Cali BBQ Media

Where he and I got introduced many, many years ago, but Shawn, for those that have been living under a rock and have no idea who Shawn is, and I say that from, from the, from the goodness of my heart, because truthfully, you're all over the place, man. And I love watching the, the success you've experienced over the last few years. But, uh, but why don't you introduce yourself a little bit about who you are to our audience that might not know you.

We have one friendly ghost kitchen. Um, in sports arena. And then we have our master smokehouse, and we've been doing this for the last 15 years. Back to the storytelling side. Uh, they tell you location, location, location to open up a great restaurant. Uh, I picked a bad location at a bad time, opened in 2008, uh, height of the economic downturn. And we picked a really difficult location and a really difficult business category, which was restaurants. Um. We struggled.

You know, the first couple years we struggled significantly to add a dinner menu, add a sports bar. It was a breakfast concept that we took over. Eventually we started doing barbecue, um, on the west coast in San Diego. Doing barbecue was laughed at because we got a lot of, I. People from Texas, from Kansas City, from Memphis that barbecues religion. So they kind of thought of it as sacrilege for people in, in San Diego to be cooking barbecue. But, uh, found a pitmaster, a mentor.

His name's Gene Goche. He competed professionally and, um, ran contest. He helped us put on a charity event, uh, in front of our restaurant, an amateur barbecue contest. And he said, if you wanna learn how to do barbecue, I'll, teach you the right way to do it. And low and slow. We learned how to cook ribs. We learned how to cook brisket. We learned how to cook. Tri-tip. Slowly added it to our menu, became Cali Barbecue.

Built a pretty good business and I thought, you know, four years in, five years in, somebody's gotta come and tell our story. Right? You know, maybe the local news has gotta come out and find out what kind of great barbecue we have. We have people coming from, there's 3 million people in San Diego. There's gotta be somebody. Somewhere that wants to tell this story. Maybe an even the newspaper. Back in the day, that was still a thing. Union Tribune, where are you?

Come out and tell our story magazine. Come tell our story. Nobody came, and that was the biggest blessing for us because we realized at that time, I. You know the iPhone came out in 2007. We opened in and so many people talk about pivoting during the pandemic. You know, we started pivoting. We didn't pivot in the pandemic. We went all in on the internet.

I knew that anything that came along the way Facebook, I made fun of my business partner for being on Facebook. 'cause I thought he was trying to pick up girls, you know?

Um, so our first podcast, long form storytelling weekly basis, uh, we started a show called Behind the Smoke, and it wasn't really a barbecue show, even though it was me and my co-host, Derek Marzo, who owns a butcher shop. It was more about marketing. It was more about storytelling, it was more about business. When I went to business school, I thought. That I was gonna get some great business lessons.

The only time that I was moved inside of business class was when an entrepreneur came on and told me their story. I.

This, this portion of the story and really we're our business, the business that that, that ultimately funds much of what we do at Restaurant Technology Guys, custom Business Solutions in 2024 is celebrating 30 years in business. And it's only been the last couple of years that we started to tell our story and it's amazing. That, you know, how powerful that is. The best things that we remember, whether it's from the, you know, the, the, the classic books of the Bible and, and these other things.

They're coming from stories of people's lives and things that have changed. And so talk me through the journey, Shawn. 'cause barbecue's awesome and products are amazing and you guys have a fantastic product. And at the same time, you, you, you were under the impression, and I think a lot of people are at, at this place where they think, Hey, if I build it, they will come. If I build a great product, they will come and. That obviously you found not to be true. You guys struggled with it.

So talk me through the journey of how you kinda built that out and really where it came from. Because again, you're doing fantastic work and I know there's a lot of people that are, that are, that are cheering, cheering you on watching

Charla was like, what are you talking about? He's like, the answer is to be so good they can't ignore you. If you're so good at your craft, people will tell other people about your craft, and I believe that's true. I also believe that no one's coming,

And I would go on the news and I was terrified of the news anchor, you know, on Fox five coming up and asking me a technical question about barbecue that I couldn't understand, that I not only couldn't understand. But couldn't explain. I didn't wanna look stupid on TV because I'm not the barbecue guy. I'm not the chef, I'm not the pit master.

I'm smart enough to get out of my own way and to use my iPhone to make a video of the pit master and now live stream it on TikTok, so hundreds of thousands of people can see it. But in the beginning, I had to get out of my own way and realize. Listen, Shawn, they're not asking you to explain how to properly cook Tri-tip. You can work your way through that. But what they wanna know is what's the idea behind this charity barbecue event that you're doing?

