April 1, 2024 • 62 mins
Welcome to the Grinding Gratitude Show, where host Danny Stone explores the life journey of renowned Chef, Author, Culinary TV Show Host, Rob Rainford. Discover how his humble beginnings sparked his life-long passion for cooking and how he went from facing challenges to building a successful culinary career.
In a candid conversation, Rob shares how he overcame societal expectations, followed his passion and navigated his way through renowned culinary school, George Brown College. He details his experiences, hardships, opportunities and the resilience he acquired through his love for basketball - a resilience that played a significant role in his career.
Transcending the ranks of professional cooking, Rob lays bare the essence of real-world experiences in honing skills. He brings to light the gritty realities of working in upscale, high-end restaurants. His candid admission of workplace challenges and how he surmounted them forms a riveting journey of his resilience and determination.
Rob's subsequent foray into television is equally inspiring. From his role as an educator to landing his cooking show, his passion for the culinary arts and television comes to the forefront.
His conversation on personal growth, life lessons, influence of personal history and the importance of pushing boundaries to succeed offers an invaluable insight into his life. Rob also stresses on the role of parents in nurturing their child’s passion.
In the final segment of the episode, Rob shares his future plans and aspirations, detailing his ventures into new professional domains. His steadfast belief in learning and reinventing presents a motivating outlook.
This episode is a blend of inspiration, resilience, determination and passion that will leave you greatly moved. Whether you are seeking to reach a personal goal or need motivation to pursue your passion, Rob Rainford's journey is a testament to the power of persistence and passion and discipline.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There was a cooking camp and a basketball camp. And I went to the basketball camp. I looked around.
Too many sweaty dudes. There was a cooking camp upstairs.
I said, you know what? I'll take that. Tons of girls up there and free food.
I went in that direction. Students are students.
Professionals are professions. Once you get paid to cook, you are a profession.
(00:23):
Whether you're at the beginning or the end of it, we're all in the same boat here.
You know my dad was a 70s man you know what i
mean like it's like we can't judge those gentle
people with the same lens that we do now like the father that i am is kind of
the father which he was to me but i don't think uh you know a man born in the
(00:44):
30s was going to have the same sensibilities so you know and as a child we can't
see the stress and the hardships that they're going through we We just,
you know, why am I getting a spanking and not a hug?
I went, did a screen test, two days for one hour for 22 minutes.
And the Food Network picked it up. Sometimes, you know, real bad boys move in
(01:06):
silence, you know, say nothing.
Or you speak it into existence.
Music.
You're listening to The Grinding Gratitude Show. I am Danny Stone,
and I've dedicated my entire life to helping people win.
Win in their careers, win in their businesses, and win in their lives.
(01:26):
This podcast is going to help you get on your grind and hustle to create the
life that you love and walk in gratitude along the journey.
Each episode, I'll teach you tools and tactics and bring you conversations with
experts that will help you turn your passion into a thriving online business.
Life isn't about wishing for something greater. It's about making it happen. happen.
There's something special about you. Bride until you find it.
(01:50):
Be grateful when you get it.
Music.
My guest today is an internationally known chef.
He is a teacher. He's the former host of a really cool culinary show that I used to love.
(02:11):
He's a multifaceted individual that you're going to love.
Thank you so much for being here, Mr. Rob Rainford.
Thank you very much, Danny. I really appreciate this, man. I watch you and I
appreciate what you're doing.
Thank you. Thank you, man. Listen, you know, I've been, I've been following you for a long time.
(02:31):
I remember, you know, it was 2002 when I used to work at George Brown Chef School
and George Brown College in the chef school is one of the biggest culinary schools in Canada.
And I remember back in 2002, that's when you had your culinary show.
And I remember I was working in the chef school and I used to handle all of
(02:53):
the student internship placements for culinary students, hotel management students,
restaurant management students. students.
And I remember you coming in for an event and I remember how excited the students were to see you.
They were so excited that you came in and you came in and you did your thing
and you really lit the students on fire.
(03:15):
They were so honored and happy to see someone who had their own cooking show,
who was a George Brown graduate and who was teaching come back.
And so that was 2002 that I met you, brother.
I've been following you since then. Oof. Oof.
I was younger then. It was a while ago, you know. It was a while.
(03:39):
So before we get into the culinary stuff and all that, where did your passion for cooking come from?
Was that something that you always had inside of you or was it something that
came about later in life? You know, where did that passion for culinary and cooking come from?
You know, I've always had little spurts of the interest and the spark.
(04:00):
You know, I tell the story quite often, but I'll tell it to your guests that
in 77, there was a cooking camp and a basketball camp.
And I went to the basketball camp. I looked around. Too many sweaty dudes.
There was a cooking camp upstairs. I said, you know what? I'll take that.
Tons of girls up there and free food.
I went in that direction. I loved it.
(04:23):
I loved it. But I went home and I told my father, wow, this is really something I'd like to do.
And my father said, listen, I'm going to bring you to Canada to be no cook.
Cook and the way and the way cook came out you
know it might as well have been the f word you know but oh you
know it hurt and you know it's it set me in
another direction so i did i just kind of left it alone didn't do a lot of cooking
(04:45):
at home loved my grandmother's cooking my mom had five of us so you know whole
cuisine wasn't on the menu people you know robbie how would you like your steak
today you know we didn't have that but you know when i went to high school at central Central Tech,
which is one of the numerous schools that I went to,
but when I went there, they had a cooking program.
(05:05):
It's still there to this day, and it's probably one of the preeminent high school cooking programs.
Danforth Tech has one. Robert Borden has one. There's a whole bunch of them
out there, but Central Tech kind of trained kids to go to George Brown.
Now, when I was in high school, they said, if you were unlucky in life,
you would end up at George Brown. Okay.
Because the path is that they want to send everybody to university,
(05:28):
even if that's not your strength or your forte, you know, it's either that or bust.
So again, reconfigured, left that school, went to commercial school because
that's, you know, I want to put myself on that path.
Again, this cookie thing always just kept calling me and calling me,
you know, like Chris Roch.
So I did it.
(05:53):
And, you know, at that point, you know, after I tried to go to university and
was unsuccessful, and then I worked for a long period of time,
I went back to school in the mid-90s.
That's where the passion came from because i wanted to
learn from the ground up best teachers in the in the
country are at george brown no offense to
(06:13):
humber or whatever else is out there but george brown
is the preeminent school for culinary and after you go there you have a great
base and anyone will see your resume and go i'll take that guy over that guy
because we know your training in your lineage so for me you know the passion
was ignited in the mid 90s i got How old were you when you went to George Brown?
(06:37):
26 years old, grad. So what was it like going back to school at 26 after you
had already been working?
Because I know a lot of people right now who might be in that situation might
be thinking, I'm too old to go back to university.
I've been out of school for a long time. So what was that like for you going
back to school as a mature student at 26? Well, I have to backtrack again because
(07:04):
at 19 years old, I had my first child.
That basically, you know, precluded me from doing pretty much anything else
other than, you know, getting the money to raise that child.
And again, a lot of circumstances happened, that relationship didn't work,
but for me, I had it in the back of my mind that I'm going to go to school.
(07:27):
I need to make enough money so that I can get myself through this period of
time where I'm not going to be making a lot of money and go through.
And believe me, I bit the bullet. It hurts.
Every day I felt like I was going back into a hole, another hole, another hole.
But I knew what the long-term picture was, is that once I graduate here,
(07:48):
I can go to any hotel in the city and get a job and then work my way from there. I'm not afraid.
Like I was a basketball player at high school. I went to Eastern Commerce,
shout out Eastern Commerce in the 80s, not the Jamal McGlure time.
But again, there was plenty of players just as good back then.
But, you know, for us, it was one of those things that if you played basketball, it was all consuming.
(08:12):
You never thought about anything else. It was like NBA or bust.
And you knew what the likelihood of you getting to that level was.
But, you know, my single-mindedness put me in that position,
and that's where I took the food.
When I went into culinary school at George Brown, I said, I'm just going to
treat this like a wall bake.
I may not be the best, but I'm going to be the best at some point.
(08:34):
What you said there, Rob, is so
important. You know, so many times in our life, we forget about the why.
We have to hold on to the why. Like, why did you get started on this goal or this dream?
And for you, you got started because you wanted to provide a better life for
your child. And you knew that you would get a better job.
And this is a great reminder for anybody right now who has a goal or a dream
(08:59):
and may have people that don't believe in them or discourage them,
or they might've had a setback.
You always have to go back to the why.
Why did you start this goal or this dream? What is it going to give you? What do you want?
And why is it a must? No, no, no. You're 100% correct.
If you think about all the negative and the things that could go wrong,
(09:22):
that's all you're going to focus on.
You've got got to look at what the long-term goal is.
And the long-term goal for anybody that enters a new field is to be proficient
at it, then master it, then teach it, and then take it wherever else you want to take it.
But there has to be that linear style of thinking when you go,
hey, this is where I need to go.
(09:42):
I know my audience is tired of me saying this, but I often say progress equals belief.
Like nobody believes that they can do something in the beginning, right?
It's not until you start to make progress and see something happening that you actually believe it.
And that's what you did. Like you took the steps, you got started,
you took action, you registered for school, you attended school,
(10:04):
you got better month after month.
And then you started working in the field. And I think it's really important
that people understand nobody believes in themselves at the beginning.
When you're first starting something, it's uncomfortable and you don't even
know if you can really do it. But if you commit and you see the progress,
then you will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
(10:24):
You know, growing up was the same for me. You know, being a young black kid
in the low-income housing, you either rap or you play basketball.
So I definitely understand what you're saying.
And so for you to do something different, it's challenging for a lot of people
to wrap their head around because those are the only two things that you kind
of focus on when you're young, when you don't really have a lot of options.
So it's interesting for you that, you know, you decided to go the culinary route and not basketball.
(10:50):
But again, you know, from 19 to 26, I had to work.
Yes. So that transition was very slow, matriculated down very, very slowly.
Even the attempts to go to George Brown were tough.
You know what I mean? Because just getting in was quite difficult.
I got in as a mature student. And believe me, man, like I didn't even know how
(11:12):
to hold my knife before I went in, but it was just, again, it was that goal.
And I said, I'm willing to, I knelt at the altar. I said, listen, I want to learn.
I want someone to teach me and I'm going to say nothing.
Until I get to that point. But as soon as I got in, it was like duck to water,
man. Like, you know, I enjoyed it.
And I, you know, excelled at it quite quickly. I mean, here's a good story.
(11:36):
At first day of class, they're making crepes. Simple thing.
It's flour and eggs and milk. Okay.
And you have to put it in a pan, swirl it around and fold it and turn it over.
That's it. it i had my towel hanging hit the
flame i'm trying to
(11:57):
blow it out in front of the whole class the child caught on fire caught
on fire that's what the professor said listen
who wants to come up here and do this not one hand went up i looked around i'll
do it and i had no i should have been sitting i can ask back there but i went
up there and again if that was the most embarrassing thing that was going to
happen it's like getting dunked on i don't think it's ever happened to me but
(12:20):
if If it did, I would know how that felt.
I would know that that feeling of shame or whatever it feels like.
But it's the next play now. Let's move on.
And that's what the kitchen is like. It's just it's equivalent to basketball. It's the next play.
It's mitigating circumstances and then moving yourself into a positive place
where you can fix or just not make those mistakes.
(12:41):
I think that's what a lot of us have to understand. You know,
failure is a part of the process.
Like we don't always have to have it figured out. And failure is a lessons,
right? They provide us lessons so that we can move forward.
And I know for myself, I've applied for jobs and maybe gotten jobs that I was not qualified for.
And I had to sink or swim. I had to figure it out.
(13:02):
And some cases I did, in some cases I didn't. But every successful person that
we know has failed and they've taken those failures and used them as lessons
and information to do better the next time.
So after school, you graduate and you start working in these high-end restaurants
in these high-pressure situations.
What did you learn about yourself working in these high-end,
(13:26):
high-pressure situations in these high-pressure restaurants?
Runs i learned everything um you know
a school only sets you up for so much and i like
to tell all my students that you know this is just your
blueprint this is your baseline once you go out there
now it's a real application real world scenarios and you know when you fully
eat a fish one time in class for a test or for demonstration purposes that's
(13:50):
just one now you got to do you know five ten twenty a hundred now you know that's
where you're going to get better but you remember Remember,
those first five, after you've only done one,
it becomes a bit of an issue.
And again, students are students.
Professionals are professions. Once you get paid to cook, you are a professional.
(14:11):
Whether you're at the beginning or the end of it, we're all in the same boat here.
And back in that time, in the 90s and before, there was basically chefs in front
of the house, like, we are the dogs, you guys are the cats.
You come around when you want something, but the dog's loyal,
right? That mentality's now changed because it's one family.
(14:33):
And if they screw up, I screw up.
