only really care about the fact that they're getting paid.
They don't really care about the product or the consumers. Well, it's okay if someone's value is that they want to go to work to make money to live their life. That's okay. You just need to know that so you could connect it to the work that you do. So in the second story, I worked at an organization that sold milk kits.
And I was talking to someone and we're talking about food safety and food quality and I knew their big thing was, hey, I'm here to do my job and go home so I can do my life. And so I talked to them about we're not in the business of selling one box of product. We need to sell multiple. I do enjoy having money so I can travel and see my friends and do all these other things.
I love that about having a job. We will not have jobs if we only sold one person, one box. They have to keep buying, and that's where food safety comes in, and that's where quality comes in. Just like that, it clicked. [00:40:00] Oh yeah, that's right, we're not. So we have to make sure our boxes are right. Exactly. So those are just some stories on how I helped influence people to move forward.
Based off of their own values and their beliefs and connecting their why, right? Neither one of those. I don't have a granddaughter, right? And really why I was in my job was not because of the pay. So those weren't my values at all, but it was their values. And that was important to the work we were doing.
So big takeaway, get the leadership skills you need in order to communicate effectively with people. So you can build those relationships, create safe spaces and trust, so you can understand their values, their beliefs, and their assumptions around what we do.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: See, those are incredible words, and I have to share that as you're saying this, I remember you and I had a conversation how we saw, this is a while back, we saw someone presenting and it was like, We [00:41:00] sell this many number of units per day and look at how the incidents of people getting sick is so, so, so small.
So if you multiply that by the number of units you sell, then it's a little bit bigger of a number than you're selling to the audience there. And when you start talking about this guy's granddaughter or how it's very human side, a very personal side. It's amazing to me how so many times people will just minimize and minimize the numbers because, you know, that's what numbers can do their factual, but they make it sound like it's really not a big deal, kind of a situation.
And yet, you know, when I talk to families. Almost every single time when I hear from families who have buried a child or any family member, they say, it's like we became invisible. We just became numbers and the numbers shrank and then the numbers, they moved on kind of a deal. And it's amazing when you have an opportunity to kind of put a name or face or a story behind a number and all of a sudden, not [00:42:00] only is it adding to the validity.
But you're actually engaging an audience.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, can you imagine that? For marketing, can you imagine? Okay, so let's equate that to packaging, okay? So, would you like to put on your packaging 3 million units sold, only 10 liver transplants and 2 deaths. Or kidney transplants.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: They won't say 10, they'll say 000017%.
Francine L Shaw: And the fact is they can manipulate those statistics however they want to. People don't think about that with the marketing because the marketers their job is to market that Is to market and to make it as good as they possibly can that's what hire them to do and they can be manipulated. However, they want to manipulate them They're shifting for their audience as consumers exactly Percent.
Tia Glave: Yeah, Darin. I remember when we were there and that person did not understand everyone in their audience. [00:43:00] It's really hard to tell you that, oh, we've only had one death. You're not going to be like, oh, well, yeah, that doesn't sit right with you. Right. It doesn't sit right with, unfortunately, thousands of people that have been impacted by foodborne illness.
And so it's important for us to understand our audience and what's important to them and how it impacts them.
Bryan Armentrout: Right.
Francine L Shaw: Right. I remember saying to somebody one time, so if you only kill one person today, that's okay, right? Wow.
Matt Regusci: It's a good day.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Right. Or that person was only 16 months old.
Matt Regusci: Or they were already in the old folks home, so they already had a hole in the grave.
One foot in the grave. Yeah. Great reasons. I mean, we're joking about it, but in, in a lot of people's heads, they are justifying this based upon statistics and they're not thinking about the individuals, which is why bringing it to the story of the individuals is very powerful.
Tia Glave: It is. [00:44:00]
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Jill, I want to make sure you and I both have some time here as well, as we're almost past the three quarter mark here.
What is your take on communicating about food safety?
