125: Monetizing as an Entrepreneurial Chef with Shawn Wenner and Chris Hill

In this episode, we talk to Shawn Wenner and Chef Chris Hill about some of the common characteristics of the world's most renowned chefs, how to diversify your online income in some really unique ways, and what it takes to make it as an entrepreneurial chef. Hey, hey, hey. It is Bjork Ostrom. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today we are doing one of those double interviews. There's going to be two people on the podcast today, Shaun Wenner and Chef Chris Hill, and they're going to be talking about this new business that they've launched. It's one year old, so they're in the beginning stages, but they've gotten past that difficult first year. And the business is entrepreneurial Chef. It's people that want to be entrepreneurial that are excited about building a business and are doing that in the food and recipe niche. And they come from a restaurant perspective, but they're talking a lot about the business aspects of how restaurateurs and food and recipe business people can be building their business. And the focus for so much of that stuff is on building a personal brand. So they're going to be talking about why that's so important, as well as some other unique ways that you can be creating an income. If this is the world that you live in, if this is the type of content that you're interested in, and if your expertise is in food and recipe development and creation, it's going to be a great podcast interview. And I'm excited to have them both on after being on their podcast recently, which we're going to talk about a little bit as well. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview with Sean and Chris, and we will start it off with the double intro, because I need to do a directed intro for double interview so we don't have to talk over each other. All right, we are kicking off the podcast, and today we have two guests. And whenever we have two guests, I have to be very strategic in directing my questions or directing any conversation to each individually. And one of the hardest parts with two guests is the initial welcome. So I'm gonna divide up the welcome and say, first, Sean, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Bjork. It's great to be here.

Yeah. And then, Chris, welcome to you as well.

Thank you as well, sir. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah. Excited to talk to you guys. The topic of your business is going to be a perfect fit for this podcast. Business is entrepreneurial Chef. You produce a lot of content and have a lot of really focused information. For people that want to be entrepreneurs and they're also interested in the food industry. But before we get to that point, I want to hear each of your individual stories. It's one of the things that we love to do on this podcast is give time for people to tell their story, because I think there are things that people can take away just from hearing a story and a person's story, not just a business story. So, Chris, I would love to hear from you. You've covered a lot of ground in your career starting out, not necessarily in the world of food. So can you take me back to you're coming out of college and not heading in the food direction or the restaurant business, you're kind of heading in, like, the advertising marketing direction. Is that right?

That's right, yeah. I got masters in marketing from the University of Alabama and jumped into consulting work and marketing consulting, strategy consulting, and realized really early on that I didn't want to sit at a desk all day. I wasn't happy with the dynamics with my boss. So I. I looked at kind of where my life had taken me so far. I worked in restaurants in college to make money, beer money for the weekends and things like that. And I said, let's give it a shot. So I had a cousin that lived up in Virginia who still does, and I moved up here to live with him, to work with him. He taught me kind of the behind the scenes of the industry. And then I realized how much I really did love it and how I could maybe apply my business background to that. So he and I shortly thereafter opened up a restaurant. And at 28, 29, I was a restaurant owner. And at the same point, I decided to try and use my marketing background to build a brand for myself. So I was doing the restaurant full time. You're not making money. In the early days to. Then I started building my brand, which in the early days also was not making any money. And then 30, 40 hours a week, I was also bartending the to pay the bills. So it was a long couple of years, but since then I've actually sold my share in the restaurant and now do a lot of writing and speaking for the industry and do a little bit consulting work and linked up with Sean about a year, year and a half ago when he was starting out entrepreneurial chef. So it's been a winding road, but it's been fun and it's been a lot of excitement to get here.

Yeah, for sure. And excited to talk about what that was like when you guys linked up and. And Started to build entrepreneurial chef. One of the things that I'm interested in. So your story, starting a restaurant at a really young age. Can you talk maybe like kind of a spark notes version of what those early days were? Like, maybe some of the takeaways that you had with that?

Well, yeah, I think it's a lot like, you know, somebody, you know, starting out. And. Yeah, I originally, when I was building my brand, was interested in the blogging space and creating recipes on that side. I think it's very similar if you don't know what you're doing. That's where I was. All of a sudden. I was a partner in a restaurant. I was the executive chef, but I hadn't had any real culinary formal training. For me, it was a lot of learning things very fast along the way, which was good because we didn't have a huge restaurant. So the failure that we experienced early on wasn't catastrophic. So it was a lot of learning things here and there that obviously I was able to realize, okay, maybe we should do that next time and move forward. So that's really learning those things early on allowed me to have a better understanding of the restaurant industry, and then also now helps me to really have a firm grasp on the industry as a whole and things that people can maybe figure out earlier on that I wish I would have known, you know, through my writing and speaking and such.

Yeah. Do you have an example of maybe one or two of those things? Like, when you talk about some of the things that you learned through failure in the early stages of the restaurant, what were the most significant things that if you could tell yourself, hey, this is something you should know when you get started. What would that be?