And if I screw up, they screw up. So if we all look at it in terms of,
this is not a family, I don't like that term all the time. When you're working, it ain't family.
All right. You could make it that environment, but it really being a profession.
And again, I used to be a very crass chef. I used to say things that weren't
(14:56):
nice because that's kind of the way people tried to treat me back in the day.
But again, being a mature student, I didn't allow anybody to talk to me reckless.
Okay. I don't care if you're, yeah, Jesus, you come down, be respectful.
Okay. And then we can conversation. conversation.
But learning, again, learning is what is the curve that I'm in for my whole life.
(15:18):
I like the unknown. I love walking into dark situations and then turning on a light.
So being a chef is, that's pretty much what we do.
We take raw ingredient, process it, and then we turn it out and make it into
something special. That's what we do.
Do you remember your first head chef job? job
again i think it harkens back to what you said
(15:40):
in terms of were you prepared where
was it your time were you sinking was it
over your head yeah it was over my head at
that point but my drive and the
fact that you know if you assemble a great team around you
because it's not a one it's not an individual that really isn't
i love when i see these shows and it's
(16:02):
the one singular you know white knight and blah blah
blah it all gets done that's not how real reality
is it takes your dishwasher to your
commies to you first took seven cooks you know
chef the parties it takes all of us in order to get it done and what i realized
was that i needed to ingratiate myself a lot more uh with my you know not my
(16:26):
pews at this point but my now underlings and that that step in your head is
like when you're here, it's one thing.
But then once you move ahead, you got jealousy.
You got a whole bunch of things. You got knives coming out for your back and
you have to watch these things.
And, you know, you don't want to tell somebody that here's a career path and it's fraught.
(16:46):
Turmoil. You work in the most high pressured environment, and yet you're expected
to stay cool, calm, and collected.
And you're supposed to make sure that at 5.30, when the first meal goes out,
or at 11.30, when the last meal goes out, it's all the same. No interpretation.
So how did you deal with that? Like either people hating on you or trying to
(17:06):
sabotage you or not performing at the best of their ability to make you look bad?
How did you deal with all that? that it was well
again um goes back to a chef that i worked for
the one of my first jobs and he's still a great friend
to this day and he was like my
vampire he bit me right so i you know i'm always going to have allegiance to
(17:27):
this guy stop hang on one second here go my doggie who's just going to stay
in hawaiian the whole time but anyhow i digress um he basically trained me the
way that that I should have been trained.
Ground up, fine dining. I learned the basics. So I knew everything that I needed to know from him.
(17:50):
And when he left the job, I took over. And it was difficult when he left.
And they always say, when your chef leaves, you should leave too.
The new regime is not going to be favorable all the time.
So it is what it is. I learned a lot of lessons that I, you know,
because of my age, I was also, I was able to see things.
(18:11):
Being a parent, you know, also changes your molecular makeup and you're able
to see through a lot of things and it's not all, you know, roses,
but you were able to be pragmatic about what you see.
Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. I think that when you're more mature and
you can see things from a different perspective, you can step back from it.
(18:32):
You can see it from different angles than when you're stuck because I know when
you're fit, when you're in a stuck perspective,
like I'm thinking about myself and my career or in certain areas of my personal
life, when I was stuck, when I was overweight, or when I was in a job that I
just wasn't passionate about, I could only see it from a stuck perspective.
So when you're able to kind of remove yourself from the situation and look at
(18:56):
it from a different angle, you see things that you don't normally see when you're,
when you're in it, like when you're going through it.
And, you know, I often tell people, like, we have to change our situation.
We have to get up sometimes and remove ourselves from a situation so that we can clear our minds.
But when you're working in a kitchen in a high-pressure situation,
(19:16):
you don't really have the opportunity to do that, right?
So, yeah. No, I understand. I definitely understand. I know exactly where I should be.
And the hard part about, you know, being in the, in the pressure environment,
you know, that chefs undertake willingly, because if somebody told you to do that, you'd never do it.
(19:36):
But knowing, knowing that the end result is that you're now feeding people.
Yeah. Just basically making sure that, you know, you're equipped mentally to deal with these things.
Cause I think a lot of people go into such scenarios, not understanding what
the big picture is. And the big picture is, is that if you want to look as good
as you want to look, everyone around you has to be equal, right?
(20:00):
And a lot of people don't want to share.
Chefs are very notorious for holding
things to the chest and not sharing information or not the sabotage.
But I think it's a form of sabotage when you don't tell somebody the whole scenario,
like how to do that particular task.
And not knowing how to do something is not a recipe for disaster. asked it.
(20:22):
It's just a recipe to ask more questions and figure out how we get this thing done.
It seemed like you were a curious person, like you were always asking questions
sort of above the level that you were at.
Were you always like that? Were you always a very curious person?
Always. My whole life, I'm a wide eye and I like to answer the why.
(20:43):
That's kind of the, I didn't know that factor. I want to be able to explain
that to people. I didn't have the best upbringing in terms of,
you know, nurturing and all that stuff. But again, you know,
you know where we come from.
You know, it's a survival mode. We came in the 70s. So, you know,
spending time with your parents at the cottage, you know, you know,
the back room was our cottage. It would be in the summertime.
(21:04):
Where did you grow up? Downtown, right? When we came to Toronto,
we moved to Dufferin and Dundas on one side of the street. And then we moved
to the other side of the street.
So we moved from on top of the store to a semi-detached. We stayed there for most of the seventies.
And then we moved up to Margareta Street, which is basically Bloor in between
(21:26):
Dufferin and Lansdowne.
So I'll never, I stayed in the same vicinity. You know, I went to Kent,
which is now going to be a condo at, you know, Bloor and Dufferin.
But I'm a Toronto kid. What was your childhood like? I have,
you know what, I'm one of five. I'm a twin.
Identical. He does not cook. book. So, yeah, yes.
(21:47):
You know, and we just, you know, I always had a built-in best friend my whole
life, but you know, you know, my dad was a seventies man.
You know what I mean? Like, we can't judge those gentle people with the same lens that we do now.
Like the father that I am is kind of the father which she was to me.
(22:08):
I don't think, you know, a man born in the 30s was going to have the same sensibilities,
you know, and as a child, we can't see the stress and the hardships that they're going through.
We just, you know, why am I getting a spanking and not a hug, you know what I mean?
Although this is the third time my dad stole something and I expect,
you know, some grace here.
Well, you know, we're getting any grace, you know, not now. We only said that before dinner.
(22:31):
Yeah. But, you know, I've learned a lot of lessons now that I don't judge as harshly as I used to.
And I don't have any daddy issues. I ain't blaming him for nothing.
He's still alive. My mom and dad are 91 years old, still here.
I really can't say much in terms of they've lived a fruitful life.
And the back nine for them is they can ride it out any way they want.
(22:55):
Oh, wow. That's beautiful, man. That's beautiful.
I often talk to people about that. Sometimes when we get older and we still
hang on to this baggage from our childhood, and a lot of people like to to blame
their parents for their upbringing and the difficulties they had.
But we have to understand that our parents only had limited information.
And if they were immigrants and they came to this country from another country,
(23:19):
they had very limited tools and they had to do what they had to do to provide
for us and create a better life.
Like my mother is from Jamaica and my father is from Canada.
My father's from Nova Scotia. So I know that when my grandparents came here, it was a a struggle.
And I know that my mom had to adapt to living in Canada from Jamaica.
So I don't blame my mother and I don't blame my father for things that happened
(23:42):
because they only had limited information.
And I think so many people blame other people for their past and other people
for the challenges they have. And we have to learn to let go.
And we have to learn to give people grace, right? We don't understand that by
not giving people grace and forgiveness, we are blocking our own blessings.
(24:02):
Oh, we all, listen, we all got daddy issues. If we have to break it right down,
we all have, especially from where we come from.
It is what it is. But again, just use that as an excuse.
And that's all it would be at this point. I'm 57 years old.
My life has come full circle in
terms where i've started to where i am now and
(24:25):
where i want to go in the future and none of that backstory really adds up to
me not being successful because he didn't believe in my cooking journey because
he said i didn't bring you here to do that because he was tantamount to being
a slave in his mind like why do you want to work in somebody's kitchen.
Then we want something bigger and brighter, you know, but again,
(24:49):
when a kid has a passion for something, our job is to just nurture that,
provide them everything that you can possibly provide them humanly possible and let them flourish.
My kids, my last two girls here, they play basketball.
They went, you know, one went to D1, the other one went to UPI.
I, again, if I had ever stifled their, their, their journey,
(25:11):
I would have felt like a horrible human being because I didn't want them to play basketball.
I wanted them, I got them golf sets, but my wife, we went to Humbersaw for some
stupid camp and literally the bug bit us.
And for almost 12 to 15 years, we've been in cars driving all over North America
for, you know, to watch our kids play. But that's what I would have wanted for me.
(25:37):
Little Robbie would have wanted that. But he ain't got it. Little Robbie?
No, no, that didn't happen for little Robbie.
But what did happen for you, though, is you landed your own cooking show.
And I remember seeing the show the first time and just seeing how passionate
(25:58):
you made cooking seem and how much you were enjoying grilling and how much you enjoyed what you do,
it really kind of lit a fire under me because seeing you and seeing the way
that you brought the food alive and seeing your passion, it just really kind
of lit a fire under me to really appreciate food more.
(26:19):
So talk to us a little bit about the show and what that was like for you.
Well, you know, that came about by me teaching in the Con Ed department at George Brown.
McCarthy is her name. She believed in me and gave me a shot,
even though I wasn't ready to teach at that point.
But she said, you know what? You'd be very good because you're not ugly.
(26:40):
You speak English. Eddie and Gary.
With that level of confidence. With that level of confidence.
I was able to go and teach my first class.
So I was teaching at George Brown when I got that show.
But to backtrack, there was a show called Cook Like a Chef that was on the Food Network.
And my mentor chef, you know, he's younger than I am. But again,
(27:03):
as a chef, he's my mentor.
He was doing the show and he asked me to be a sous chef. Once I was able to
see how it was done, how the sausage was made, no pun intended.
But I said, you know, I can do this. I can do this.
I love TV. there's nobody who's
watched more television than me
okay not a book and not an
(27:25):
outside activity i love tv honest and abashed unashamed i love tv i can watch
it 25 hours eight days a week okay 66 days i could watch it because i get to
watch whatever i want i get to i'd like to watch things things that I learn.
So history channel, discovery, anything like, you know, and I watch my frivolous
(27:48):
stuff too, but I'm always like CNN's on, FOPS is on.
I want to get every piece of information I possibly can. I'm a visual spatial learner.
So I understand that this is the way that information gets into my brain and
I can digest it and then regurgitate.
So getting the show basically came about by me teaching and commanding my classroom,
(28:10):
even though I wasn't perfect at it. I was, I was, you know, I was able to stand
up there and I felt confident and your passion comes with confidence.
You can show me anyone that's not confident. I will show you that they have
zero drive, zero passion.
So for me, that information that I digested through my cookbooks,
okay, which I learned Food Network was just starting to flourish in Canada.
(28:33):
You know, Emeril Lagasse, you know, Motomario, all the, all the old guard that
was there, You know, the chef du jour, when Sousa would come on, wow, look at that.
That's somebody from just down the street.
He's like, you know what I mean? Like everything that I could see,
I literally could touch, you know, Michael LaMonaco.
I met him on the today's show. Like I said, you're a, you're a mentor.
(28:55):
Like you were in somebody I watched, you know, growing up and in the, in the culinary field.
And I used to take all my specials from watching, you know, cook shows.
I just loved it. And again, once I did that and I auditioned,
which I didn't really audition, this show was pretty much laid in my lap.
I went, did a screen test.
(29:17):
Two days for one hour for 22 minutes, and the Food Network picked it up.
So it was that serendipity. It was like literally it was a goal of mine.
I didn't know how I was going to achieve it, but I just knew that by doing the
teaching thing, it was going to help me become a better performer.
Because the teachers you know are not the ones who are just reading the PowerPoint.
(29:40):
I don't care. I can read the PowerPoint myself.
I need the information between those.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. I used to teach part time in the continuing
education department at George Brown College. I used to teach a human resources class.
So I know what you mean. Like, imagine for you, you are working in the industry and teaching.
(30:00):
So you were bringing the experience, you were bringing the textbook alive for
a lot of people. So I can only imagine what that was like teaching and then
working in the industry and having your own cooking show.
I can imagine that the students must have really benefited from that.
I mean, the ivory tower chef doesn't exist anymore. Because when we went to
(30:20):
George Brown, those chefs, they'd been there forever.
Right? Alan Brown, Chef Alan Brown.
There's a couple that you don't mention their names. Yeah.
I'm biting my lip now. You know, the great Scott, you know, Chef John Higgins was that, you know.
And then he came over afterwards. I remember him in the 2000s coming over and
that changed the whole cachet of what George Brown was, what he did, he will have fruition.
