Sarah Beth Shulte

00:00Hey guys, today we're talking about Pliny Crane. What is a Pliny Crane? Pliny Crane is a full service marketing and social media creative management company, right? So what they will do is they will help you create a strategy. They will help you with organic marketing, real relationships really are the way of the future, but they're still a place for traditional marketing. They have access to every form of marketing in the field. They can create, distribute content and campaigns with speed and efficiency, keeping your brand and company visible at all times. And then also in a world of streaming, content streaming across the globe, the only way to stand out amongst the noise is through creativity. They have a full team focused on being the best in their craft. You will have access to the most dedicated and inspiring creatives in the industry. If you have that team working for you, making a schedule, posting, you can't lose. Guys, you got to contact Pliny Crane. Let me tell you their phone number. It's 865-850-7809. You can email them at info at plinycrane.com or you can visit them at plinycrane.com.

01:08That's P-L-I-N-Y-C-R-A-N-E.com. Fill out the contact form and they will get back to you ASAP. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. I am so excited to be back. We have had a little bit of a break just because we've been so damn busy. We are full at NARA and we have been visiting so many restaurants and we're doing good. So we're loving life. If you are on the waitlist to get in, we are going to start hitting you guys up here this last week of July. So onboarding now will be the last week of the month. We'll try and get as many people on the waitlist on board.

02:19If you want to get involved with NARA, go to our website, naranashville.com, N-A-R-A-N-A-S-H-V-I-L-L-E.com, and you can join the waitlist and we will get to you accordingly. It has been a blast. It has been an amazing past couple of weeks. Obviously the World Cup has been amazing. Today is Sunday, the final is today, and we had a big star chef's week this past week in Nashville, and I would like to thank Patrick Sudol from Rezzy for inviting me to come to the dinner. I didn't realize this. I was talking to somebody and they said, you're the only media in the room. And I said, I'm not media. What are you talking about? And I guess I am media. That's really a weird thing for me because I don't consider what we do here media. But yeah, we were. We were the only media that was there. And what an amazing evening. So many amazing chefs in one room. The food was amazing. But I want to shout out some people who were recognized by star chefs. Number one, some of our members. Number one is Tantissimo, Ana Aguilar, and Joshua Cook. They were recognized for just being awesome. I don't know what they were like, best chef categories. I think there were some best chef categories, best drinks categories, all the different things. I will say that Julio Hernandez from Maiz de la Vida was on stage for I think every one of them. That guy is involved every single place.

03:53He actually threw the party the next day at Maiz de la Vida for all of the restaurant, bartenders, servers, chefs, everybody. Man, it was a hell of a good time. It started at 10 o'clock at night. So it was a late night for me. But yeah, it was an amazing night. It was a hell of a good time. It started at 10 o'clock at night. So it was a late night for me. But I do want to say congratulations to Josh and Ana over there. Edgar Victoria from Al Abreje was also recognized for what he's doing. And if you haven't been to Al Abreje over in East Nashville, it is absolutely incredible. I had a good conversation with him the next night. And just the best dude. But also the way that he's doing food is so beautiful. And the flavors are so good. I just loved getting to hang out with him. Another person at 1111, Sun Pham. I met him a couple weeks ago for the first time.

04:53And I think I've seen him six times since then. And apparently, if you have not been to 1111, which I am one of those people. I have not been to 1111 yet. It is the place to go. So if you want to get in there, I'm sure it's already impossible to get in. But if you want to get in there before this guy is the best chef in the world, get in there. 1111 right now. I got to hang with David Andrews, another amazing NARA member. He's just doing awesome, awesome things over there. Big shout out to Diana Barton from Diana Barton PR. Good to see her and hang out. They're doing awesome things. I'm going to say the award for me, for the nicest people that I've met, nicest person, nicest people, was Alex Humbrecht and Zach Halfill from Gorilla Biz Kits. They won a community award. And I got to talk to Zach for a little bit. I'm not kidding. I don't think I've met a nicer dude. They're doing really cool things over there.

05:58Vegan biscuits. Definitely go check them out if you have the opportunity to do so. That's my breakdown of what we did. The food was awesome, but there was every name under the sun. Big shout out to Josh Hobbiger for winning one of the big awards for the night for the Mentor Community Award for everything he's done back in the day. Patterson House, the idea behind Catbird Seat, Bastion. He's an icon. A lot of these people, if you go back on our episodes, we've had them on. We've had Edgar Victoria on a couple times. Sun Pham is coming. He's going to be on the show soon. We've had Josh and Ana on a couple times. David Andrews has been on the show. Julio Hernandez. If you go back and listen to our first episode in 2020, he actually announces that he's going to be doing Maíz de la Vida. And now it is Michelin-recommended Bib Gourmand. So lots of cool things that you can go back and hear.

07:01But yeah, sorry we've been a little bit of a break. I have just been trying to get this episode out. Today we are talking with Sarah Beth Schulte. She is the owner of the Instagram page, The Tip Jar Nashville. I'll tell you, I always like having influencers. She's a content creator. I always like having people on the show because they have a different perspective from the people inside the industry. This one kind of went all over the place. I have to apologize about the audio. I recorded this on my special board that I have here that sounds just like it is right now. It's a pretty good sound quality. But for some reason it hit pause and didn't record. So I always record things twice. We had these small lav mics on. And Vince Lanni, who joins us on this episode, was not on one of those mics. So everything you hear from Vince is like picked up in the background and I'm trying to get him in the show. But it's not amazing and I apologize for the sound on this one.

08:06We are going to also put out another quick episode. We're going to start doing NARA updates. Just to let everybody know, this is for NARA members. Or if you're not a NARA member, you can hear this and know what's going on with us. So that episode will come out right after this episode. It's about 20 minutes. Maybe it's 30 minutes. I don't know. But we talked about everything that's going on with us. We have our big independent restaurant show. It's going to be happening on September 1st. So excited about it. You're going to get to meet all of your favorite vendors. Jason Ellis from SuperSource will be there. We will have Pepsi there. They're going to be giving away all kinds of stuff. Empire Distributing is going to be there. We're going to have wine. We're going to have cocktails. We have some brokers that are going to be there. We have a Dickinson Wright, which is a law firm, will be there. We've got Giving Kitchen. Twine Graphics is going to be on hand making special shirts for the event.

