Angelo Esposito [00:00:02]:

Welcome to Wisking It All with your host, Angelo Esposito, co-founder of WISK.ai, a food and beverage intelligence platform. We're going to be interviewing hospitality professionals around the world to really understand how they do what they do. Welcome back to Wisking It All. We are here today with Shawn Walchef.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:25]:

Shawn is the founder and CEO of Cali BBQ. Cali BBQ Media hosts, I think five shows, but I'm going to let him say the name of the shows. I can't even remember them all, but really, really smart guy knows a lot about the hospitality space and the media space. So, Shawn, welcome to Wisking It All.

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Shawn Walchef [00:00:41]:

I appreciate it, Angelo, thanks for having me on. Hopefully the listeners, whoever is tuning in, will get inspired to turn whatever business they're in into their own media business. We believe that no one's coming to tell your story, and there's never been a better time to learn how to tell your story on the Internet. Entrepreneurs, business owners were really good in real life. You can't be a business owner unless you can convince another human of your crazy idea. What we're not good at is talking about that crazy idea and publishing it on the Internet in modern form. So hopefully we can get uncomfortable and share some of those secrets today.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:19]:

That's awesome. Super excited to get into it. I think a good place to start as always. Maybe to just give people a bit of I'll never do it justice. I want you to maybe explain bit of background. What is Cali BBQ then? What is Cali BBQ media? Just hearing it from your mouth and then from there we could kind of go through the journey.

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Shawn Walchef [00:01:38]:

Sure. So I launched Cali BBQ in 2008, at the height of the economic recession. Picked a terrible location. They tell you, location, location, location, had a terrible location. But it became the greatest gift because of the community that we built, the hard times that we went through and the stories that we learned how to tell that Barbeque business. Doing Barbeque on the West Coast is very difficult. We have a lot of transplants that live in California and live in San Diego that come from the Barbeque meccas of the world. And learning how to make craft Barbeque is hard.

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Shawn Walchef [00:02:12]:

We made a lot of bad brisket before we learned how to make great brisket. And on the media side of our business, we told a lot of bad stories on the Internet. We made a lot of bad Facebook posts, a lot of bad podcasts, a lot of bad videos before we realized that essentially no one was coming to tell our story. I mean, once we built the profitable side of our business. Our Barbeque business, 15 years, we've done over $35 million in sales. We have five locations currently. Two stadium locations, two ghost kitchen locations, and a full service restaurant and sports bar, which is essentially our master smokehouse and media center, where we do kind of a hub and spoke model, where we smoke all of our meats and then distributed them daily to the ghost kitchens and the stadium locations. We are trying to get more Barbeque to more people, leveraging technology to do that.

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Shawn Walchef [00:03:06]:

The problem with Barbeque is it takes time and it takes expertise. We are leveraging relationships that we have with toast, with Doordash, with Uber, with the ghost kitchens, to get more Barbeque to more people so that people don't have to wait in line. Barbeque takes a lot of time to make some great brisket and great pork and great spare ribs. But if you can do it really well and you can get it to people on their terms, then that provides what we call digital hospitality. Hospitality in real life is making a memorable moment, turning a stranger into a raving fan. What? The best businesses on earth are doing that not only in real life, but they're doing it online, so they're understanding that. Omnichannel, it doesn't matter what the platform is. You need to have a presence.

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Shawn Walchef [00:03:54]:

You need to tell a story, but you also need to communicate with your guests and build a relationship.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:59]:

Well said. Wow. And I think for our listeners, one thing that's always interesting is to kind of learn how you got to this point. Were you always a restaurant guy? Did you grow up in that world or just walk us through that journey where. What got you into this space? I guess, yeah.

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Shawn Walchef [00:04:16]:

I mean, I currently own the restaurant that I bust tables and wash dishes in when I was 13 years old.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:22]:

Wow.

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Shawn Walchef [00:04:23]:

I never met my father. I was raised by my Bulgarian grandfather, and that was the biggest blessing. He made me work in the restaurant over the weekends when I was young, when I was 13. And while all my friends in La Jolla were going to the beach or playing sports, and I resented it. I hated it. I didn't want to be in the restaurant business. I didn't want to work hard or do the work that was required to be in the business. But it's the greatest thing that my grandfather did was exposing me to hospitality and exposing me to the experience of watching people come into a restaurant that they didn't own, but acting like they owned it.