(30:46):
So for me, you know, it's just, I got, there's a lot of mentors around.
Again, we were never going to be the guys who, like we had a professor by the name of Gregory Law.
He was the nutty professor. Yeah, he regaled us in the stories of how he cooked
for 1,200 people by himself with one arm broken.
You know, I mean, and the man was this big, you know, again, but there were stories.
(31:09):
And that was, you know, I had to get through that.
Maybe he's embellishing here, but he's doing it for a reason because this is
not a real glamorous life. Okay. I love the Food Network.
I love what they've done, but they've glamorized something that's a hard thing
to do, you know, And not everyone does it well or at the same level.
(31:31):
There are levels to this.
Tell everybody what the premise of your culinary show was all about. It was every Saturday.
I am to be cooking for a few of my buddies that would drop over.
And I just come up with some interesting, tasty barbecue.
And it wasn't barbecue. It was more grilling. So there's a difference between
a griller and a barbecue.
(31:52):
A barbecue denotes barbacoa, which is the root word.
And it literally means smoke and charcoal now
that is one aspect of it now grills
every kitchen on the planet has a grill
in their kitchen whether it be charcoal or gas but there are different levels
to this because now feeding a fire making sure your fire stays the same i remember
(32:15):
gas just gives you consistent heat throughout the whole process unless you run
out of some source and if it's tied into a natural gas you'll never run out
all right so it's a little bit,
I wouldn't say easier, but just different in terms of its application.
So learning on a grill all the time was, you know, was my thing.
That's why I got that show because I was an expert on that.
(32:39):
Now, you know, it's taken me now, like in the last five years,
I haven't cooked on gas outside of professional kitchens, but at home it's all charcoal.
Because that's it. Cause I need three of these and we're ready to rock.
You got your brew in your hand and you're ready to go. Well,
with natural gas, you can only drink one.
(32:59):
So you had the show and the premise for the show was you were grilling up food for your friends.
So how long did that show go on? Because it seemed like there was a quite a
long run of that show. How many episodes did you shoot?
104. Did a one hour special, which is the four part, but I did basically,
you know, That was a good apprenticeship.
(33:20):
That's how I looked at that. Because learning how to talk to a camera in our
application right now, not simple, but again, we're engaging each other.
When you have three cameras, now you've got to know your marks.
And it's a take that when you thought was great, something happened,
the cloud went over, your audio went out, it's scratchy.
(33:43):
There's so many things now when that game starts to be played.
I did not know that game at all.
I had a little bit. I got a chance to watch from the outside when I told you
I did that show, Cook Like a Chef.
But being in the passenger seat is a different experience than in the driver's seat.
So I got a chance to be in the driver's seat. I was a lead by myself,
(34:05):
carrying 22 minutes alone.
Nobody did, excuse me, could you, you know, nothing. And I, for the first six
episodes, I was sucking my thumb hard.
I called my wife. I said, honey, I'm coming home.
Oh, no, you're not. So you were ready to quit? Oh, it was difficult.
Difficult thing. You know, there would be two cameras. All right.
(34:27):
And I was supposed to go right, which is your left. And I go in the middle.
Just so, so confused. Even my camera guys, you know, Peter and LD and,
and, and Brian, they would like, they, they, you know, and they've tried to
help, but I really didn't have any true help while I was on the set itself.
So it was, it was difficult, but again, six shows, 12 shows,
(34:49):
I started to find a little bit of that footing.
You know, there were some, there were some real hardship days there.
Real, you know, I don't even want to get into them until I write a memoir.
There were some real hardship days, but then something clicked and it was told
to me it's going to click.
Once it clicks, you never have to, you don't have to start from the ground again.
How did you, how did you push through that? There are people right now who are
(35:12):
listening, who are struggling with a goal or a dream or some area of their life
and they feel like quitting, but they know that maybe if they keep going, they could do it.
So how did you push through it? What inspiration or what inspired you to keep going?
I'm a dog. Okay. I'm a dog. my damn dog
okay i would have bone i am not letting it go
all right i will i refuse to be bad at something forever now knowing and being
(35:38):
humble about when you're in that learning curve whatever happens happens okay
i you know i can equate it to my dolphin picked it up in 2006 for almost a decade i was horrible.
A couple of good shots that would always bring me back, but horrible.
I would shake. I was in celebrity tournaments. I had a guy said,
listen, 10 grand, he hit somebody in the grandstand here, you know?
(36:01):
Like things were said to me like that. But again, go back to the basketball.
This is when we play, it doesn't matter if the guy's two inches taller than
you. You can't stop me from where I'm going.
I'm going to jab you. I'm going to faint you. I'm going to do whatever it takes,
but I'm going to get to my spot because that's how how good and great players behave.
(36:22):
Outside of that, the people who crumble under the first bit of adversity,
those are the people that probably you weren't going to make it in.
It is what it is, but stick to it.
And I think this is where when you're going through something difficult or you
have a big goal and it seems so far away, it's so important to find those moments
of joy, to celebrate along the way.
(36:44):
Like we have to celebrate those daily wins, those weekly wins.
And it's really, really important important because the dream just seems so far away.
And as you're going through the struggles, you're not going to see the end of it.
So having those moments where you just celebrate yourself and you say,
you know, I've gone to the gym for 20 days now, 30 days today,
I applied for five jobs just to celebrate along the way.
(37:07):
You know, it's going to be tough. It's going to be hard. It's going to be a
journey, but it's going to be worth it.
And so that's what I'm hearing you say. I'm hearing you say that it's going
to be a tough road, but we have to celebrate ourselves along the way.
That's kind of what I got from what you were saying.
Surmise that extremely well, because that's the way it goes.
(37:27):
But, you know, you always equate things back to, with our sports analogy.
That's why I think we get along very well, because it really does.
Like when you join a team, and you remember there's a captain,
there's co-captain, and then role players.
And then there's, you know, there's so many different aspects to it. Find your niche.
Find out what you're good at. And excel at that until somebody sees it.
(37:48):
You know, and if they never see it, that's fine too. Two, I strive every day
for perfection, the best I can do.
And I screw up when I'm on social media.
I thought a 57-year-old man on social media, people are asking me,
what is your content? You know what? Shut up, okay? I'll give you what I give you.
You don't like it, you know? Like Mike Isis said, change your station.
(38:14):
There's no station to change, but don't worry about me, right?
Right. Because I'm used to doing real television.
OK. And now with social media, it's changed the whole landscape.
You know, a guy you don't even know could cook is way out of a paper bag is
now looking like a professional.
But now to me, what a professional is, is that take that all that application
(38:35):
and take it to a real restaurant.
And that real guests critique what you're doing, because everything at home
always turns out mistakes are made. And again, learning from mistakes is what
I believe in. Don't make the same mistake.
Shaq said it. You don't make the same mistake twice.
Do your best to eliminate that and work on that. And that's what I do every
day in my life. But I, you know, I know I'm not perfect.
(38:57):
Ask my kids, ask my wife. I'm not perfect. People are probably listening to
this right now and they're thinking, was Rob always this confident or did you
develop it along the way?
I mean, you come from, there's five of you, five siblings, five kids, and you have a twin.
So did you always have this confidence or did you develop it along the way?
I think of, you know what, if anyone who's known me for a long period of time
(39:20):
knows that That, yeah, my confidence comes with the territory in our house.
If you were last, you was last. Okay.
But if you didn't eat that piece of chicken, you was in that piece of chicken.
Okay. So you had to be confident in what you were doing at your own plate.
Okay. So learning from my family, like I said, there's five of us,
(39:43):
man. And the jockeying for positions was always there.
And I had a twin who was smarter than me. You know, I'm better looking,
but he's smarter. You know, and I accept certain things.
You know what I mean? I'm good at this. He's good at that. And together we're a combination.
You know, I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations is over.
But when we went to Central Tech, you know, I would take classes twice.
(40:05):
I've definitely taken a couple of classes twice in high school. So I get you. I get you.
So you and your twin, have you always been close or did you kind of develop
this closeness throughout time or what's your relationship like with your twin? My best friend.
He's my best friend. I have good friends now, you know, and,
and they know who they are.
They, they, they are people who mean something in my life, you know,
(40:29):
and an acquaintance is an acquaintance.
All right. That's somebody that, you know, you can say hello to in the street.
That guy that when you're down and you haven't said anything and they call you
just to make sure you're okay, that's a friend, right?
And I always had that in the womb and I have until this day. He's,
(40:49):
been somebody that's been there for me the whole time and you know he has the
same confidence that i have same drive that i have and we we never have to worry
about one trying to you know win one on the other person it's it is what it
now playing basketball it was cutthroat.
I was trying to kill him and he was trying to and i love that about you know
(41:11):
i would never let somebody win unless you really want even kids know to this
day man you never won until you could win. What does your brother do? What's his profession?
He's retired. He was in the plumbing industry for quite a few years and he's
done quite well for himself.
And he was able to sort of relax on this back nine.
I will have to work till I'm 66 or maybe a hundred, but whatever,
(41:35):
whichever one comes first.
So speaking of that, what's next on the horizon for you or what's something
major or something big or a big goal or dream that you have going on?
So I've got two Two projects, you know, one is a TV show called Hungry,
which, you know, I've been talking about for the last three years.
And at COVID, I've had a whole bunch of setback, but, you know,
you and I had a little preamble where sometimes, you know, real bad boys move
(41:58):
in silence, you know, say nothing, or, you know, speak it into existence.
I, you know, with my partner, we said at the beginning of the pandemic or before
the pandemic that we want to do a television show called Hungry with Rob Rainford.
We want to cook with a celebrity, but at the end of this mandate is that this
food's not going to go to waste. It's going to go to hungry people.
(42:22):
So knowing that that's part of who I am as an individual, that I want to take
care of other people, that's how my cooking style is.
It's kind of nurturing in that way, that this lends itself perfectly for how I want to be on TV.
Now, it's going to be part interview where I talk to the celebrity,
just like you and I are having this conversation. And I'm going to be asking
(42:43):
those questions that you just asked me.
So what's your inspiration here? What is your food memory?
What can, and then we recreate that.
And then, you know, again, we have one full hour, you know, 22 and 22.
So that's, it's, it's a big process, you know, and, you know,
I've hired everybody, like everyone on this set.
I am blessed. I am 50% owner of this with my partner.
(43:06):
So I don't work for somebody. This is, this is my project.
This is my baby. And I, you know, my wife and I, we've been sitting with this for a long time.
You know, we need it to come to fruition as well, but we're looking like July
will be our, our start time and we've had stops and starts, but again,
this is what we're working with right now.
The, you know, 66 seven group is the company that I started with my buddy,
(43:28):
Tim Frey, and he's 67. I'm the 66th part of it, and it's basically a catering,
but it's literally anything that you could take to run an event.
We can do from audio to food.
And it's on my, I'll send you that link stuff, Bob. So, so the catering business
is a one-stop shop for everything that people need for their catering needs,
(43:49):
the audio, the visual, the food, the front of the house, you do everything?
And, and between Tim and myself, we have enough experience in the business that,
you know, because he's a front of the house guy.
I'm the house, so we really aren't going to be fighting against each other while we're here.
So we want to make some money, more makes it be black. high so so
in terms of the show you're gonna start shooting in july that's what
(44:12):
you were saying true yeah so you're shopping around to different networks
or do you have a distributor yeah we have a distributor already
cooking channel oh no we're good uh distribution i got i got a great team in
la and in new york this is not a one-person operation this is not a youtube
show like you know i gotta be me with my iphone walking or gopro on my head
(44:33):
and nothing wrong with that i I really love Gorilla Style.
I really do love that kind of stuff. I mean, there's a couple of shows on YouTube
right now that are more popular than Food Network Show.
I was told about YouTube when it started, and I did the old lifting those and
never, never, and now, you know, oh, yeah, I take a YouTube show at a second.
(44:58):
But again, the fact that, you know, in terms of revenue and streamed and views
and all those things, they can change the algorithm on you and you're done.
But, you know, with that work, it is what it is. They buy the blocks,
we air the blocks, and we move from there.
So that world makes sense to me. I know how that world works.
(45:21):
And I can resell this to international markets.
And again, ADC Africa is going to be one of the distributors.
So think about a whole continent, a whole continent, man, not a country,
man, not, you know, like not a game, not a game.
Look, man, congrats on the show. Congrats on the catering business.
(45:41):
So will you be going out to L.A. and New York to shoot the show?
100%. It's going to be shot in L.A. for the first, I would say the first run.
So we got picked up for 53 episodes.
So we've got a lot to produce. We got to do like, we'll probably only be able
to get maybe 20 or 30 done in a year.
But again, until that mandate's fulfilled, that's number one.
(46:03):
Number two is now, once that starts going, I can, I want to do the Gordon Ramsey
approach where, you know, he's on every single thing you can think of.
