This week, Nick explores the diverse paths to financial success in the food service industry, emphasizing that the key lies in identifying a single, effective approach. His guest, Shawn Walchef, a leading voice in restaurant storytelling and digital hospitality, shares insights shaped by years of experience. We examine the power of narrative in building authentic connections, highlighting Shawn’s innovative “smartphone storytelling” method, which has helped numerous leaders boost their visibility and influence. 

Tracing his evolution from restaurateur to media creator, Shawn shares the strategies that have allowed him to go beyond traditional marketing. 

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Nick: nick.portillo@portillosales.com

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one. On the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo, and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it. Welcome back to Titans of Food Service.

I'm your host, Nick Portillo. Thank you again for joining me here on another episode today.

I'm Jim, joined by a true force in restaurant storytelling and digital hospitality, Shawn Walchef. Shawn. He's the host of Restaurant Influencers, a podcast and video series produced by Cali Barbecue Media and published by Entrepreneur Media.

The show has surpassed 71 million views, featuring executives, operators, and innovators who are shaping the future of restaurants, hospitality and tech.

Through his digital hospitality framework and what he calls smartphone storytelling, Sean has helped countless leaders stop being invisible online and start building authentic connections at scale.

What started with a simple toast unboxing video at his own Cali barbecue restaurant has grown into one of the most visible creator brand partnerships in the industry. Teaming up with toast entrepreneur Pepsi, Uber Eats, and more. At the heart of all of this is Sean's belief that stories make big things happen.

And today we're going to unpack his journey, his framework, and his lessons for anyone trying to build trust, attention, and impact in the modern restaurant world. Without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome Shawn. All right, Shawn, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.

Man, I appreciate you taking time to come on and meet with me.

Really excited to not only talk to you, but hopefully inspire some of your audience that are listening, watching, viewing wherever.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my restaurant and media storytelling career, so anything that I can share that will hopefully help help someone listening, that that's what we're here for.

I love it. I love it. So tell me, how'd you get into the food business?

Food business grew up. Actually, this is a picture that I keep close, which is me at 13 years old. For those watching on video.

I love it.

Have a stupid chef hat and washing table. Washing dishes at the dish pit. So I actually own this restaurant.

So the dish pit layout is a little bit different, but the sink, obviously the water is all in the same spot. And yeah, I got started early on. 13 years old, family restaurant, working on weekends, busting tables, washing dishes. Hated it.

We took over a breakfast concept in a very difficult location. And bright eyed, bushy tailed thinking it was an easy job.

Like yeah, just add a liquor license and add dinner service and a part of San Diego that was underserved. If you build it, they will come. And turns out they don't come. They didn't come. And we, we learned a lot in the process.

But we've been open for 18 years. We have three locations now. We have a stadium location at Snapdragon Stadium. We have a location, a QSR location on the San Diego Navy Exchange.

So we're the only local brand that's serving barbecue fresh every single day. Competing with the Panda Express, Pizza Hut, Subway, all the big boys. And yeah, we love what we do.

We, you know, do serve slow smoke barbecue fresh every single day. Once we're out, we're out.

That's incredible. It, it's so interesting. You don't want to have people come on and like I, I asked like, how did you get into the food business?

How did you get into this, into this industry?

Because I feel like a lot of times when you're going to school, you learn it about, you know, they teach you about an attorney or being a doctor, being, you know, all of these different professors being a teacher, but they never really talk about food service. And it's a gigantic industry for sure.

I mean, whether you're on the restaurant side or the manufacturer, distributor, you know, there's so many different plays within the industry. And you know, it's funny, people like yourself are either born into it, maybe have some sort of family tie. That's how that's myself.

My dad, he worked actually at a meat market, then he went to Cisco and then got into the food broker business, which is what we do now.

But there's a lot of people that like, hey, I just kind of, it found me in a way where they didn't, maybe they went to school or they had aspirations to do something else. But here they are here in this industry.

So tell me about, about your early days.

So the new owners, they were looking for owner operator to come in and spice it up and, you know, make it successful. We knew that there was an active community that had believed in the breakfast business.

And we thought if we added a dinner business and full liquor license and sports bar, that we could, you know, create something in a part of San Diego that was an underserved community. And it took us time. You know, we struggled in the beginning getting people to know who we are, what we did, especially barbecue on the West Coast.

San Diego is a transplant town. So people come from Texas and the Carolinas and St. Louis, and when you say barbecue, it's. It's religion for them.

