Ep.52- Chef Shawn Walchef "Digital Hospitality"

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Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser. Hey everybody, welcome back. And we have a really awesome and unique guest joining us today. And since opening the Kali Comfort Barbecue outside San Diego in 2008, the Walchef family has incorporated the Bulgarian tradition of hospitality into every facet of the Kali barbecue business, from hosting cooking competitions to catering events of all sizes. To collaborating with community organizations and hosting a podcast. Today's guest, Sean Waltreff, is the owner of Cali Comfort and the host of Digital Hospitality, which is a weekly podcast that helps business owners develop a mobile-first internet strategy by sharing stories of innovative brands and personalities who are outranking the competition in search results. Sean, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's my absolute pleasure. I know since we first connected, I've been very excited to hang out and spend some time with you today. So, 2008, this thing started, this really awesome Cali Comfort Barbecue. What was the backstory and how did you get to this idea that you even wanted to do this?

You know, I was very fortunate that for someone that never met their birth father, I had my father figure, which was my grandfather. He was a Bulgarian man that dedicated his life to learning. He was born in a village and he was able to leave that village because his grandfather taught him a love of reading. That love of— that because he loved reading, he was able to read every single book in that village and had to actually go to a different village to find more books and eventually became a medical doctor in Germany during World War II. He didn't speak a word of German, but all the medical schools in Bulgaria rejected him. So he said, okay, well, I'm going to be a doctor, so who's going to accept me? He got somebody to help translate the application into German for him, and he got accepted into the university in Germany. But he didn't speak a word of German, so he literally had to study German to study medicine. And the Nazis were recruiting the international students to come and fight the war, which he was lucky that he was able to just work on his education and not have to get involved in the war. Yeah, for somebody that never met his father, you know, my having him as my role model, him as my father figure, growing up in La Jolla, which is a very wealthy part of San Diego, very fortunate white privilege, immigrant privilege, but that also comes with a lot of expectation. You know, he was a medical doctor and then he became a developer. He was always curious, always learning, and he had high expectations for what he wanted for not just his children, but his grandchildren. I was the eldest grandchild of 7 grandsons. I was the eldest. So I was almost his pseudo son, kind of the next generation son for him. And I thought that law school was what I was going to do. And I was never bad at school. I was never great. I was probably like 3.5 GPA. If there was a class that I was interested in, I did amazing. If I wasn't interested in it, I probably didn't do very well. But I thought I was going to be an attorney and I took the LSATs, I took the tests. And at that point my grandfather was getting older, so I wanted to stay close to him in San Diego so I could help work and help him with the local properties that he was managing. But I applied to University of San Diego, Thomas Jefferson Law School, and Cal Western Law School, and they all rejected me. And that was— I think it was more devastating to have to tell my grandfather than it was to actually get the rejection. And now I'm working with David Meltzer, who's kind of my mentor now, and we've been talking a lot about rejection and acceptance of rejection. Looking back at it, I know that that was one of the greatest gifts that I ever got because of the opportunities that I have now. I mean, I'm the type of person that has the law school rejection letters framed on my desk right behind me, which is something that I just use as motivation because I know that I'm good enough to not only get in, but I'm good enough to build a law school if I wanted to. That's back to my grandfather's mentality. But yeah, that was, I believe, around 2004, 2005. I ended up helping my grandfather in the next couple of years. And then we had an opportunity. One of my close friends from college, Corey Robinson, he worked in his family restaurant growing up in Aspen. And I had grown up, actually, my grandfather had one of his properties, he had a breakfast restaurant. Here in East County, San Diego. And that breakfast restaurant, he took over when I was 12 years old, and I ended up on the weekends coming out to bus tables and wash dishes. And it was a miserable experience. I was a kid. I hated the fact that I had to get up early on the weekends, that I had to drive out to the restaurant, and all my other friends in La Jolla were going to the beach, they were playing sports, And I did that all throughout high school and all throughout college. And it was something that I never thought that I'd be in the hospitality business, but as my grandfather got older, as things changed at the property, we sold the property. The owners had a couple tenants that didn't do a good job and they knew that we had history with the property and they offered a great deal on a lease to me and my business partner, Cory Robinson. We said, great, let's take this liquor license. Um, and instead of just being a breakfast restaurant, let's turn it into a family-friendly, um, sports entertainment destination with great food because it's an underserved community out here in San Diego. And, um, we did that and that was 2008, the height of the economic recession, not the best time to be investing money into an unproven concept. Um, in an unproven location in a very difficult industry. But we did it. And, you know, now it's 11 years later. I was fortunate, uh, Corey, about 4 years in, decided that being in the hospitality business wasn't his, his life passion. And he, um, thankfully we were— I was able to buy him out and we would be able to remain as close friends as we are. And he's doing real estate up in Marin County and Now the restaurant's evolved from what it was when we first opened in 2008 to a media company now that we put on a podcast, we have a YouTube show. We actually are signing clients now to help them do what we've been able to do. 2007, June 29th, 2007. Do you know what happened on that date?

June 29th, 2007? No.

So the only reason that I know is that on June 29th, 2017 was the birth of my first son. So my first child, my son, Colleen, he was born on that date. I was in the hospital Googling, you know, what other earth event, you know, events in history have happened on June 29th. And I found out June 29th, 2007, literally 10 years earlier was the day that the iPhone came out. The first iPhone.

Interesting.

And that gets to the essence of what I've found is my playground in life, which is digital hospitality, helping other business owners do what we've been able to do for our restaurant, which is understand that every business needs to be in the digital business and every business needs to be in the hospitality business. So as much as we love digital and you have to be on Yelp and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and TikTok and YouTube and podcasts, you also have to be in the hospitality business because that's where all the magic happens. The magic happens in the human interaction. But once you post that, then you have that exponential power of the internet, the exponential power of the smartphone. And so much has changed since 2007. In 13 years, to think about how much has changed in the world of, I mean, different businesses, different industries. Professional sports and nonprofit raising money. And like, if you're not where everyone is, which is on the smartphone, it's going to be very hard to get your mission out.