Jill Stuber: Well, you know, we didn't even plan this order, but the part that, that I'm going to, to step into for the conversation today is no matter who your audience is, you still have to create awareness around what will resonate with them. As we think about, have you ever been in a spot where you're like, gosh, I told that story and they totally didn't get it.
Or I gave that report and they totally didn't get it. We're just talking about retraining. We retrained and they totally didn't get it.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Or the entire time they were on their phone.
Jill Stuber: Yeah, and those are things that happen. But one of the things is how do we pause and say, what is happening here right now and how did I contribute to that?
Emotional Intelligence in Communication
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Jill Stuber: And that's really about building another level of EQ, emotional intelligence around how we're working with [00:45:00] people. So whether I'm communicating with the media, like I still need to understand that audience, but also preparing for that. Whether it's the maintenance person, like I still need to know how I'm showing up and have enough bandwidth to create space to understand their perspective as well. And I think we are moving so quickly in the food industry that we're doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. When do we pause and go, where is this at? Am I doing the right things? Am I truly connecting with people? And that's really the part when we talk about how do we connect with individuals where we need to create that space as professionals.
Otherwise, we do get caught up in doing, we do get caught up in data and science. And if we need to bring it back down to people, we even need to understand what stories will resonate with them. And that all starts in the little moments. We're not going to be able to pull it off as an executive or in front of a camera crew if we haven't started practicing early.
[00:46:00] And so, you know, when we think about being intentional and some people are like, Oh, that's like meditating or journaling and there's all different types of ways, but you still have to pause and think about how am I connecting? You need to be curious about where others are at and really listening. That's one thing we don't do well as food safety professionals in terms of what is it that they need from me?
How do I step in and serve them? How do we better collaborate? I think we misunderstand that we get along with people or we appear to collaborate well with people for EQ. That's a whole different skill set. And I think about even someone I had just talked to last week was talking about something really local.
They were in their facility. They were working on a new rework procedure. So, of course, in quality and food safety and the group, they had all collaborated and put something together. Ops started using it. And then they came back [00:47:00] and they were like, we don't really like this form. And the food safety quality person said, at first, they were kind of like, their initial reaction was going to be just use the form.
We all agreed. Instead, they paused and went, how do I create space for this person to share what's bothering them? And by allowing a space for conversation to happen, they actually moved together and truly connected and collaborated to make it better. But had they had just responded and they weren't intentional on what they were doing, they would have shut down that conversation, shut down that relationship, and shut down the progress they could have made together.
So I think about how often the EQ portion is missing in what we do. And it's undervalued, like we often think we need the technical skills more than we need the EQ skills. So how do we make those a priority? Because if we're not practicing when we're frontline managers or middle managers, we certainly aren't well positioned [00:48:00] to do this as senior leaders when really we are responsible for taking care of all the people around us.
So if you ask me EQ is the place to go.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: It's a verypo powerf point, you know, it's kind of like, this should not be shocking, but no matter what your job title is, you still are a consumer.
Jill Stuber: Yes.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: And no matter what your job title is, you still have that EQ. The you're emotional. You're not a robot. We're not talking to robots.
I hope we're not talking to robots.
Jill Stuber: Not yet, at least.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: But we do have to boil down our various audiences to those kind of very human elements.
Jill Stuber: We do. And I think there was something about regulations in one of the comments. And I think, obviously, that's an important part of what we do. But if we rely on, well, the regs say this, the requirements say this, customers need this, we've given away our power to step into being a collaborator and being a servant leader because we haven't developed the skills to go further [00:49:00] than just the regs say that.
So, when we want to think about communicating more effectively, we need to position ourselves to be able to step into those spaces better as well. Position better to tell the stories and have them received.
Tia Glave: Yeah. It's one of the things that we talk to organizations about often, who are you outside of regulations, right?
What does your organization stand for? What do you want to be known for when it comes to food safety, as well as your other functions? So that now, like there's a lot of conversation happening about what's the future of food safety regulations. Well, for organizations that have done the work and know what their values are, where their policy stands, regardless of what's shaping up outside, they are in a much better position than the ones who's just trying to do compliant, right?