09:08We have a special design that are the actual event. So you can get a shirt. They're going to be screen printing their lives. If you've never seen a screen printing happen live, they're going to be doing that right there for the show. So they're limited edition. We have 100 of these shirts that we can do. And you can have one. All you have to do is make any donation to Giving Kitchen. Giving Kitchen is going to be there also. So with any donation to Giving Kitchen, we're going to print you off a custom shirt. $5 to get a custom shirt. Now for every $50 that you donate, you will be put into a raffle to win a limited edition bottle of Maker's Mark. We're going to be giving away all kinds of fun stuff. We've got Dunks we're giving away. So everybody who comes in will get a raffle ticket. Now this is for restaurant owners only. Not restaurant owners only, restaurant leadership. Or if you work in a restaurant and you just want to be involved and you want to see this, I will actually need a couple of people to help me work the event. So if you are somebody who wants to be kind of on our team for the day, please reach out to me at brandon at nara nashville dot com.

10:13That would be the email. And if you're a vendor and you'd like to go, if you want a table, I've got three tables left. So we have 33 different vendors there. All our friends from Cooler Control Solutions are for humidity. These guys are amazing. You're going to love what they have to offer. We've got Kitchen Guard. If you want to work on SEO in your restaurant, search engine optimization. If you want to help get your Google ranking way up, we're going to have Distillworks is going to be there. We're going to have Toast. I've already said Toast. C&B Lennon are going to be there. Guest Work IT. I mean, gosh, if you want to look up and down your P&L, this is an independent restaurant show. So we're going to have everybody. It's not just fried food. It's all really good food. Joe Offitagado is going to be there. And he owns an olive oil brand that comes out of Sicily. His family owns an orchard. Is that what they're called in Sicily?

11:14And he is bringing in fresh 100% olive oil from Sicily. And he distributes himself. And this stuff is the best olive oil I've ever had. And you'll get to try it. And so if you're a restaurant that uses olive oil and you want a really good olive oil, you want to come to this and taste the stuff that Joe is offering because it is dynamite. So many more vendors that are going to be there. We are going to have Downriver Collective playing music throughout the event. Fat Bottom Brewery is going to be there. I mean, gosh, guys, we just have it's at Fat Bottom Brewery, by the way. And so, of course, they will be there. Lots of good things. So I know you're dying to get into another episode here. We're going to do that straight away. Here we go. Sarah Beth Schulte. Super excited today to welcome in Sarah Beth Schulte. She is the proprietor at Tip Jar Nash at Tip Jar Nash.

12:19And you're on Instagram. That's where I know you from. But where else are you? Yeah, it's actually at the Tip Jar Nash. And I'm only adding that in because people can't find me without it. It's very frustrating. The Tip Jar Nash. The Tip Jar Nash. If you leave out the the, you'll find somebody who's been inactive for like five years and has three posts. So the Tip Jar Nash on Instagram is my primary platform. But also TikTok, Facebook, and a little bit of YouTube. YouTube's a different beast for me. It is for some reason for me too. Yeah. I don't know why. Also welcome in Vince Lanni here. Hey there. Co-hosting the show today. What's up, Vince? I'm doing good. Living the dream, you know? This is his dream right now. He's living it. He's living it for all of us. You know, in one of our last episodes I said, how you doing, Vince? He goes, I'm better than donuts. Oh, that's good. That's usually, I missed my opportunity. You missed your opportunity.

13:19I went, better? There's nothing better than donuts. Stop it. What are you doing? You're going to have to make that your tagline now. Yeah. That's how I feel. I feel better. The best day at work is when someone brings donuts. Yeah. That's how I feel. So that's great. I did make a deal one time with my team at a restaurant I need to manage. I said, if I ever don't respond with better than donuts, I'll bring in donuts the next day. Well, you've got to bring in donuts for the next podcast. I guess so. I'll come back. I love Sarah Beth's accountability on the front end. She is like, let's go. Okay. So full disclosure, we have lots of restaurant owners on the show and people that work in restaurants, but you have a tagline on the top of your Instagram page. I'm going to butcher it, but I'm going to say it. For people who like to have a good time, but still get to bed at a reasonable time. Yeah. Something along those lines. Is that it? That's the gist. It's because we still want to have fun, but also go to bed at a reasonable hour.

14:19And that sung to me. I looked and I was watching your posts. I love it. Every week you post like a weekly, this is what you can do in Nashville this week. You're going in places, you're creating content that I really enjoy your content. And I was like, I want to learn more about this woman. Would you like to come be on the podcast? And here we are. And here we are. That's my book. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Well, let's get into it. I don't know what that means. That's just what they say on podcasts. Let's get into it. What did you do? How long have you been doing? Because you've got like almost 60,000 followers. I mean, when did this journey begin? It started about almost exactly. End of June will be four years. So I lived in Nashville. I'm not a native. I wish I were. We moved around a lot when I was growing up. I'm not a native to anywhere. So I've lived in Nashville since 2015. It is my chosen home. Had moved to D.C. right before COVID for work.

15:19What a time to move. What did you do? I worked for the federal government, Federal Student Aid Department of Education. So two months after I moved, we went remote. And then two years later, they said you could stay remote. Which, of course, all that has changed now. But when they said that, I was like, well, great. I'm going back to Nashville. So moved back. Still worked for the government. And just coordinated a brewery crawl through the nations. There were several breweries within walking distance. Some have closed. Different ones have reopened now. But invited like 20 friends. And we all just like hopped along breweries. So by the end of the night, you know, everybody's feeling pretty good. And just started talking about Nashville Guru. Which is how I learned my way around the city when I moved here. Nashville Guru is great. It's so helpful. And I was 30 when I moved here. So big on happy hours. Not making a lot of money. Just like I learned the neighborhoods through Nashville Guru. I learned which happy hours were great. And got to try a bunch of restaurants that otherwise would not have been accessible to me.