Well, I mean, a very. A very easy example to understand is we opened up, and most restaurant openings are, you know, it's like, all right, we're open on this day. And even if it's that day, like, regardless, it's kind of like with the house, like, it's to the very, you know, the very last second you're pulling things together, you're putting that last coat of paint on. And we had our menu and everything set up, and we were ready to go that first day, but we didn't have a lot of recipes for our staff to follow. So that first kind of three months, we were playing catch up so much that we weren't able to have a really systematic and standardized way of doing things. And for anyone starting out now, I say the most important thing to have is your recipes. To have your systems and processes in place so that things can kind of run on autopilot if you're not able to be there.

Man, that is such a huge takeaway. I just got back from a conference, and one of the, like, big, bold, triple underlying takeaways for me was the importance of processes. And they call them, you know, SOPs as well, which sounds kind of businessy, but it really is a standard operating procedure and how important that is for a business and for me running a business, there's a lot of things that I just know that are in my head and I can do, but if I'm away for a month, then nobody else knows how to do those. And it's interesting that you say that's a really important thing for the restaurant industry as well, so. Because if you are the executive chef, if you are the main guy or the main girl and you're not there, then what do people do and how important that is to have those procedures and those processes, even when you're in the early stages. It's a great takeaway for people that want to start a restaurant or that are building their blog. We use a tool called Process Street, P R O C E S S T to do those. But I know people use Google Docs and Google Drive for that as well. So great takeaway and excited to jump into some of the other takeaways that entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs in the food and recipe world can. Can take away some of the things that you guys have learned as you built this brand. But before we do that, Sean, I want to jump over and hear a little bit about your story. I know that you were involved in the food world, the restaurant world, but in a little bit of a different way. So can you talk to me a little bit about your journey and take me up to the point of entrepreneurial chef?

Yeah, absolutely. So first, to go a little farther back. I was an entrepreneur in the music industry, and I never really broke through. I struggled, and that came into play later. So I ended up falling into a position at Le Cordon Bleu College in Orlando, Culinary school. And so when I landed there, I fell in love with culinary arts. The passion, the people. All of a sudden, I felt an industry that was very familiar to me, right? People that were very passionate about their work and artistic. And so I stayed with them for almost 10 years, just met a lot of people, watched a lot of students enter school and leave school. And there was always a problem that I saw. I always saw a lot of students enter school wanting to be, let's say, Gordon Ramsay or have their restaurant as soon as they graduated, or be an entrepreneur of some kind when they finish. But yet they struggled when they left. And I reflected back to my time when I was an entrepreneur in the music industry. I focused on the art, not the business. So in the process of being at Le Cordon Bleu, ended up going back to school, ended up getting a master's and mba. And then when I left Le Cordon Bleu last year, in the Le Cordon Bleus in the United States, Le Cordon Bleu, North America, they closed down. All of them had closed across the country.

I remember reading that.

Yeah, yeah. So I sat back and I kind of had one of these moments where I thought, what am I going to do? Right. So to understand the gravity, In September of 2015, I was married. We get back from Maui in October. By December, I'm notified we're going to be let go. By January, I don't have a job. By February, my wife and I become pregnant with our first one. And so I'm sitting back wondering, what am I going to do? And I reflected back onto that massive problem that I saw at Le Cordon Bleu, where students would enter and then exit, and they just could not make their dreams become a reality. So that's the idea. That's where the idea for Entrepreneurial Chef came into play. I started to dig in and look at resources. In fact, that's where I came across you all with food Blogging Pro and your platform. But I looked at what was out there and looked at the resources that were specifically targeting food entrepreneurs in general. And I saw that there was nobody that was bringing them all together. There was different little pockets. There was a catering resource, there was a personal chef resource, there was a restaurant resource, a food truck resource. But nobody was taking everyone together. And in pulling the best insights and business tips and entrepreneurial tips from all of these different niches that were in the food service and our culinary hospitality industry and pulling them all together. So that's where the idea came from. So, yeah, from there, I essentially watched a ton of tutorials to build a website and never published before. Never did anything like this before and just started grinding. And in June of 2016, officially had launched Entrepreneurial Chef.

That's awesome. I think people that listen to this podcast will really relate to that idea of, like, I've never done this before. I'm going to watch a ton of tutorials and I'm going to be frustrated as I try and get this to the place where I want it to be. But like you said, the grind of getting in and actually doing it is such an important piece of the puzzle. So before we move too far on a couple of questions, this isn't necessarily directly related, but I'm just kind of curious. Do you, do you have thoughts on why the Cordon Bleu closed? Like, was that an industry shifting or maybe a business model that wasn't working? What do you think was behind that?