Completely agreed. And I want to just go back a few minutes to where you started with this incredible tradition that you got from your grandfather. And both my grandfather also during that time came over as a survivor of the Holocaust from Nazi Germany. He was in Poland. Came over, moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a little bit later started what's now our third-generation family furniture business. And it was in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, called Lee Furniture. He was Leon. It's now Wasser's Furniture. But I know how important it was to be able to take care of your family, to take care of your community, to be involved, right, with what's going on around you was very, very, very important to him, especially coming from the atrocities of the war. And I believe as we're talking right now, the day of this interview is the 75th liberation of Auschwitz in Germany.

Oh, wow.

So we're having this very similar experience of two very different stories, but very similar stories that have come over to our country, right, from Europe and impressed upon the next generations how to succeed, how to take care of people, how to provide for people, how to provide for your community. And I think that's a really powerful thing that's missed out in the entrepreneurship space. So I live in Florida and I joke that I ran away from entrepreneurship for my entire life because I saw it as douchebaggery. And it's all about the Lambos and the yachts and everything we saw on MTV. And it wasn't about this conscious, social conscious idea, conscious capitalism, right, that Rand Steigen and a bunch of other people are involved with, where you can make money and you can also be providing an incredible service. To the community.

I couldn't agree more.

Yeah. And I think that's a beautiful thing that both you and I are sharing in this experience as we're trying to do in your world, right, with helping other business owners. And my side is—

Sure.

—who also works with entrepreneurs as well. So when you were— like, if there was one takeaway from your grandfather that would probably be like that biggest teachable moment for you, I'm sure there's many, but is there one that kind of stands out to you the most? It's definitely curiosity.

It's infinite curiosity. I mean, I've never seen a man, I've never heard about a man, I've never witnessed anyone that was just— it didn't matter if we— when we went, we— I was so fortunate that he cared enough to write all of his life lessons down into a, into a book, into a memoir. And I actually helped him self-publish that book, which was an incredible experience one of the most valuable things that I cherish for the rest of my life. But during that process, we went back to Europe, to Germany, to Heidelberg, where he went to medical school. We went back through his Germany, his journey, and spent about 6 weeks just literally collecting different material from Bulgaria, from— and we also, you know, hit some tourist spots as well. He's a huge tennis fan, and we were able to go to the Wimbledon and the French Open, able to go to the Opera House in Paris. We just do some absolutely incredible once-in-a-lifetime stuff. But no matter where we went, no matter what tour we were on, he had to be the first person in the bus. He had to be sitting next to the tour guide. He has to be asking questions. If there was a pamphlet, he would always have to pick up every single pamphlet in the hotel because he needed the information because he didn't want to miss out on some treasure not just for him, but to share with me. And that's definitely something that, you know, for the rest of my life, when I take my son and my daughter now, and my wife, I want to teach them because I remember him doing it when I was younger. And it would always annoy me to the fact, why do you have to be in the front? Or why do you have to, you know, you're going to collect all these pamphlets and then they're just going to be in the hotel and then they're going to go in your suitcase. But it's like he cared so much about that information, about that history, about that culture, because he didn't want to miss anything. He just didn't. He had this mystery of life that he just, he wanted, that's what got him from that small village to La Jolla. And, you know, in retrospect, seeing that and going through that really allowed me to say, you know, this is something that's so valuable that I just, I have to pass this on to my next generation.

So how are you playing that out in your world, in your industry? Because running and opening up a food business, we know, has a significant failure rate within the first 2 years, correct? Yes. So that curiosity, how did that seep into what you were implementing in 2008, 2009, 2010, where you had the biggest risk of failure and then realized that this is actually something and it's working?

I mean, I think, you know, part of being an entrepreneur, part of, you know, getting into the hospitality space, part of being in any business is just listening to your heart and figuring it out along the way. Because I was by no means an expert and I had to understand that I needed to find experts and people that were smarter than I was. I don't know anything about barbecue. I'm a San Diego kid. I grew up in La Jolla and the last person I should be the loudest on the internet talking about barbecue, but I found somebody that was willing to be a mentor and that was willing to help us put on a charity event for kids using barbecue and then offered, "Hey, if you'd want to use barbecue, if you want to learn how to do it for your restaurant, we can add some barbecue items." I said, "Well, not only do I want to add barbecue, I want to go all in on barbecue." So going all in on barbecue and knowing that that would be our competitive advantage because it's so hard, because it's so difficult. But if we did it, that would be a point of differentiation within our market, but also how can we build up the other barbecue restaurant in our community. Craft beer in San Diego, we love to say that a rising tide lifts all ships. Obviously, that's one of our mantras, and craft beer in San Diego became stronger because they were willing to share ideas, they were willing to collaborate. It wasn't Coke versus Pepsi, it wasn't you know, Burger King versus Wendy's. It was, how do we all help each other? How do we share ideas so that we become a place where everyone around the world wants to come and try craft beer, which they've successfully been able to do. So for us, we've always celebrated the other local barbecue restaurant, which to most people is counterintuitive because you, they think, well, why are you inviting, you know, somebody that owns a barbecue restaurant less than a mile away in front of your restaurant for a festival to sell, like that's direct sales. Like, well, no, because that's a different style of barbecue. That's Texas-style barbecue. We do Kansas City-style barbecue. And ultimately, we're all better together.

It's so interesting that you say that because one of my last trips out to San Diego when I was there for a conference, one thing I noticed about the environment of the community where it seems like on the outside because you're only a few hours south of LA. So there's that LA mentality and this California mentality that people who don't live there think that all of California has. But the one thing that I found was that there was a complete lack of pretentiousness. And I was shocked because like, these people, I'm like, I'm at this restaurant. And then we went to this little brewery somewhere. And everybody there looked like they would be looking, like they would look at Miami Except they were nice and they were hospitable and they were answering questions like, oh yeah, well, let me tell you about this place and this place, as opposed to, what do you mean? Why are you even talking to me? You don't know where the best place is. And I was so stunned by that. And I'm sure there are people there who are pretentious. But when you're talking hospitality industry, everybody that I've ever met— and I've been to San Diego and Carlsbad and a bunch of other places in that area— everybody has always been about that hospitality. In a way, it's like the southern hospitality of Atlanta, Georgia, but it's southern hospitality of California.