He is that guy right now.
And I lift my hat off to a guy like that, who's worked his butt off,
a Michelin star. And now he's getting the just reserved desserts of his labor.
(46:26):
And I don't look at it with jealousy, but I do look at it as a template.
I'm not too old to not be in this game, right?
I know I got another 20 good years where I can produce at a high level.
Well, I can't play basketball. I think that when a goal or a dream doesn't happen
(46:47):
the way we expect or in our timeline or in our time frame, we get discouraged and we give up.
But we're living in an age with the Internet and the Internet is so powerful.
We're able to reach more people than we ever have been able to in the past.
We're able to make deeper connections.
We're able to, you know, form sort of collaborations. separations.
(47:07):
So we should never give up because you just never know when something is going to happen.
And just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it's never going to happen.
Yeah, there's this book I have here called Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy.
And it really boils down to that. Just because you don't know how something
is going to happen doesn't mean that you can't make it happen.
(47:27):
And usually it's just about connecting with the right people,
just like you did. You got your business partner for your catering business now.
Now you You found your production company and the people that you need to connect
with to help you do the TV show.
So it's about who sometimes. It's not just about how.
Yeah, because that's all everyone can do. Not who is, yeah, we don't know everybody.
(47:50):
And you need to assemble that team. Again, I know that what you're doing,
you're not doing this by yourself.
Right? And acknowledging those people that are helping you along the way is kind of important, too.
Your whole thing about gratitude, which resonates with me, is that in a lot
of circumstances, I don't display that gratitude gene front.
(48:11):
I acknowledge it and I internalize it, but I don't thank you.
Thank you for doing this. Because again, the world that we come from,
and especially with culinary, is like, do it.
And the only repercussion is get out. And that doesn't work all the time.
No, I'm learning. I'm still learning. 57, I feel like a kid.
(48:34):
I feel like I'm in that process.
I mean, things are percolating and bubbling.
And again, maybe this is off topic, but the gig economy, where no one has this
one profession or one job anymore.
It's all just temporary and you've
got to accumulate all this stuff worry about your taxes
(48:55):
and take care you know that i'm not getting a gold
watch right you know but i can
buy my and that's all that's all the options
i need i love it i love it you know i love when people have big dreams i meet
so many people whose dreams are just so small and and they're just afraid to
dream bigger because what if they fail what if they don't achieve it but what
(49:18):
if your dream is so small that you do achieve it and your life doesn't change in any way.
And that's most of the people that I meet. They're afraid to set the bar higher.
So they set the goal so low that once they achieve the goal,
it doesn't change their life in any way.
And what we have to understand is that, you know, people always ask me,
hey, Coach Stone, how do I know if my dream is big enough?
(49:39):
And I say, well, it's big enough if it scares you. If other people say it's crazy,
crazy if other people look at it and say you'll never do
that that's when you know that you're on the right track
with your goals and your dreams so i love what you're saying
man i love the fact that you got your show and after it's
done it's run you can do anything with it it can be out there to live on the
(49:59):
internet forever it's because of how we're conditioned right i agree i think
it's the you know the aspect of us forgetting to play you know when you're a
kid that's you know recess You weren't looking for math class or English recess.
Look, the other recess, you know, and then get to play.
That's sort of how my school career went. I'm not sure about you,
(50:21):
but again, never forget to play. That's something that I adopted.
I'm going to, you know, yes, as negative as I can get from time to time,
because when the world does crush me, I feel it.
I've experienced some tough stuff over the last couple of years, but the whole world has.
We can't use that as the excuse to not
(50:41):
succeed or to or to give up on you know
and that's again i'm lucky very lucky that i
have an infrastructure around me that allows me to do this as well right but
even about going back to when i went to george brown i was i had to pay 200
child support and going to school i was gonna have to work full-time and go
(51:01):
to school to in order to keep that up and i I fell behind from time to time,
but it was what it was because I told you, what is the big picture here?
What is the big picture? What do I want?
Because when I told people I'm going to be a chef or a cook.
Man i i got snickers i got laugh even my
old father you cool i'm like
yeah dad i'm gonna i'm gonna give this a shot i said
(51:24):
i just need to move home i need a bed so that
i can just come and sleep and go do what i gotta do because again my life was
unraveling at that point but i said i'm not gonna let this thing unravel to
the point where i can't fix it i knew that going to george brown that's that
was a singular goal that i could just say i'm gonna focus on this don't worry
about out the rest. Everything else will come back.
(51:46):
And I'm lucky that my oldest is now 36 years old, 35, 36.
I'm a grandparent of three cores, this little, two girls and a girl.
So things are happening for me that 30 years ago, 40 years ago,
man, I wouldn't have even thought this was going to be my life.
(52:06):
Yeah. I think that's a really good lesson. So many people ask me like,
Like, hey, Coach Stone, how do I take my life to a whole nother level?
And I always tell them, there's really four things that you have to do.
You know, the first thing is we have to give ourselves some forgiveness,
give ourselves some grace.
Like, we have to learn to forgive ourselves for our failures and mistakes and wrongdoings.
And we have to learn to forgive other people so that we can move through it.
(52:29):
The second thing that we have to do is we need clarity.
We need to get very clear about what it is that we want and why it's a must.
Must. And then the third thing is we need focus.
Like a lot of what you're talking about is like, you got to focus on the right
things and filter out the things that aren't helping you to get there.
And then the fourth thing is really about discipline.
And this is what you've demonstrated throughout your career.
(52:51):
You need to show up consistently every single day and try to get better than you were the day before.
But I know that there's somebody listening right now who says,
look, I don't have people who believe in me. I don't have a twin brother like Rob.
I don't have a wife or friends or people who believe in me like Coach Stone.
What would you say to that individual who's saying right now,
(53:13):
like they want to make a change, they want to up-level their life,
but they just don't have somebody who believes in them. What would you say to them, Rob?
Again, internalize. And again, I may have said that in passing,
but again, there were times when I didn't have that support that I needed,
especially going to George Brown the first time where I told you,
relationship busted up. I have nothing.
(53:35):
I'm either going to continue doing this plumbing job that I don't like doing
because I was a buyer at a plumbing wholesale company. company,
a lovely company, took care of us, my twin and I, my twin stayed on in it.
And I said, you know what? I just can't do this anymore.
And, you know, I didn't get a lot of, you know, whoa, good for congratulations. You know what I mean?
(53:55):
But I just said to myself, you know what? This is a tantamount to,
you know, picking up the ball for the first time.
You're going to be terrible at this, but I'm going to continue because I just, for me personally,
I think we We rely too much on external influences and not enough of that quiet
time that I have between 12 and 2 in my house where I'm able to just be introspective.
(54:20):
Man, the conversations I've had with me, I'm telling you, I've admonished me.
I've congratulated me. I broke
my arm patting myself on the back because that's just who I am, you know?
And at the end of my conversations, I always say, you know what? You're fucking great.
Don't worry about the rest. You're good. You're good. it. You're going to make
it. Whatever this we're going through, we are going to get through this because I refuse.
(54:43):
I refuse, man, to just let something tear me down. I can't do that.
I will not do that in my life.
And again, being this age, we've come through a lot of real estate, a lot of real estate.
I don't have 57 more years to live.
Right? And that's just an honest assessment of the reality of life.
And do I want that back, mind? Do I want to be a 99-year-old,
(55:07):
you know, dribbling down with the water down my face?
I don't want that, man. I want to enjoy this now.
When you think about your legacy, what do you want people to say about you?
Well, that's like tombstone thinking. You know, what do you want written on your tombstone?
What I would like is that I was a decent husband, because I know I'm not great, but I'm trying.
(55:29):
And I was the best father that I could be to my kids. Really,
there was no professional accolades I want.
You know, people ask me all the time, well, who are your chef mentors?
I thought one guy, Ned, who I love to this day.
And I, you know, and a guy, Michael Pastor, who I went to culinary school with.
I'll remember these guys for the rest of my life.
(55:49):
But I never followed them. Like I was always blazing my own little path.
And I've always put myself in that position where I was
going to be successful with what I do because not
everybody again I told you there's levels to this so when
me getting into the fine dining already stopped all
the middle stuff and have to worry about these guys because that's
all you can do is you can work at your little chain restaurant and open
(56:12):
your bag up and do your thing that's great I'm happy
for you but that's not how I'm not going to feel comfortable at
the end of the day going that was my day so for me
was always just putting myself in the in the highest positions highest
part of the of the of the deal where i
could flourish that's all i really look for in life i
don't want gordon ramsey good i don't watch the shows because i don't watch
(56:35):
tv to be angst okay i don't want the competitions don't mean anything to me
i want to learn something at the end of the day you know and if he does a show
where he's teaching one-on-one stuff that i haven't seen before i'd watch it But I don't,
I've not watched the Food Network since I got on. I don't watch any.
I don't, it's like a teacher coming home and watching a teacher's show.
You're not going to teach that. You want to find something else that's the escape part of your life.
(56:58):
So I'm, you know, I'm still happy. And I told you, there's a lot of good guys
out there right now. A lot of good guys.
You dropped a lot of heat, brother. I love the honesty and the transparency and everything.
So before we wrap up, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wanted me to ask you?
No, you know what? I've given you an open book.
(57:18):
I told you once when you reached out, you know, I've told you,
I've seen this before and I go, I don't like to push my way onto people's platforms.
That's not my thing. You know, when it's my time, it'll be my time.
And this is a natural evolution. It really did work out.
Serendipity here actually is at play. And again, if there's anything that you
ever need and you need me to, you know, be on your behalf in the court, I will do so.
(57:44):
You know, you have the same easygoing, confident, funny kind of attitude and
personality that you have now from when I met you back in 2002.
And I love the fact that you stay curious, you stay learning.
And I think that's what we all need to do if we want to level up our lives.
(58:04):
And I truly believe that we're all naturally curious, creative,
resourceful, and whole. We're never broken. We don't need to be fixed.
We have those natural things within us. And Rob, I want to acknowledge you because
you've demonstrated these four things throughout your career.
You have this curiosity.
You have this ability to bounce back and this resourcefulness.
(58:27):
And I think I just wanted people to kind of understand that you got to this
level because you were not out of alignment in those things. You were in alignment.
You stayed curious. You stayed learning. You stayed, you know, creative.
And those are the things that got you to where you are.
Wow, that's the exclamation point on that.
(58:49):
I'm ahead of period now. Oh, thank you very much. You know, I,
you, sometimes you don't know, like I said, I, I, I'm purposeful with my word.
I, I try never to mince them too much. I swear way too much,
but I only did one, I think in this thing.
But one thing I do remember in life is that, you know, if you can't see the
goal, you can't achieve it.
(59:11):
So there's no, there's that all of this stuff is, it's just a waste of time.
Got to be singular in that approach. It has to be the North Star.
Find it, walk to it, run to it, whatever.
You know, moonwalk to it. I don't care how you do it, but get there.
That's all I tell people. Just keep pushing because I'm not going to.
My last push will be my last day out. So, Rob, two final questions I ask all my guests.
(59:35):
The first one is, what does the word grind mean to you?
Grind for me is something I use daily. It's the word ethic.
It's your ethos. It's the way that you matriculate your way through life.
As if, again, you know, back to that North Star, that grind is not going to happen by just looking.
(59:57):
You got to follow it with footsteps.
And that's what I do every day. Just keep moving. Whether I physically move
or mentally move, I'm always in the same position.
How do I get this? Where I get this? How do I do this? Just keep playing and
keep playing and don't forget to play and work hard in between.
That's it. And the last question I have for you is what does gratitude mean to you?
(01:00:19):
You know, gratitude is something that I don't believe I've truly given to my
life because, you know, I always believe that you deserve whatever you get.
Gratitude to me now at this point in my life is like the appreciation,
the understanding of someone else's perspective.
A lot of the times when I was, you know, closed minded about something is just
because, you know, I didn't see it from your perspective. You had a bad day.
(01:00:42):
You come to work and I'm here now giving you crap and not realizing that maybe
all I need to do is say, hey, how are you today?
Give me a pound. Just different things. Now that, you know, I'm not a clinical psychologist.
I don't go see a shrink. I don't know that there's anything wrong with that.
But I will always say, dig deep into yourself because all those answers, they're there.
(01:01:04):
They're just waiting for you to ask the right question. People are afraid of the answer.
Rob, thank you so much for being so open and transparent and honest.
I know people are going to find a lot of value in this conversation.
Please let people know how they can connect with you and where they can find you.
They can find me online. But again, unfortunately, I'm 57 years old.
(01:01:25):
On my Instagram somewhere, Chef Rob Rainford, I think. Twitter, same thing.
And what's that? I'm not on Facebook anymore because somebody hacked me and
I don't have the energy to go back.
Yeah, yeah. Don't worry. We'll make sure that people have all of your social
media and where they can contact you. We'll put all that in the show notes in the description.