16:24So I said to my friends, well, I'd love to work for them. But I know they're not hiring. And a friend of mine said, well, just pitch yourself to them. And I was like, it's very clear that they're not hiring. Maybe I should just start my own. So I started a website. And then thought Instagram would lead people to the website. Quickly realized, oh, Instagram is what people care about. I still have a website. It exists. The tipjarnash.com. I don't do a ton with it. I suspect more visitors are Googling things and find the website. Whereas my Instagram was always designed to be for locals. Tourists can follow me. That's totally fine. But my intention was for this to be a place for locals and primarily people in their 30s and 40s, young Gen Xers, elder millennials. That's what I am. A geriatric millennial. So that's where the tagline came from. Because I was like, what do people my age want to do? We don't really want to go to Broadway much, if at all.

17:28Actually actively try and avoid it. Right, exactly. If I can. Oh, you're going to be doing something different. Yeah. So we probably have a little bit more money than we used to. May or may not have kids. Like going to bed at a reasonable time. And yeah, so that was just kind of the gist of, you know, I kept that target audience in mind the entire time. Locals in their 30s and 40s. Anyone, all ages can and do follow me. But that was my goal. And so I just kept creating content for them. And another thing that millennials especially, but maybe Gen Xers too, are very nostalgic. So with my event guides, a lot of the events that I highlight are tribute bands and trivia nights for The Office and New Girl and Harry Potter and Twilight. And all these things that were such a part of our formative years are now things that we want to do as adults too.

18:30So you're like the millennial content creator. You're doing things specifically for that generation. I'm trying to. Yeah. And there's a lot of people doing what I do, which I'm grateful I didn't know when I started or I probably wouldn't have started. Now that I'm in it, I see there is room for all of our voices. But coming into it, I think I would have just thought, who needs to hear from me when they've got 50 other people to hear from? Well, I think everybody has a unique take on things. There could be 50 different content creators for kind of a similar thing. But everybody, like I like the fact that you're doing it for people that are your age. And I love that because that's me. I mean, I'm a little older than you are. But like, yes, I resonate to all of those things that you're doing. I love that because I don't understand some of it. I'm like, I don't know that that slaps. Yeah. You're going to love this. It slaps. I'm like, you're going to get slapped there? How does that work? And I'm like. I'm going to begin on the slang.

19:31Yeah. I am now chronically online, which is the Gen Z term for being on your phone all the time. Chronically online. Chronically online. That's just the nature of what I do. Everybody's chronically online. I think so, too. So some of the terms, I kind of know what they mean. And I feel like I don't have children, but I feel kind of like the cool aunt because I do know what these things mean because I'm online. But I also, even when I was young, I didn't use like, I just didn't. I say like all the time. I just caught myself saying it, but I didn't use the weird, extreme, crazy slang. I just never did. So I'm certainly not going to do it now at 41 years old. All I have is like the old AOL instant messenger slang. BRB and stuff like that. Oh, for sure. LOL. Yeah. LOL. JK. I say JK in real life sometimes. Yeah. Like a real life term. Yeah. Yeah. What's your favorite neighborhood in town?

20:33If you were going to go on a date tonight, you mentioned that you did a podcast. You did 40 Dates and 40 Nights. Yes. So I'm going to go back. That's the reference. I'm not just. So if you're going to go on a date. Yeah. Okay. If somebody was to ask you out on a date and said, what part of town do you want to go to? Where would you say you'd want to go in life? Probably East Nashville, which is not where I would necessarily choose to live because I would have to take Interstate 24 every day of my life. And that would make me want to jump off a bridge. But. If you lived there? Yeah. If you lived there, why would you have to take Interstate 24? Because you already live there. The nature of my job, I have to go all over the city every day. Oh, okay. So I'd just always be on 24. But the best restaurants, I think. The best conglomeration of restaurants are in East Nashville. So that's probably it. But I did used to live in Sylvan Park. That's where I would live again. I miss it every day. Which, what restaurant?

21:33Are you going to the Urban Cowboy into Laughlin Table date? Because that seems to be a very popular date these days. I have done that date before. Today's my fiance's birthday and we're going to Laughlin Table. See? There you go. Were you going to Urban Cowboy beforehand to hang out and have drinks and then go Laughlin Table? Because apparently that's the Nashville date. Well, we don't drink. But also, I've always wanted to go there and check it out. I haven't been yet. So we'll see. Yeah. Well, you can report back. It is a great date. I've done some content about mocktails. My brother is sober. Several people in my life are sober that are important to me. I call myself a sober ally. So I have done some mocktail content, but I don't remember if Urban Cowboy was on there. I'm sure they could whip you up. Everybody has something like that. Yeah, at least a couple beers or something like that. Favorite restaurant in East Nashville? NoCo, which is almost everybody's favorite, I think. It's so good. NoCo's delicious. Yeah.

22:33And Corée. And that one's a little bit more of a hot take. Well, I don't think it's a hot take in that it's controversial. I think a lot of people have not heard of it. You guys know it? Corée? Uh-huh. Yeah, I know. I don't know it. Oh, you don't? Where is it? You're the guy. I'm just kidding. I don't live in East Nashville. I live a long way from East Nashville. That's one of the ones that I see on like the... And I might know it. I just don't know if I do. People have like a reservation for it and they can't make it. And they're like, if anyone wants it, they put up like NoCo and Corée. Oh, interesting. I don't know. Kase? Yeah, which is... Part of NoCo, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is also very good. Where is Corée? Let me put you on to Corée. Let's go, everybody. Okay. First of all, you know... Do you know Me Kitchen? That's down here in Cool Springs. The Me Kitchen? Me... Am I Me Kitchen? No. Oh, gosh. Okay. These are sister restaurants. I think they're owned by the same people, but they are sister restaurants. Anyway, Corée in East is across the street from Rose Pepper.