Yeah, it's very unique and all. I remember something one of my mentors and advisors when I was studying abroad in Spain, I was studying in Alicante and Alicante is on the same meridian as San Diego. So, they have very— the weather is just so similar and it's so beautiful 365 days out of the year. And it's something that we take for granted and we You know, we joke about we're soft. Oh, and we can't, if it's below 60 degrees, we've got to wear a sweatshirt and we're complaining. And, but because of the sunshine, it changes kind of our willingness to be open with other, other humans that we don't know. And, um, it's not that things are different anywhere else. It's just, he explained it to me that in Northern Spain, people are more reserved and it doesn't mean that they don't love more. It doesn't mean that they're, they're worse people. It's just, they're more reserved and protective in nature just because it's cold. And I never thought of it like that. But then if you think of any of the colder states, it makes sense. I mean, it makes sense that weather affects how we are as humans. And people go on vacation to Hawaii, they go on vacation to San Diego. We're one of those very fortunate places that people that live here no matter where we go in the world, we're actually excited to come back home. Like, you're on your final descent into San Diego. Most people, when you're on your final descent back home, you're like, oh, vacation's over. I've got to go back to work. Like, we pay a lot of money for that. You know, granted, we're, you know, it is very expensive and more people are leaving San Diego than coming here. But, you know, we're very fortunate. And, you know, there's nowhere else in the world I would rather live or raise my family. Yeah.

So let's go back for a moment to your coach. You mentioned David Meltzer. Yeah. And I know he's all over Instagram and putting up some amazing clips, and it seems like he's very much into law of attraction. Yes. So where has that had any influence on you in your development? Right. Because even though you're from California and we have the vibe of California being very hippie dippy, but this mindset of what you think, what you believe, how you feel about things will draw the experiences into your life. Did— have you embraced that? Has that been something that's been organically there? Has that been something that like he's been focusing on and working on with you?

I think I found him through the law of attraction. I mean, my favorite book of all time is Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, and that's the universe speaking to, you know, the shepherd boy. The things that happen in everyday life, if we're willing to stop and have gratitude for those things, then, you know, the universe reveals itself in all kinds of ways you would never, you would never, you would never know until you actually tell the universe. And for me, I have always been a big fan of the saying that you are the sum total of the 5 people that you spend the most time around. And The more that I've, 'cause I'm a very social person and I, you know, in high school I was actually, you know, all those yearbook awards they give out, I was forever a friend was what I won. And, you know, one of my favorite sayings is, you know, from Winnie the Pooh, we'll be friends forever, just you wait and see. And that's the way that I've always lived my life. But it's also when I'm thinking about something that I want as an entrepreneur or something that I'm trying to achieve, I need to be as close to the sun or to somebody that's done it before. And those mentors, those people, especially when you're talking about podcasting for David Meltzer, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, I mean, these people have done it. They're not talking about doing it. They're not showing me pictures of Lamborghinis and jets. And that's not, even what I want. I want to have an impact and I want to have an impact in a way that goes beyond our restaurant, that goes beyond basically what the gifts that my grandfather was given to me, you know, and I want to pass that on to my children and I want them to carry that on as well because it's, it's, it's deep rooted in gratitude, you know, and for somebody that has had such a fortunate life and been blessed in so many ways, it's just, I married a Bulgarian woman and that's the universe speaking to me. It's, my son's more Bulgarian than I am. My grandfather is Bulgarian, but now he's, him and my daughter are more Bulgarian than I am because I married somebody that's fully Bulgarian. And every year we take them back to see their grandparents, to work in the village, to work in the farm. And those are experiences that as Americans, it gets lost. It gets lost in— once people move over and they set up roots and you lose ties to the old country. And there's so much that we can learn from the old country that I think anybody that has grandparents close in their lives, they seem to have a different perspective on life. And it's not that their parents can't teach them. It's just that that next generation They've lived it. They've seen it. You know, what we think is so terrible today, you know, like you said, my grandfather, anything that happens in my life, anything that happens in my business, I have to remember that at one time my grandfather did not speak a word of German. He did not understand medicine, yet he was studying German to study medicine with bombs getting dropped on him in a war that he had no business being in. Like, how bad is my life? He figured it out.

Yeah, and I've heard Gary Vaynerchuk talk about that a lot, right? If we look back and like, what was our grandparents doing during, you know, 50 years ago, 70 years ago, and they had nothing, right? Everything was like, if you made it, you were really like the, the number, the disparity, the discrepancy, sorry, between like the successful people and the non-successful people were probably wider because there, there was here, there's social programs, and there's way to get right there to help you with, with things that you might need. But back then there wasn't that. And people were dying on the streets and they were dying at home. And they were— so there's so many more thankful things. And I'm really curious because the word gratitude has come up a few times for you. And knowing that we're both like-minded individuals, what's your personal definition of gratitude?