Look, anybody who's listening, I hope that you found some value in this conversation.
(01:01:49):
I hope there were some takeaways for you to not quit, to push through anything
that is holding you back, that you just got to push forward.
You can make things happen. You're never too old. you're never too left far
behind there's always a way so thank you so much for tuning into this episode
of the grinding gratitude show i'll catch you in the next episode take care everybody.
(01:02:14):
Thanks so much for being my co-host on this episode of the grinding gratitude
show i really appreciate you i hope that you learned something and you're motivated
to take action and get on your grind didn't that go by fast if you want more
head over to grindinggratitude.com for for show notes and more information about this episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and subscribe and leave a rating
(01:02:36):
so more people will tune in.
And let me say this, there's something special about you.
Grind until you find it, be grateful.
Music.
There was a cooking camp and a basketball camp. And I went to the basketball camp. I looked around.
Too many sweaty dudes. There was a cooking camp upstairs.
I said, you know what? I'll take that. Tons of girls up there and free food.
I went in that direction. Students are students.
Professionals are professions. Once you get paid to cook, you are a profession.
(00:23):
Whether you're at the beginning or the end of it, we're all in the same boat here.
You know my dad was a 70s man you know what i
mean like it's like we can't judge those gentle
people with the same lens that we do now like the father that i am is kind of
the father which he was to me but i don't think uh you know a man born in the
(00:44):
30s was going to have the same sensibilities so you know and as a child we can't
see the stress and the hardships that they're going through we We just,
you know, why am I getting a spanking and not a hug?
I went, did a screen test, two days for one hour for 22 minutes.
And the Food Network picked it up. Sometimes, you know, real bad boys move in
(01:06):
silence, you know, say nothing.
Or you speak it into existence.
Music.
You're listening to The Grinding Gratitude Show. I am Danny Stone,
and I've dedicated my entire life to helping people win.
Win in their careers, win in their businesses, and win in their lives.
(01:26):
This podcast is going to help you get on your grind and hustle to create the
life that you love and walk in gratitude along the journey.
Each episode, I'll teach you tools and tactics and bring you conversations with
experts that will help you turn your passion into a thriving online business.
Life isn't about wishing for something greater. It's about making it happen. happen.
There's something special about you. Bride until you find it.
(01:50):
Be grateful when you get it.
Music.
My guest today is an internationally known chef.
He is a teacher. He's the former host of a really cool culinary show that I used to love.
(02:11):
He's a multifaceted individual that you're going to love.
Thank you so much for being here, Mr. Rob Rainford.
Thank you very much, Danny. I really appreciate this, man. I watch you and I
appreciate what you're doing.
Thank you. Thank you, man. Listen, you know, I've been, I've been following you for a long time.
(02:31):
I remember, you know, it was 2002 when I used to work at George Brown Chef School
and George Brown College in the chef school is one of the biggest culinary schools in Canada.
And I remember back in 2002, that's when you had your culinary show.
And I remember I was working in the chef school and I used to handle all of
(02:53):
the student internship placements for culinary students, hotel management students,
restaurant management students. students.
And I remember you coming in for an event and I remember how excited the students were to see you.
They were so excited that you came in and you came in and you did your thing
and you really lit the students on fire.
(03:15):
They were so honored and happy to see someone who had their own cooking show,
who was a George Brown graduate and who was teaching come back.
And so that was 2002 that I met you, brother.
I've been following you since then. Oof. Oof.
I was younger then. It was a while ago, you know. It was a while.
(03:39):
So before we get into the culinary stuff and all that, where did your passion for cooking come from?
Was that something that you always had inside of you or was it something that
came about later in life? You know, where did that passion for culinary and cooking come from?
You know, I've always had little spurts of the interest and the spark.
(04:00):
You know, I tell the story quite often, but I'll tell it to your guests that
in 77, there was a cooking camp and a basketball camp.
And I went to the basketball camp. I looked around. Too many sweaty dudes.
There was a cooking camp upstairs. I said, you know what? I'll take that.
Tons of girls up there and free food.
I went in that direction. I loved it.
(04:23):
I loved it. But I went home and I told my father, wow, this is really something I'd like to do.
And my father said, listen, I'm going to bring you to Canada to be no cook.
Cook and the way and the way cook came out you
know it might as well have been the f word you know but oh you
know it hurt and you know it's it set me in
another direction so i did i just kind of left it alone didn't do a lot of cooking
(04:45):
at home loved my grandmother's cooking my mom had five of us so you know whole
cuisine wasn't on the menu people you know robbie how would you like your steak
today you know we didn't have that but you know when i went to high school at central Central Tech,
which is one of the numerous schools that I went to,
but when I went there, they had a cooking program.
(05:05):
It's still there to this day, and it's probably one of the preeminent high school cooking programs.
Danforth Tech has one. Robert Borden has one. There's a whole bunch of them
out there, but Central Tech kind of trained kids to go to George Brown.
Now, when I was in high school, they said, if you were unlucky in life,
you would end up at George Brown. Okay.
Because the path is that they want to send everybody to university,
(05:28):
even if that's not your strength or your forte, you know, it's either that or bust.
So again, reconfigured, left that school, went to commercial school because
that's, you know, I want to put myself on that path.
Again, this cookie thing always just kept calling me and calling me,
you know, like Chris Roch.
So I did it.
(05:53):
And, you know, at that point, you know, after I tried to go to university and
was unsuccessful, and then I worked for a long period of time,
I went back to school in the mid-90s.
That's where the passion came from because i wanted to
learn from the ground up best teachers in the in the
country are at george brown no offense to
(06:13):
humber or whatever else is out there but george brown
is the preeminent school for culinary and after you go there you have a great
base and anyone will see your resume and go i'll take that guy over that guy
because we know your training in your lineage so for me you know the passion
was ignited in the mid 90s i got How old were you when you went to George Brown?
(06:37):
26 years old, grad. So what was it like going back to school at 26 after you
had already been working?
Because I know a lot of people right now who might be in that situation might
be thinking, I'm too old to go back to university.
I've been out of school for a long time. So what was that like for you going
back to school as a mature student at 26? Well, I have to backtrack again because
(07:04):
at 19 years old, I had my first child.
That basically, you know, precluded me from doing pretty much anything else
other than, you know, getting the money to raise that child.
And again, a lot of circumstances happened, that relationship didn't work,
but for me, I had it in the back of my mind that I'm going to go to school.
(07:27):
I need to make enough money so that I can get myself through this period of
time where I'm not going to be making a lot of money and go through.
And believe me, I bit the bullet. It hurts.
Every day I felt like I was going back into a hole, another hole, another hole.
But I knew what the long-term picture was, is that once I graduate here,
(07:48):
I can go to any hotel in the city and get a job and then work my way from there. I'm not afraid.
Like I was a basketball player at high school. I went to Eastern Commerce,
shout out Eastern Commerce in the 80s, not the Jamal McGlure time.
But again, there was plenty of players just as good back then.
But, you know, for us, it was one of those things that if you played basketball, it was all consuming.
(08:12):
You never thought about anything else. It was like NBA or bust.
And you knew what the likelihood of you getting to that level was.
But, you know, my single-mindedness put me in that position,
and that's where I took the food.
When I went into culinary school at George Brown, I said, I'm just going to
treat this like a wall bake.
I may not be the best, but I'm going to be the best at some point.
(08:34):
What you said there, Rob, is so
important. You know, so many times in our life, we forget about the why.
We have to hold on to the why. Like, why did you get started on this goal or this dream?
And for you, you got started because you wanted to provide a better life for
your child. And you knew that you would get a better job.
And this is a great reminder for anybody right now who has a goal or a dream
(08:59):
and may have people that don't believe in them or discourage them,
or they might've had a setback.
You always have to go back to the why.
Why did you start this goal or this dream? What is it going to give you? What do you want?
And why is it a must? No, no, no. You're 100% correct.
If you think about all the negative and the things that could go wrong,
(09:22):
that's all you're going to focus on.
You've got got to look at what the long-term goal is.
And the long-term goal for anybody that enters a new field is to be proficient
at it, then master it, then teach it, and then take it wherever else you want to take it.
But there has to be that linear style of thinking when you go,
hey, this is where I need to go.
(09:42):
I know my audience is tired of me saying this, but I often say progress equals belief.
Like nobody believes that they can do something in the beginning, right?
It's not until you start to make progress and see something happening that you actually believe it.
And that's what you did. Like you took the steps, you got started,
you took action, you registered for school, you attended school,
(10:04):
you got better month after month.
And then you started working in the field. And I think it's really important
that people understand nobody believes in themselves at the beginning.
When you're first starting something, it's uncomfortable and you don't even
know if you can really do it. But if you commit and you see the progress,
then you will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
(10:24):
You know, growing up was the same for me. You know, being a young black kid
in the low-income housing, you either rap or you play basketball.
So I definitely understand what you're saying.
And so for you to do something different, it's challenging for a lot of people
to wrap their head around because those are the only two things that you kind
of focus on when you're young, when you don't really have a lot of options.
So it's interesting for you that, you know, you decided to go the culinary route and not basketball.
(10:50):
But again, you know, from 19 to 26, I had to work.
Yes. So that transition was very slow, matriculated down very, very slowly.
Even the attempts to go to George Brown were tough.
You know what I mean? Because just getting in was quite difficult.
I got in as a mature student. And believe me, man, like I didn't even know how
(11:12):
to hold my knife before I went in, but it was just, again, it was that goal.
And I said, I'm willing to, I knelt at the altar. I said, listen, I want to learn.
I want someone to teach me and I'm going to say nothing.
Until I get to that point. But as soon as I got in, it was like duck to water,
man. Like, you know, I enjoyed it.
And I, you know, excelled at it quite quickly. I mean, here's a good story.
(11:36):
At first day of class, they're making crepes. Simple thing.
It's flour and eggs and milk. Okay.
And you have to put it in a pan, swirl it around and fold it and turn it over.
That's it. it i had my towel hanging hit the
flame i'm trying to
(11:57):
blow it out in front of the whole class the child caught on fire caught
on fire that's what the professor said listen
who wants to come up here and do this not one hand went up i looked around i'll
do it and i had no i should have been sitting i can ask back there but i went
up there and again if that was the most embarrassing thing that was going to
happen it's like getting dunked on i don't think it's ever happened to me but
(12:20):
if If it did, I would know how that felt.
I would know that that feeling of shame or whatever it feels like.
But it's the next play now. Let's move on.
And that's what the kitchen is like. It's just it's equivalent to basketball. It's the next play.
It's mitigating circumstances and then moving yourself into a positive place
where you can fix or just not make those mistakes.
(12:41):
I think that's what a lot of us have to understand. You know,
failure is a part of the process.
Like we don't always have to have it figured out. And failure is a lessons,
right? They provide us lessons so that we can move forward.
And I know for myself, I've applied for jobs and maybe gotten jobs that I was not qualified for.
And I had to sink or swim. I had to figure it out.
(13:02):
And some cases I did, in some cases I didn't. But every successful person that
we know has failed and they've taken those failures and used them as lessons
and information to do better the next time.
So after school, you graduate and you start working in these high-end restaurants
in these high-pressure situations.
What did you learn about yourself working in these high-end,
(13:26):
high-pressure situations in these high-pressure restaurants?
Runs i learned everything um you know
a school only sets you up for so much and i like
to tell all my students that you know this is just your
blueprint this is your baseline once you go out there
now it's a real application real world scenarios and you know when you fully
eat a fish one time in class for a test or for demonstration purposes that's
(13:50):
just one now you got to do you know five ten twenty a hundred now you know that's
where you're going to get better but you remember Remember,
those first five, after you've only done one,
it becomes a bit of an issue.
And again, students are students.
Professionals are professions. Once you get paid to cook, you are a professional.
(14:11):
Whether you're at the beginning or the end of it, we're all in the same boat here.
And back in that time, in the 90s and before, there was basically chefs in front
of the house, like, we are the dogs, you guys are the cats.
You come around when you want something, but the dog's loyal,
right? That mentality's now changed because it's one family.
(14:33):
And if they screw up, I screw up.
And if I screw up, they screw up. So if we all look at it in terms of,
this is not a family, I don't like that term all the time. When you're working, it ain't family.
All right. You could make it that environment, but it really being a profession.
And again, I used to be a very crass chef. I used to say things that weren't
(14:56):
nice because that's kind of the way people tried to treat me back in the day.
But again, being a mature student, I didn't allow anybody to talk to me reckless.
Okay. I don't care if you're, yeah, Jesus, you come down, be respectful.
Okay. And then we can conversation. conversation.
But learning, again, learning is what is the curve that I'm in for my whole life.
(15:18):
I like the unknown. I love walking into dark situations and then turning on a light.
So being a chef is, that's pretty much what we do.
We take raw ingredient, process it, and then we turn it out and make it into
something special. That's what we do.