So to step into that space to say, who are we? As an organization, as a culture, as a people, right, [00:50:00] that's when you're able to be proactive, right? And the things, the challenging things that's happening around us are chaotic times that's happening around us, whether it's what it looks like today, or it's a recall, or insert something that is chaotic.
You actually have something to stand on because you've done that work.
Leadership Lessons and Takeaways
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: Speaking of doing the work, I, uh, a lot of us have been doing this for decades, and we can all talk about how we changed over time. When I used to talk about food safety, back in the nineties, for the most part, I would talk about the experience that I went through and my son's loss and my son's death and other patients, other families, those kinds of situations.
And I come to realize over time that it's kind of like, you know, you can't just eat the meat or you can't just eat the potato. You can't just eat vegetables. You have to have a balance there. You can't talk about the why and nothing but the why, because then you're left with the idea. So then what are we supposed to do with this?
What are our [00:51:00] takeaways? What are our next steps? I think what's the call to action? I don't have a call to action. Okay. Well then how do you have a story, but you don't have a call to action. You have to have that balance. The communication is so important. I remember a story. I think this is from actually, I know it's from the eighties in New York.
There was a situation where these scientific entrepreneurs. They saw an opportunity that no one else saw, yay, basically went in, wanted to shut them down and would not listen to what they had to say. And ultimately, he was, this guy was so arrogant, the EPA guy, that he shut down their system and it ended up causing more problems for the city than anyone had ever imagined.
Of course, the EPA guy doesn't take any responsibility for his actions and the entrepreneurs were left to basically save the day. I bring this up because when we're not really listening, it becomes problematic. I learned a very valuable lesson a few years ago when I kept getting called in by leaders to come [00:52:00] in, to do a corporate event, even sometimes like a state health department type event.
And what I noticed is. The division head, the whatever, the CEO, the highest person in the totem pole would introduce me, and then guess what that person would do? Leave. Leave. Walk out.
What message does that send?
Yes. To everyone else left there? If the person in charge says this is very important that we all listen, and then that person leaves.
And so I...
Francine L Shaw: yeah.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: They open up a file and they're, they're going through their things. Right. So I started saying, I will only do this for you. If you promise me that these people will stay in the room. Oh, and by the way, I want someone from your legal team there as well. And I want to have other executives there as well, because.
After the fact, you know, Oh, we're going to make sure that you understand our priority and our investment and our trainings. Yeah. You're talking about training for the line workers and the salespeople. What about the training for those people [00:53:00] that their decision making is probably what got you into the problem in the first place?
You know, what are you doing for those executives to make sure that they are truly part of the culture or they are part of the conversation and they have a pulse in terms of their EQ around the values and the culture that's going on with this. So it's, it's very important to try to be more inclusive of different audiences, even of the leadership.
So having that balance, having that leadership there, that's been important to me. There's one more thing that I'll point out is that, and we've been in this situation before where I personally, if I'm going to go to a two or three day event, I'm there for the event, I'm going to listen to all the speakers and all the presentations.
I know there are some people that come in right before they speak, they speak, and then they leave. I don't know how they get a pulse check of the company and get to understand them or what's going on around them. But one of the things that I have learned is that. Yeah, there's a lot of scientific and policy talk and a lot of [00:54:00] numbers.
Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're good. I remember someone had diagrams of the parts of a chicken and I'm like, Oh, okay. I just learned something, you know, uh, kind of a thing, or, you know, so you're like, that's where the nugget came from. Or, you know, someone from AFDO is showing a bar graph of the data they collected from over 50, 000 different participants or something like that.
Good information. But one thing I noticed is that we look, we want people who are courageous, but do we actually ask and validate our courage? And so I started really making sure that I don't point out all the bad things that I really try to make an effort to talk about, you know, the Herculean effort behind food safety and to validate the courage.