So thinking that someone from California would take the time and the effort required to learn the craft of slow smoke barbecue, we had to over. We still overcome those, to be honest with you, we still overcome them.

But once people come in and they see the dedication and the craft that we've, you know, spent 18 years learning how to slow smoke brisket every single day, overnight pork butts every single day, ribs every day, like all of those things we make literally daily. And because of that, we have an, you know, an amazing community that supports us and has kept us in business for 18 years.

For anybody that would go onto your LinkedIn or see you anywhere on social media, you know, you're really good at broadcasting your message out there. I know we talked a little bit off camera about, you've got different shows and podcasts that you do.

What are some tactics that you've learned over the years of getting and broadcasting the message of your restaurant out to, you know, the local market?

So anybody that's watching this or listening to this, the number one thing that I hope you take away is that no one's coming. No one's coming. Like, I thought that if you build it, they will come.

I thought if we opened up a restaurant, we serve phenomenal barbecue, we had great hospitality, we gave back to the community. People from San Diego would care.

People in the pandemic, they say, oh, we pivoted and we started, you know, doing online ordering and started doing social media.

Like we already believe we wouldn't have been open if it wasn't for social media and if it wasn't for controlling our website, learning how to sell things online and updating our blog and figuring out how to podcast and do a YouTube channel, none of that stuff, we would be out of business if it wasn't for it. So people ask, what's the ROI of doing social media or storytelling? I wouldn't be here talking to you. That, that's number one.

I wouldn't be sharing my message. I wouldn't be, you know, doing deals on a media side with companies like Toast and Restaurant365 and Pepsi Uber, Uber Eats, Google.

I mean, we're asked to film content and share stories about some of the biggest brands in the industry. And a lot of these opportunities are also global.

A lot of them have taken us in different countries where we're paid to shoot really cool restaurant stories because we believe that storytelling is the number one thing. And the fact that, you know, right now, who watches, do people watch more CBS or on Instagram?

Oh, Instagram, I'm sure.

Do people watch, you know, NBC more or Facebook?

Yeah, those, those old media, you know, more traditional media. I think that's definitely becoming a thing of the past, or at least it's not as big as what you know, is available.

And how much does it cost? If you wanted, if you're a restaurant, you wanted to run an ad on NBC, you wanted a 30 second commercial.

Yeah.

I mean, we're talking about a six figure, six figure ad buy plus the creative. Like it's crazy.

Yeah.

If you took, if you took, if you took that money or a fraction of that money and you dedicated it to telling your story in video form every day on social media and just documenting who you are, what you do, why you do it. You can go to Cali Barbecue's page and you can see like we spend all day, every day sharing our about us.

You know, every single restaurant that's listening to this, you have an about us page on your website. You got an about us section on your menu. But how often do you update it? Probably not since the last time you updated your website.

Probably not since the last time you printed your menu. Social media is about us every single day. And more importantly, it's not just about us. It's about the community. It's about our why.

You know, it's about why we do the things we do, we don't need to have a viral video. We just need to connect with people that are close to our community that want to think about where are they going to eat.

You know, I have kids, I have an eight year old boy, a six year old girl. Me and my wife, we go shop locally frequently.

When we see something on Instagram, when we see something on TikTok, when someone sends me a YouTube video, like we'll go check out a restaurant. That's the world that we live in.

My uncle, he owns a meat shop here in Orange county and it's, it's the oldest, you know, meat market in Orange County. It's been around for over 40 years.

And he's, he's a good example of somebody that's constantly wanting to figure out how do I get my message out there? You know, he's, if he's the original or the oldest meat market, like, what a cool story to tell.

But he, he always gets caught in like, how do I get that message out? How does somebody start?

Because I think he looks at, there's instagram and there's TikTok and like how do I do this sustainably over long periods of time, like essentially scaling this up, essentially getting that message out. You know, you mentioned you're doing videos every day, all day, pushing out the content. How do you do that?

So the one of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Ash, which is start where you are, do what you can with what you have. So we teach restaurant owners what we call smartphone storytelling.

As great as it is that I have a media company and a production team and we do drone shots and multi camera shots.

When you start, you can't start there, but you can start with what you have in your hand, which is a smartphone, whether it's an iPhone or an Android, you have 4K ability to take that camera, download an app like Facebook and go live. You know, the problem is we think we want quality first. Like we want to make sure that we're on brand. But that's not what the Internet wants.