I think there was a lot of different things at play and it's very hard to put your finger on one, to be honest. I think it's just one of those things that happened that a lot of people try to make sense of. And I wasn't close enough to everything that went down to be able to answer that with any type of certainty. I just. Yeah, it's hard to say. It's hard to say without jumping into speculation. Yes, essentially, I know what I read, essentially that was put out by the company. I do know that they were looking to sell the Cordon Bleu and to another place I knew. I do know that they had somebody that was interested in purchasing. And then next thing you know, I know that they were closing it down. So not. Not too sure in terms of that, other than speculating?

Yep, yep, absolutely. The other thing that I think is important to point out that you talked about was how there were these people coming into Le Cordon Bleu and they had these dreams and aspirations of building a career that was, you know, a career where they are able to do what they love. And in a lot of ways they are the person that is the decision maker in that. So maybe it's a restaurant owner or, you know, an executive chef somewhere and how difficult it is that make that transition. Because it's not just about the product, it's also the marketing around the product. And one of the things I think about a lot that kind of ties into that and also ties into your story with music is I remember reading some really early interviews with John Mayer and he obviously is an incredible musician, but there's hundreds and thousands of incredible musicians that aren't as popular as he is. But he was talking about in the early stages what he would do for marketing. And one of the things that he would do is he said he would go on to forums with like made up names of teenage girls, like, I don't know what, like John Mayer lover, lv R R or something, and he would post about himself on these music forums. But I just remember being so Surprised that somebody would have to do that, but also being so impressed with this grit and the, the grind of having to build your own career. And it's. That was like early days Internet. So there social media was a little bit different or non existent. So you know, it was kind of a version of social media. But I think the same can be said for people that are wanting to build a blog or a website or a brand or a restaurant. All of those things require you to have an understanding of marketing and how to promote yourself and to be entrepreneurial. So you start this company and realize that there's this huge need for it because you've seen that you get a little bit into it and realize, hey, maybe it would make sense to bring somebody else in. So Sean, can you tell me a little bit about kind of the early stages of that and when you connected up with Chris and the reason for reaching out to him, to bring him in as a partner?

Yeah, absolutely. So first I'm going to say along with your John Mayer example, I forget the rap artist name, but back in the Napster day, he would title his music incorrectly and he would title it with like Jay z's name or 50 Cent's name or whoever's name. So people would download a song and then they realized it was this other artist and he would have his name at the very beginning of it. I thought it was brilliant.

Yeah, it's like growth hacking.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, it's a very, very neat example I just came across. So starting entrepreneurial chef, that was in June of 2016. The first individual that graced the COVID of the magazine was Chef Chris Hill. And so I came across Chris because of his book Making the Cut. And so once I read the description of Making the Cut, did some research, thought he would be a phenomenal guest to have. I read about his story and his brand and what he was able to do. And he had this post that went viral, Dear chefs, post that went viral. And Chris, I'm sure you'll talk about that. But what I read about this individual, this guy, it really resonated with me. And I knew that it was going to resonate with the audience because the people that I was looking to serve, they were looking up to a Chef Chris Hill or some of the other people that I also was looking at to interview. So that's, that's kind of how I was introduced to Chris. As I reached out, he was gracious enough to take the time and do an interview and then we put him on the COVID of the magazine, and it was the first issue of the magazine. And by the way, the magazine was just a test. I was. I created the website. It was never supposed to be a magazine. It was just a kind of a blog, if you will. And after 30 days, I looked at the analytics and saw that there was a high bounce rate. So I thought, what if everybody would have all of the information from the website, the blog, but in a PDF, kind of downloadable form, a quote magazine. So I looked at my wife one night, said, I'm gonna do a magazine. Seven days later, slapped it on a landing page. And that was after I had connected with Chris. And that's how the magazine was born. It got a few thousand downloads, just that first one, and that kicked off. So that's kind of where it began with Chris. And in terms of the evolution, we just connected and we collaborated. I collaborated with him on his brand, and then from there we just started just talking, having in depth conversations. I would ask his opinion about things, he would do it vice versa. And next thing you know, we just kind of form this alliance together. Cool.

And I'm excited to talk about how that partnership came together. Before I do, though, Chris, I'm curious to hear a little bit about Making the Cut, the book available on Amazon. If people want to check that out, we'll link to it as well. 98% five star ratings. People really get a lot of value out of this book. But can you talk for those that are listening? Kind of what the premise is and why you felt like it was an important book to write?

Sure.

Bjork. So, you know, for me, I was at the point where I built this brand for myself. I recently sold my share in the restaurant, and I was going to try to do kind of like what you guys have done with the company and doing it full time. Obviously, to be able to do it full time, you need one or ideally multiple revenue streams coming in. And I saw that a book might be a good opportunity to do that, especially following my interest with being a writer. And people kind of knew me as being someone that put their words out there. So I had this idea of taking really some stories from different chefs that I was able to interview some folks that are really popular, like Fabio Viviani, and then some that aren't quite as popular but are doing some great things, who've won James Beard awards and Michelin stars and such, and wanted to kind of hone in on what makes a chef or restaurateur successful and told their Stories of success and failure and. And really along the way as well, told my story. And so I tried to make it somewhat personal, but not just about me and my wins and losses, but really about the industry as a whole. So I really saw it as an opportunity to connect with people, to share more and really also to kind of keep the brand going in a way that I'd be able to make an income off of.