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Shawn Walchef [00:05:07]:

It didn't matter the age, it didn't matter the background. People would come in for mom's birthday or grandma's birthday or an anniversary, and they would say, I want to sit on the patio at my art table. And their table was their table because they felt connected. It was their special place. And that special place is something that we're always searching for. That's the community aspect of what we build and why we build it. And it's how do you connect with people, not just in your village? Because we obviously have to care about the four walls of our restaurant and our micro communities. But if you publish what you do in your village, there's people all over the world that own restaurants.

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Shawn Walchef [00:05:48]:

There's people all over the world that own bars. And it can be a lonely place. As a restaurant owner, it can be a very lonely place. Asking, how do you raise capital? How do you open your second store? How do you better do inventory management? How do you do all these things? Asking for help is a hard thing to do. Restaurant owners, we spend all of our time solving difficult problems, all different types of difficult problems. And usually we do it on ourselves, but do it by ourselves. But asking another restaurant owner, how did they do it? Which is why I love shows like this, is we can share the secrets. Yeah, I will talk to a restaurant owner anytime and tell them, don't do what I did or do it faster.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:33]:

Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, one thing, just like a little parallel on the WISK side, and one of the reasons, again, this is about you. But just one quick anecdote of what inspired me to start WISK what eight, nine years ago now was. I realized so many restaurateurs got into the business because of their passion and they love it. Like you said, the connection side and the hospitality side, and then maybe even being their own boss. But then what ends up happening is they don't realize how much other stuff they need to do that they didn't anticipate. And it kind of goes from like, I'm going to be my own boss to I'm working seven days a week, 15 hours days kind of thing. And that sucks because there's so much time and energy spent in excel and doing things that labor costs and cost of goods sold and prime costs in general.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:18]:

And just there's so many, like you said, operational locations, legal, whatever, and hiring, staffing, whatever it is. And we realized, like, man, that sucks because you're going in and then there's all these things you didn't kind of anticipate. And so I love the fact that you're super open about this and then willing to share because I think a lot of our community and our audience can definitely take some of these nuggets away. One thing I'd love to maybe highlight is what got you. So it sounds like you've been at. At a young age, 13 years old, you probably learned everything behind the scenes, right? All the ropes. What made it so, like, in 2008? Was there something specifically said, okay, I want to open now. It's time to open my own joint? What was that shift in 2008 where you're like, I'm opening my own spot? Yeah.

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Shawn Walchef [00:08:01]:

I mean, it really was an opportunity. There was a property that my grandfather used to own. It was leased out to a previous restaurant owner. They weren't doing a good job. We sold the actual property, and the new owners knew that I had worked in the restaurant, that I had a restaurant background. They said, are you interested in taking over the spot? At the time, there was an inactive liquor license, type 47, full liquor license. It was a breakfast concept, and we thought, if we activate this liquor license and bring it to a breakfast concept, add dinner in an area that was underserved, that we could do something cool, unique, and special. And being 26 years old, I thought, yeah, instead of doing real estate, let's go and build a sports bar, a sports entertainment company, and we weren't even doing Barbeque when we first opened.

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Shawn Walchef [00:08:55]:

It was a breakfast concept, a dinner menu that was all over the place. The Barbeque came because we wanted to do a community event. We wanted to raise money for local youth sports. We kept getting all these fundraising requests, help us fundraise for this team or this sport, and it became so much that we're like, let's just do one event, and let's focus our time and our effort and get other businesses involved so that we can raise money. That turned out to be an annual spring Valley tailgate and Barbeque festival that we did for ten years. Wow, ten years. We raised a lot of money, and we learned a lot putting on that event. Thousands of people in front of our restaurant.

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Shawn Walchef [00:09:34]:

Barbeque restaurants from all over San Diego would come and sell their Barbeque in front of our Barbeque place, and people go, why would you do that? And we believe a rising tide lifts all ships. I mean, we're in San Diego, craft beer capital of the world, one of the few meccas of where craft beer originated. And it was because people collaborated. Stone became better because of the ballast point. All those things were things that we saw, and we knew that no one makes the same Barbeque. Everyone's Barbeque is different. Everyone's Barbeque is unique. And we built some really strong relationships because we were willing to think outside the box.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:11]:

That's awesome. And I think one of the things I'm super excited to get into the content side, but before we jump there, I'd love to just talk a bit about some nuggets, maybe on the entrepreneur restaurant tour side. So when you opened up, like you said, you made a ton of mistakes. One of the best ways to learn is by your own mistakes. But sometimes you can also learn from somebody else's mistakes. So any kind of key mistakes that you remember that, and I know there's probably a lot, I mean, there's a lot of mine too, but any key mistakes you can remember kind of when you took it over in those first few years, in those first few years that you can maybe share with our audience. Any nuggets?