Do you remember your first head chef job? job
again i think it harkens back to what you said
(15:40):
in terms of were you prepared where
was it your time were you sinking was it
over your head yeah it was over my head at
that point but my drive and the
fact that you know if you assemble a great team around you
because it's not a one it's not an individual that really isn't
i love when i see these shows and it's
(16:02):
the one singular you know white knight and blah blah
blah it all gets done that's not how real reality
is it takes your dishwasher to your
commies to you first took seven cooks you know
chef the parties it takes all of us in order to get it done and what i realized
was that i needed to ingratiate myself a lot more uh with my you know not my
(16:26):
pews at this point but my now underlings and that that step in your head is
like when you're here, it's one thing.
But then once you move ahead, you got jealousy.
You got a whole bunch of things. You got knives coming out for your back and
you have to watch these things.
And, you know, you don't want to tell somebody that here's a career path and it's fraught.
(16:46):
Turmoil. You work in the most high pressured environment, and yet you're expected
to stay cool, calm, and collected.
And you're supposed to make sure that at 5.30, when the first meal goes out,
or at 11.30, when the last meal goes out, it's all the same. No interpretation.
So how did you deal with that? Like either people hating on you or trying to
(17:06):
sabotage you or not performing at the best of their ability to make you look bad?
How did you deal with all that? that it was well
again um goes back to a chef that i worked for
the one of my first jobs and he's still a great friend
to this day and he was like my
vampire he bit me right so i you know i'm always going to have allegiance to
(17:27):
this guy stop hang on one second here go my doggie who's just going to stay
in hawaiian the whole time but anyhow i digress um he basically trained me the
way that that I should have been trained.
Ground up, fine dining. I learned the basics. So I knew everything that I needed to know from him.
(17:50):
And when he left the job, I took over. And it was difficult when he left.
And they always say, when your chef leaves, you should leave too.
The new regime is not going to be favorable all the time.
So it is what it is. I learned a lot of lessons that I, you know,
because of my age, I was also, I was able to see things.
(18:11):
Being a parent, you know, also changes your molecular makeup and you're able
to see through a lot of things and it's not all, you know, roses,
but you were able to be pragmatic about what you see.
Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. I think that when you're more mature and
you can see things from a different perspective, you can step back from it.
(18:32):
You can see it from different angles than when you're stuck because I know when
you're fit, when you're in a stuck perspective,
like I'm thinking about myself and my career or in certain areas of my personal
life, when I was stuck, when I was overweight, or when I was in a job that I
just wasn't passionate about, I could only see it from a stuck perspective.
So when you're able to kind of remove yourself from the situation and look at
(18:56):
it from a different angle, you see things that you don't normally see when you're,
when you're in it, like when you're going through it.
And, you know, I often tell people, like, we have to change our situation.
We have to get up sometimes and remove ourselves from a situation so that we can clear our minds.
But when you're working in a kitchen in a high-pressure situation,
(19:16):
you don't really have the opportunity to do that, right?
So, yeah. No, I understand. I definitely understand. I know exactly where I should be.
And the hard part about, you know, being in the, in the pressure environment,
you know, that chefs undertake willingly, because if somebody told you to do that, you'd never do it.
(19:36):
But knowing, knowing that the end result is that you're now feeding people.
Yeah. Just basically making sure that, you know, you're equipped mentally to deal with these things.
Cause I think a lot of people go into such scenarios, not understanding what
the big picture is. And the big picture is, is that if you want to look as good
as you want to look, everyone around you has to be equal, right?
(20:00):
And a lot of people don't want to share.
Chefs are very notorious for holding
things to the chest and not sharing information or not the sabotage.
But I think it's a form of sabotage when you don't tell somebody the whole scenario,
like how to do that particular task.
And not knowing how to do something is not a recipe for disaster. asked it.
(20:22):
It's just a recipe to ask more questions and figure out how we get this thing done.
It seemed like you were a curious person, like you were always asking questions
sort of above the level that you were at.
Were you always like that? Were you always a very curious person?
Always. My whole life, I'm a wide eye and I like to answer the why.
(20:43):
That's kind of the, I didn't know that factor. I want to be able to explain
that to people. I didn't have the best upbringing in terms of,
you know, nurturing and all that stuff. But again, you know,
you know where we come from.
You know, it's a survival mode. We came in the 70s. So, you know,
spending time with your parents at the cottage, you know, you know,
the back room was our cottage. It would be in the summertime.
(21:04):
Where did you grow up? Downtown, right? When we came to Toronto,
we moved to Dufferin and Dundas on one side of the street. And then we moved
to the other side of the street.
So we moved from on top of the store to a semi-detached. We stayed there for most of the seventies.
And then we moved up to Margareta Street, which is basically Bloor in between
(21:26):
Dufferin and Lansdowne.
So I'll never, I stayed in the same vicinity. You know, I went to Kent,
which is now going to be a condo at, you know, Bloor and Dufferin.
But I'm a Toronto kid. What was your childhood like? I have,
you know what, I'm one of five. I'm a twin.
Identical. He does not cook. book. So, yeah, yes.
(21:47):
You know, and we just, you know, I always had a built-in best friend my whole
life, but you know, you know, my dad was a seventies man.
You know what I mean? Like, we can't judge those gentle people with the same lens that we do now.
Like the father that I am is kind of the father which she was to me.
(22:08):
I don't think, you know, a man born in the 30s was going to have the same sensibilities,
you know, and as a child, we can't see the stress and the hardships that they're going through.
We just, you know, why am I getting a spanking and not a hug, you know what I mean?
Although this is the third time my dad stole something and I expect,
you know, some grace here.
Well, you know, we're getting any grace, you know, not now. We only said that before dinner.
(22:31):
Yeah. But, you know, I've learned a lot of lessons now that I don't judge as harshly as I used to.
And I don't have any daddy issues. I ain't blaming him for nothing.
He's still alive. My mom and dad are 91 years old, still here.
I really can't say much in terms of they've lived a fruitful life.
And the back nine for them is they can ride it out any way they want.
(22:55):
Oh, wow. That's beautiful, man. That's beautiful.
I often talk to people about that. Sometimes when we get older and we still
hang on to this baggage from our childhood, and a lot of people like to to blame
their parents for their upbringing and the difficulties they had.
But we have to understand that our parents only had limited information.
And if they were immigrants and they came to this country from another country,
(23:19):
they had very limited tools and they had to do what they had to do to provide
for us and create a better life.
Like my mother is from Jamaica and my father is from Canada.
My father's from Nova Scotia. So I know that when my grandparents came here, it was a a struggle.
And I know that my mom had to adapt to living in Canada from Jamaica.
So I don't blame my mother and I don't blame my father for things that happened
(23:42):
because they only had limited information.
And I think so many people blame other people for their past and other people
for the challenges they have. And we have to learn to let go.
And we have to learn to give people grace, right? We don't understand that by
not giving people grace and forgiveness, we are blocking our own blessings.
(24:02):
Oh, we all, listen, we all got daddy issues. If we have to break it right down,
we all have, especially from where we come from.
It is what it is. But again, just use that as an excuse.
And that's all it would be at this point. I'm 57 years old.
My life has come full circle in
terms where i've started to where i am now and
(24:25):
where i want to go in the future and none of that backstory really adds up to
me not being successful because he didn't believe in my cooking journey because
he said i didn't bring you here to do that because he was tantamount to being
a slave in his mind like why do you want to work in somebody's kitchen.
Then we want something bigger and brighter, you know, but again,
(24:49):
when a kid has a passion for something, our job is to just nurture that,
provide them everything that you can possibly provide them humanly possible and let them flourish.
My kids, my last two girls here, they play basketball.
They went, you know, one went to D1, the other one went to UPI.
I, again, if I had ever stifled their, their, their journey,
(25:11):
I would have felt like a horrible human being because I didn't want them to play basketball.
I wanted them, I got them golf sets, but my wife, we went to Humbersaw for some
stupid camp and literally the bug bit us.
And for almost 12 to 15 years, we've been in cars driving all over North America
for, you know, to watch our kids play. But that's what I would have wanted for me.
(25:37):
Little Robbie would have wanted that. But he ain't got it. Little Robbie?
No, no, that didn't happen for little Robbie.
But what did happen for you, though, is you landed your own cooking show.
And I remember seeing the show the first time and just seeing how passionate
(25:58):
you made cooking seem and how much you were enjoying grilling and how much you enjoyed what you do,
it really kind of lit a fire under me because seeing you and seeing the way
that you brought the food alive and seeing your passion, it just really kind
of lit a fire under me to really appreciate food more.
(26:19):
So talk to us a little bit about the show and what that was like for you.
Well, you know, that came about by me teaching in the Con Ed department at George Brown.
McCarthy is her name. She believed in me and gave me a shot,
even though I wasn't ready to teach at that point.
But she said, you know what? You'd be very good because you're not ugly.
(26:40):
You speak English. Eddie and Gary.
With that level of confidence. With that level of confidence.
I was able to go and teach my first class.
So I was teaching at George Brown when I got that show.
But to backtrack, there was a show called Cook Like a Chef that was on the Food Network.
And my mentor chef, you know, he's younger than I am. But again,
(27:03):
as a chef, he's my mentor.
He was doing the show and he asked me to be a sous chef. Once I was able to
see how it was done, how the sausage was made, no pun intended.
But I said, you know, I can do this. I can do this.
I love TV. there's nobody who's
watched more television than me
okay not a book and not an
(27:25):
outside activity i love tv honest and abashed unashamed i love tv i can watch
it 25 hours eight days a week okay 66 days i could watch it because i get to
watch whatever i want i get to i'd like to watch things things that I learn.
So history channel, discovery, anything like, you know, and I watch my frivolous
(27:48):
stuff too, but I'm always like CNN's on, FOPS is on.
I want to get every piece of information I possibly can. I'm a visual spatial learner.
So I understand that this is the way that information gets into my brain and
I can digest it and then regurgitate.
So getting the show basically came about by me teaching and commanding my classroom,
(28:10):
even though I wasn't perfect at it. I was, I was, you know, I was able to stand
up there and I felt confident and your passion comes with confidence.
You can show me anyone that's not confident. I will show you that they have
zero drive, zero passion.
So for me, that information that I digested through my cookbooks,
okay, which I learned Food Network was just starting to flourish in Canada.
(28:33):
You know, Emeril Lagasse, you know, Motomario, all the, all the old guard that
was there, You know, the chef du jour, when Sousa would come on, wow, look at that.
That's somebody from just down the street.
He's like, you know what I mean? Like everything that I could see,
I literally could touch, you know, Michael LaMonaco.
I met him on the today's show. Like I said, you're a, you're a mentor.
(28:55):
Like you were in somebody I watched, you know, growing up and in the, in the culinary field.
And I used to take all my specials from watching, you know, cook shows.
I just loved it. And again, once I did that and I auditioned,
which I didn't really audition, this show was pretty much laid in my lap.
I went, did a screen test.
(29:17):
Two days for one hour for 22 minutes, and the Food Network picked it up.
So it was that serendipity. It was like literally it was a goal of mine.
I didn't know how I was going to achieve it, but I just knew that by doing the
teaching thing, it was going to help me become a better performer.
Because the teachers you know are not the ones who are just reading the PowerPoint.
(29:40):
I don't care. I can read the PowerPoint myself.
I need the information between those.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. I used to teach part time in the continuing
education department at George Brown College. I used to teach a human resources class.
So I know what you mean. Like, imagine for you, you are working in the industry and teaching.
(30:00):
So you were bringing the experience, you were bringing the textbook alive for
a lot of people. So I can only imagine what that was like teaching and then
working in the industry and having your own cooking show.
I can imagine that the students must have really benefited from that.
I mean, the ivory tower chef doesn't exist anymore. Because when we went to
(30:20):
George Brown, those chefs, they'd been there forever.
Right? Alan Brown, Chef Alan Brown.
There's a couple that you don't mention their names. Yeah.
I'm biting my lip now. You know, the great Scott, you know, Chef John Higgins was that, you know.
And then he came over afterwards. I remember him in the 2000s coming over and
that changed the whole cachet of what George Brown was, what he did, he will have fruition.
(30:46):
So for me, you know, it's just, I got, there's a lot of mentors around.
Again, we were never going to be the guys who, like we had a professor by the name of Gregory Law.
He was the nutty professor. Yeah, he regaled us in the stories of how he cooked
for 1,200 people by himself with one arm broken.
You know, I mean, and the man was this big, you know, again, but there were stories.
(31:09):
And that was, you know, I had to get through that.
Maybe he's embellishing here, but he's doing it for a reason because this is
not a real glamorous life. Okay. I love the Food Network.
I love what they've done, but they've glamorized something that's a hard thing
to do, you know, And not everyone does it well or at the same level.
(31:31):
There are levels to this.
Tell everybody what the premise of your culinary show was all about. It was every Saturday.