Yeah, absolutely. So in those interviews with those chefs, those restaurateurs, which is such a fun word to say, what were some of the common traits that you saw, some of the things that, if you had to say, I'm going to pick one or two things, and across the board, all of these successful entrepreneurial chefs had these traits, what would those be?

Well, yeah, I think the one that probably hits closest to home for me, and maybe the audience listening as well, would be they're not afraid to try new things. Meaning that, okay, it might not work the first time around. Especially when you're testing a recipe. If it works exactly right the first time, you're probably just not testing it enough. But if you try something and it doesn't work the first time around, you give it another try and keep testing and get closer and closer to what you're trying to come up with. And then you have a recipe, and then you have a restaurant, then you have your brand, whatever it might be. So I think the most important thing is this resilience and this willingness to keep trying things, knowing that the first time around, it's probably not going to work. But if you keep getting closer, as Seth Godin says, if I fail more than you do, then I win.

Yeah, I think about that with the work that we do, especially learning new skills. One of the things I've been interested in two things primarily lately. One is doing split testing for website pages. So getting really good at understanding how to build two different versions of a website. Sometimes people call it. Or a web page, call it a B testing, and then run a test to see which one performs better. Like, which one do people stay on the longest or which one do people click on the longest? And I don't really know the tools that well, and I can get kind of frustrated with that. But I think back to, like, when I started playing tennis or when I started playing guitar, and. And I didn't have an expectation of really knowing or being really good at it. When I was first starting, like, with guitar, I remember, like, I would try and move my fingers to the, you know, a G chord, and it's like they'd go so slow. But I had an expectation that I wouldn't be good at it to start. And I think that for some reason there are different skills where people expect to be good at it when they start or they feel bad if they're not really good at it and assume that everybody else is. And I think technology can be one of those things. It can feel like everybody else is really good at it when they're. When they're first getting started. So we hear that a lot. But it's interesting for you to hear that you talk about that with, like, recipes, developing a recipe. Cause I think that can be true as well. And for people just to know that, especially if you're in the early stages, it might take a while. You need to iterate. Don't give up too early. Have patience and know that as you test and improve and stick with it, then over a long time, you'll get to a point where you, you'll be able to create a recipe and it'll be really good. Or, you know, you can move your hands to the G chord a little bit quicker than 30 seconds. Uh, so I think that's an awesome, awesome takeaway. Uh, yeah, go ahead.

And I was just a. Yeah. And you know, like, for me and like a lot of folks that are starting your personal brands, like, the opportunity to do speaking. I'd never spoken before. I do a lot of TV now, too. When I first started doing tv, I'd never been on TV before. But you do that first one and it goes horribly wrong. And it's kind of like starting a website where you get six people show up the first day. But if you keep iterating, which I have so much respect for, Sean, with him and the entrepreneurial chef of really taking an idea and saying, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to figure it out. And over the course of six months, went from having an idea and then really implementing it, and now has this great following, a beautiful website, beautiful magazine. And it's all because the fact that you just kept going.

Yes. Which is such a. Such a huge takeaway and something we talk about often on this podcast, but we could talk about it multiple times every podcast because it's so important, it's so critical, the willingness to stick with it and continue to build and to iterate and to not get discouraged, but enjoy the process. So, Sean, there's this point where you said, hey, you know, I want to bring Chris into the fold on this one of the things I'm always interested in is how partnerships actually work. So when you boil it down, the nitty gritty details, you say, hey, Chris, I would be interested in bringing you in on this. How do you start that conversation? And do you say, hey, at some point, you know, we're going to do, you know, we'll figure this out in terms of the partnership deal? Or do you say right away, hey, let's get this on paper and figure out from a business perspective how this is, how this is a shared business. And what does that look like?

Yeah, good question. So when Chris and I got to the point where we noticed that there was a lot of synergy between what we're doing because he already had a massive platform built. He had 140 something thousand people that were following him. He had just already had the book. And here I was just starting out, creating a platform. And so once we realized we both thought alike and we were going after very similar things, we had, as I said, had a lot of synergies. We talked about the possibility of linking up for certain things that the podcast was one of them that we now do. And then there's other ventures that are in the works that we're working on right now. And so at the very beginning, we definitely did have that conversation as it relates to money. And so one of the things that we did with some of the ventures now that we have is we said we would just split it right down the middle.

Right.