The Internet wants you like the original creators. You know, we live in a creator economy.

Somebody that has a lot of followers on YouTube, a lot of followers that listen to their podcast or a lot of Instagram follow the creator economy. Entrepreneurs and business owners are the original creators. Like you had to sell your story to open up your restaurant.

You had to sell that crazy idea that you had to get someone to invest, a family member to invest, a bank to invest.

Whoever you pitched, you had to sell the landlord that you were going to actually make money and pay your bills, like you had to sell, the first GM that you hired. All of these things you had to do in real life.

But then when it comes to, like, how do you tell the story on Facebook, people all of a sudden don't know what to say. And it's the difference between, you don't need to be an actor, you just need to be you. You just need to document what you're doing.

You just need to literally go throughout your day and have somebody film you doing what you do every single day. And the easiest part is that that costs nothing. Like, literally.

You can ask your wife to do it, your husband to do it, anyone that's close to you, your kid to do it, your aunt, your uncle, ask your team. You know, asking for help, I think, is probably one of the biggest pieces of advice that I personally, I reinforce.

What my grandfather taught me so long ago is that asking for help. There's so many people in your community, probably on your payroll right now, that understand Instagram better than you do, that understand Facebook.

And they're probably wondering, why doesn't our restaurant do more videos on Facebook? Why doesn't our restaurant do more videos on TikTok?

But if you don't ask them if they want to do it or if they're good at doing it, you think people are going to offer to voluntarily do it? No, they're not. You, as the leader that's listening to this podcast, you have to have the courage to say, this is important.

Storytelling in the modern era is important. And I'm going to remove the logo. So so much of the problem with social media is that people have a subjective feeling towards Facebook.

Like, oh, I like Facebook, or I don't like Facebook, I like Instagram, or I don't like. The bottom line is it doesn't matter what the logo is. It's just a storytelling platform. And your customers are on all of the logos.

They're on all of the logos. And the easiest way to get your message in front of people is to use video. And short form video is, you know, the easiest way to get started.

I like how you break that down and just make it simple. You also touched on something that I.

That I feel a lot of times when I, because I post consistently on LinkedIn, that's really been my channel of choice.

And I think sometimes I get too caught in the desire to be perfect, that the content, every single time has to, for whatever reason, has to be, you know, in a nice box With a nice bow. It's got to look really good. But sometimes maybe it's just getting content out, even if it sucks, you know, it's how you get your message out.

I see you all over LinkedIn and the message gets out there.

But sometimes I've had to overcome and I still get it to this day of like getting too caught in trying to make it perfect and make it, make it read a certain way for you with, you know, having a camera crew. At what point did it flip for you where you started being able to maybe hire people to help with, you know, the content?

He owns Valley Farms Farm Market, which is one of the oldest butcher shops here in San Diego. So they have multiple locations. We built a studio above the butcher shop. It was an audio only podcast to begin with.

But that was really the day that I mark of like, when did Cali Barbecue Media become something?

The reason why we launched it was I just knew inherently that I wasn't alone, that there were other restaurant owners, business owners that were curious like I was, and that there were other people that had done more significant things, had made a lot more mistakes, that if I asked them for their time, would they be willing to share their stories, their failures, their successes? People would share. And in the beginning, no one cared. Like, no one, no one listened.

But I knew that if I remained consistent over time and I got better at the craft of podcasting, storytelling, video production, turning a video into a feature article that now, you know, we have, we have a show on entrepreneur called Restaurant influencers that's reached 71 million people since we've started.

Wow.

And that's, you know, feature article reads, that's podcast listens that video views. We've had Shaquille o' Neal on the show, Emeril Lagasse, Robert Irvine, Rob Dyrdek.

I mean, it's, it's amazing the guests that we've been able to have on that show. But that didn't happen when I started. And I think that's the message that I try to tell.

You know, I'm fortunate to go and speak all across the country at restaurant events, technology events. I talked to restaurant owners every single day. But the message is, in the beginning, no one will care.

And in fact, not only will no one care, but your friends will make fun of you.

Like, you have to be comfortable with knowing that this is the best way to leverage the enterprise value of your brand by learning how to tell your story on the Internet.

Because no matter, whatever platform is your preferred platform, if it's LinkedIn, if it's Facebook, whatever it is, you start there, start with the playground that you're most comfortable with, and start to make video. But the beginning, your friends, your family, they're going to go, what are you doing? Because they did it to me in the beginning.