And the more that I leaned into that telling that story, the more I realized that not only can I tell the story on local news, but I also have Facebook. I also have Instagram, I also have Twitter. I also have all of these tools to communicate to our community and to anyone that cares. Hey, we're putting on a local event for charity. We're we want more amateur, barbecue teams to come and sign up for this event. We want local vendors, local businesses, we need local bands. We need local sponsors.

Let's just start sharing and asking the internet for help. You know, there's never been a time where anyone can be a publisher. Everyone can be a media company. You don't. You don't need to ask for permission to start a YouTube channel. You just need to have the courage to look stupid and sound stupid, and the willingness to learn along the way. You know, the thing that I, I, I, I'm fortunate, I get asked to go speak at a lot of conferences, trade shows.

I talk to sales organizations, marketing teams, and the biggest fear that people have is that they want quality content. That's what prevents them from posting.

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The only way you get good barbecue is by making barbecue and screwing it up a lot of times until you get it right. The only way you get good content is by doing it wrong. Which leads me down that path, Shawn, of, of you're one of those guys that that your entire life. Going back to even your early story is about continuous improvement. It's about getting better. It's about investing in yourself so that you can give away to others. Where does that come from?

Talk to me a little bit about that origin story. 'cause I think it's cool for our listeners to hear it if you're willing to share. And then let's talk a little bit about what that looks like day in and day out. Because I think. All too many restaurants go, ah, I'm too scared. And then they don't go do it.

But it was his relentless curiosity of reading every single book in that village where he had to go and walk to another village to find more books that led him down this path where he became a medical doctor. He became successful. A re a real estate developer. And he raised me as his son and having him raise me as his son and teaching me this relentless curiosity, this relentlessness, to ask the dumb question that no one else wants to ask. You know, I remember when I was, I. 21 years old.

I was, I went to University of Colorado, so I, I left San Diego and um, I studied abroad. I applied to go study in Spain and I was studying in Spain, writing, uh, emails and calling my grandfather from, uh, literally the center of the center of Alicante. A Laconte is right on the Mediterranean coast. And, uh, my grandfather was asking me, Shawn, I need help. I need help telling my story. I wanna write my own book.

I. I can either go back to Boulder or I can transfer to San Diego and help my grandfather. Ultimately, my father tell his story and I made the decision literally sitting at the Plaza de Toros, which is where the Bull Bull ring is in the middle of a La Conte saying, I'm gonna help my grandfather with his story. It's more important than going back to my friends in Colorado, and at that point.

My grandfather's like, I'm gonna come pick you up when you're done with your semester, and we're gonna travel from Western Europe to Eastern Europe so that we can get materials for my book. And when he came to pick me up, I'll remember going to every single city, whether it was in Paris or whether it was in Germany, or whether it was in Bulgaria, where he's from. Every single place that we went, all he cared about was making sure that he was the first person on the bus.

He was the first person next to the tour guide. He was always the one asking the questions, and as a young, you know, 21-year-old kid, I, I almost got embarrassed because my grandfather kept asking questions, but it was because he, he didn't ask those questions for him. He was asking him for me.

You are one of the most amazing giving people out on the internet, whether it's your staff that's making barbecue or it's the, you know, it's the people that, that you're serving in the restaurants or it's others that are in the space. Is that really coming from your grandpa? Is that really where, where that comes from? Because.

Again, I, I do, I recognize that you have that philosophy that, you know, the, the, you know, the rising tide lifts all shifts, and at the same time, it takes energy and it takes time to give of yourself. The way that you do is that philosophy come straight from, you know, straight from that 20, 21-year-old Shawn back in Europe.

You know, one of my favorite quotes is from the great philosopher Winnie the Pooh.

I have some very successful friends, friends, family that paid a lot of money to go to the high school that I went to the bishop school, a hundred kids in my graduating class, but at the same time, I bust tables on the weekend in Spring Valley, which is a working class neighborhood.

You know, these universal keys to the test, and if he could ask them the right question, he could get information that was gonna make our experience traveling that much better.

Talk to me a little bit how you balance that as a father, as a husband, as a business owner, as a media guy, as a guy that's having to balance the, the speaking tour and, and all of that. Because, you know, for some of our, some of our listeners out there that are running restaurants, they're exhausted. They don't know how to make payroll. They don't know.