So 50%. 50. 50. And we did that ahead of time. And I think for anybody that's engaging in a partnership, I think it's smart to do that ahead of time. Get some definitions around what each individual will be doing and the compensation and kind of the revenue share, if you will. When you're in the idea stage, the money is intangible. You can't feel it. Doesn't seem real. It's just this, this, this dreamy state that you want to get to. But what I know about a past, my past life, my experience, not this hasn't happened with Chris, but what I've know from my past with partnerships is that when money starts coming in, emotions change very quickly, and people can change very quickly. And if you didn't set some boundaries, if you didn't put some definitions around things, things can go awry pretty quickly. And a lot of it has to do with the expectations that people have with the project. Right. So individuals will expect different things out of it. And that's usually where you get that frustration point. One person thinks they're putting in 50%, and another person thinks that that same individual is only putting in 25%. And so it can get a little sticky. So we talked about that ahead of time before we jumped into certain ventures.

Yeah. And then with a partnership, are you guys having, like, a weekly meeting or do you keep track of time? Like, how much time you're working on something? Or is this. There's this kind of mutual trust that you say, hey, this is something we're doing. We're working on it together. And we know that when it all boils down, it's going to be pretty similar in terms of work and energy and time put into it.

Yeah. I will say. And then I'll let Chris chime in, but I would say I. Interesting. I joke with Chris early on, saying that he's like a cousin that I never knew that I had, because his thinking in the way that he deals with things is so similar to myself that I placed trust into Chris early on. And trust is an action. Right. It's not one of those things where you sit back and you wait for someone to earn your trust or the person has to prove themselves. It's an action. You either. You either actively trust somebody or you don't. And I actively trusted Chris and. And he's never done anything that has defied that trust, if you will. And so I knew early on that I can trust this guy, and it made it very, very, very easy. Everything has just been very seamless. So there hasn't been a tally of kind of, you know, who's doing what in terms of the project or the hours. We identify an end goal, and we essentially work backwards to get there. And we flip back and forth. There might be conversations, Chris, I don't know what. Every day for five days, and then until we figure something out and we make progress on it. But we just. We seamlessly and almost effortlessly go back and forth, and that's my vantage point. And Chris, obviously, Chris might say something different. This might be an unveiling here.

Yeah.

Now I'm completely in sync with what Sean just said. And I've been burned before as well. Not by Sean, but in the past. So I think it is important to have certain parameters and understanding of what the end goal is and who's going to get what in the big picture. But I've recently gotten interested in watching Shark Tank online.

Yeah, for sure.

One of the things that Mark Cuban says is it's better to have 30% of a watermelon than 100% of a grape. When I was looking for help growing my brand and really getting strategic about my brand, about a year ago, actually, Sean helped me with relaunching my website on a WordPress platform and did a great job with that. And I knew that there'd be a revenue share involved there, but I knew that the revenue that was coming in was very minute, versus if we were able to take it to another level, it would make up for any sort of having to share revenue because the fact that there was a bigger audience, there was more money coming through, that kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. I love that idea of 30% of a watermelon. And it's such such a truism in the world that we live in with websites and scalability and reach. And, you know, it's. If you bring the right person in, have those right connections, you're able to grow significantly faster. So that makes sense. So let's talk a little bit about the restaurant business. I'm so curious to know, because I have really so little experience with that. And, you know, people that listen to this podcast, I would assume the majority of them focus on online presence like a blog and social media. But I know that there's also a lot of people that would be potentially interested in other avenues of monetization for their passion, and this would probably be one of those areas that they're not necessarily thinking of first and foremost. But I'm a huge believer in diversifying the type of income that you have, and this could be one avenue for that. So, obviously you guys talk about, you know, entrepreneurial chefs and the focus, the sub focus underneath that I would assume would be restaurants, but I'm guessing there's lots of other ways that people can be creating an income from food production. So, Chris, can you talk a little bit about, you know, outside of just restaurants, what are ways that people that are interested in food and recipes and food content that they can leverage the brand that they already have and create a little slice of income from that in a more physical way, not just a digital way. So there are other ways people can do that other than just restaurants, right?

Well, when I was doing the research for my latest book, which is coming out pretty much right now, Crush youh Career, I was researching chefs who had been successful not just on the food side of things, but also in being able to build a brand for themselves. And I realized really early on that, like myself, a lot of their income wasn't necessarily coming from the restaurants that they were partners or owned, but were from these side avenues. So sometimes it was appearance fees or you can even lumped speaking fees in there. Sometimes it was through licensing their name on a product and sometimes it would be through the coursework. Maybe it's teaching someone how to take better photographs of their food or plating or there's so many different ways. Obviously cookbooks is a huge thing. And realizing that, like I know you had Dorie Clark on the podcast recently. We did as well on our podcast. And you're talking about, you know, if you can create three or four or five, six, seven income streams that aren't dependent on one another, then you can really control the trajectory of your career and the opportunities you can create. And by getting yourself into more circles where people are making decisions and are where people are conversating, then you can become more relevant and create opportunities that way. So there's so many different ways and I really encourage people to, you know, instead of just focusing on being a cook, where you're making maybe 10 or 15 bucks an hour, what can you do on the side on the weekend, or taking your passions outside of the restaurant world, bringing those into what you're doing as a brand for yourself and then creating opportunities that way.