23:36So... Yes. Okay. It's been switched. It's been a lot of things. But Corée, they call themselves... Oh, it's where the Eastland Cafe used to be? You probably don't know that. It's directly across the street from Rose Pepper or on the side with all like the... No, on... Directly across... Across from the gravel parking lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that used to be Eastland Cafe. That's where Hal Holdenbach used to work before he left Eastland Cafe to go open Lachlan Table. Oh, interesting. That's where Hal used to be. Yeah, Hal used to... I didn't know what it had changed. And I'm... Yeah, well, I think it's been... Love Rose Pepper. Something in between that. Yeah. Okay. I think it was sushi, something in between. That's what I thought it was. I didn't know that Corée had opened. Yeah. K-O-R-E... That's on to you. Right there, yeah. So, Corée, it's Asian. They call it small plates. But if you order their K-Pop Chicken, it's almost a mall-sized serving. Like, it is not a small plate. Very affordable pricing. K-Pop Chicken. Fantastic. It's, like, it's in a house, so it's cozy, and it's always crowded.

24:40But not impossible to get a reservation. Just, like, you need one, but it's not impossible to get one. But the service is fantastic. Every time I've been there, it's like... It feels like a cheers bar. Like, everybody knows each other, and... Storm! I... Based on what I do, I seldom get to go back to places, even if I really like them. It's just hard for me to get there. But that place, I had several people visit me last year. So, I went five times last year. Which was a dream for me. They also have a really great happy hour with some of the food on happy hour specials. Every single person I took loved it. Every single person. Okay. That's a date night I'll have to go check out. Yeah. And I... I love that. I love that you mentioned cheers. Mm-hmm. One of our core values at Marable was cheers. Oh, yeah. Had nothing to do with the television show. Okay. So, we wanted you to create cheers moments. Like, actually, like, cheersing somebody. You know, like, to create celebratory moments. And every time I do an orientation, I would explain this to a server or somebody.

25:41And I would say, cheers is one of our core values. And they go, are you familiar with the television show? And they go, no. Nobody knew. Like, none of our servers knew what cheers was. Oh, has it fallen out of... Well, it's just... This was a television show, like, in the late 80s. Well, right. I mean, I... We were born in, like, 2003. Yeah. Like, that's, like, an old... I guess even your parents didn't watch it. It's a thing. So, I just... The millennial content's perfect. So, I'm like, of course we all know what cheers is. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's a thing. Mm-hmm. You mentioned cheers as a core value. I'm thinking of, like, Make Every Guest a Rookie customer. Like, everyone knows your name, right? Mm-hmm. And that's... And you go into a different way with this. Well, that was kind of the whole thing, was that you'd think it was about television shows because, remember, me was also one of them. The actual cheers theme song was a different core value. Sorry. We go off on a little tangents over here. I love it. Okay. So, you go to East Nashville. What part of town do you live in? I live in Donaldson, which people who live in Donaldson love it. And Donaldson's getting a lot more things. Red Door just opened. Bagel Shop's there, locally owned.

26:43Red Door? What is that? I'm just kidding. I'm just joking. I was like, well, we gotta go way back. Dude, I thought you were the restaurant guy. What is this? Red Door, Bagel Shop, yes. Yeah. Red Door, Tenfold, which I live very close to. Homegrown Taproom? Homegrown Taproom, yeah. So, there are a lot of choices. I personally hate Lebanon Road and don't have a family, which I feel like Donaldson's the family area of town. And, again, because I'm going all over the city all the time, if they would just build a bridge from Donaldson to East, just across the river, it'd be so easy. But instead, I have to go around all the time. I have to drive through downtown. So, Donaldson is not where I would choose to live in. You could take Riley to Gallatin. That's what I'd do. I'd take Riley to Gallatin. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that works for the Inglewood part of East. Yes. Yeah. It's a thing. Yeah. So, you said that you worked for the government previously and you had your own podcast.

27:45Yes. I am dying. So, before the interview started, we were kind of just catching it. We were just like, hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you, kind of a thing. And then you were telling us that you kind of did this previously. And I was really intrigued. And I said, no, no, no, don't tell me the story. I got to hit record. Okay. So, you did a podcast. Tell us the story behind the podcast. Yeah. Can people still find it? Yeah. It still exists. I would like to do a season two at some point. I'll get to that. We're going to be taking applications here shortly. It's going to be awesome. So, last year, I went through a difficult breakup like a week before I turned 40. What a time to go through a breakup. Turn 40, go through everything. My best friend is always very much, you got to get back out there, whatever. She's also- Back on that saddle. Yeah, yeah. She also, I don't know. Are you guys Enneagram people? I am an Enneagram 7. Oh, okay.

28:45I'm like 7 and 8. I'm like right there. Yeah. I'm more of a 7 because 8s are tough. My wife is a 6. Okay. What are you? I'm a 3. Oh. So, the achiever. Yeah. I'm like, that's a great one to be. Yeah. Well, I think 7 is a great one to be because you guys are fun. We are fun. Vince will tell you that it sounds great, but being around a 7, it's like he's just dropping shit everywhere. I have to like, he's full of ideas, but everything else around it is like, whoa, wild. Do you know what your Enneagram is? No, no. Oh, we're going to do that. Yeah. I love it. Of all the person, I like personality stuff anyway, but that one really resonated with me. But I'm a 3. My best friend's a 3. So, we're at dinner and she was like, what are your goals with the tip jar? Which is just a normal conversation for two threes to have. And she said, well, do you want to have a podcast? And I said, I would love to, but I don't know what I would talk about. And we just kept talking about it. And she said, what if you went on a date every day for a month?