They go, sean, why are you posting so much about Cali Barbecue? We know you have the restaurant. Like, well, if you know how you know I have the restaurant, why don't you come and support it?

Because we're about to, we're about to go out of business. If you are my friend, how about you come in and pay full price and you don't ask for a discount? How about you come and bring some other friends?

Like, this is the call to action. If you're. And if you don't want to see me post about the restaurant, then just unfollow me, no problem. Yeah, let's call it what it is.

But you have to have the courage to have the tough skin to go. You don't care what anybody says.

What you do care about is the people that are going to listen to your message and go, wow, I love what Nick was talking about. Yeah, like, that's exactly the way that I feel. I mean, how do you have the courage to do it now?

You're doing it every single day and like, wow, how cool is you're doing? You're like, I'm literally doing the same things I was doing before. I'm just sharing the story on LinkedIn so people know what I'm doing.

You look at some of the influencers out there, you know, people like a Grant Cardone or Gary Vaynerchuk or, you know, some of these guys and gals, I mean, in all different channels and industries and their velocity of content that they put out there, it's.

It's unparalleled of how much they're posting, you know, and a lot of times it's, you know, they probably view others of, like, you're just not posting and getting content out there enough.

I listen, I got a chance to attend this seminar and the CEO of, of or the founder of Ugg Boots was speaking, and he was from Australia and He sold his boots as like a surfer. It was for surfers. It was supposed to be like a replacement for a sandal. And you know, here in the US we don't really think of it like that.

And he goes, I, I would go to surf shops in Southern California from San Diego all the way up and trying to build his business. And he said it was very, very hard for a long time. And then he went on Oprah, she tried on the boots, she just happened to try it on.

And then he was kind of this overnight success, you know, which wasn't really overnight, but for you. You know, you mentioned you had 71 million, you know, interactions, views on one.

You know, for one thing, was there something that changed for you that, that clicked, that you, you were doing this a long time, not really getting much traction, and then it flipped.

I mean, I, you know, it's something I tell podcasters all the time.

It, it's one thing to start a podcast every single week and hold yourself accountable to publishing long form content 52 weeks out of the year, no matter what. A lot of people, they start a pod. I mean, the numbers are ridiculous.

When you think about, I think it's like 40% of people that start a podcast publish one episode and quit.

Wow.

Another 70% won't make it to 10 episodes because it's a lot of work.

Like, as easy as it is, because it's never been easier to start a podcast to, you know, go live, to get an RSS feed, to get on Apple podcasts, Spotify. But like, there's a lot of intricate parts that have to happen every single week in order for your show to come out.

And then when your show comes out, you need to make short form clips, you need to make an article, you need a thumbnail for YouTube. Like, there's a list of stuff. Like I said, it's never been easier. You can go to ChatGPT, it'll tell you how to make a podcast.

You, but like, you have to make a commitment that, okay, I'm going to commit to this long form. What's the ROI of storytelling? The ROI is that now you're a media company, you're no longer doing marketing, you're doing storytelling for life.

And if you do storytelling for life and you make that investment in yourself and in your organization of how to build this infrastructure, now all of a sudden, everything makes more sense. Everything you do makes more sense because we have the tools and the technology, like I said, to go live from anywhere, to share a stage.

I go and I Speak at events. Sometime there's hundreds of people in the audience. Sometimes there's five.

But when there's five people in the audience, guess who else is in the audience? A camera person. Whether it's my wife with a. With her iPhone filming me or whether it's my media team, either way, 100%, I will always get it filmed.

Why?

Because we're going to put it on YouTube, we're going to put it on Instagram, we're going to put it on LinkedIn, and it will reach hundreds, thousands, if not tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people, because we understand that we have all the technical technology in our fingertips. So the thing that really clicked for me was actually starting a second podcast. So we had. Digital Hospitality was the first podcast.

We did that for five years before we launched Restaurant Influencers. And by the time we had launched, we had done so many episodes, we had learned so much about how do you optimize? How do you add video?

How do you make it into a YouTube video? How do you make it now into TikTok? Like I said, remove the logo. The logo doesn't matter. What matters most is your commitment to the storytelling.

But once we launched our second show, we started finding the intricacies of scale, of figuring out, well, now we're doing two podcasts a week. Now we have something that's very valuable because we've partnered with Entrepreneur. Toast is the sponsor of that show.