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Shawn Walchef [00:10:46]:

Sure. I mean, one of the dirty words in any business is insurance. You never want to pay for insurance. You don't have the money to pay for insurance until you need insurance. We learned the hard way, we've been sued multiple times. If you don't have insurance, if you don't tender that insurance early, you don't have the right protections, then you could lose your business. We were very fortunate that my attorney, Chris Roberts, who still helps us to this day, was very adamant about securing the proper amount of insurance for the business, even though I always resisted him and told him, I don't want to spend that money, why do we have to spend so much money? But then when things went wrong, we actually could tender a claim, whether it was a claim where very early on, back in 2008, 2009, we used to run a ladies night promo and we got sued for running a ladies night by men that said we were violating the Americans versus Disabilities act and that almost, they wanted over $50,000 in the lawsuit. And that would have put us out of business.

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Shawn Walchef [00:11:59]:

But we figured out a way to not only get insurance to help us retain coverage, to retain an attorney, to help us fight it, but to settle. And because we settled, we were able to continue the business.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:11]:

Wow, that's crazy. Talk about something I would never expect. That's nuts. And then, so I guess now that you're building that business, I think online you call it the I don't want to butcher it. So you could probably recap, but like trying to be the Amazon prime for.

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Shawn Walchef [00:12:34]:

Mean, the. The premise is to make Barbeque easy. Barbeque is hard. Making great Barbeque is hard. And once you figure out how to make great Barbeque, what happens? There's a lot of people waiting in line to get the Barbeque. And then once you're out. You're out. We want to leverage technology with our relationship with toast, with online ordering, with juicer for dynamic pricing.

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Shawn Walchef [00:12:56]:

We want to figure out the best ways to take care of guests that are excited to try our Barbeque, that come from wherever they come from and they can guarantee because they ordered ahead of time.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:06]:

That's awesome. And right now I'm trying to just envision the logistics right now. Is it that they can order ahead and pick up at your locations, or is there also, like, delivery happening right now that you guys are doing?

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Shawn Walchef [00:13:18]:

Yeah, we do delivery locally, so local delivery through Uber Eats and do. That's why we opened up the ghost kitchen location, so people don't have to drive from all over San Diego, they can actually go to a more hyper local location. But yeah, the idea is ordering things from your know, making it as easy as possible, the least amount of resistance so that somebody that loves our Barbeque can buy our Barbeque and then makes it easy for them to order it again.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:47]:

Yeah, that's awesome. And so just kind of changing tune. I know. One of the things I'm super excited to talk about with you is the media side of things. And I love the fact that you alluded to content creation and things kind of sucking in the beginning. I've been going through that journey. It's funny, my realization, and you summarize it really well. So I have a feeling most people end up going through this thing, but it's like, just keep kind of post.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:13]:

This is my two cents, but keep posting every day and just find one thing to make it like 1% better. Was it my audio? Was it my video? That content sucked. And you look back in 30 days and you're like, man, that was cool. And then you look back in 60 days and you look back, and the more you look back, I'll look back at this and be like, I could have done such a better job at these interviews, but the only way to do it is to do it. There's no other way except to just start. But I love to hear kind of your journey with the content side because I think that's one area, as you alluded to, that there's a massive opportunity for these interesting restaurants and restaurant owners to share their story, but they might just not know, how do I start? Right? So let's jump into that. How did you start when it came to the content side of sharing your story?

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Shawn Walchef [00:14:54]:

I used to think that if you're so good, they can't ignore you. If you make something so amazing, people can't ignore you, and they're going to come and write about you, put you on TV, put you on radio, right? It didn't happen. We built something amazing, something that had never been built in our community. We never made any of the big lists that they put out regionally for Southern California or San Diego, for Barbeque or restaurants or family style restaurants. And we just said, well, we need to just tell our own story. And by telling our own story and starting really poorly, because nobody starts well. If anyone thinks that a YouTuber or a TikToker or a podcaster or anybody that's doing online storytelling does well in the beginning, you're just joking. You're kidding yourself.