Gratitude's one of my favorite words is agape, and agape is unconditional love. And unconditional love is something that it gets to the heart of friendship. It gets to the heart of family. It gets to the heart of everything that we do. It's loving without condition, you know, and that's back to when you're talking about business. I mean, Simon Sinek talks about the why, but he just came out with a book called The Infinite Mindset. And The Infinite Mindset is not about making money right now. It's about having an impact. All that other stuff gets figured out. Doing great things, all that other stuff gets figured out. But when you have a mission and you have a purpose, you have a just cause, you have something that you believe in big. You, every single day that I wait, that I've woken up in the last year, I knew that building this media company and helping other business owners do what I've been able to do for my business is the most empowering thing that I could possibly be doing. And I've been working towards that goal every single day. And, back to the David Meltzer, David, I went to a training that he had with his interns at the end of the year and he started the training by talking about New Year's resolutions. Everyone comes in with a New Year's resolution. I'm going to get fit. I'm going to do— this is the year my diet starts. This is the year I'm going to read a book a week or whatever it might be. But he was talking about Albert Einstein's 8th wonder of the world and his theory that You know, the 8th wonder of the world is compound interest and that compound interest and applying that into the micro habits that we do every single day. And if you do one micro habit every single day, how much your life will change. And you know, it's been so tough the last 2 days with the passing of Kobe Bryant for somebody that I never met. I can't believe that his death has impacted me the way that it has. And I think it has to do with the Mamba mentality, and that Mamba mentality is something that transcends all of sports, whether you loved basketball, you don't love basketball. It was, you know, there was a LinkedIn article that I recently reshared. It's somebody wrote an article based off of an ESPY speech that Kobe Bryant gave, and it was literally just a line of the speech where it was called "Because of 4 AM." And he says, "That's the reason why anyone up here wins an award is because of 4 AM. It's because we're willing to do what nobody else is willing to do when no one else is watching in the middle of the night, at the end of the night. We're willing to work until we bleed." We'll work until we can't do it anymore. And that's my grandfather. That's what my grandfather did. No one was going to stop him from becoming a medical doctor. No one. And, you know, Kobe Bryant epitomized that. And, you know, seeing the tributes from all over the world, world leaders and celebrities, presidents, basketball players, and his love as a father, you know, it's just, it's, it's something that it grounds you back in gratitude and it grounds you back in the things that we have to be grateful for. And, you know, back to David Meltzer, you know, I told him at that meeting at the end of the year last year that one of my goals was to every sunrise I would pray and ask for help. And every sunset I would pray and ask, who can I help? I've lived up to the first one because I've started— today was day 16 of my sunrise gratitude. So every single day for the last 16 days, I've woke up before the sunrise. I woke up at 4:00 AM, did my reading, and an hour before the sun came up, I went on a run. And the reason that I hate running is that I'm such a competitive person. And I want to be the rabbit. I want to be running with the rabbits. I want, I want my 5 rabbits to be the fast, the Kobe Bryants of the world. But I know that I can't do that. And I'm in pain and I'm fat and I'm out of shape and it's frustrating. And I'm going on these runs and I realized that all the magic happens when I realized that I'm the tortoise. The tortoise just has to get there every day. If I come every day, if I just get outside before the sun comes up, and I'm grateful that the sun came up, no matter if it's raining, no matter if it's sunny. And if I, and I started taking pictures, you know, on my run, I would, before I would run and, you know, try to time myself, figure out how long I needed to run. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is I get outside and I move. And then now I've taken pictures and I posted on my Instagram stories. I posted on Facebook, on Twitter, not to show off that I'm running, just to show off that I'm grateful. And it's the most engagement that I've ever gotten on any of my social media stuff. And I don't know if that's just because it resonates because it's gratitude. I don't know if it resonates because it's running, but what I do know is that it's resonating, you know, and I listened to your interview, um, forgot the gentleman's name, but, uh, but that does the, uh, the earth altars.

Yeah. Dave, Dave Shulcrit.

Amazing. Yeah. Beautiful interview. I mean, it was just an absolute beautiful interview and it's, it's exactly, you know, him talking about going outside, getting outside and being grateful that the sun came up. Isn't that enough? You know, it's living a proactive life, not a reactive life. And that's, you know, going back to what can I do today to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better father.

Well, I had a very similar experience to you because Sunday morning, as I shared with you, I ran my first, my second half marathon ever, but I'm now 41 years old and 2 and a half months ago I decided to go train and a few months before that I made the commitment that I was gonna do it. And my whole thing was I'm not doing it to beat a time. I'm not doing it to compete to anybody in my age bracket, right? Especially anybody who's younger than me or who's been running more than me. But it was one of the things through my business community program called Business Finishing School that's out of Dallas, that's for business development and entrepreneurs and my involvement with Jesse Itzler's Build Your Life Resume community. I love Jesse Itzler.

He's a rock star.

He's a rock star and he's real.

Oh my God, he's so real, which is incredible. I saw him at the EntreLeadership conference here in San Diego. Not to get you off track, but yeah, he was just— he brought some power to the stage that nobody else could, and you just can't keep that man in a bottle. And everything that comes out of his mouth, I mean, he's phenomenal.

Yeah, so it's been really an incredible thing because the community is really about not just about the business, but it's about your personal care, about your health, about your spirituality, all those things. So it's a really genuine, integrity-filled community, which I also found with Business Finishing School, that it's a business program with a heart. Everything is about core values. Everything is about what's your purpose and your passion, not yes, you should be making money here, we're gonna help you We're going to help you make more money. We're going to help you remove the things that are blocking you in your business life. But they also focus on your professional life. And everybody who's been involved in this community, their marriages or their relationships or their health has gotten better. So I find that, like, as I shared before, like, my original thought about entrepreneurship was about douchebaggery. The people that I'm connected to the most. Yeah, right. And we can think of certain entrepreneurs in the social media space who, who may elicit that. There's this idea of like, you can do this, have a heart, have personal development, have personal growth, have better relationships. And gratitude is a key part. And because of that, you're going to start connecting to other people like David Meltzer or Jesse Itzler or something like that. But it's interesting. So I came home and I came back around 11-ish and showered, iced down, right, was relaxing, and then went to check something. I got a text from my brother. For his birthday on Sunday. And I'm like, oh, let me just go check what's going on in the world. And I saw this Kobe Bryant thing. And I'm like, okay, what's going on with Kobe? And I click it and like, I'm a Miami boy, so I'm a Heat fan. And I know, right, there's the big rivalry, but like, I was devastated because it was before we knew about his daughter, it was before we knew about anybody else, right, that there were other children and other young adults on the trip. But I also had this very consistent, including yesterday when I started watching more clips where I couldn't stop myself from crying. And I know he has certain things in his past that had to be dealt with that, you know, legal things that have come up. But I also know that someone like Tim Grover, right, who is his performance training coach, who I've gotten to know a lot of his stuff through people that I'm connected to. Talked exactly about that 4:00 AM. And the 4:00 AMs were with this guy, Tim Grover, who was also, right, D. Wade's and a bunch of other people's fitness coach. But you're right, that 4:00 AM commitment does longitudinally, right, over the course of time, compounding interest. And I think the sum of Kobe's legacy is the compounding interest that he created created, because it wasn't just about being the greatest basketball player. And I think he was told by his guidance counselor when he was in middle school, don't play basketball, you're not going to be good enough. And he took that and he's like, well, I'm going to prove you wrong and that chip on your shoulder. But the fact that in his retirement, he was championing women, he was— right, his daughter and WNBA and a bunch of other things with women, but he was also writing kids' books. Yeah. And he spoke what, 7 languages, apparently? Yeah. So it's compounding interest, right? You don't learn a language fluently. It's— they say it takes on average 4 to 7 years to learn a language. And that's compounding interest. A book doesn't get written overnight. A league doesn't, right? Coaching doesn't happen in one session. So I really think that for everybody who's listening to this conversation, that compounding interest has nothing to do just with the financial market, but also your inertia with what you're doing with your personal development.