Now, because we're doing that now, the first show becomes valuable as well. And then we start realizing, well, I have a team that's producing both shows. Can we produce a third show? Sure.

Now we can produce a third show for somebody else and teach them exactly what we learned how to do.

Interesting. So as you scale this out, you know, how big do you think it can really get?

Very big. Hundreds of millions of dollars.

You.

You've gotten more locations, you're getting more and more podcasts. And I'm curious, like, how do you continue to get more and more out there? Are you hiring more people or, like, what's your way of getting.

Getting more? Because that's a lot. You know, I do this podcast here. I post every. Every week on LinkedIn. That's a lot of work and effort or effort.

And I'm curious, like, how you're able to build out the infrastructure to continue stacking on top of it.

I mean, I think the, the greatest gift that we have now is that there's a lot of talented people that are looking for work and looking for stable income in the creator economy.

So when you think of, you know, legacy media, people in tv, people in print, you know, newspapers, magazines, people in radio, very talented storytellers. But legacy media, as we mentioned, is losing eyeballs. I mean, we're people are watching Netflix, people are watching Amazon.

Like, you know, all of the viewing consumption behaviors have changed, and because of that, a lot of talented people are out of work.

Well, if you are a modern media company, you have the opportunity to provide stable income to somebody that's super talented, then you can build a roster that can help you scale and take care of other people.

So, I mean, we've been very fortunate to have very, very gifted team and teammates that are experts at YouTube, that are helping us build out our YouTube strategy for our clients. We have experts at podcasting, we have experts at social media, short form clips, short form editing. We have writers on our staff.

We have people that literally just do thumbnails for YouTube. I mean, we're doing that many thumbnails for YouTube that we have somebody that is fully dedicated to thumbnail production. And it's only.

It, you know, back to the point. So the easiest way for me to explain the B2B storytelling opportunity is if you go to the national restaurant show in Chicago.

Biggest show, 55,000 people. We go. We've gone for the last five years, 2,200 vendors.

So there are 2,200 vendors from 130 different countries that come to try to get their products and services in front of restaurant owners. Of the 2,200 vendors, how many of them do you think do a good job on social media sharing their story of who they are and what they do?

Because I represent manufacturers that attend that I'm gonna go with not that many.

Like, from a percentage basis, are we talking 20?

I'm gonna go with under 10.

Probably under 10.

Yeah.

Because somehow we don't believe, as business owners, we don't believe restaurant owners are on Facebook. Like, is that the premise that we're really going off of? That business owners don't watch YouTube, that business owners don't listen to podcasts?

Because you and I both know that that's not true.

You and I both know there's restaurant owners right now on LinkedIn watching something that you posted or something that I post, literally learning from the content.

Yet we have brands that run marketing budgets in the hundreds of Thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars yet have allocated nothing to organic social.

Yeah, you're right.

The greatest trade show on earth is happening right now and it's on the Internet and it happens 365 days out of the year, 24 7. But it doesn't happen if you don't put anything out there, if you don't publish anything.

You're right in that.

In working with the brands that I represent, I don't think I have, I, I have a couple that are very good at, you know, they have full blown marketing teams that understand the importance of social. But the overwhelming majority, probably, let's say 98% of the brands I represent are not doing it at all.

They do the old traditional, you know, they create print, you know, point of sale to hand or restaurant, like here's our products. Or maybe they do some email blasts. But even that's so far, far and few between. It's, it's like they don't grasp it. They don't.

And when people come to me because they see my stuff, they're like, how do you get started? And I'm like, well you just have to like kind of put something out there and just be consistent with it for long periods of time.

When I started this podcast I was like, I'm going to do this for 10 years at minimum. I'm just going to give it a run and I'm going to post every week and see where it goes.

And you know what, it's been great for my business because it gets my name out there. I interview people like yourself who are, you know, very well spoken in your channel of trade.

You know, you're, you're a thought leader and I blast that out there to everyone and that's how I get my content. Sometimes I don't have to, you know, you come and say, hey, here's some great ideas on social media.

For me, I don't, I'm using that content to put it out there. But a lot of times people, they just don't know where to begin or start. And again, I think trying to go back to being perfect and, and I'll.

Give somebody some tactical advice. This is definitely answer, answer to the test. It's quantity plus speed plus consistency will eventually equal quality.