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Shawn Walchef [00:15:48]:

Everybody's awkward. No keynote speaker was phenomenal the first time they put a microphone and put them on a stage. The only way that you get better is through repetition. The recipe that I share often when I give keynotes or when I talk on podcasts is the answer to the Internet is easy. And it's that people want quality first. Quality never comes first. You will never make a quality LinkedIn post, a quality Instagram reel, a quality YouTube short, a quality blog post first. The answer is quantity plus speed plus consistency equals quality.

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Shawn Walchef [00:16:30]:

Quantity, speed, consistency. Day in, day out, consistent, persistent pursuit of making the craft of storytelling better. And the most important thing is to remove the logo. We have a subjective feeling towards TikTok, towards X, towards Facebook, towards LinkedIn. I don't need to be there. I don't like that platform. It makes sense. Annoying.

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Shawn Walchef [00:16:52]:

I don't like the notification. It doesn't matter. That's where people are. Just go to the App Store and look at the most downloaded apps. The most downloaded free apps. Guess what? That's where humans are. Humans in your village, in your community, in your city, people that you want to connect with. And if you don't connect with them, that's fine.

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Shawn Walchef [00:17:09]:

You can continue to do business. But five years down the road, you're not going to get any better at online storytelling. And if you're telling me your website doesn't matter now, I don't know what happened during the pandemic to not wake you up to the fact that your website is important and it's not something that you do once it's a publishing vehicle. Every single business is a media company. Whether you choose to look at it as a media company is completely different. Because why do we market things? We market things to sell things. How do you sell things? You sell things through stories. One of the other things that we teach is be the show, not the commercial.

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Shawn Walchef [00:17:46]:

No one wants to watch a commercial yet. All these brands spend all this time and all this effort to make one video to put on YouTube, to put on their website, one video on your website one time, three years later, no, every single day you need a video. And then three years later, after you've made over 1000 videos, you'll actually be making quality videos.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:10]:

Yeah, it's funny because it's two things I want to share. One is, yeah, regarding the quantity, quality, I think you nailed it. I've always had this thought, but I find that Alex Hermosi and you as well, actually, you wrapped it up really well. But Alex Hermosi said it great. He was like, do quality, do quantity, excuse me? Until it becomes quality. So in the beginning, don't even worry about quality, just do quantity. Say like, I'm going to post one video a day for like 90 days. Cool, those suck.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:39]:

And then you'll figure out quality. And then obviously the end of picture is, can you do quality and quantity? And that's the goal. But I think you nailed it there. It's like one thing that just on the personal journey of posting every day that I've learned is there's so many little nuances that you don't know, that you don't know. You can read online and how to do a good podcast, but until you just start doing it, you're like, oh wait, I mumble shit. I get awkward when I'm holding the camera and there's people walking by. I kind of shy away and you kind of pick up all these little things or like, man, that camera was shaky. I should probably get some type of stabilizer.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:11]:

That's super annoying footage. And you just keep kind of improving, improving, improving. And the hardest part is just, I think staying consistent. But going back to you, I'd love to hear because again, we have a lot of restaurants that we work with listening. And I think like you said, the ones that will take this step and take it seriously and start thinking about content or doing content are going to gain a massive advantage. So what would you say is like a good way to start, right? You're a QSR somewhere, listening. We have clients all over the world, but let's say Canada, US, you're listening. You're like, this is intriguing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:43]:

I want to start posting. I don't know where to start. What do I post? Do I post my staff cooking? Like, what do you know? They might not have that inspiration. Can you give me some guidance or give them some guidance on maybe how to approach this idea of being the show, not the commercial.

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Shawn Walchef [00:20:00]:

So there's two. I'll give you the beginner, and then I'll give you somebody that's more advanced.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:06]:

Okay.

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Shawn Walchef [00:20:06]:

And if you're a beginner and you're not producing social media that you like, that you're excited about, that's not making you uncomfortable. Where do you start for your restaurant? Well, you start with what we call smartphone storytelling. So you don't need a video team. You need what you already have in your pocket. Doesn't need to be an iPhone, can be an Android. No excuses. You have everything that you need in your pocket. Everything that happens in your business.