29:45And I said, what if, because I just turned 40, I went on 40 dates in 40 days. And she was like, yeah, I thought this was going to go viral. It didn't. In part, I think because TikTok is probably where it would have gone viral. And I got on the wrong side of TikTok real fast. What's the wrong side of TikTok? TikTok, I have observed as a consumer, you can either get the really sympathetic people who are like, you're amazing, girl. Go for it. Like, we love you. Or you can get what I did, which is the girls who are bitter and saying stop centering men. Or the men who are bitter. One guy, I had an episode. This is when I quit because I had an episode about going to Alaska. And the Alaskan men loved me because the ratio. Like, I mean, it's like 10 to 1 up there or something. I did the math. Men to women? It's crazy. So anyway, I did an episode about this.

30:45And one of the comments was, well, yeah, there are so few women. Everybody thinks a 4 is a 10. I'm like, okay. Oh, my God. I was like, I don't need verbal abuse from strangers. This is not worth it. Yeah. So I quit TikTok, which is... Anyway, back to the podcast. It never went viral. But I really enjoyed it. I loved podcasting. I was getting a lot of feedback, especially from women who were older and have been single. And dating is really difficult. You're married. You're engaged. Stay that way. I've been with my wife for almost 25 years. Yeah. I've never even been single with, like, the... We didn't have... There was, like, MySpace when we started dating. We never had social media. Right. I've never had social media as a single person. Well, I have been single a lot. I've not been married. So I've been through, like, every days of it. From, like, Yahoo!

31:45Personals, which, thank God, I didn't get murdered. To, like... Craigslist. Yeah. Craigslist. To, like, the early days when it was just Tinder to... I've tried every dating app that existed. And in that time, the dating apps themselves have changed a lot. And I think they're on the decline. I think people are really craving in-person connection now, which is a whole other topic that we could get into. But I did the 40 days. I actually... I counted... If I went to, like, a singles event, I counted that as a date. If I had a date lined up and he ghosted, I counted it. So, altogether, I think in the 40 days, I went on 25 actual dates. But I did something every single day. And it was so much worse than I ever anticipated. It was the absolute worst experience of my life, except for the podcasting part. But the actual dating, it was so terrible.

32:45And at the end, my... Why was it terrible? I need examples. How did you find these men, first of all? Mostly on the apps. I did one of my best dates. Not that I was interested. It was not a good fit for many reasons. But actual, like, good, pleasant date. He planned something. He was very sweet and asked me questions. I met him at Mother's Ruin, which is not a place I regularly frequent. But people said, go there. It's easy to meet people. He came up to me. I knew he was younger. But I didn't know how much younger. We go on the date. He starts telling me things. And I said, how old are you? He was 24. No way. What was going on? I didn't tell him my age. I said, I'll tell you on the second date. Which, of course, you're never going to have. You're number 23 on my 40 dates. It's funny, because you're 24. And this is my 23rd date. Amazing. So, that one wasn't terrible. It just wasn't a good fit. And it's exhausting to keep going out with these bad fits.

33:47So, on the podcast, would you interview the actual people you went on the date with? No, I just talked about it. You just talked about it. Yeah. And I did some interviews, too. Yeah, we can break them for a second date. Yeah, we can break them for a second date. Actually, sit down. We're going to talk about our first date. We're going to break this down for you. So, when you asked me what my favorite Pokemon character was, what part of this made you think I'm into Pokemon? There was a lot of, not Pokemon specifically, but a lot of, why do you think that is something that I would, like, what? What context clue have I given you? Exactly. Exactly. So, anyway, by the end, I was so broken down. I was like, I can't keep talking about other people's dating, but I don't want to keep doing this. I legitimately ended the podcast by saying I want to get back with my ex. And if that happens, great. If it doesn't, then I'm done.

34:47And he and I have been on a journey since then. Are you back together? It's a long story. We're not back together. This will be season two. Yeah. So, I've been waiting to do season two. He's probably going to listen to this. Sorry. I've been waiting to do season two until either I was in a relationship or I, like, just totally didn't care at all. So, it's still just waiting. So, you're taking a break from alcohol. You're looking for alternatives. You want to test out the THC market. Listen, there's a million THC drinks out there, and a lot of big brands are just throwing something into the hat. Let me tell you about North Canna. These guys have an amazing product. Sometimes they have too much sugar. These have no sugar, no calories. So, there's no guilt. There's also no alcohol. They make them in 5 and 10-milligram strengths, and they're fast-acting. You feel the effects in 30 minutes. No hangover.

35:47You get to chill out, watch a movie, or chill out and have a nice dinner with friends. It's naturally extracted and transparent. Their THC is never synthetic. Only U.S. grown, and each batch is a third-party lab-tested and full-panel lab results available. I'm telling you, if you like fruit flavors, these flavors are amazing. You can get blood orange mango, berry lemonade, strawberry melon. They have a pineapple one also. So many other flavors in the 5 and 10-milligrams. They actually make a 30-milligram. That one has 25 calories, though. I've got to let you know, which is nothing. Get them at the finest liquor stores in town, or you can purchase them from Lippman Brothers today. We all know that there are things that you can potentially save money on. One of the areas you don't want to skimp is when you have your hoods cleaned. Kitchen fires can put you out for weeks and weeks and weeks. Having somebody come in at a cheap price so that they can do a subpar job just isn't worth it.

36:47That's why we are recommending Kitchen Guard. Kitchen Guard has been operating since 2009 and are the trusted experts in the kitchen exhaust industry. They service all of Nashville and the Middle Tennessee area, and they can do a free inspection and consultation. All of their cleanings are done in accordance with strict NFPA 96 guidelines. You get professional service every time. They have properly trained technicians to keep your equipment and restaurant clean, safe, and compliant. There's pre- and post-inspection reports for compliance. Full exhaust cleaning from hoods to fans. They exchange filters, and they clean the filters. They do repair and maintenance services. Clear and consistent communication with every service. Call Kurt Kowalski with Kitchen Guard. He will get you set up. He'll come in, check it out, take pictures, let you know what's going on. You can call him at 734-344-2010, or you can email him at kurt.kowalski at kitchenguard.com.