And I watch somebody like you that's running your restaurant, that's raising kids, that's traveling with your wife and living and doing it all publicly, and the faults you put out there too. But you've gotta balance that. So talk to me a little bit about where, you know, how you balance that, that portion of your life. 'cause it's, it's tough.

I mean, I, I too have, you know, for any very long time listeners, everybody knows I've got four kids at home and, and you know, it's a lot running a business and, and managing a household and speaking. Running a podcast and at the same time, I don't know that I would have it any other way. So talk to me about how you balance that.

Um, I had two uncles, I have a mom yet I was the one, the oldest grandchild that was asked to essentially take care of my grandfather's affairs as he was aging. And I remember a close family friend said, Shawn, you know, this is a lot for anybody to deal with. I love you. I care about you, but I don't think that I can offer you objective advice. Have you thought about going to see somebody?

And this was right when we started opening up the restaurant and. Working seven days a week, 365 days out of the year. Um, you know, I was drinking at the time too, and I told her, this is just the only way that I know how to live. She's like, well, when you travel on a plane and they're going through the safety instructions and the oxygen mask comes down, what are you supposed to do if you're traveling with, with, with anybody, with kids? I didn't have kids. I didn't have a wife.

But the answer for me was, you'd be chivalrous as a man. You take care of everyone around. You put the mask on the kids, put the mask on the woman next to you, she goes, no, you have to put the mask on yourself first, because if you don't have oxygen, you're worthless to anybody else. You know? And like for what she told me, what she taught me, right now I'm in therapy for myself. I go to couples therapy for me and my wife. I'm also in a program of recovery for my sobriety.

There's a lot of work that I do on a weekly basis. On a daily basis. I have a sunrise gratitude routine where I go outside and, uh, listen to music and, and walk and watch the sunrise. Like there's a lot of things that I do to maintain the craziness, you know, and I, I share, I share the struggles, I share the, the, the good things. But you know, there is, you know, nothing as balance. Like I'm, I'm just lucky that I have today.

You know, for me, I'm lucky that I have the opportunities that keep getting in front of me, but it didn't happen overnight. You know, people see the things that, you know, we're doing. Recently, I just interviewed Amman Nang, the co-founder of Toast, um, for Restaurant Influencers, a show that we do on Entrepreneur Magazine. It reaches, you know, millions of people. Um, I did that at Toast Sales kickoff call. And people look at that and go, well, how did you do that?

I'm like, it, it didn't happen overnight.

Leaky roof or the, you know, the, the, the fire pit that was too hot and you burned a whole bunch of ribs or you know, the crappy day that you have with your wife. 'cause all of us go through it. But everybody that's in this influencer world wants everybody to see this perfect, you know, perfect day, perfect world. And you're, I don't say that you're the opposite 'cause you do have fantastic days and you have crappy days, but you're choosing to put both out there.

Where, where did that decision come from?

There's so many different entities that we've worked with, and it comes back to, well, what's the message? What's the message before we put out the message on the internet? And for me is. Why are we practicing when we, let's just be who we are. If I'm just who I am, if you and I have this conversation on, for a podcast, on, for a YouTube show on for TikTok, it's gonna be the same conversation that we have if you come down to Spring Valley for a rack of ribs.

It'll be the same if you bring your kids and we're at Coronado Beach and we're hanging out like I am who I am. Put the cam, the cameras are always on, like the cameras should always be on. And if they're always on, sometimes it's gonna be good. Sometimes it's gonna be tough. Sometimes it's gonna be hard. But like by publishing content and by not bullshitting people, by sharing, Hey, I've never met my dad. Like the first time that I publicly talked about never meeting my dad.

I never seen so many people reach out to me because they never met their dad. I had no idea. I had people on Facebook that I haven't talked to, I didn't even know I was connected to saying, thank you for sharing that story. You know, my grandparents raised me, or my mom was a single mom. All of these people. Why? Because the truth vibrates the fastest, and most people don't want to talk about the truth.

'cause you know, you and I have talked about sobriety as well. I'm, I'm on that same journey and, you know, there's people that knew me back before I was, and you know, it's amazing. You know, we went through an adoption journey. It's amazing how many times I've gotten a chance to talk to people about that. And it's hard. I was on the phone with somebody earlier today that went through the journey and it's hard. They're in the middle of it and they're in a, in a crappy spot and.