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Shawn Walchef [00:20:34]:

It might be boring to you. It is not boring to other people. If you think about Instagram, if you think about Facebook, if you think about YouTube, we see the same things all the time. If you're a burger restaurant, we see pictures of burgers, we see pictures of fries. What are videos that you can do to show versus tell? Show somebody the actual assembly of the burger. Show somebody how the bread gets into your restaurant and why you take care of the bread. Well, why would anyone care about that? People care about you and your story and the attention to detail that you and your team put to taking care of that bread all the way until it hits the plate in front of the customer. I was fortunate.

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Shawn Walchef [00:21:17]:

One of our shows that we do is called restaurant influencers. It's on entrepreneurs. We've reached 25 million people since we launched. I have incredible people like John Taffer from bar Rescue, his PR team reaching out to us to get him on the show. Recently, in his episode, he talked about, we're not in the restaurant business. We're in the reaction business. What does that mean? Well, not a reaction to something going wrong, but how do you create a reaction to something that goes in front of a guest? Well, before they even get into the four walls of your restaurant, they're on the Internet, they're on Google, they're on Yelp, they're on your website, they're on Instagram, they're on TikTok, they're on all these platforms looking, why should I bring my wife and my kids to this? Know, when I go out to eat, I look at TikTok. And why do I look at TikTok? Because it's showing versus telling.

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Shawn Walchef [00:22:13]:

I can see from a TikTok creator, because most of the time, most restaurants aren't on TikTok. They're not doing video. So I've got to find a food influencer that's gone to the restaurant, tag them, and then I can get a visual of, this is somebody walking into the restaurant. This is somebody where they sit down at the bar. This is somebody where they sit in the family style section. This is the most popular menu item. This is the dessert. Don't forget to do this.

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Shawn Walchef [00:22:36]:

Or they have this cool mural, whatever that is. That's showing versus telling. So anybody that's listening, I say TikTok, and I only say TikTok because it makes people uncomfortable. It makes business owners uncomfortable because they think it's just a dancing app. And all it is is a video app. It's a short form video app. And the better that you can get now, in 2023, video is not going anywhere. But if you can get good at short form video, taking the video out of your pocket.

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Shawn Walchef [00:23:06]:

We have a video that's done. 1.5 million views on our Cali BBQ TikTok page.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:11]:

Right?

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Shawn Walchef [00:23:11]:

And it is not edited. I literally took out my iPhone from my pocket while Bernice, our pitmaster, was pulling ribs off of the smoker. She's literally just pulling ribs off of the smoker.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:23]:

1.5 million. That's amazing.

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Shawn Walchef [00:23:25]:

1.5 million views, Shawn. No trending sounds. I'm not dancing in the video. No fancy tags. Literally just Barbeque coming off the smoker.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:38]:

That's amazing. You know what I find super interesting, and you alluded to it right there, but it's like, sometimes the videos you think will do well, and you spend time on whatever, don't do that well. And then the videos, you're like, I'll just post it. To post it surprise you. And you're like, those are the ones that get a hit. And so what's your take on? How do you encourage people to just post and not be so self conscious of, I'll post this one, I won't post that one. What do you say when coaching people or helping people so they kind of maybe step outside that comfort zone?

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Shawn Walchef [00:24:08]:

I mean, the most important thing, when you start to go down a content creation journey, whether it's for yourself or for a brand, and I encourage people to do it for both, because the more uncomfortable you are, the more you'll grow. And this is a long game, not a short game. People are like, what's the Roi of starting a podcast? Or what's the RoI of starting to make? You know, one of my friends, Dean Labe, who I have on our clubhouse calls, he talked to me. He's a salesman. And he said, well, you should start talking to them. About Coi, I said, what's Coi? Cost of inaction. What is the cost of inaction? Of investing your story into the Internet to figuring out how do I get my brand, how do I get who I am as the founder, who I am as the owner onto the Internet so I can connect with more people, do bigger business, find an investor, find my next employee, find somebody that's going to strategically help our business, scale our business. No one's coming to tell your story.

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Shawn Walchef [00:25:08]:

You have to get uncomfortable. You're going to sound dumb. You're going to look dumb. All your friends and family will make fun of you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:15]:

Yeah.

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Shawn Walchef [00:25:17]:

If you have butterflies in your stomach right now, I will tell you that it will continue, but you have to have the courage to. What? One of my guests, he came on my show and he said, you have to have the courage to start a digital flash mob. How do you start a flash mob?

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:33]:

You got to be the first one to dance, I guess, or the second.