Yeah, so let's say that somebody is. They maybe have a website and they're kind of in the early stages of getting that started. They have experience and feel relatively confident on the food side of things. What are, let's say your top three recommendations for, hey, here's three things you could do starting next month that would be one of those revenue streams. So we talk a lot about, you know, blogging, sponsored content, creating income from ads, things like that. But what about the non digital world? What, what would be, you know, if there would be a top three recommendations, hey, here's one, here's two, here's three for different ways that you could be building out that those different revenue streams as you want, you know, shift into kind of controlling your own career or your own destiny.

Yeah, I definitely think that taking. So if you have a blog with recipes on there, that's already a great start. You have people that are interested in what you're doing. They might be local, they might not be, but if you have local followers, even family and close friends, have them over for a cocktail party and start letting people know that you can take these recipes and apply them to dinner parties and maybe some sort of catering realm that can also lead to more content for the blog or the website that you have. In addition to that, I would take what are some of your popular posts on your blog and then think, okay, well, is there a way that I could create a product out of this? So maybe it's a jam or a salsa or something else along those lines. And then you can find ways to distribute that either online or maybe even at the local farmer's market. Those are a couple ways. And then in addition to that, if you have, let's say you have great photos of your food. I know that your wife Lindsey does this for you guys. If you were to take your photography and people really love it, you could do some sort of online offline class where you charge X number of dollars for a five hour session on Friday and make a couple hundred bucks that way.

Yeah, I think there's a blog post I did a while back where I talk about this egg carton method where you have a dozen eggs and you could view each one of those as a potential income source. And when it's full, that would be the equivalent of what your full time income would be. And the, you know, if you break that down into these different, these different income streams, you, you can relatively quickly get to a point where you can say, okay, if I'm doing the farmer's market once a month, and I know that, you know, if I'm creating my own jam or something, and I can make $500 from that, maybe that's one egg. And you have your blog and you say, okay, if I know that from this, I can do, let's say, $500 a month between sponsor content and ads. Okay, so that's, you know, $1,000. And slowly over time that kind of adds up. Where you look at all these potential income streams and you can add those up. Obviously that takes a lot of time and energy and at some point you want to double down on the things that are most successful. But when you're first starting off, you can piece those things together to help you get started, which I think is, it's a really important takeaway for people to think strategically about that. But Sean, one of the things that I wanted to hear from you is let's say that people that are listening want to go the traditional route and they want to leverage their online brand and their identity into a restaurant career. So they want to build a restaurant, they want to be a restaurateur, they want to be a brand behind a restaurant. How are they able to do that? And the other thing that I'm interested in hearing, because I don't know much about it, are, can restaurants be profitable? I feel like it's such a hard business. And what does that look like? How long does it take for a restaurant to be profitable?

Well, I'm going to have to rely on Chris for a little of it because I'm not the restaurateur. But I will say from the people that I've talked to with Entrepreneurial Chef, so, number one, restaurants can absolutely be profitable, hands down. That's why we have them. That's why they've been in existence. That's why there's restaurant groups across the country. But using Chris's words, it's those that have the processes, the procedures in place. They take the time to invest in training, they're investing in their employees. It's not just somebody that on a whim, wanted to open up a restaurant, but somebody that knows the interworkings of it. Because it's not just about the food, it's about the business aspect as well. Those individuals that have strong partnerships with people that offset their weaknesses, those are the ones that are going to be successful with it. And that's the individuals that I've interviewed with Entrepreneurial Chef is they're the ones that either they understand the business side and the food world, or they have a partner that balances them. And additionally, they have bled restaurants for years and years and years, and they understand the interworkings of it to the point where they were confident. And another piece that I've picked, picked up along the way, some of the most successful individuals, they had a very humble beginning. They had a very. They started small, they grew into something. As opposed to kicking off a $5 million build out for the first restaurant, which is just, I mean, it's just, it's insane to do something like that. So it is, it is possible for someone to do it. But I would have a lot of questions for them. I would ask them their background, you know, their strengths, their weak weaknesses, who do they have in partnership, how much capital do they have, how much time they have? Because everything that I picked up from some of the most successful restaurateurs and chefs that have places that are all the things that I mentioned, number one. And there's a lot of things that go wrong on that first one and that first build out. So you need to have a lot of money to be able to handle that first time go around.

Yeah. And it seems like that's one of the most difficult things with this industry is the startup costs that are associated with it and just how high those are, especially when you compare it to industry in the world. That we're in where it's like starting a digital asset relatively affordable, right? You have hosting fees and maybe a couple additional expenses. But you know, instead of 5 million, it's maybe $500 to start things off a little bit more time and build up like you might not have your true first customer for a really long time as opposed to a restaurant you probably would relatively quickly. But so much goes into it on those early stages.