Yeah. And it's the more that I focus in on just the daily habits. And we spoke, I'm a recovering alcoholic, I'm a bar owner, I'm an alcoholic bar owner. I'm fortunate that April 29th of this year will be 8 years of sobriety. And I don't take for granted that I might not be sober tomorrow because it's one day at a time. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And it's because of the program, it's because of AA that grounds me every day. And I have two meetings that I go to at my bar, a Friday lunch meeting and a Saturday men's meeting. And, you know, I will, if anything's possible, I will try not to miss that Saturday men's meeting because That's a form of, of love, of companionship, of men sharing and being vulnerable and doing things that we just don't do as men. We just don't do it. We don't do it in a public space, but it's a safe space because it's anonymous. It's obviously not very anonymous for me being in my own restaurant with my own staff serving us, but I got over that. I got over all of that, and it's been one of the greatest things that I've ever done. It's made me a better man, better husband, better employer, better friend. And I was just fortunate that it came with acceptance. It came with accepting that I was an alcoholic. And I joke that I was a professional Hall of Fame drinker. If there was a drinking Hall of Fame, I would be in it. Not only would I be in it, but I'm good at recruiting people to get in it with me. I would host the party for the Hall of Fame of the drinkers. I mean, that's my thing. But I knew that, you know, back to, you know, one of my other favorite quotes is, "Clear eyes, clear hearts, can't lose." And that's Friday Night Lights. Classic. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. Yeah.

Well, when you said that you had to have this showing up in front of your staff, in front of your employees. What message does that really send though? Because, right, you're being vulnerable. You're putting out there saying, hey, I'm fallible. Hey, I got my own stuff to deal with. And I'm going to put it out there on the table, right? You're right. I know in the sobriety world, in the 12-step world, that everybody else is responsible for your anonymity, but you can do what you want. Correct. So what have you seen through this journey of people knowing that you're going through this process, that is help uplift and support other people in their own experience?

To be honest with you, the more that I've shared that I'm an alcoholic, the more of an impact that I can have because other people know that they're not alone. You know, we've, we started our podcast in 2017 and, you know, it was probably good 10, 15 episodes in until the conversation came up and I just felt like It was just, I had that, that is who I am. And that's what podcasting does. It's either you're authentic or you're not. You share who you are as a man, you share who you are as somebody that wants to be a great leader, somebody that wants to do the right thing, but we're vulnerable, back to, we're human, we're fallible. And that's part of human nature. And if it wasn't for my uncle who who was an alcoholic and he was the last person on earth that was ever gonna get into recovery because that's just not who he was. But he had to and he did it. He accepted, you know, step 1. He accepted that he was an alcoholic. And he, even though there's alcoholism rampant in our family, he never pushed it on us. Never, never said one thing, Sean, you should go, you should go to a meeting, you should go to, you should come in the program, you should read the the Big Book, never, not once. He just lived his life and his life got better. That's why I knew that there was something for me. Once I got into legal problems, once I got my second DUI, I spent my whole life as a functioning alcoholic. Like I used to say, it was, "Yeah, I'm a functioning alcoholic, no problem. I can get up with a hangover and nobody's going to know. I'm burning the candle on both ends, no problem." But eventually it became a problem. And once it became a problem, I realized that I had to change. And, you know, that's something I don't take for granted. That's why I go to— I continue to go to meetings. I'm not healed. You know, it's, uh, one of, one of my good buddies in AA, he likes to say that, um, you know, he's, he's a pickle. He can't go back to being a cucumber. Once you're a pickle, you're a pickle. And once you come to accept that you're a pickle and you're okay to celebrate being a pickle, then life changes. And there's, you know, it's terrifying. It's a terrifying thing to think about, you know, what's the next wedding that I have to go to? What's the next holiday that I have to go? I mean, my business is tailgating. 30% of my business is selling alcohol. What kind of hypocrite am I? Well, once I get over all that BS, all that bullshit, all that clutter, I can just be me. Yeah. Because other people don't have a problem with alcohol, so there's no reason for them not to enjoy alcohol at our bar. I do, and so do other people. So they come to our bar for AA meetings, or they come to the bar to enjoy it. But the more that I share that there is— I have a problem, maybe somebody else will reach out. I mean, I've had friends that I've known for my whole life that that, you know, they've reached out to me and they don't live in San Diego. And I tell them what I tell anybody is I'm here to help them, to ask them, you know, answer any questions they might have about the program or about what I went through. But I'm not an expert. And the best thing about AA is that they're all over the world. There's meetings, hundreds of meetings daily, hourly, everywhere. And why it works because it's fellowship, it's people sharing, it's people being vulnerable, it's people knowing that just because someone's been sober for 20 years doesn't mean that they don't fall off because they do. Happens all the time.

And I strongly believe, and as I shared with you before, that there should be a 12-step process for everybody for something that they're going through in their life, whether it's, right, it's adult children of divorce, or whether it's money or spending or food, that there is so many different resources out there for every little niche of something someone's struggling with. And it doesn't have to be, you know, for people out there listening, it doesn't mean that you have to be going through the experiences that you went through, right? It could be, I'm struggling with this, I just want some support. I'm willing to be vulnerable and willing to be brave and willing to share my stuckness in front of others. Get the feedback, get the help, and then hopefully get some accountability on where I need to go. And I think that's a huge part of the 12-step process is having a sponsor, having accountability, holding true to your word, making amends with your right, with everything like that. But at the end of the day, these things that you're learning through the 12-step process is stuff that's going to help you, right, as a dad, as a husband, and as a business owner, and as a friend, and where is this now showing up professionally in your world, right? The things that you're taking from the 12-step world, and now that you're doing both your business where it comes to the food, but also to your digital side.