37:52I don't think I could be more excited to introduce you to OneTapFix. OneTapFix.com is where you need to go, and they have any service provider that you need as far as equipment failures, plumbing issues, HVAC problems. Any of these problems that happen and you have to get on the phone and call somebody, there's an app. You can type in what's wrong, and it will find you a person, give you an estimate, and they can come out that same day. Guys, this is revolutionary. Everybody is going to be on this before you know it, and you're going to say, Oh, I heard about that on Nashville Restaurant Radio. This is one of those meetings where I was just over the moon excited to learn about this. Now, Eric is the CEO, and I'm going to have him on the podcast to explain the history behind it, why it works, how it works, all that stuff. But in the meantime, go to OneTapFix.com. You will send me an email and say, Thank you.

38:53This is absolutely amazing. Hey, guys, we are talking today about Twine Graphics, and I'm talking about people who maybe have multiple locations. One of the headaches I get is, man, the manager at this location buys our shirts from this company, and it's not consistent from the next guy who buys it from his buddy who runs this shop. Twine Graphics does all of your custom apparel, including screen printing, embroidery, staff uniforms, branded tees, or retail merch your customers actually want to buy. Beyond apparel, they also produce drinkware, decals, branded goods, so your brand stays consistent across every touchpoint. That consistency happens because they will build a website for your company. At each location, the manager will be able to go into that website and order the branded merch that you have selected to make sure that it is consistent across all of your locations. You can keep them consistent with each location so you know who purchased what. It is unbelievable how these guys partner with local restaurants.

39:56If that sounds interesting to you, you need to give them a call. Call Brandon Hagan. His number is 629-281-0838. Or you can email him at Brandon at twinegraphics.com or visit him online at www.twinegraphics.com. There's always a couple like circling in my DMs. A couple guys, they're very respectful. Nobody's ever said anything inappropriate. But I don't really talk about my love life. For one thing, it's complicated right now. For another, that's not the purpose of my account. But they shoot their shot sometimes, which is sweet. I'll never mock anyone for shooting their shot. The thing is, they know so much more about me than I know nothing about them. Nothing. I don't even know their name because their handle is like... Rip Rider 12. Yeah, exactly. And then their profiles are private. So even if I wanted to stalk them, I can't.

40:58It's a weird move, the DM thing in any scenario. Yeah. I feel like... To be fair, my ex and I met through Instagram. But it was a little bit different. So I DMed you to come on the show. True, yes. But that had a real purpose. Your account wasn't private. I could see you were a legitimate person. Hey, no, I just want you to come on the podcast. Anything else, I promise. So this is really cool. So let's get back to the actual account and what you do as a content creator. How do you make money? Through brands or businesses paying me is the primary way. I have several side hustles and there are other things. But brands paying me is the primary way. The challenge for me is that I have built a business of mostly supporting local. And a lot of local businesses don't have money for advertising, which is what I am.

42:01I am advertising and marketing. I compare content to the modern-day billboard or newspaper ad. You're just getting in front of eyeballs. But people want to see a return on investment, which you can't really do on social media. I can give you anecdotal stories. Well, there is. I think that content creators get a bad name. And I had Jessie Tigges. Do you know Jessie Tigges? I know of her. I've had her on the show to talk about this. Because I think you guys are the number one way in which restaurants can get ROI. I think when you look at how much money you have to spend for print advertising. How much money you have to spend just in targeted Facebook ads. I mean, it's not inexpensive. What's happened is you have Kiki from Idaho who's coming to town on a bachelorette party. And she calls the restaurants like, Hi, I'm Kiki and I have like 5,000 followers.

43:04And my bachelorette party is coming. And if you feed us for free, we'll talk about you. And restaurant owners are fatigued. Because everybody wants something for free. And so I went to the bar bash. Whatever it was. It was at some hotel. I forget the name of the hotel from the rooftop. Cow C-A-O? Oh, Coa. Coa. I went to Coa. C-O-A. It was at Coa. It was a bartender bash. And it was like this big contest. And I was there with C&B Linen. And they met 100 people. And people walk up. And I would say, hey, what do you do? I'm a marketing. I'm a digital marketing. I'm a content creator. I'm a content creator. I'm a content. Like everybody was a con. And it was out of control. Like how many people were just there like, hey, doing their thing. And I think there's a side of that that is obnoxious to a lot of restaurant owners. Sure. But if you have a really strong demographic. And you're local here in Nashville. And people follow you because they take your. Because you take it seriously. And because you're going to restaurants you love.

44:04And you're giving honest reviews about this restaurant. Then people go there. My wife buys clothes. She buys so many things. Because she follows an influencer who she likes and respects. And they said, this is the thing you got to do. And she'll go buy it. And it's real. Like the influencer thing is real. People are influenced. So people go to your site. They see what you have going on all week. They see what you're doing. And they go do those things. So if you're a local restaurant. There's, in my opinion, almost no better ROI right now. Than contacting somebody like Sarah Beth. And saying, hey, I'd love for you to come to my restaurant. And do a feature. Because you're 57,000 followers. I don't know if every one of those organically will see it. But those are the videos. Oh, Sarah Beth likes it. We got to go try that. Yeah. And most of them are local too. Like if they're in that demographic. That we have money to spend at restaurants. We're talking about geriatric millennials. Or zennials like me. I see something.

45:05I'm like, I didn't know about that. I'm going to go try this place that you were talking about. Across from Rose Pepper. And we're over there all the time. Seeing Andrea at Rose Pepper. I'm going to bring a wife out there. Just because you said that. Yeah. Well, you guys get it. I think there is a disconnect. There are several areas of disconnect. One is I need to see. I need guaranteed numbers. Which I can't do. The algorithm has a mind of its own. I will give you the best content I can. And after that, it's out of my hands. So that's a disconnect. There's also a disconnect. This is why I like the billboard analogy. Because it's, well, if 1,000 people see it, am I going to get 100 people? Am I going to get 10? I'm like, I can't control that either. I'm just getting it in front of people's eyes. And yes, I can tell you that my audience is really engaged. But unless they're, like, with events, when there's a ticket that I can give a coupon code, then you can track exactly how many people came in because of my post.