And I will say, and then I look at someone like Tim Ma, who we interviewed in May. So he was in the magazine for May, he took out cash advances on his credit card and that's how he started the restaurant. I think they did it for. I think it was maybe 30,000 or 40,000 or something like that. And they started in a small spot and then now he has several restaurants. So it's definitely about work within your means. And it is okay to start small. It's okay to start with a 10, you know, 10 seats or you know, 15 seat place. It just don't have to start very big.

Yeah, that's great. I think of a restaurant that we really like here in St. Paul called Cook St. Paul. And it's this really small, super intimate place, but it's always booked and there's lines out the door. And it's really. It from a business perspective, it seems like a really approachable way to start and build a restaurant in that it's not the most expensive place in the neighborhood. It's a small place, but they're always busy. And so I would assume from a cash flow perspective, it makes it a little bit easier because they're not having to employ a bunch of people. They're not having to pay a huge lease for the spot and they're able to have some predictable income knowing that the seats are almost always going to be full or at least. So that makes. Makes a lot of sense. Chris, for somebody that's interested in getting started with it, what would you recommend as the first steps? If somebody says, hey, this is something I want to do, I want to do it as a profession. I want to, you know, use my blog or my brand that I'm building online. Not to be the thing, but to the be the thing that feeds into a restaurant or a physical location. What are those first steps look like?

Yeah, so I think I relate it to, you know, you go to the mall and you walk by the food court and they always have the Chinese restaurant with the guy handing out samples. Right. And they want you to try their food and hopefully you like it, and then you'll actually spend money there. I think that the best thing to do starting out is, the good thing is if you've already created a digital platform for yourself, you already have a little bit of interest around what you're doing, but then you really want to make sure that, okay, now I need to make sure that this product that I'm trying to put out there is viable, that it's gonna actually work in the marketplace. So I think the best thing to do is to maybe do, like I was saying with the dinner parties with your friends and family and get honest feedback. But then maybe the next step is to try a pop up restaurant.

Sure.

Where you can spend a couple thousand dollars maybe to get some space to set up what you think your restaurant would maybe look like, what it would maybe be in terms of the menu, and then invite people to buy tickets for maybe it's two weekends in a row where you're offering your product and if it's a huge hit, people love it, then maybe that's a good sign that, okay, we can maybe go forward with this and then figuring out, okay, now I can think about what type of location we'd be, how many different, how many seats we would need, how big menu, all that kind of stuff. The bigger questions I think need to be addressed after the fact that you realize that I can make this a viable business for myself and for my family without huge risks.

Yeah. And Sean, maybe a good question to end on would be for those that are looking to sharpen their business skills to lean into the entrepreneurial part of being a chef. What are the things that they need to make sure that they're paying attention to and implementing in their business?

Ooh, that's a good one. If you're going to lean into that, you know, I think hands down, number one is the people that you surround yourself with, the networking that you do, the reaching out into the community that you want to be involved with, not that you're with at maybe that current state. And what I mean is that if you want to be successful in a certain area, find somebody that's been successful in that area and become their friend or connect with them, you know, So I think, you know, to get to where you want to go in that realm, it's definitely networking and building up that network and that can take some time. And a lot of people are not that patient with doing stuff like that. But you can have exponential leaps. I the only reason why I was able to take entrepreneurial shaft from completely no Idea, I never even thought about it prior to April of 2016 and then launched it in June. And is that I, for 10 years had just built a Rolodex of individuals just that I knew from the industry and nurtured and fostered those relationships. And when the time came, when the time was right, when I now was launching my own venture, I reached out to those individuals. And within, I mean, within a matter of a month, I was talking to and connecting with some incredible people. I had some people that were helping me, strategic planning advisors. It just, it was amazing. So I would say that that's one of my biggest pieces of advice is reach out to the community that you want to be involved with, connect with them, foster those relationships and that's going to help you in a follow up for that.

How do people do that? What does that look like in a concrete way? Because I know a lot of people know that they need to know people, but it's hard sometimes to break into those circles when it feels like it's kind of closed off. So what would your advice be for people that want to connect but maybe don't know how to do that?

Hire a private investigator, have them follow the person that you want to connect with randomly.

Show up at a bar. Yeah, good. That's been your strategy, I'm sure.