Talking about that publicly and letting people know that it's not always easy. It's not all rainbows and sunshine because life is hard, but that's where that toil and that struggle, you know, when you think about the best movie that you ever watched or there's always some struggle in there and, and that's where you can connect with those people. And so. Shawn, you've turned this into a full business though, man. Like this is the part that I also think is so cool.

You know, you're still making ribs, you're still smoking brisket. You're, you know, you're killing it on the, on the restaurant side, you know, go Aztecs, by the way, former, you know, San Diego, Aztec, um, you know, and, and, and you're also now have this media company that you're out doing this and, and it. You know, at least publicly it feels like that's spending, you're spending as much of that time doing the me media pieces. What does that look like?

What does that look like For somebody that wants to tell that story from both the inception to where you're at today?

You can use all of the tools that are available to us, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, apple Podcasts,

They need it to accomplish whatever dreams, hopes, and goals that they have.

And in this world of telling your story, you've gotta fall down sometimes. Um, you've gotta figure it out, but. You, I, I, I speak for, for both of us. I am certain there's hundreds of people in the world, if not thousands of people in the world that look at us and go, how do I get to there? How do I get a YouTube channel? How do I get a, and they want to know. I mean, I've, I've taught dozens of people how to build a podcast the way that I do it.

Not that mine's perfect, not that it's the most amazing thing in the world, but. It's out there. Um, just had a call, call with a, a college MBA that I met at Disneyland who asked me, she's, she, she went and we were talking and line at Disney. She asked about, what do I do? I said, you know, I work in the restaurant technology. She goes, oh, how do I learn more about you? And I. I told her about my, you know, social media handle.

She found the podcast, listened to a couple episodes, had all of these questions about how to start a podcast, and I'm like, you know, what, what does that influence look like and how, how does it get out there? Yes. It's embarrassing at first when your kids, you know, my kids are all teenagers or most of 'em are teenagers. They like to play it in the back of the car, and my voice will be in the back of the car while we're on a road trip just to gimme crap.

But at the end of the day, how many people have we helped make their world a better place because of the stories that we're telling.

You know, the amount of restaurant owners that I have empathy towards, that were in the same place I was on the manager schedule until my son was born. Like, why did I do that? I did that because I didn't have somebody saying, Shawn, you don't need to do that. You created a job for yourself. You don't own a business. You're not a business owner. You're the worst manager on the schedule. Get off the schedule. But I had to wait till my son was born to, you know, get outta my own ego.

So I'm the only one that can do NFL Sunday and set up the TVs because I know which fans are gonna come in and which game needs to have audio. That's so dumb. That's dumb. Get out of your own way. Get out of your own way and find systems. Use technology to figure out ways to think bigger. We didn't get into this business to make pennies and to struggle and to figure out how to pay payroll. I mean, we've all been there. How do you get better?

You get better by asking questions, by not doing the same thing over and over. Every day, over day, week over week. Start listening to shows like this. Start consuming content. You know, you're the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. Well, who are you surrounding yourself with? If you're surrounding yourself with

I've watched you do it publicly with quite a few people, but we get hundreds, thousands of restaurants that sit and listen to the show and they want to be in the place where you are not, you know, maybe not necessarily out flying to go do, you know, press releases and all of those kind of things and be on the speaking gig. But they want people to come in and learn about the great pizza that they make.

They wanna learn about the great chicken that they, and the reasons that they buy chickens from this one farm, or, or they have wine from this one winery. Talk them through what, what does it look like to engage not only with your media company, but even with you to, to learn more about these things and sit at your feet and, and be at a place where they can get to, to, to make that same influence and that same impact on the world for those that, uh, that, that they wanna

But back to your question, we put out free content about storytelling on all the platforms. Restaurant Influencers is literally a show dedicated to storytelling and hospitality, how to become a media company. So I try to have the best storytellers on Earth come onto that show. Um, it is hard 'cause no one's gonna care in the beginning. You know, I had a, I had a guest, um, on digital hospitality, one of our shows come on and asked about why do you do what you do?

You know, this digital hospitality, this thesis of yours, that every business needs to be digital first, especially brick and mortar businesses, and every business is in the hospitality business, whether they know it or not. You know, when you started telling that story. Nobody was listening. I'm like, yeah, no one was

If you're willing to find two people this year that believe who you are, what you do, why you do it. And those two people are willing to go tell two other people next year. But most people don't want that. They want the ROI. Shawn, I want the ROI now, if I'm gonna invest time and effort every day to make one video for TikTok, for Instagram, for YouTube, you know what's the best advice to start? The best advice is to go on TikTok. We're recording this in 2024, is go live on TikTok today.

