Bennett Maxwell understood that to run a successful company he needed to know the business and be the least important person in it.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us. But we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[Waukee Feet Ad]

Stephen Semple:

Hey, it’s Stephen Semple here, and we’ve given Dave another break. Dave Young has been getting lots of breaks lately. But he’s a hard-working guy, so it’s good that we can give him a week off. And I’m really excited. I have with me Bennett Maxwell, who’s the CEO of Dirty Dough. And I’m going to let him explain what Dirty Dough is. And in fact, I’m even going to let him explain what a CEO is, because we were talking earlier about whatever the heck that is.

Bennett Maxwell:

You can write it chairman over CEO, because we’ll probably get it in the story that I have a CEO, which is why I don’t know what the hell a chairman is because I’m like, it’s the title you get when you have a CEO and they’re like, get out of my way. Here’s a title.

Stephen Semple:

Even better. Even better. Right out of the gate, I made a mistake. But it’s not about the titles, it’s about what you’ve built. And it’s pretty cool what you guys have built and how you found yourself in the food business. Because one of the things that is remarkable about so many of the stories that I’ve come across for the Empire Builders Podcast is how many of the businesses have been started by people who are not from the industry. And you’re the same. You’re not from the food business. So tell us a little bit about the beginning, and then how you ended up stumbling into Dirty Dough.

Bennett Maxwell:

Yes. The beginning of me or the beginning of Dirty Dough?

Stephen Semple:

Beginning of you. To me, that was really interesting.

Bennett Maxwell:

Okay. Beginning of me. Raised in Utah, one of nine kids, to a single mom. And there was seven boys. So me and my brothers were always hustling to make some money, selling everything from lawn aeration door to door, to discount cards for the schools, to shaved dice. My first real job, I would say, was Cutco, which is all sales as well. Learned a ton of good referrals or referral based sales from that. I served a two-year Mormon mission in Tijuana, Mexico.

Stephen Semple:

Because Cutco, they do door to door knives, right?

Bennett Maxwell:

Not door to door, or at least not how I was trained. It’s sit down with your close friends and family, tell them that you make $15 an hour presentation or commission, whichever one’s higher. But they don’t need to buy anything. And just go get practice. And then at the end of the presentation, you say, “Okay, Stephen, whether you bought or not, who are 10 people that would be willing to listen to our presentation?” And you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I could think of them.” Like, “No, I need you to think of them right now. And now I need you to call them.” So that was a really good practice of ask for referrals, and unapologetically ask for referrals. Really good. And I think that’s led to a lot of success with Dirty Dough, which we might get into. But a two-year Mormon mission. And then I did a lot of door to door sales, pest control, satellite, direct TV led me to do solar. Started a solar company, and then that kind of led me into the Dirty Dough side, which, going from solar to cookies is a little bit of a stretch.

Stephen Semple:

Now, if I remember correctly, when we were talking, you had built the solar business up to a stage where you were able to sell that business and exit out of that business. Isn’t that correct?

Bennett Maxwell:

Yeah. Right from the get-go, I was lucky to partner with my brother who’s 13 years older than me and has been in business since, I don’t know, his early twenties he bought a franchise. So he had us sit down. And it was just me and him starting the company. We did our whole organization chart and put our heads in all of it, like what we want the organization to look like in three to five years, whatever it was. And then within a year, we were able to both replace ourselves pretty much completely out of the org chart. And then six months later, it set us up really nicely. When the time came to sell the company, it was like, oh yeah, me and my brother, we’re not really involved in the day-to-day. So it made it, I think, a lot more attractive. And I’ve tried to use that same strategy with Dirty Dough, hence the chairman title, not CEO title. I’m trying to replace myself as quickly as possible with people who’ve been there, done that and are much smarter than me.

Stephen Semple:

Right. So you’re in the solar business. You’ve sold the solar business. I’m going to assume you’ve sold it for a nice amount of money, but not so much money that you’re kicking your feet up in some sunny beach somewhere not having to ever do anything again. Or maybe you did and you just got bored. I’m not sure which. But nevertheless, you sold the business. Did you go straight from the solar business to Dirty Dough, or was there anything in between?

Bennett Maxwell:

So Dirty Dough started actually before the solar business. It was a buddy that I went to high school with. Moved to Arizona. He wanted to be the first gourmet cookie company in Arizona because he saw Crumbl and Chip and these other companies out of Utah. So in order to do that and move fast, he just started selling cookies out of his apartment. And he was selling out most nights. And then he posted on Facebook, out of all things, looking for an investor. I invested. He opened up the first storefront in 2020. And at the beginning of 2021, I’m like, “Dude, let’s franchise it. I’ll be your first franchisee.” And he said, “No, I’m actually looking to get out.” So I bought it from him when it was a single location, open for less than a year.

Stephen Semple:

Single location. And where was it again?

Bennett Maxwell:

Tempe, Arizona.

Stephen Semple:

Tempe, Arizona. Okay. All right. So he was like, “I want to do this cookie thing.” He was looking for investors. You invested. He opened it, ran it for a year. You saw the potential in franchising it. And he was like, “No, I’m out. I don’t want to do it.” And you bought him out?

Bennett Maxwell:

Yes. Because I was honestly scared that I was going to lose my investment. I’m like, “Who are you going to sell it to?” The store, it had been open maybe eight months. It wasn’t doing amazing. It wasn’t doing bad, but it wasn’t doing amazing. He didn’t have capital to keep growing. It wasn’t doing marketing. I mean, what I bought to what we have today, other than the name Dirty Dough, the colors, the logo, the branding, the recipes, the process, the branding, the messaging has all been redone. But it’s really nice that I had something to go off of in order to make those changes.

Stephen Semple:

Did he create the name Dirty Dough?

Bennett Maxwell:

Yes.

Stephen Semple:

So was it already the name Dirty Dough when you invested into it?

Bennett Maxwell:

Yes.

Stephen Semple:

All right, awesome. Awesome. Do you know why it was called Dirty Dough?

Bennett Maxwell:

Yeah. I actually had lunch with him again yesterday. Dirty Dough is just a sound catchy. But what it means today, since I’ve taken it over, a customer walks in and says, “What’s up with the name Dirty Dough?” And one of the employees at that Tempe store said, “Oh, it’s called Dirty Dough because the dough is dirty, because we focus on more mix ins.” And that’s when I’m like, oh, I like that. I want to separate myself from the competition, primarily being Crumbl, which is a plain cookie with a lot of dressing on the top. So I’m like, oh, let’s do a plain looking cookie, with all the goodies on the inside. And that led to developing the world’s first three layer cookie, which has been fun.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Okay. So what’s a three layer cookie?

Bennett Maxwell:

You could have three layers of dough or a mixture of dough slash hot fudge injection. So one of the cookies that we have is the Reese’s Reverse or something like that. It’s a peanut butter dough on the outside. And then you break it open, there’s a chocolate dough in the middle, and there’s an injection of hot fudge. So it’s already three different flavor profiles all built with special machines. And then we ship those to our franchisees. And all they do is put them into the oven to get a very one of a kind type of cookie.

Stephen Semple:

So this is cool, and we’re going to come back to this. So your buddy wh...