I mean, it's, it's a great question. It's actually something I was asked. I was on a restaurant podcast recently called The Corner Booth, and, you know, I've been reading their magazine and their online resource for restaurant owners since we opened. I mean, they're— I'm so happy that they're podcasting now because I'm kicking and screaming for them to podcast and to be on Instagram and to be on YouTube. It's like, please put your content out. It's so valuable for independent restaurant owners. But the two gentlemen, Chris and Barry, they had me on and they were asking kind of a question similar to that. And that's, what do you do as a restaurant owner that's facing all the challenges that we face with minimum wage going up, with how difficult it is, profitability, third app delivery. I told them, I take it back to the principles that I learned in AA. It's, I don't worry about the things that I can't control. The things that I can control, that's what I'm going to worry about. And that's such a powerful thing. Once you stop worrying about who the president is or what war we're in or who's gotten elected or just so much information overload where there's so many people that are so certain about their ideas. But when it comes back to what are the things that they can control, I know that I can be a better dad. I know that I can be a better dad. And I know that one of the most difficult things for me is to keep my phone away from me when I'm at home. With my children. So let me focus on that and let me stop focusing on all the other stuff. Because if I focus on that and I make, and I, and I, I fix that problem for me, maybe my wife will see that and that'll help a different problem. So we're all focusing on all these problems that we like. You can vote, go vote, please go vote. Yes. Have an opinion, be educated. No problem. But let's focus on the things that we can control because then all the things around us change.

And I have that conversation all the time with my clients. And I'm like, you know, let's say this, you know, the sitting president decides to change the Constitution somehow and is going to become president for the next 40 years. So I tell my clients and they say, okay, so Jason, what are you going to do about that? And I have them ask me that question and I go like this. I got to take care of you guys.

Correct.

I shrug my shoulders. And just what, what's right in front of me, that's the most important thing. And right now, the most important thing is the conversation I'm having. Correct. And there's other things that are just— but we get so invested in, so, so torn and so divisive. And it is a divisive experience right now. And people, I mean, but people aren't making it— you're not making it better for yourselves, people, by posting crap. And, you know, going back to the law of attraction. I heard Esther Hicks, which is one of the big, big law of attraction person, once say post-election, you know, why did he win? And, you know, people are like, oh, well, he threw more negative campaign and he did this. And she's like, no, no, it's much more simple than that. The people that loved her hated him more than they loved her. So who do they spend more time talking about, right? The law of attraction is really divided into two things. You put your focus on more of what you want or more of what you don't want. So if they spent their time, you know, leaning one way and saying, this is what's great, this is what's wonderful, this is what's amazing, this is what has been accomplished, this is what will be accomplished, this is how I felt about this experience, this is what I hope to teach from that experience, versus I don't like that, I hate that, I don't want that, that sucks, that's awful, that's evil, that's bad, that's— one has more of a dominant energy.

Yeah. And that goes back to the P.T. Barnum principle. I mean, that's marketing 101 right there.

That's why he was brilliant on that.

Absolutely. The only thing that— the only time he was upset is if they weren't talking about him. Didn't matter if it was good or bad, but they better be talking about him and they better spell his name right. Right. But back to the law of attraction, I mean, that's the most magical The one thing that does happen is that when you live a proactive lifestyle, when you choose to be grateful for the things that you do have and you are present in the moment, um, and you don't worry about the things that you can't control, it makes it so much easier. Everything else just seems to work itself out. And then it starts to get back to the universe has put so many different opportunities in front of me that I would have never had otherwise. And I probably wouldn't have seen them, you know, to be honest with you. And, you know, it's, it's allowed me to say yes to so many things that I never would have been presented to me before. Yeah.

Well, I want to make a very practical call to the people out there who are listening to this. And, you know, when it's versus saying yes, saying no, how do I know? How do I decide? And I'm a huge fan of that. Unless it's a hell yes, it's a hell no, because you never want to be stuck in a hell maybe.

Yeah, correct. I agree with that. And absolutely. And part of, and you know, part of entrepreneurship is, is decisiveness. You know, one of the most important things is being decisive and understanding that that decision could be wrong and you will learn from that decision. And that'll probably be better than not making a decision at all. Cause that's really the biggest problem. The biggest problem is everyone has great ideas. They don't want to jump off the fucking cliff. Jump off the cliff. That's, that's what an entrepreneur is, jumping off the cliff every day at 4 AM and getting right back up. Well, it's what it is.

It's managing your fear at such a different level. And as I've shared this story previously with other people where my investment into my personal development was okay, as long as I was getting either a credit for it, right, for if I was going to go back to school and go from my master's to a doctorate. And I'm so thankful how you said that, you know, you were rejected from certain schools. I got accepted to my doctorate program. But my background history for people out there is that I barely graduated with a 1.8 high school GPA, didn't get accepted to college, went to Israel for 2 years to go study, then came back and then did everything. But I didn't think master's degree was ever in it for me because I would not pass or do well in the LSATs or the GREs or anything like that. So going to graduate school, even for therapy was like, you know, so scary and so fearful. And then I found a program here in South Florida that didn't require the GREs, not because it wasn't a requirement intellectually or academically, but philosophically, they didn't believe that taking a test will determine whether you're going to be a successful and good therapist.

I agree with that. Right.

So, so that way, philosophically, the philosophy shifted, and then the way that they trained us and the way they taught us shifted. But now looking back of where I was then to where I am now is like exponential worlds of difference. I would never see myself in this place interviewing successful business owners. And 2 weeks ago I had David Bihar, who was the former international president of Starbucks. And right, so it's like, who am I, this guy? I'm a therapist. I'm in South Florida. I don't have this international presence yet.

