About Matthew Brunken

I like problems that are specific. "Cleaning" is too broad to be a business; cleaning a gas grill so it is safer and cooks evenly is not. Each of my companies started by narrowing a problem down until it was something I could explain in a sentence and do to a clearly higher standard than the do-it-yourself version.

That is how Husker Grill Cleaning works: grills only — gas, charcoal, pellet, smokers and flat-tops — with a defined deep-clean process and a gas safety check every time. It is also how Sleep Sanitation started. My wife is sensitive to mold, and when her organic mattress needed cleaning we didn't want a wet method anywhere near it. Dry vapor steam was the answer, and a mattress-only company grew out of it.

The thread through all of it is standards. A service is only as good as the process behind it, so I write processes down, train against them and publish what customers get. That idea led to the American Grill Service Institute: an exam-based certification for grill service, with credentials that renew and can be publicly verified. I explain why in why trade certification matters.

It also led to FairlyKnown. When customers hear about a local business, they search for it and for the person behind it. I wanted a straightforward, honest way for people to make that search accurate — which is what this site is.

I'm a runner, and I take it seriously: I've won BRIN championships and a number of races, my marathon best is 2:45, and I coach other runners.

I'm a runner at heart. Much of my thinking happens on Nebraska roads, and the habits running demands — consistency, sensible pacing, recovery and honest measurement — are the same ones that keep a small company healthy. I wrote about that overlap in what running taught me about running a business.