I am to be cooking for a few of my buddies that would drop over.
And I just come up with some interesting, tasty barbecue.
And it wasn't barbecue. It was more grilling. So there's a difference between
a griller and a barbecue.
(31:52):
A barbecue denotes barbacoa, which is the root word.
And it literally means smoke and charcoal now
that is one aspect of it now grills
every kitchen on the planet has a grill
in their kitchen whether it be charcoal or gas but there are different levels
to this because now feeding a fire making sure your fire stays the same i remember
(32:15):
gas just gives you consistent heat throughout the whole process unless you run
out of some source and if it's tied into a natural gas you'll never run out
all right so it's a little bit,
I wouldn't say easier, but just different in terms of its application.
So learning on a grill all the time was, you know, was my thing.
That's why I got that show because I was an expert on that.
(32:39):
Now, you know, it's taken me now, like in the last five years,
I haven't cooked on gas outside of professional kitchens, but at home it's all charcoal.
Because that's it. Cause I need three of these and we're ready to rock.
You got your brew in your hand and you're ready to go. Well,
with natural gas, you can only drink one.
(32:59):
So you had the show and the premise for the show was you were grilling up food for your friends.
So how long did that show go on? Because it seemed like there was a quite a
long run of that show. How many episodes did you shoot?
104. Did a one hour special, which is the four part, but I did basically,
you know, That was a good apprenticeship.
(33:20):
That's how I looked at that. Because learning how to talk to a camera in our
application right now, not simple, but again, we're engaging each other.
When you have three cameras, now you've got to know your marks.
And it's a take that when you thought was great, something happened,
the cloud went over, your audio went out, it's scratchy.
(33:43):
There's so many things now when that game starts to be played.
I did not know that game at all.
I had a little bit. I got a chance to watch from the outside when I told you
I did that show, Cook Like a Chef.
But being in the passenger seat is a different experience than in the driver's seat.
So I got a chance to be in the driver's seat. I was a lead by myself,
(34:05):
carrying 22 minutes alone.
Nobody did, excuse me, could you, you know, nothing. And I, for the first six
episodes, I was sucking my thumb hard.
I called my wife. I said, honey, I'm coming home.
Oh, no, you're not. So you were ready to quit? Oh, it was difficult.
Difficult thing. You know, there would be two cameras. All right.
(34:27):
And I was supposed to go right, which is your left. And I go in the middle.
Just so, so confused. Even my camera guys, you know, Peter and LD and,
and, and Brian, they would like, they, they, you know, and they've tried to
help, but I really didn't have any true help while I was on the set itself.
So it was, it was difficult, but again, six shows, 12 shows,
(34:49):
I started to find a little bit of that footing.
You know, there were some, there were some real hardship days there.
Real, you know, I don't even want to get into them until I write a memoir.
There were some real hardship days, but then something clicked and it was told
to me it's going to click.
Once it clicks, you never have to, you don't have to start from the ground again.
How did you, how did you push through that? There are people right now who are
(35:12):
listening, who are struggling with a goal or a dream or some area of their life
and they feel like quitting, but they know that maybe if they keep going, they could do it.
So how did you push through it? What inspiration or what inspired you to keep going?
I'm a dog. Okay. I'm a dog. my damn dog
okay i would have bone i am not letting it go
all right i will i refuse to be bad at something forever now knowing and being
(35:38):
humble about when you're in that learning curve whatever happens happens okay
i you know i can equate it to my dolphin picked it up in 2006 for almost a decade i was horrible.
A couple of good shots that would always bring me back, but horrible.
I would shake. I was in celebrity tournaments. I had a guy said,
listen, 10 grand, he hit somebody in the grandstand here, you know?
(36:01):
Like things were said to me like that. But again, go back to the basketball.
This is when we play, it doesn't matter if the guy's two inches taller than
you. You can't stop me from where I'm going.
I'm going to jab you. I'm going to faint you. I'm going to do whatever it takes,
but I'm going to get to my spot because that's how how good and great players behave.
(36:22):
Outside of that, the people who crumble under the first bit of adversity,
those are the people that probably you weren't going to make it in.
It is what it is, but stick to it.
And I think this is where when you're going through something difficult or you
have a big goal and it seems so far away, it's so important to find those moments
of joy, to celebrate along the way.
(36:44):
Like we have to celebrate those daily wins, those weekly wins.
And it's really, really important important because the dream just seems so far away.
And as you're going through the struggles, you're not going to see the end of it.
So having those moments where you just celebrate yourself and you say,
you know, I've gone to the gym for 20 days now, 30 days today,
I applied for five jobs just to celebrate along the way.
(37:07):
You know, it's going to be tough. It's going to be hard. It's going to be a
journey, but it's going to be worth it.
And so that's what I'm hearing you say. I'm hearing you say that it's going
to be a tough road, but we have to celebrate ourselves along the way.
That's kind of what I got from what you were saying.
Surmise that extremely well, because that's the way it goes.
(37:27):
But, you know, you always equate things back to, with our sports analogy.
That's why I think we get along very well, because it really does.
Like when you join a team, and you remember there's a captain,
there's co-captain, and then role players.
And then there's, you know, there's so many different aspects to it. Find your niche.
Find out what you're good at. And excel at that until somebody sees it.
(37:48):
You know, and if they never see it, that's fine too. Two, I strive every day
for perfection, the best I can do.
And I screw up when I'm on social media.
I thought a 57-year-old man on social media, people are asking me,
what is your content? You know what? Shut up, okay? I'll give you what I give you.
You don't like it, you know? Like Mike Isis said, change your station.
(38:14):
There's no station to change, but don't worry about me, right?
Right. Because I'm used to doing real television.
OK. And now with social media, it's changed the whole landscape.
You know, a guy you don't even know could cook is way out of a paper bag is
now looking like a professional.
But now to me, what a professional is, is that take that all that application
(38:35):
and take it to a real restaurant.
And that real guests critique what you're doing, because everything at home
always turns out mistakes are made. And again, learning from mistakes is what
I believe in. Don't make the same mistake.
Shaq said it. You don't make the same mistake twice.
Do your best to eliminate that and work on that. And that's what I do every
day in my life. But I, you know, I know I'm not perfect.
(38:57):
Ask my kids, ask my wife. I'm not perfect. People are probably listening to
this right now and they're thinking, was Rob always this confident or did you
develop it along the way?
I mean, you come from, there's five of you, five siblings, five kids, and you have a twin.
So did you always have this confidence or did you develop it along the way?
I think of, you know what, if anyone who's known me for a long period of time
(39:20):
knows that That, yeah, my confidence comes with the territory in our house.
If you were last, you was last. Okay.
But if you didn't eat that piece of chicken, you was in that piece of chicken.
Okay. So you had to be confident in what you were doing at your own plate.
Okay. So learning from my family, like I said, there's five of us,
(39:43):
man. And the jockeying for positions was always there.
And I had a twin who was smarter than me. You know, I'm better looking,
but he's smarter. You know, and I accept certain things.
You know what I mean? I'm good at this. He's good at that. And together we're a combination.
You know, I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations is over.
But when we went to Central Tech, you know, I would take classes twice.
(40:05):
I've definitely taken a couple of classes twice in high school. So I get you. I get you.
So you and your twin, have you always been close or did you kind of develop
this closeness throughout time or what's your relationship like with your twin? My best friend.
He's my best friend. I have good friends now, you know, and,
and they know who they are.
They, they, they are people who mean something in my life, you know,
(40:29):
and an acquaintance is an acquaintance.
All right. That's somebody that, you know, you can say hello to in the street.
That guy that when you're down and you haven't said anything and they call you
just to make sure you're okay, that's a friend, right?
And I always had that in the womb and I have until this day. He's,
(40:49):
been somebody that's been there for me the whole time and you know he has the
same confidence that i have same drive that i have and we we never have to worry
about one trying to you know win one on the other person it's it is what it
now playing basketball it was cutthroat.
I was trying to kill him and he was trying to and i love that about you know
(41:11):
i would never let somebody win unless you really want even kids know to this
day man you never won until you could win. What does your brother do? What's his profession?
He's retired. He was in the plumbing industry for quite a few years and he's
done quite well for himself.
And he was able to sort of relax on this back nine.
I will have to work till I'm 66 or maybe a hundred, but whatever,
(41:35):
whichever one comes first.
So speaking of that, what's next on the horizon for you or what's something
major or something big or a big goal or dream that you have going on?
So I've got two Two projects, you know, one is a TV show called Hungry,
which, you know, I've been talking about for the last three years.
And at COVID, I've had a whole bunch of setback, but, you know,
you and I had a little preamble where sometimes, you know, real bad boys move
(41:58):
in silence, you know, say nothing, or, you know, speak it into existence.
I, you know, with my partner, we said at the beginning of the pandemic or before
the pandemic that we want to do a television show called Hungry with Rob Rainford.
We want to cook with a celebrity, but at the end of this mandate is that this
food's not going to go to waste. It's going to go to hungry people.
(42:22):
So knowing that that's part of who I am as an individual, that I want to take
care of other people, that's how my cooking style is.
It's kind of nurturing in that way, that this lends itself perfectly for how I want to be on TV.
Now, it's going to be part interview where I talk to the celebrity,
just like you and I are having this conversation. And I'm going to be asking
(42:43):
those questions that you just asked me.
So what's your inspiration here? What is your food memory?
What can, and then we recreate that.
And then, you know, again, we have one full hour, you know, 22 and 22.
So that's, it's, it's a big process, you know, and, you know,
I've hired everybody, like everyone on this set.
I am blessed. I am 50% owner of this with my partner.
(43:06):
So I don't work for somebody. This is, this is my project.
This is my baby. And I, you know, my wife and I, we've been sitting with this for a long time.
You know, we need it to come to fruition as well, but we're looking like July
will be our, our start time and we've had stops and starts, but again,
this is what we're working with right now.
The, you know, 66 seven group is the company that I started with my buddy,
(43:28):
Tim Frey, and he's 67. I'm the 66th part of it, and it's basically a catering,
but it's literally anything that you could take to run an event.
We can do from audio to food.
And it's on my, I'll send you that link stuff, Bob. So, so the catering business
is a one-stop shop for everything that people need for their catering needs,
(43:49):
the audio, the visual, the food, the front of the house, you do everything?
And, and between Tim and myself, we have enough experience in the business that,
you know, because he's a front of the house guy.
I'm the house, so we really aren't going to be fighting against each other while we're here.
So we want to make some money, more makes it be black. high so so
in terms of the show you're gonna start shooting in july that's what
(44:12):
you were saying true yeah so you're shopping around to different networks
or do you have a distributor yeah we have a distributor already
cooking channel oh no we're good uh distribution i got i got a great team in
la and in new york this is not a one-person operation this is not a youtube
show like you know i gotta be me with my iphone walking or gopro on my head
(44:33):
and nothing wrong with that i I really love Gorilla Style.
I really do love that kind of stuff. I mean, there's a couple of shows on YouTube
right now that are more popular than Food Network Show.
I was told about YouTube when it started, and I did the old lifting those and
never, never, and now, you know, oh, yeah, I take a YouTube show at a second.
(44:58):
But again, the fact that, you know, in terms of revenue and streamed and views
and all those things, they can change the algorithm on you and you're done.
But, you know, with that work, it is what it is. They buy the blocks,
we air the blocks, and we move from there.
So that world makes sense to me. I know how that world works.
(45:21):
And I can resell this to international markets.
And again, ADC Africa is going to be one of the distributors.
So think about a whole continent, a whole continent, man, not a country,
man, not, you know, like not a game, not a game.
Look, man, congrats on the show. Congrats on the catering business.
(45:41):
So will you be going out to L.A. and New York to shoot the show?
100%. It's going to be shot in L.A. for the first, I would say the first run.
So we got picked up for 53 episodes.
So we've got a lot to produce. We got to do like, we'll probably only be able
to get maybe 20 or 30 done in a year.
But again, until that mandate's fulfilled, that's number one.
(46:03):
Number two is now, once that starts going, I can, I want to do the Gordon Ramsey
approach where, you know, he's on every single thing you can think of.
He is that guy right now.
And I lift my hat off to a guy like that, who's worked his butt off,
a Michelin star. And now he's getting the just reserved desserts of his labor.
(46:26):
And I don't look at it with jealousy, but I do look at it as a template.
I'm not too old to not be in this game, right?
I know I got another 20 good years where I can produce at a high level.
Well, I can't play basketball. I think that when a goal or a dream doesn't happen
(46:47):
the way we expect or in our timeline or in our time frame, we get discouraged and we give up.
But we're living in an age with the Internet and the Internet is so powerful.
We're able to reach more people than we ever have been able to in the past.
We're able to make deeper connections.
We're able to, you know, form sort of collaborations. separations.
(47:07):
So we should never give up because you just never know when something is going to happen.
And just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it's never going to happen.