46:09But otherwise, there's no way to track it. So all I can tell you is this is who my audience is. These are the people you want to reach. And so that's an area of disconnect as well. And then I think the biggest one is why should we pay you? Because Instagram is free, which it is. But my time is not. And knowing what my audience is looking for is not. And a billboard and a newspaper ad are not. But that is an area of disconnect. And I'm not talking about people who are like, we would love to pay you. We don't have a budget. I understand that. But I have frequently heard, why would we pay for this? So that is a challenge. Because Kiki from Idaho is going to come in and do this for a free meal. And I think that there's a real value. When I was at Team Heidi, which is the Giving Kitchens, big annual event in Atlanta, and I brought the podcast there.

47:09And I interviewed the head of marketing for Taziki's. And I said, wow, this is really cool to get to talk to you. I said, what is the thing that Taziki's is doing right now that's getting you the most ROI that restaurants get? She goes, local influencers. She goes, that is the number one thing we have gravitated towards. You get the number one, the most ROI, bang for your buck. Because most influencers are relatively inexpensive. You get to create relationships with them. And then they sell your brand to all of their followers. And local food followers are the most loyal people. They go to those restaurants. And she goes, we use, in all of our markets, we find all the local influencers. We pay them, and then they promote our content. And I went back to Maribor the next day, and I was like, we're transitioning to influencers. And we started doing, twice a month, we would bring influencers in and start paying them to do this. And it's amazing how much it worked. Yeah, yeah. If you're marketing a restaurant, and you're like, hey, look how good my food is.

48:11I'm like, that's great, but you're selling. I'm sure you think it's good. When the third person comes in and says, this is great, it builds a little more trust there and drives it to a hyper-local audience. And otherwise, if you just put ads out yourself, you're probably not hitting them all. If you put a billboard out, you're not hitting a key demographic. The local influencers can really do that and put your place in front of more people that are more likely to come in. Yeah, I think it's an education thing. All of the disconnects that I mentioned, as well as what you're talking about with Kiki from Iowa or Idaho or wherever Kiki's from. Some other state. Some other state. Probably not Idaho. Yeah. I'm not trying to generalize. You could have Kiki's in Iowa or Idaho or Nebraska, Oklahoma. I mean, pick one. Yeah. It's her 25 or her 4,000 people that are in Oklahoma. It doesn't matter to NoCo. I was going to say, there's only 5,000 people in Idaho.

49:12Right, right. Sidebar, I'll come back to my point, but sidebar, I was looking at a coffee shop, which is not local, but I was interested in trying it and reading the reviews. And someone from Des Moines was in Nashville and said he had done all this research on Nashville coffee shops. And he said, Nashville's not known for its coffee scene anyway. I was like, excuse me. Nashville is definitely known for its coffee scene. And he ended up at this chain coffee shop that I was looking at. And he was like, I did all this research and I came here and it was just the best. And I was like, it's a good thing that you cannot argue with people on Google Maps because I would have been in there just telling him, go back to Des Moines. You don't know what you're talking about. Which is why we do the little stickers, the NARA stickers on the doors that say we are certified local. You can know who the people are. Yeah. But so Kiki, wherever she's from, I think there's also a lack of education.

50:15And to be fair, I mean, social media influencing all this is new. We've been advertising in newspapers for 200, 300 years, whatever. We've been advertising on Instagram for 10, maybe 15 at most. So it is new and it takes a while for people to understand how it works. But I think a lot of people don't know how to vet their influencers, whether it's this person's from Iowa and they're not going to help me. Or I see sometimes when a big, fancy restaurant opens in town, not a local restaurant, like from New York or whatever. They invite all these lifestyle girlies who live in Nashville, but their audiences, they were on The Bachelorette, their audiences are from all over the country. That's not going to, maybe when they come to Nashville on a birthday party. If they remember that thing they scrolled by. Right, exactly. So just knowing how to vet your influencers and also looking at a lot of people.

51:20I shouldn't say a lot. Some by followers, some by engagement. So you've got to even look at the ones who. And that's not common in the Nashville. Most of the Nashville accounts, we're all friends and they're great. But there are people that do that. So just learning to if you're. This is an investment of your money and you want to see a return on that investment by investing in the influencers who do have a foothold in this community and are honest and not defrauding you. Because that's what I think is happening when you're. This is my soapbox. I get on it all the time. When you're buying followers and when you're buying engagement, especially when you're buying engagement, you are defrauding brands because you are charging based on false numbers. And I get really mad. A hundred percent. And you don't care about them. I mean, you only care about selfish. You just care about yourself. Right. How do you even buy?

52:20How do you buy? I don't even know how this works. How do you buy followers or buying? I don't even know what that means. I don't know how you do it because it feels very black market to me. So I don't know what dark web people are on. Other countries will spam it out. You'll get a bunch of bot accounts and all that kind of crap that follows. So somebody's business out there is I have 20,000 bot Instagram accounts. And when you hire us, we'll get you 20,000 likes on a post. And then that bumps the algorithm. And then maybe that helps. Or maybe your client sees that you got 20,000 likes. And that's the metric that they're like, oh. It's not pushing it to the people that need to see it. It's pushing it to a weird audience that isn't going to actually engage. And if you don't keep using it. Well, I'll tell you. Jessie Tickets was on the show. And I don't know if she's – do you guys consider yourself like competition? I expected when I started my account that there would be a lot of competition.

53:20And of the food and Nashville people, I don't know what happens in the fashion and the home goods. We don't – like our worlds don't cross usually. But of the food people, most everyone just gets along. I mean, there is an element of competition in that if a new place opens, you want to be the first to talk about it. Because if you're not first, like it kind of doesn't matter at that point. You know what I would like to see? I'm going to interrupt you. Please. I want to see an influencer who gives two shits about new restaurants. I hate new restaurants. Right? I'm not saying that like I literally hate new – good for you opening a business. What I like are the restaurants that have been doing it for a long time. I like the people who have shown up for their community year after year, put out consistent food and have proven themselves. That's the page I want to see. Like the local legends page where people are just going to people who have absolutely crushed it for a long time and shown up.