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Shawn Walchef [00:25:36]:

You got to be the crazy person. No, you got to be the crazy.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:38]:

Person in the middle of the town square.

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Shawn Walchef [00:25:41]:

That's dancing. You got to be willing to dance when no one else is dancing and have everyone make fun of you until you get one other person to go.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:49]:

Exactly.

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Shawn Walchef [00:25:50]:

I like this. I'm into this. And then two people become four people.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:54]:

Exactly.

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Shawn Walchef [00:25:55]:

Four people become 16. That's how it happens.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:58]:

Yeah. It's so true. It's so true. So you spoke about the beginner one, which I love. Everyone's got a smartphone. Start filming and you'll just figure it out because you can debate till exhaustion or you can just start posting and be like, all right, that sucked. This did better. This sucked.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:11]:

And you'll naturally just get better and get signals from the market. Let the market decide instead of getting in your own head. What about the more advanced way, since there's a more advanced kind of maybe recommendation you have for people who are.

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Shawn Walchef [00:26:23]:

Bit further along, so there's something really cool happening. There is what we call the creator economy. The creator economy is people that are on the Internet, YouTubers, podcasters, TikTokers, Instagrammers, people that are really good on Facebook, that can tell stories and that can build community. So they're technically influencers. Creator economy influencers. They're looking for brand deals. The other economy is the one that's been around since the beginning of time, which is entrepreneurship. Business owners and business owners are really good, especially the best ones at making what I call B to C content, business to consumer content.

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Shawn Walchef [00:27:01]:

So restaurants that are listening to this, that are already really good at promoting their drinks, at making videos about their food, at showing their community, at talking about the events that they do, the charity work that they do, they're already really good on Instagram. They're already really good on TikTok. Well, what they don't do and where I see the huge opportunity of where we're going is what is called the business creator economy. Are you willing to tell stories about your vendor partners? B to b content. Business to business content. So I made a toast unboxing video with my business partner and general manager, Eric Olifson. Him and I made a toast unboxing video when we switched from Aloha point of sale to toast during the pandemic. And I had people that said, why would you do that? Why are you wasting your time? Why are you wasting your resources? I go, because I know that I'm not the only restaurant owner on earth that's on Aloha, that's making a contemplation of switching to toast.

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Shawn Walchef [00:27:59]:

And if we make a toast unboxing video, that's absolutely absurd and ridiculous. It's hardware, it's software, but it's helping improve our restaurant into digital hospitality. Well, that toast unboxing video was shared by Chris Comparado, the CEO of Toast. He shared it to the entire company.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:15]:

Wow.

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Shawn Walchef [00:28:16]:

On the company all hands. They started the meeting by talking about that toast unboxing video.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:21]:

Wow.

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Shawn Walchef [00:28:21]:

Now I'm on the toast customer advisory board. I was invited to the toast IPO. So they had 20 different restaurants that were invited. We were by far the latest adopter of toast at the IPO. We were by far the smallest restaurant group that was at the IPO. Why? Because we were willing to tell the story about toast, about their technology, about how they help our restaurant, how they help other restaurants. And now we do content for toast. They are the primary sponsor of restaurant influencers.

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Shawn Walchef [00:28:53]:

I'm launching another show with them coming up soon. I do work with a lot of other hospitality tech brands and hospitality brands, restaurant groups, helping them be the show, not the commercial.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:06]:

That's amazing. That's a really cool story. I had chills when you said it to be that an unboxing video and kind of like said, right? Like, you launch a video, people are like, what's he doing? And then all of a sudden, once it hits, then everyone else is always, I always knew Shawn had it in him, but at the beginning, it's like everyone's like, so awkward. Look at those videos.

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Shawn Walchef [00:29:25]:

It's easier to make fun of the person dancing to crazy person dancing to music in the town square.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:30]:

Yeah, you know what? I think it was Gary Vee who said it, but there's a quote I really like from him. He says something along the lines of, you know what? I'd rather be made fun of, but be the guy on the field than be the person in the stands. And that's, like, my mentality as well. I'm playing the game. Make fun of me. Cool. But I'm playing. You're not playing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:47]:

You're sitting in the stands.