Right? You're podcasting. But podcasting. But, but hold, hold right there. Because that's one of the most important things that people understand is that what we're doing, what you're doing, what other podcasters are doing, what other people are doing when they produce something for Instagram, what they do for when they— if you're doing something with great intentions, you have the ability to reach anybody that has internet access. My grandfather that didn't have access to enough books, if there's a child, there's a little boy in his village, If he has internet access, he could literally hear this conversation for free. He could hear a Harvard professor for free. He could hear Gary Vee. It could change his direction, his path in life. And that's what's important. It's not about how many people are listening, it's who's listening and what's that impact. Exactly.

And that's why, to round that whole conversation out, is the importance of the yet. That when I started this process, I'm just that guy in the back corner office of this building. I'm the guy who has this background and this story and these conflicts and these challenges that I've been through in my life. But when you add the yet to the end of the statement, right, I haven't gotten there yet. I haven't, right, gotten on those stages yet. And this is what I'm saying, but I want people to add to their story is add yet to something that they feel they haven't achieved. And that completely changes your physiology, your response and your nervous system to it. So, you know, we've been talking about law of attraction and people out there can think it's very hippie dippy hokey stuff, very, very California woo woo. And it's not, it's actually neuroscience on the deepest level.

Absolutely. I mean, you can think about, you can think about it however you'd like to think about it, but once you start saying what you want publicly, your deepest passions that you have in life, your deepest hopes and dreams, whether they're for curing cancer, whether they're for watching your child experience love, what, whatever that might be, start sharing it with the world. Share it on Facebook, share it on Instagram, share it with your wife, share it at your church, wherever you share it, and then see what happens. Something magical will happen. And that's one of the beauties about David Meltzer. And one of the things that, If, if you take away nothing, it's that Teddy Roosevelt, it's that people will not ask for help. But once you ask for help for something that you want, how can you help me? Or do you know someone that can help me? And then someone is invested in actually helping you. The greatest people on this earth have always been willing to ask for help.

Well, that's breaking down the Superman, Superwoman syndrome of I have to do it all by myself. I have to be the jack of all trades. I have to be right from the E-Myth, the entrepreneur, the technician, and the manager all at once, which is something that I, that I help my clients both therapeutically and in their business, help them break through. But at the end of the day, every client that I see, the first question I ask them is, tell me what you want. In other words, what will happen when we've accomplished all the conversations we need to accomplish? What will that reality look like for you without telling me what you don't want? So they'll go like, oh, well, my relationship, you know, it will be great if we're fighting less. No, no, no, that's not what I asked. What will that look like when you're no longer fighting less? What will you be getting instead? Well, we would be fighting less. They can't like that. That's that flip of that dialogue is so difficult because we're so— our brains are 4 times as likely to focus on negative than it is on positive out of survival. Survival, right? The reptilian part of our brain. But that first 15 minutes of an average session, I will spend with my clients waiting for the light bulb to turn on, for them to hear the language they're using to describe their worldly experiences with themselves and with— that they're already one-downing themselves. They're already limited by the way that they ask and express for what you want. And I always use the expression, even though you're a barbecue place, but let's say you were a pizza place. No one goes into the pizza place and says, I'd like to order a pie and I don't want mushrooms and I don't want anchovies and I don't want pepperoni. Yeah, correct. Right. But we do that in every single other aspect of our life. So it's the whole tell me what you want without telling me what you don't want. What's the positive version? So I did this with a client and they said that they would be, they would be less stressed. Right. Which everybody wants. Okay, so what is the opposite of less stressed in the positive way? And it took them minutes for them to come up with a word that fit for them in their reality. Because everything's about what do I have to do to get less stress? What do I have to do to get this off my back? What do I have to do to get my employees off my back? What do I have to do to get my spouse off my back? Well, what would that reality look like? What would you call that reality when that's no longer a concern? So for us to get there, we— it's huge, right? We have to reprogram our brain. And I know you're out there doing that with businesses. And I'm doing, you know, and I'm doing that with my clients. And I think once you have that leverage to do that, that pivot point, everything starts to open up. And I know how challenging it can be, one, as a person who grew up going to therapy with a lot of stuff in my own family, but be helping people on a daily basis, whether it's my family therapy clients, my kids, my couples, my military clients, or my business owners.

You know, I mean, it's, it's such a profound thing. And when I started going to therapy, when my brother got into legal problems that were of grand scale that impacted our family, impacted him. But I had a close family friend that said, you know, I love you and I care about you, but I think you should go see someone. And, you know, therapy is not something, you know, back to me accepting that I'm an alcoholic or going like self-help as a man is just not ingrained in what we do. But, you know, I was lucky enough to take his advice and I went to my therapist and one of the first things that she taught me was, it was just this beautiful analogy about when you go on an airplane and you're traveling with children, your children, and they go through the safety instructions and they say, well, when the, when the air, when the mask comes down, what are you supposed to do? And your natural tendency is to protect the children, to protect everybody else. But if you don't put that mask on yourself first, you're worthless to the children. And like, I bring that up to— in so many different circumstances because it was such a profound thing for me to think about because I was burning the candle on both ends. I was trying to help my grandfather, I was trying to help my grandmother, I was the trustee, I was helping my mom, I was I was helping my brothers. Like, who the hell's helping me? It's like, it was my friend's father that said, hey, you need to go to fucking therapy so that you can recenter yourself. And, you know, I recently, we did a podcast with Nick Hardwick who was, uh, played for the Chargers for 11 years, captain. Um, and he experienced some, you know, just a brutal reawakening when he had to come out of retirement. Um, so he retired and then he just didn't have a purpose in life. And now he started a podcast called Finding Center. You know, he was a center. It's perfect. But we had this great conversation just with him and his wife, just about really the essence of what we're talking about right now. And that's living a proactive lifestyle, choosing that Mamba mentality, choosing to get up at 4:00 AM, to do the things that nobody else wants to do, but to do them for the reasons that are true to your heart. True for me, Sean, because if I take care of Sean, I can be a much better dad. I can be a much better husband. I can be a much better leader. I can be a better podcaster. I can ask better questions. I can listen better. I can be a better mentor. I can be a better mentee. Um, and compound interest. Compound interest will build day after day after day. And sometimes I might fail and I have to be okay with that, but I have to also recenter and know that tomorrow the sun's going to come up and I want to have a sunrise gratitude run.