No, you know, with, I can, I can speak with. Something that I've done is I've, I've relied heavily on social media on LinkedIn and then also meetup groups. Right. So meetup.com we were talking before this about an individual, Chuck Mullins, who I, he gave me incredible advice when I was first starting out and that's only because I went to a meetup group that he was hosting and then became a friend of his. And now we'll, we'll do lunches from time to time and just connect and talk. And I ask him questions, he gives me answers and feedback. And so it's definitely just actively reaching out. So I would connect with individuals on LinkedIn, go to meetups in your area or in your surrounding area, social media, reach out. And it's just as simple as just, just requesting to ask them a question, for instance. Right. So I would find people, for instance, I found a publisher in the industry and he looked like he was very successful, had a business for a while and he accepted my request on LinkedIn. And so as soon as he did, I said, hey, you know what? I see that you're a publisher in the industry. I see that you've had a lot of success. I love what you're doing. I just have a question for you if you have time. And he bounced back and said, sure. We jumped on the phone and for about 60 minutes, this guy lined me up with strategic advice before the platform was launched. That helped me in the first three months of the platform. So it's little things like that. It's not being afraid to just put yourself out there and face a potential rejection of someone saying, no, I'm not going to answer your question, or no, I'm not going to help you out. So what? Big deal. Move on to the next person. So I would say that's the actionable stuff.

Awesome. Yeah, that's great. And there's. There's a few different meetups that I do here in the twin. In Twin Cities and do that through meetup as well. So great little takeaway there. And then, Chris, what? For somebody that's just in the early stages, what would your advice be to them as they're getting started? What would your encouragement or advice be for somebody in the early stages?

A lot of the same stuff that I think Sean really just mentioned, but maybe on a bigger scale of just knowing that you're signing up for a marathon, not a sprint, that it's going to be a long and often, at least the case has been for me, winding road. You think you're going to a certain place and. And you might get there sooner, you might get there longer, but know that it's going to take a while and you really understand that you have this mountain in the distance you're trying to get to, and know that every day you have opportunities to move closer to or farther away from the mountain. And sometimes those steps will be very intuitive and sometimes they won't. But knowing that if you keep moving forward every day, if you keep really building a brand around yourself to where people know you for something, where you are a trusted resource, a trusted cook, trusted chef, whatever it is, then in long run, it'll pay off for itself. And that's really what I've been able to do, and it's how I've been able to create a sustainable business for myself.

Yeah, that's great. Sean, can you talk a little bit about Entrepreneurial Chef, where people can find out more about it, maybe sign up to be a subscriber to the magazine and kind of what they can expect from that, and then maybe your podcast as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So Entrepreneurial Chef is just how it sounds. It's entrepreneurialchef.com and what I'll Do Bjork, is I'll give you a special link to where people can go and just sign up and get a free annual subscription to the magazine. And the magazine. There's four distribution channels, so it's got native apps and Apple in Google. We're also on Amazon's newsstand for Kindle devices. And then once somebody signs up, there's email distribution as well. So there's those four channels there. So we'll give you that link so people can sign up and get a free annual subscription to it. And what can they expect? Essentially, with Entrepreneurial Chef, we reach out to the most successful chefs or restaurateurs or general food entrepreneurs. Sometimes the individuals are not chefs. Right. Because Bjork, yourself and Lindsey are going to be in the November magazine. Right. So we reach out to individuals that have done great things to pull insights from them. So if you're looking for marketing and leadership and operations and financial and management, all these different types of advice from people that are successful in what they've been able to do, then that's what you can get out of Entrepreneurial Chef. And then with the podcast, Chris and I collaborate on the podcast, and that's a little bit more of a crossover podcast. So it's not. Not just for chefs and restaurateurs. We connect with some of the most successful people in various industries. So we've connected with people like Simon Sinek, and Chris had an interview with Seth Godin or Patrick Bet, David or David Berkus, and just individuals that have done incredible things. And they talk to us about how they've been able to do those incredible things. And a lot of them position the answers toward the culinary and hospitality industry, which is really neat. So we have that. That's called Making. Making the Cut after Chris's first book, and that can be found on itunes and Stitcher.

Awesome. Great. And we'll make sure to link to those in the show notes as well. Chris and Sean, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Bjork, it was a pleasure. Thanks so much, buddy.

Absolutely. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it, Bjork.

Thanks. That's a wrap for our interview with Sean and Chris. Make sure to go out and check their podcast out. It's called Making the Cut. And as they mentioned, they talk about some of the same things that we talk about here on the Food Blogger Pro podcast. But also, you know, it's a little. There's a little bit of overlap, but there's some stuff that they. That we don't talk about here that they do talk about. So if you enjoyed the topics that they shared about and you think that this would be a good match for you, I'd encourage you to go over check out their podcast, subscribe to that and if you haven't yet, subscribe to the Food Blogger Pro podcast as well. If you're still checking these off as one off interviews, make sure to hit that subscribe button. That makes a big difference for us as well as any ratings or reviews. And if you leave a rating or a review on the podcast, take a screenshot of that. Send me an email. I'd love to connect and say thank you in person because when somebody leaves the review I can't see who the email address is or where they're from. So I'd love to personally connect with you if that's something that you do. Thanks so much for tuning in to the podcast. This week we will be back here same time, same place, same. Until then make it a great week.