That's out there to do what we do from day in and day out. And that really resonates with the audience as well in looking at that and calling out people who do those, take those actions and kind of calling out, you know, the impact of the storytelling. And before I run out of time, [00:55:00] I want to point out that a lot of the lessons in leadership are lessons that we are learning all the time.
We've learned it in movies. That New York EPA story I told that's from a movie that's Ghostbusters. So if you were thinking it, you were on the right track.
Bryan Armentrout: I was so dying to say that. I so wanted to say that.
Matt Regusci: I know exactly what it was.
Tia Glave: I was like, sounds right.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, sounds right.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: The reason why I did that is to point out that half the lessons we talk about in terms of leadership and communication, we've been seeing these all along.
We're not necessarily saying anything that's like this brand new idea. Hey, you should listen to those people around you. Hey, you should consider both sides of the story, whatever it is. Guess what? We've been seeing this all along. And so we need to use these stories. We need to engage with these people to remind them that these weren't just leadership lessons.
These were life lessons and that these are not just job responsibilities. These are responsibilities that impact lives. I
Bryan Armentrout: [00:56:00] want to point out something that Darin did that I think is very important, is we don't have to be dour and serious to get our message across. Humor is incredibly effective, right? It allows us to relate as people, so use humor.
Mm hmm.
Tia Glave: Darin, one other we said that stood out that leaders, these are like lessons. These are lessons that were taken on, but we have to use them, right? A leader standing up and saying, Oh, this is an important message. And then you leave. What is that telling your people? Or I love the leader who said, Oh, it's just my two cents.
Well, you're the CEO. Your two cents is actually worth a lot of money. Like, just being aware of you and how you impact other people, and you have to stand in that, right? Like, you have to recognize that and know it and learn from it and practice it, right? Like, you can't just say, Oh, this is important. I know leaders should, but I'm not going to do it this time.
What's going to be a negative impact to someone...
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Because it's [00:57:00] important to realize that balance, right? I don't use humor to talk about the true burden of disease and the impact on families, but I will use humor to engage the audience and make sure that they feel a connection and that they are part of the situation and that they're able to perhaps lower a barrier that would allow them to listen to the true message of what I'm saying.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, I don't know anything about humor guy whose logo is don't eat poop, but using humor can create a provocative response and provocative responses are memorable. Pushing people to the boundaries is kind of our job and there's been a lot of questions about culture I hope everybody realizes that this whole entire hour long conversation is about creating the culture.
We didn't talk one time about The specific SOPs, Bryan even joked about SQF in terms of all their different numbers and alphabets that that went beyond it. And so when we think about culture, you have to remember that the [00:58:00] first four letters of culture is cult. And while there's a lot of negativity about cults, they are very, very effective at creating amazing cultures.
And so by taking your organization and thinking it in terms of how do I create a cult? of food safety within my organization. That's how you create a culture. And a lot of this is wrapped around stories. So what are the individual stories within your facility or your farm or retail establishment that create the culture of food safety. What it is for you is going to be dramatically different than what it is for any other organization across the world because you have your own cult and that is your own culture. The Bible, regardless if you're Christian or not, has been around for multiple, multiple millennia.
Why? Because it's a list of [00:59:00] stories that tell what their cult is. I'm Christian, so I can call it a cult. But if you look at it, it's multiple stories of people who are never living up to that expectation of being Christ like and so you're going to have that within your facility where you're constantly having these individual stories that make up where individuals did the right thing and where individuals fell short and how they could have been different to get to that right thing.
All of those stories create the unique impact of food safety and quality within your organization.
Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, you know, whether we're in a cult or not, we're all subject to the laws of time, and we are a little bit short on our hour here. How about this? Why don't we bring this to a close? Let's do a round robin of your either biggest takeaway or the one thing you wish you had said earlier.
And I think that that'd probably be the best way to close this out. And maybe we need to, after the event, have that conversation in terms of maybe we need to revisit this down the road. [01:00:00] But let's go back to our order here. Francine, what would you like to end this conversation with?