Quantity, yes, plus speed plus consistency will eventually equal quality. And the problem that everyone has, myself included, is that we want quality first. We want quality to go on the Internet when we start posting.

And the best way that I can describe this is I own a slow smoke Barbecue restaurant in San Diego. We wanted quality brisket when we first opened the doors. Guess what our brisket was Shit. It was no good.

When we first started, we had terrible brisket. It was the last thing that we added to our menu.

And the brisket that we make today, 18 years later, is better every single day because we're making it 1% better every single day. We make our barbecue like we make our media. Storytelling is a craft.

You have to get better every single day, and you have to make a commitment to doing it. And it's never been easier. And that's why it's so hard. That's why so many people don't do it, is because we see what we want. We see the quality.

They see your videos, they see my videos, and they go, well, look at. I want my videos to look like. Go look at our beginning videos. Go look at the beginning podcasts, they're bad.

But we made a commitment to ourselves, the consistent, persistent pursuit that no matter what, we will get better. And guess what? The podcasts that we put out today, much better. The YouTube videos, we make more, way better just in a year.

YouTube is one of the hardest platforms, one of the most important platforms for anybody, B2B especially. Yet people don't do it because it's hard, but that doesn't mean that there's not opportunity there.

Yeah, you're right. So you had the, you know, the restaurants, right?

And a lot of the, I'm sure attention on social media is pointing back towards them or towards you as a. As a thought leader, as a brand, which, you know, you're connected to the restaurants.

But now you have these teams that are able to create the content and help you out. You know, writers and, you know, people within specific channels. Sounds like, like YouTube. How did you start monetizing what you were doing?

So the. It goes back to the quantity plus speed plus consistency.

Okay.

We started monetizing once we became really good at what we did, and we started getting partnerships that mattered. So building a case study for a company like Toast, which is our point of sale company.

They said, okay, we'll believe it when we see it. We made a Toast unboxing video. You know, my. My kids, they watch unboxings of like, you know, dinosaurs and dolls.

We made an unboxing video about technology, and I had a Lot of friends and people around me like Sean, no one's going to buy Barbecue because of, you know, you're making an unboxing video.

I'm like, I know that, but I know there's other restaurant owners that are looking at their legacy point of sale system and thinking about switching to a cloud based system like Toast. And I want to answer this question for them. Why did we switch? What were the hurdles? What were the successes? And we shared that video.

That unboxing video got shared by Chris Comparato, the CEO of Toast, at their all Hands meeting. So thousands of Toasters saw Cali Barbecue's video.

Now they use that video when they're talking to prospective clients of, hey, why should you switch from aloha to Toast? Look at Cali Barbecue. And here, this is their 5 minute unboxing video of why did they make that switch?

Now that started a five year partnership with Toast where they're the title sponsor of Restaurant Influencers. So that's a show that we do on Entrepreneur. I'm paid as a creator for Toast. We do events. I'm on their customer advisory board.

I was invited to their IPO. There were 20 restaurants that were invited to the IPO. All of those restaurants more successful than Cali Barbecue.

All of those restaurants have been on TOAST for longer than we were. Yet we were invited because we were the storytellers and we have documents of that day, of them going live and how cool that was.

And now I'm on the customer advisory board and we do all kinds of incredible work with Toast for Toast for Toast partners because they believe in storytelling and more importantly, they just, they believe in restaurants.

That is impressive. I mean, the way that you think about, you know, solving that problem of, you know, how do I build this out?

And, you know, going to Toast and doing the unboxing video, you know, having the idea and the creativity around it and then also having, you know, the courage to do so. I think a lot of people, they don't have the courage to even put themselves out there too.

And I guess kind of the, the theme of this conversation is just putting yourself out there and trying it. In, in all the years you've been doing this, what are some things that you've done that have been that don't work?

I know, like not posting enough doesn't work, right? But like, what are some other things that you've learned along the way that have really helped you grow?

I think the biggest lesson and takeaway was that I hoped that the brand would stand by itself. I. I wanted Cali barbecue, the product to be so good and the logo to be so good that I didn't have to share my story. Because I'm from San Diego.

I didn't grow up in Texas. I didn't grow up in St. Louis. You know, I don't have a. A pit mask. I don't cook the barbecue. I'm the restaurateur. I'm the storyteller.