Yeah, there's this book I have here called Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy.
And it really boils down to that. Just because you don't know how something
is going to happen doesn't mean that you can't make it happen.
(47:27):
And usually it's just about connecting with the right people,
just like you did. You got your business partner for your catering business now.
Now you You found your production company and the people that you need to connect
with to help you do the TV show.
So it's about who sometimes. It's not just about how.
Yeah, because that's all everyone can do. Not who is, yeah, we don't know everybody.
(47:50):
And you need to assemble that team. Again, I know that what you're doing,
you're not doing this by yourself.
Right? And acknowledging those people that are helping you along the way is kind of important, too.
Your whole thing about gratitude, which resonates with me, is that in a lot
of circumstances, I don't display that gratitude gene front.
(48:11):
I acknowledge it and I internalize it, but I don't thank you.
Thank you for doing this. Because again, the world that we come from,
and especially with culinary, is like, do it.
And the only repercussion is get out. And that doesn't work all the time.
No, I'm learning. I'm still learning. 57, I feel like a kid.
(48:34):
I feel like I'm in that process.
I mean, things are percolating and bubbling.
And again, maybe this is off topic, but the gig economy, where no one has this
one profession or one job anymore.
It's all just temporary and you've
got to accumulate all this stuff worry about your taxes
(48:55):
and take care you know that i'm not getting a gold
watch right you know but i can
buy my and that's all that's all the options
i need i love it i love it you know i love when people have big dreams i meet
so many people whose dreams are just so small and and they're just afraid to
dream bigger because what if they fail what if they don't achieve it but what
(49:18):
if your dream is so small that you do achieve it and your life doesn't change in any way.
And that's most of the people that I meet. They're afraid to set the bar higher.
So they set the goal so low that once they achieve the goal,
it doesn't change their life in any way.
And what we have to understand is that, you know, people always ask me,
hey, Coach Stone, how do I know if my dream is big enough?
(49:39):
And I say, well, it's big enough if it scares you. If other people say it's crazy,
crazy if other people look at it and say you'll never do
that that's when you know that you're on the right track
with your goals and your dreams so i love what you're saying
man i love the fact that you got your show and after it's
done it's run you can do anything with it it can be out there to live on the
(49:59):
internet forever it's because of how we're conditioned right i agree i think
it's the you know the aspect of us forgetting to play you know when you're a
kid that's you know recess You weren't looking for math class or English recess.
Look, the other recess, you know, and then get to play.
That's sort of how my school career went. I'm not sure about you,
(50:21):
but again, never forget to play. That's something that I adopted.
I'm going to, you know, yes, as negative as I can get from time to time,
because when the world does crush me, I feel it.
I've experienced some tough stuff over the last couple of years, but the whole world has.
We can't use that as the excuse to not
(50:41):
succeed or to or to give up on you know
and that's again i'm lucky very lucky that i
have an infrastructure around me that allows me to do this as well right but
even about going back to when i went to george brown i was i had to pay 200
child support and going to school i was gonna have to work full-time and go
(51:01):
to school to in order to keep that up and i I fell behind from time to time,
but it was what it was because I told you, what is the big picture here?
What is the big picture? What do I want?
Because when I told people I'm going to be a chef or a cook.
Man i i got snickers i got laugh even my
old father you cool i'm like
yeah dad i'm gonna i'm gonna give this a shot i said
(51:24):
i just need to move home i need a bed so that
i can just come and sleep and go do what i gotta do because again my life was
unraveling at that point but i said i'm not gonna let this thing unravel to
the point where i can't fix it i knew that going to george brown that's that
was a singular goal that i could just say i'm gonna focus on this don't worry
about out the rest. Everything else will come back.
(51:46):
And I'm lucky that my oldest is now 36 years old, 35, 36.
I'm a grandparent of three cores, this little, two girls and a girl.
So things are happening for me that 30 years ago, 40 years ago,
man, I wouldn't have even thought this was going to be my life.
(52:06):
Yeah. I think that's a really good lesson. So many people ask me like,
Like, hey, Coach Stone, how do I take my life to a whole nother level?
And I always tell them, there's really four things that you have to do.
You know, the first thing is we have to give ourselves some forgiveness,
give ourselves some grace.
Like, we have to learn to forgive ourselves for our failures and mistakes and wrongdoings.
And we have to learn to forgive other people so that we can move through it.
(52:29):
The second thing that we have to do is we need clarity.
We need to get very clear about what it is that we want and why it's a must.
Must. And then the third thing is we need focus.
Like a lot of what you're talking about is like, you got to focus on the right
things and filter out the things that aren't helping you to get there.
And then the fourth thing is really about discipline.
And this is what you've demonstrated throughout your career.
(52:51):
You need to show up consistently every single day and try to get better than you were the day before.
But I know that there's somebody listening right now who says,
look, I don't have people who believe in me. I don't have a twin brother like Rob.
I don't have a wife or friends or people who believe in me like Coach Stone.
What would you say to that individual who's saying right now,
(53:13):
like they want to make a change, they want to up-level their life,
but they just don't have somebody who believes in them. What would you say to them, Rob?
Again, internalize. And again, I may have said that in passing,
but again, there were times when I didn't have that support that I needed,
especially going to George Brown the first time where I told you,
relationship busted up. I have nothing.
(53:35):
I'm either going to continue doing this plumbing job that I don't like doing
because I was a buyer at a plumbing wholesale company. company,
a lovely company, took care of us, my twin and I, my twin stayed on in it.
And I said, you know what? I just can't do this anymore.
And, you know, I didn't get a lot of, you know, whoa, good for congratulations. You know what I mean?
(53:55):
But I just said to myself, you know what? This is a tantamount to,
you know, picking up the ball for the first time.
You're going to be terrible at this, but I'm going to continue because I just, for me personally,
I think we We rely too much on external influences and not enough of that quiet
time that I have between 12 and 2 in my house where I'm able to just be introspective.
(54:20):
Man, the conversations I've had with me, I'm telling you, I've admonished me.
I've congratulated me. I broke
my arm patting myself on the back because that's just who I am, you know?
And at the end of my conversations, I always say, you know what? You're fucking great.
Don't worry about the rest. You're good. You're good. it. You're going to make
it. Whatever this we're going through, we are going to get through this because I refuse.
(54:43):
I refuse, man, to just let something tear me down. I can't do that.
I will not do that in my life.
And again, being this age, we've come through a lot of real estate, a lot of real estate.
I don't have 57 more years to live.
Right? And that's just an honest assessment of the reality of life.
And do I want that back, mind? Do I want to be a 99-year-old,
(55:07):
you know, dribbling down with the water down my face?
I don't want that, man. I want to enjoy this now.
When you think about your legacy, what do you want people to say about you?
Well, that's like tombstone thinking. You know, what do you want written on your tombstone?
What I would like is that I was a decent husband, because I know I'm not great, but I'm trying.
(55:29):
And I was the best father that I could be to my kids. Really,
there was no professional accolades I want.
You know, people ask me all the time, well, who are your chef mentors?
I thought one guy, Ned, who I love to this day.
And I, you know, and a guy, Michael Pastor, who I went to culinary school with.
I'll remember these guys for the rest of my life.
(55:49):
But I never followed them. Like I was always blazing my own little path.
And I've always put myself in that position where I was
going to be successful with what I do because not
everybody again I told you there's levels to this so when
me getting into the fine dining already stopped all
the middle stuff and have to worry about these guys because that's
all you can do is you can work at your little chain restaurant and open
(56:12):
your bag up and do your thing that's great I'm happy
for you but that's not how I'm not going to feel comfortable at
the end of the day going that was my day so for me
was always just putting myself in the in the highest positions highest
part of the of the of the deal where i
could flourish that's all i really look for in life i
don't want gordon ramsey good i don't watch the shows because i don't watch
(56:35):
tv to be angst okay i don't want the competitions don't mean anything to me
i want to learn something at the end of the day you know and if he does a show
where he's teaching one-on-one stuff that i haven't seen before i'd watch it But I don't,
I've not watched the Food Network since I got on. I don't watch any.
I don't, it's like a teacher coming home and watching a teacher's show.
You're not going to teach that. You want to find something else that's the escape part of your life.
(56:58):
So I'm, you know, I'm still happy. And I told you, there's a lot of good guys
out there right now. A lot of good guys.
You dropped a lot of heat, brother. I love the honesty and the transparency and everything.
So before we wrap up, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wanted me to ask you?
No, you know what? I've given you an open book.
(57:18):
I told you once when you reached out, you know, I've told you,
I've seen this before and I go, I don't like to push my way onto people's platforms.
That's not my thing. You know, when it's my time, it'll be my time.
And this is a natural evolution. It really did work out.
Serendipity here actually is at play. And again, if there's anything that you
ever need and you need me to, you know, be on your behalf in the court, I will do so.
(57:44):
You know, you have the same easygoing, confident, funny kind of attitude and
personality that you have now from when I met you back in 2002.
And I love the fact that you stay curious, you stay learning.
And I think that's what we all need to do if we want to level up our lives.
(58:04):
And I truly believe that we're all naturally curious, creative,
resourceful, and whole. We're never broken. We don't need to be fixed.
We have those natural things within us. And Rob, I want to acknowledge you because
you've demonstrated these four things throughout your career.
You have this curiosity.
You have this ability to bounce back and this resourcefulness.
(58:27):
And I think I just wanted people to kind of understand that you got to this
level because you were not out of alignment in those things. You were in alignment.
You stayed curious. You stayed learning. You stayed, you know, creative.
And those are the things that got you to where you are.
Wow, that's the exclamation point on that.
(58:49):
I'm ahead of period now. Oh, thank you very much. You know, I,
you, sometimes you don't know, like I said, I, I, I'm purposeful with my word.
I, I try never to mince them too much. I swear way too much,
but I only did one, I think in this thing.
But one thing I do remember in life is that, you know, if you can't see the
goal, you can't achieve it.
(59:11):
So there's no, there's that all of this stuff is, it's just a waste of time.
Got to be singular in that approach. It has to be the North Star.
Find it, walk to it, run to it, whatever.
You know, moonwalk to it. I don't care how you do it, but get there.
That's all I tell people. Just keep pushing because I'm not going to.
My last push will be my last day out. So, Rob, two final questions I ask all my guests.
(59:35):
The first one is, what does the word grind mean to you?
Grind for me is something I use daily. It's the word ethic.
It's your ethos. It's the way that you matriculate your way through life.
As if, again, you know, back to that North Star, that grind is not going to happen by just looking.
(59:57):
You got to follow it with footsteps.
And that's what I do every day. Just keep moving. Whether I physically move
or mentally move, I'm always in the same position.
How do I get this? Where I get this? How do I do this? Just keep playing and
keep playing and don't forget to play and work hard in between.
That's it. And the last question I have for you is what does gratitude mean to you?
(01:00:19):
You know, gratitude is something that I don't believe I've truly given to my
life because, you know, I always believe that you deserve whatever you get.
Gratitude to me now at this point in my life is like the appreciation,
the understanding of someone else's perspective.
A lot of the times when I was, you know, closed minded about something is just
because, you know, I didn't see it from your perspective. You had a bad day.
(01:00:42):
You come to work and I'm here now giving you crap and not realizing that maybe
all I need to do is say, hey, how are you today?
Give me a pound. Just different things. Now that, you know, I'm not a clinical psychologist.
I don't go see a shrink. I don't know that there's anything wrong with that.
But I will always say, dig deep into yourself because all those answers, they're there.
(01:01:04):
They're just waiting for you to ask the right question. People are afraid of the answer.
Rob, thank you so much for being so open and transparent and honest.
I know people are going to find a lot of value in this conversation.
Please let people know how they can connect with you and where they can find you.
They can find me online. But again, unfortunately, I'm 57 years old.
(01:01:25):
On my Instagram somewhere, Chef Rob Rainford, I think. Twitter, same thing.
And what's that? I'm not on Facebook anymore because somebody hacked me and
I don't have the energy to go back.
Yeah, yeah. Don't worry. We'll make sure that people have all of your social
media and where they can contact you. We'll put all that in the show notes in the description.
Look, anybody who's listening, I hope that you found some value in this conversation.
(01:01:49):
I hope there were some takeaways for you to not quit, to push through anything
that is holding you back, that you just got to push forward.
You can make things happen. You're never too old. you're never too left far
behind there's always a way so thank you so much for tuning into this episode
of the grinding gratitude show i'll catch you in the next episode take care everybody.
(01:02:14):
Thanks so much for being my co-host on this episode of the grinding gratitude
show i really appreciate you i hope that you learned something and you're motivated
to take action and get on your grind didn't that go by fast if you want more
head over to grindinggratitude.com for for show notes and more information about this episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and subscribe and leave a rating
(01:02:36):
so more people will tune in.
And let me say this, there's something special about you.
Grind until you find it, be grateful.
Music.
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