Francine L Shaw: Food safety needs to be specific, very specific.
It needs to be understandable and simple. We need to talk like we're talking to eight year olds because not everybody understands food safety and we can't assume that they're going to understand so keep it specific and keep it simple
Matt Regusci: Matt, if you're trying to figure out how to become a storyteller, read novels, watch stories, and think of how the, like when you're watching a TV interview, which is a series of stories, you realize every compelling episode that you watch is actually multiple stories within a larger, broader story. And if you can get your brain to start thinking about how I can create a collection of stories that are like a novel, that are like a TV series, where all of these different things [01:01:00] interweb into each other to a much broader, larger story, then just train your brain and it's going to take forever.
But luckily reading novels helps. So if you like reading novels or you like watching TV, just while you're doing it, think how could I do this in my own facility and then you could just call it work, right?
Bryan Armentrout: Yes. I mean, to build on that real quick with Matt. So, I mean, so I saw Austin Welch here's in the chat with us here today.
Sage Media, that's his, his whole business, right? It's helping people learn how to tell stories. I think the biggest piece that I took away from this is a point that Tia was making very well, is there's no communication without trust. If there's a barrier between you and the person you're trying to speak with, it's not going to happen.
Yeah. Tia?
Tia Glave: I would say invest in your leadership skills. We have strong technical skills, that's why we're in this space, but if we do not invest in ourselves and in our teams and in our organization to gain these skills, then we won't [01:02:00] have an awesome cult. We will have a, we might have a strong one, but it's not going to be one you want, because people are not going to know how to communicate with each other, build these strong bonds, right?
People are going to be hiding behind themselves because there are no safe spaces. And so that's my message is that as organizations in food, we have to start investing in our people and protecting our people and ensuring that they are being taken care of. You
Jill Stuber: know, I would say if you're in the audience and you're like, wow, I really loved what somebody said and oh, I wish I could do that.
Or I wish somebody would do that. My takeaway is go do that. The someone you are waiting for is you. So I hope people feel like empowered and might be a little scary, but the people around you are waiting for something and that could be you. So step in.
The Role of Heart in Effective Communication
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: I would add that between specifics and [01:03:00] trust and initiative and skillset, perhaps the one thing that needs to connect all that is heart.
If you don't truly have the heart of the intent and what you're trying to do and connecting with that audience, then whatever you say on whatever stage or platform will ultimately be perceived as being as hollow as those fiberglass mascot statues that we grew up seeing standing in front of some of the fast food restaurants we went to.
You need to think about that because that is ultimately what people are going to take away. I don't remember half of the data sheets and spreadsheets and PowerPoints that I've ever seen at conferences, but when someone has a message that is truly from the heart and resonates with the hearts of those in the audience, that is what becomes a memorable and an empowerful, impactful, if you will, a presentation.
Everyone has a role, and I think that we need to make sure that what you've seen here with our panel, incredible panel, again, six people who I talk [01:04:00] to regularly, some more so than others, sorry about that, but we all have heart and initiative and leadership and experience and have a significant experience talking about food safety in different contexts, and I imagine that all of us will continue to do this for a very long time.
Final Thoughts and Gratitude
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Dr. Darin Detwiler: I want to thank our audience as well. We had so many great comments and inputs. A lot of people saying, Hey, we should do this again. I agree. But, you know, ultimately 30 years ago, I thought that this would be one of those things that we're not going to have to be dealing with for too long. The reality is there'll always be a need to talk about food safety.
There'll always need be a need to impact leaders and to validate the courage that we demand as consumers in terms of the day after day focus on food safety. And with that, I want to thank not only our panelists and our participants, but anyone who watches a recording this later. Thank you for all of the Herculean effort that you put into making sure that we don't eat poop.
And that [01:05:00] we are catalysts in our own different ways and that, uh, food safety chat is always something that is live and meaningful. Nice. Thank you very much, everyone.
Bryan Armentrout: Thanks everyone.