I love it. I love it. It sounds so simple when we focus on the right things and every single client I work with, the first major assignment they get is I need to know your core values because you can tell me that you want this big macro theme in your life, but unless I know what you're making decisions on, and I can't help you. But even more so, how do you know what you're making decisions on, on a day-to-day basis? So I send each one home with a core values worksheet. In fact, I did it with a family last night. I said, I want each person in the room, all of you, all of the adults to write their own personal core values. And then I want you to sit down together and come up with the family core values are. What's your brand? Back in the day, right, coat of arms, or right, and the one person's like, oh, it's like Game of Thrones, right? I'm like, yeah, Game of Thrones, except, you know, you're not doing sketchy stuff with somebody in your family. So it's the round table, right? Exactly. So, right, but what is your personal coat of arms? What's your brand? And a few months ago, I did this for a young professionals retreat where we did what's your dating brand and why aren't you getting that which you want to get when it comes to relationships? And, and We had them all do this within a 45-minute process. And then I said, OK, now you know your core values. Now you know the 3 top core values of the person you're looking for to date. I want you to go back to your adult life in the last 5, 10, whatever years it's been and go through the list of people that you've been dating or have had relationships with. Put that list as a lens against those people. How many of those people would you have gone either A, gone out with in the first place, or B, would you go out with again? So there was about 50 to 70 people at that workshop. Of all the 50 to 70 people, one girl raised her hand and she said, there's only one person that I would redate again. Everybody else I never would have dated in the first place. But no one else in the room had either one of those to offer either. Yeah. And how much time, effort, energy are we wasting when we're not crystal clear on our core values, on our purpose, on our priorities, and on our vision?

It helps remove the clutter. Literally removing the clutter. And it's funny as Americans, we sold our condo. Our beautiful daughter was born this summer and we had a 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo in downtown. We absolutely loved it, but we have 2 children. The math no longer works. This isn't the village in Bulgaria. We would've been fine, but we sold our condo and we found a beautiful home in East County, San Diego, Eastlake. And part of that process was we had to declutter our house. We had to Marie Kondo our house for staging to sell the house. And it's like, I mean, I love it because I had never heard it before. And our real estate agent, Kyle Whissel, phenomenal. But he's like, it's the Marie Kondo method. And I'm like, okay, well, what's that? Look it up on Netflix. And sure enough, it's the Japanese woman that's doing this incredible thing. And she goes into people's house, she touched the clothes, like, does it bring you joy or does it not bring you joy? And like, it's such a simple practice. And you think of how much crap we have, but then once you remove all that crap, so we removed all of that. We sold our house, we leased, we sold our condo, leased back the house. And we had all this stuff in storage and we were only living on the stuff that we could wear. I mean, literally it was like we were living in a hotel. But that's all we needed. Yeah, I didn't need any of that other stuff. And yet I've brought that stuff and thinking right now it's in my, it's in my closet, in our big house. And I don't need any of it. I need just the stuff that I had in my suitcase, because that's the stuff that I wear every day. Just removing the clutter. It's Dr.

Seuss's ultimate philosophy, wherever you go, there you are. And you bring all that stuff with you, right? So, and it's so true. Because I know when I travel for conferences or work trips or whatever, it's kind of like, well, what do I really need? And it's kind of like, I need a pair of sneakers, I need a few pairs of socks, I need anything else I can pick up. There's a Nordstrom Rack or Marshalls somewhere within it. Yeah. If I really did need it.

And Tim Ferriss talks about the same thing about travel. Literally not having to have anything is the best way to go. Yeah. Yeah. But we want to bring it all with us. We, at the end of the day, you know, I mean, that back to Kobe Bryant. At the end of the day, I mean, this man had hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. At the end of the day, ashes. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, but what has he left? He has left a profound impact on the globe, on basketball fans, on dads.

Yeah. And that really ties everything together for the entire conversation, which is this dance of Who are we? What are we supposed to be bringing in the world? When do we doubt ourselves? When do we know that we're living in our purpose? Especially as you were just talking about, right, the success and the legacy of Kobe, where there is a great Hasidic teacher from Europe, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and he always would teach this following teaching where it was you should always have two notes with two different things, and one goes in each pocket. And on one note it says, I am nothing but dust and ashes. And you should put that in one pocket. And then the other side, the note should say, "The whole world was created just for me," and keep that in another pocket. So he used to ask, the trick of our life is to figure out when to pull which note out of which pocket at whatever time that we're going through a certain experience.

Yeah, profound.

So I know we can talk about a lot more. I know there's tons more we can tackle. My guess is we're gonna have to save that for a second episode, which I would love to talk more about, going into a deep dive of digital media and the importance of all of that and the practical applications. But let's just get started today with what we shared, just the incredible family legacies and honoring family legacies and the curiosity that you took from your grandfather and that you're bringing into your world and empowering and letting people out there hear that story of you can be— there's redemption, right? There's redemption stories, and you can go through struggles with whatever it may be, whether it's addiction or business stuff or financial stuff or family trauma, and still come out on top like I'm seeing you do. So I really want to thank you for sharing your time with us today.

Well, thank you for the gifts that you're giving by recording these conversations and sharing them with the world. I'm excited to meet you one day in San Diego or Florida, wherever our paths cross, but really enjoyed this.

Thank you so much. So guys out there, if you're listening and you want to check out what Sean and his business is doing, please check out calibarbecue.media and you can follow him on Instagram at Cali Comfort Barbecue. And if you're listening to— also check out his podcast, right? It's on all same platforms all— probably all mine is on. His podcast is called Digital Hospitality. Please go check it out, listen to some stuff, leave him a positive 5-star review. Don't just leave the 5 stars, leave a written review. That helps us be found by more people. And while you're at it, please do the same for me if you found any value in this episode or any other episode. We really look forward to connecting with you again.

Thanks again so much, Sean. Absolutely, thank you. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.