Start an account your own personal name. Your restaurant underneath it or your tech company underneath it, and start, start telling me every single day, what are you doing? What are you building? Bring us into your meeting. Put it up. Put put the, put it on TikTok live. Bring us into the kitchen. Share exactly what you're doing. You know the idea of an open kitchen where they remove a wall and you get to see the chef cooking that's available now. It's called TikTok. It's called Instagram.

Like go on Cali barbecues, TikTok, or Instagram. I have videos that have millions of views. I didn't do anything special. Those haven't even been touched by my media team. My video team, it's literally iPhone of me next to Bernice, my pit master. She's just fabricating ribs, wrapping ribs, dipping them in butter, putting sugar on 'em. Millions of views. I didn't have to pay TikTok one penny for that.

Are the ripples that we leave behind. Those are the footprints that we leave behind on people that we don't even know we're doing when we are brave enough and bold enough to put things out there

I get it. I get it. Anybody that's in the space, I, I totally get it and I know that that's not the right way. Not even that, it's not the right way to do it. I'd rather consistently know that I can commit to one episode a week. Getting good quality content, good quality guests out into the space. Now it's a second medium form. 'cause for the first 200 episodes it was all just audio.

I went from audio to video late last year and now it's AI clips and, and cutting 'em down into little pieces to be able to do that. And I'm learning how to do it myself to begin with and then I'm gonna move on. And so if you were to look at my goals for the year, it has it on there. It has that on there. And so. Absolutely. I set my goals and I set my intention that says, this was my plan for this year was I, my plan for 2023 was to launch YouTube.

My plan for 2024 is to get those things cut down into all of these social media clips to, to help blow up RTG and, and quite frankly, I. Selfishly just want to, in not even influence. It's not even about influence. It's about giving. It's about giving back. I've been privileged enough to, to live in this world for close to 30 years.

Yes, I've sat with the CEOs of really large brands, huge brands in boardrooms, learn things that I never, I remember that one of my meetings, you know, similar to your conversation at, at 23 or 24 of 'em sitting. With the CEO and founder of Cheesecake Factory, one of the most successful casual dining restaurants. And I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing in this room. Why am I here? But at the end of the day, if I don't give that back and I hold onto it, it's for nothing.

But now, if I go out and tell the world, tell my team, tell the others that are out there, it really makes that difference. And so that for me is, is sharing that, um, you know, sharing that story and getting that, getting that word out there. So thank you for asking. Thank you for pushing me. 'cause, uh, I know that's, you're, you're really quite good

Um, we have some other brands that have reached out 'cause they wanna launch their own shows. I mean, the, the premise of everything that we do is be the show, not the commercial. Nobody wants to be a commercial, but everyone

And you know, when I meet people like you that are doing the work, that have had conversations and, you know, been able to do so many cool things because of podcasting and storytelling, I know that we're just beginning, you know, it's like people say the podcasting market's saturated, there's 2 million podcasts. Of the 2 million podcasts, a percentage of those are active. Those ones that are active, they just stop. So if you're willing, it's the consistent persistent pursuit of your potential.

If you're willing to wake up every single day and be a little bit better storyteller and digital storyteller, that is everyone's, you can't be in business and not be a good storyteller, otherwise, you probably wouldn't go out of business. Right now the true tectonic shift is how well do you translate that into digital, like remove the logo. I don't care if it's Facebook and meta, Twitter, x TikTok, Instagram, none of that matters. We're not trying to hack the algorithm.

We're just gonna go audio, video, words and images. We're gonna put in as many places as possible, as consistent as possible with as much speed as possible, and eventually, if we get a little bit better each time. We're gonna start putting out some stuff that people are, are gonna be impressed with. I go, we need that. How can we collaborate? How can we work together?

You work in public and the people that look up to you and want to, uh, you know, that admire you and want to drive towards that as a husband and as a dad, it's also fun to watch because again, we're connected on, on multiple forms of social media.

I've gotten to see you interact with your kids Last year at Murtec, I watch you walking around with your wife and kids, you know, so in general, it's fun to, fun to finally get on an episode after so many years of kind of knowing each other in and around the space. So thank you for, uh, for making the time my friend.