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Shawn Walchef [00:29:47]:

So it is the man in the arena.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:49]:

Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. And so maybe just to get a little tactical, I don't know. I know we have a couple of minutes left, but just get a little tactical. Maybe you can share some of this, maybe not. But just for the people that want to get a bit more advanced, what would maybe a content flow or pipeline potentially look like? So the idea is obviously record show versus tell and try to record more things. Pull out your phones. Do you have any tips on procedures? Is it something where you're like, hey, try to film once a day and just upload? Or do you have any tips on, like, hey, invest in this, buy a decent mic.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:25]:

Do you have any quick little tips to maybe guide people on how to streamline this process?

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Shawn Walchef [00:30:32]:

The easiest thing would be to recommend every single person that's listening to create a show. Your long form show that happens every single week, right? No matter what. Every single week you have a manager meeting and you go to your manager meeting. What can you come up with that gets you excited enough that you want to have a conversation about? And how do you record that conversation? That long form conversation becomes your YouTube show, becomes your TikTok show, becomes your Instagram reel. But this way, no matter what, 52 weeks out of the year, you're updating your website. You have something cool to send out in your email newsletter. You have something different and unique to add to the marketing that you're already doing. But how do you become a show? You become a show by contemplating.

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Shawn Walchef [00:31:18]:

And it could be crazy. The problem is everyone looks at marketing of how do I directly get a customer into my chair? That's not what you have to do. What you have to do is be you. The same reason that you opened up the business in the first place. You convince someone in real life of your dreams, your hopes, but you stop telling that story, right? You got to tell that story to the know. Why is a comedian like Kevin Hart or Chris Rock or Jerry Seinfeld why are they so good when they go on a stadium tour? Because they're telling original jokes. No. Told the same joke over and over and over and they got better at telling the same joke.

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Shawn Walchef [00:31:56]:

Every single person needs to get better at telling who you are and what do you do? Why do you do it?

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:03]:

It's true and it makes me think it's funny. I did a little challenge. This was more on the personal side. So like you said, I'm trying to do the wild side, which is having fun doing it. And then I started doing a bit of a personal podcast and personal, just more about entrepreneurship. It's called anything and everything. And the idea is like most entrepreneurs are willing to do anything and everything to make their business survive. And I'm having fun doing it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:22]:

And one of the things I decided to do was this 30 day challenge of just waking up and getting sunlight first thing in the morning. And the challenge was super interesting because I made the goal and maybe this will help some people. So I'm just sharing a nugget. That worked for me. I'm not an expert, but this nugget helped me as I went from, I am not going to look at the views, I'm not going to measure my success on views or likes. I'm just going to measure my success on if I can post every day for these 30-day challenge. And that was it. And by making that the new goal, it took so much stress off my back because I wasn't looking at like, oh, this one only got 300 views.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:56]:

Oh, this one got 1000. And you're going through this emotional roller coaster. I said, you know what my win is? If I could post every day and by doing it, what's amazing is I learned so many things throughout those 30 days that I wouldn't have learned by googling or watching YouTube. You just pick up by doing. And so that's one thing I maybe want to just share. And I don't know if you have any anecdotes where that's happened for you, where you just start doing and then you pick up so many things that you didn't know. You didn't know.

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Shawn Walchef [00:33:21]:

So much of what we believe with digital hospitality, what we believe with smartphone storytelling goes back to a conversation I had with one of my best friends. His name is Adam Harris. He's the co-founder of Cloud Beds. So a very successful hotel technology company and he's grown that company to, I believe they have over 800 employees and they're in 120 countries. It's very impressive what he's built. But before his cloud bed days, he was managing websites for the California Restaurant association, the San Diego chapter, and we had a different website provider. And I remember having a conversation with him, asking him, I'm having trouble updating our website because we would host fight nights. Mayweather, Pacquiao and I wanted to come up in the search results.

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Shawn Walchef [00:34:09]:

We paid a lot of money, about $3,000, because of our capacity to host these events. We charged cover, but I needed a boxing fan to know when they googled, where can I watch the boxing fight in San Diego? I needed to come up in the top of those search results. The company that I was using took too long. I would email what I wanted. They would email me back three days later. It's updated. It wasn't the way I wanted. I would email back three days later and Adam's like, dude, you need to get on WordPress.

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Shawn Walchef [00:34:41]:

I'm going to teach you how to do WordPress, and I'm going to tell you that it doesn't matter what the technology is. If it isn't good enough for an idiot to figure out how to use it, it won't last. Don't be scared of technology is what he told me. And that principle of not being scared of getting your hands dirty. Everyone wants someone else to do it. Everyone else wants someone else to go into Instagram, someone else to go into YouTube, someone else to go into the podcast RSS feed like that. Yes, you need to allocate resources, time and resources. But there's something magical when you actually have to do it yourself, because no one's you.