But once I got out of my own way and realized, like, Sean, you put on an amateur barbecue contest where you shut down the main road in front of your restaurant, you have thousands of people, you invite all of the barbecue restaurants, other barbecue restaurants in San Diego to come and sell barbecue in front of your. Like, why are you doing that? Well, once I realized the local news wanted my story about why we were. Were we doing that?

We were doing it because the rising tide lifts all ships.

We believe that more people supporting craft barbecue in San Diego is a good thing, and the more that we can support an amateur barbecue cook that's a caterer that sells at the farmers market that wants to open up a restaurant. If we can build that infrastructure and that culture, then we all win.

And once I got out of my own way and realized, like, you're going to sound stupid on the news in the beginning and you're going to stutter and you're not going to say the things the way. But it all comes in reps. You know, it's the same thing with speaking on stages, you know, getting up on the stage and sharing your story.

And, you know, it's one thing to be on a panel and have somebody ask you a question. That's another thing when someone gives you the mic and 45 minutes, entertain the audience.

Yeah, that's quite a bit. That's good on you for doing that, too.

I like what you said about bringing other barbecue, you know, essentially competitors in a way to come out in front of. In front of your location. And I never really.

I've read before, you know, definitely on different marketing books and things like that, of, you know, introducing your competitors into your story in a way and talking about them, because nobody else is. Is talking about it in that way.

And it's essentially leveraging maybe some of the audience that they have into your own and becoming a thought leader of, hey, now, I want to go talk to Sean about when it comes to barbecue. Yeah, you're selling barbecue, but maybe there's more to be learned here overall in the story, too.

Yeah.

What about looking down the line, what Are some things that you want to accomplish that you've not yet accomplished?

I mean, I. I have really high hopes for the business storytelling platform that we're building, the ability to represent other brands, to work with other restaurant groups that have legacy stories. I mean, we work with a company called San Pedro Fish Market. Yeah, San Pedro Fish Market. They have a show on Amazon prime called Kings of Fish.

So they are doing everything that we believe and we, you know, wholeheartedly support. We've helped them secure sponsorship for their show.

We know that there's other creators, business creators out there that are really good storytellers, that have restaurants that know that there's brands that want to work with them and leverage, not just the B2C, because it's one thing to, you know, be a YouTuber and have millions of views, but the most powerful thing for anybody that's listening to this is like, business owners are on the Internet. And you don't need thousands of views, tens of thousands of views. You need the right person to watch your video.

We have a YouTube channel that only has 2,000 subscribers, yet the more that we focused on YouTube, the more I show up at the National Restaurant show, or I'm going to the Create Conference, or I'm going to the Murtech Conference, wherever me and my team goes. Every single time, someone stops me and goes, sean, I love your podcast. I love your videos.

I always ask them, which platform One, Because I want to know a true marketer. Like, how did you find me? Like, what did you search? Are you using ChatGPT? Did you use Google? Like, did somebody tell you?

And more and more people are telling me that they found me on YouTube. That's a clear signal to me and me being a dad. Like, my kids watch YouTube. They don't. They don't care about DirecTV. They don't care about.

They don't even care about YouTube TV. Like, I was with my daughter speaking at the US Food show to 5,000 people, and we were up in our hotel room, and my.

My daughter, who's 6, goes, what is happening? What do you mean, what's happening? She's in. In the hotel room, and she doesn't understand what live television is.

She's like, why can't we skip the commercials? We can't skip the commercials because. But that's the world that they live in.

So if that's the world that they live in, we all don't want to watch commercials. Why? Because most of the time, they're just selling to us. But we all want to. We all want to hear a story. We all want to hear a good story.

You're right, Sean, what's the best way for people to connect with you, to find you?

We make it very easy. I'm Instagram's probably the quickest at Shawn P walchef S H A W N P W A L C h e f LinkedIn. I'm. I'm active on all the platforms.

You can email me Shawn Cali BBQ Media.

But you know, if you heard me on this show, and more importantly, if you make it to San Diego, if you're watching this, if you're listening to this, if you own restaurants, if you work in the restaurant industry, please send me a message. I will meet you at the restaurant. We will make videos at the barbecue smoker.

We will send them directly to Nick and say, we heard him, you heard him on the show. How did you find me? And now look what you know, now we. Now we made a friendship for life. So please come out to San Diego.

Come enjoy some barbecue on me. Let's make some content together. And Nick, the same goes for you. I expect to see you in San Diego, man.

I'm in. That sounds good to me, Shawn. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This was fun.

Awesome.