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Shawn Walchef [00:35:16]:

And once you do it, and then once you see it, now, all of a sudden, for me, I'm not a technology expert yet. I sit on technology boards of some of the most powerful technology companies and restaurants. Why? Because I'm willing to go into a Starbucks app and talk to other tech companies about the things specifically in the Starbucks app that I like. The things that I like in the Amazon app, the things that I like at the department of Motor Vehicles. Why can I book an appointment at the department of Motor Vehicles? Why is it so easy for me to do? Well, they've prioritized what we call digital hospitality. They've made it easy, but they've only made it easy for me. And now it's at a point where I go and I book an appointment, I get there, there's 200 people waiting in line, and I get anxious. I'm like, oh my God, did I do something wrong? No, I'm the only one that made an appointment, 200 people didn't even go on the Internet and make an appointment.

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Shawn Walchef [00:36:09]:

But that's the world that we're living in. If you have the courage to look stupid, sound stupid, to play with an app, to post, to try out a technology, you can get to a very valuable place where your feedback matters. My son just started first grade, and they have an app that they do homework on. And I made a bet with one of my close friends who knows who I am and knows how I'm like, I will probably be sitting on the board or be doing content for this company because there's a bunch of things that I don't like about the app, and I'm sure no one's had the courage to tell them.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:42]:

That's amazing. That's awesome, man. So, Shawn, that's super helpful. I think for people listening, there's a lot of good nuggets they're going to be able to take away from today. One of the big ones being like, just start posting content and you'll figure it out. But for people who want to kind of dive deeper, because I'm sure you go deep into some of these concepts, love to give them the resources that you can share. So maybe you can just walk through your website where they can find you, where you're at, your different podcasts, YouTube, whatever. This is your chance to just really tell people where they can learn more and follow you and all that good stuff.

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Shawn Walchef [00:37:13]:

Yeah. The easiest place is just to go to. I mean, you can start at Instagram. It's at Shawn Walchef. S-H-A-W-N W-A-L-C-H-E-F. It's the same on all LinkedIn x threads. TikTok. If you follow me, I will follow you back.

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Shawn Walchef [00:37:31]:

We believe a rising tide lifts all ships. And as a content creator, sometimes it's a lonely place. So it's nice to have a community. That's why we meet on Clubhouse. So every Wednesday and Friday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, the social audio app clubhouse. You can find the digital hospitality room. You can find me.

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Shawn Walchef [00:37:48]:

But come up on stage. We say, stay curious, get involved, ask for help. Curiosity brings you to a podcast. It's why you've stayed this long and you've listened this far. But then now you have to do something about it. What do you do? You post a video, but where do you find a community? You find it with us on Clubhouse. Come and join us. We have tech founders, we have restaurant owners.

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Shawn Walchef [00:38:09]:

We have sales professionals, marketing professionals, content creators, PR people, we all come and we talk about a topic of the day. But more importantly, we get to learn about who you are.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:19]:

That's awesome.

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Shawn Walchef [00:38:19]:

So no matter where you are in your restaurant journey, do that. And then finally, the shows that we do is restaurant influencers. You can find that on entrepreneur.com or any podcast platform. The other one is digital hospitality. You can find that show on all podcast platforms as well.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:35]:

Amazing. Some great resources. So for everyone listening, that was Shawn Walchef from Cali BBQ. Cali BBQ Media and amongst many other things, toast advisory board. I don't even remember the full list, but restaurant media guy, super smart, super fun, super kind. This is the first time I actually meet you, and I got to say, man, it's been a pleasure and I don't think it's going to be the last.

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Shawn Walchef [00:38:58]:

I think we'll probably appreciate what you're doing. The amount of calls that I'm on where founders don't have the courage to do what you're doing, and that's build a community around content and share your story. They don't see the ROI. I give them the COI the cost of inaction. So I appreciate what you're doing building in public, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you or anybody that listens amazing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:24]:

Well, thank you, Shawn, and thank you for joining us on another episode of Wisking It All. Feel free to check out WISK.ai for more resources and schedule a demo with one of our product specialists to see if it's a fit for you.

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