54:21There's a tornado. They're outside with bottled waters. They're the ones who are outside with a chainsaw helping people cut trees off the side of their house. They're inviting people in to use the restroom. Those are restaurants we need to support. The brand new place, like y'all can have them. I'm going to focus on the people that are local and that have shown up for their community forever. So you would like my national original series, which every Wednesday I post about a place that's been in business at least 25 years. The challenge – You're running out of Wednesdays. I mean, how many places are there? Actually, my list is getting longer, but I'm not limiting it to restaurants. I posted about the Belcourt last week. That one did really well because everybody has a good memory at the Belcourt. I certainly do. The very first one I ever posted in this series was about the Villager Tavern. Another classic. Yes. When things go beyond the people that follow me is when I get negative feedback sometimes.

55:22Someone said, Well, stop telling everybody about this great place that's for locals. I said, Or I remind locals that it exists so they keep coming so we keep it in business. There's people that are like, Stop telling everyone and let me close. I can't believe that closed. I love that place. Well, you didn't support them. Yes. That's the dumbest. How do you take that? I mean, you said there's a comment on your podcast that was negative. Now, that was a pretty low blow kind of a comment that is just an asshole thing to say. But if I was in your business, I'd be like, bring on the haters. All that does is bump the algorithm. More comments, more likes, more engagement means Instagram is like, Hey, let's keep bumping this thing up. Well, that's your Enneagram eight wing. I'm too delicate and I don't handle it very well. It depends on the day. Some days I just let them talk. Some days I'm sarcastic back to them and say exactly that. Thank you for bumping up the algorithm. Some days, if it's actually inaccurate, I will correct it.

56:25I report people for bullying and harassing all the time. I don't think it does any good. But in my mind, Metta is keeping a tally and eventually they're going to have too many strikes and they're going to get booted. So truly, it depends on the day how I handle it. But the primary way I handle it is only engaging with comments on Instagram because most of my Instagram, for the most part, is very nice. TikTok is not as nice. Sometimes I read those. Sometimes I don't. I don't think what I'm posting is that controversial, but people will find a way to make it. Facebook, I refuse to engage at all. I just post it and let it do what it's going to do because those people are nasty. On Facebook? Yeah. They're nasty or they have no brain cells because the number of people I will tag the restaurant, put the location in there, put the address in there, like the name of the restaurants in the reel and in the caption. And people will still say, where is this?

57:26I really don't like it with the Facebook. I think it's really the least anonymous comment you can make. If I say something on my Instagram or my TikTok or something, I don't really comment on stuff. I don't even care unless I'm supporting it. But if I were to do a negative comment, okay, it's Instagram, it's TikTok. On Facebook, you can see connections and family. I don't want to say something that's going to start something on a page. Someone can go and follow or message me and my family members. I think it's a weird thing to do. Yeah. But they'll fight with each other on Facebook, so I just let them do that. And then that boosts my engagement without me having to be part of it. But Facebook pays the most, so I can't ignore Facebook altogether. No. And Facebook Marketplace. You guys have been on Facebook Marketplace? You ever sold anything on Facebook Marketplace? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's those people that are commenting. The people you're like, I sell shoes on there sometimes.

58:27I sell shoes. That's what I do. It's a hobby that I do. This is the size of the shoe. This is what the shoe is. This is the location. It's like, hey, is this still available? Where are you located? What size is the shoe? It's in the title of the thing. And then it's like, the shoe is $220. Will you take $15? You're like, what? That's not how this works. And then you're like, sure, I'll take $15. And then Kaiser Solsé, they're just gone. You'll never see them again. I almost sold a table. You know Dusty Slay? I almost sold a table to him once. It was earlier in his career, but I knew who he was. But I already promised it to someone. I was so blind. And you said no? Yeah. I was like, well, if they don't come to help. Look at the integrity on this young lady. But, yeah. There was something I was going to circle back to earlier. I don't know. We'll keep going. Well, I love your friends question. I don't know if we really got that answer. What is the goal with the tip jar?

59:28Oh, well, I thought when the podcast didn't go viral, that ended that goal for now anyway. But I don't know. I don't know if being a creator in this niche is sustainable. I say niche. Everybody else says niche. But I've always said niche. We knew what you were talking about. Thank you. We'll do a reel on that. Is it niche or niche? Is it niche or niche? I'll type the same word. It's written so you can't hear it. Keep that. We're talking about your goals. I'm going to do another sidebar. We did an interview with Chris Winters and Hal Holdenbach. And Chris Winters is his farmer at White Squirrel Farms, I believe is the name of the farm. And he was talking about the different rocks he puts next to the plants. And this rock does this. And I said, oh, so it's like a yin and yang. It is very similar to a yin and yang. And I went, oh, did you just passively, passive-aggressively correct me that it is not yin and yang?

01:00:34It is yin and yang? And he was like, well, the yin and yang is very important. And I was like, okay, there we go. So I didn't say, so what is your niche? Or whatever. What is the goal of the tip jar, Nash? I don't know if it's sustainable to be a content creator without expanding. I mean, Nashville keeps growing. And new restaurants do come in. And there are old ones to highlight. Sidebar on my own comment. What I was going to say earlier is the challenge with highlighting those older places, the places that have been showing up and doing well, is the algorithm doesn't like it. So if you're treating this as a business, which I am because it is my business, it is a balance between wanting to support those businesses that are integral to the community and also knowing that I have to feed the algorithm or else my account dies. So that is a challenge. I don't like posting about the new restaurants because there's 20 other accounts posting about them.

01:01:37I'll let them do it. I still like going because I want to know if it's worth visiting or not. I do a lot of roundups, like five places for bottomless mimosas or whatever. They may make it into that, but unless they're paying me, I'm not going to do a full post about a new place. I'll show it in my stories. They gave me a meal. I'll give them some love in my stories. I say love. I'll give them some attention in my stories. I always tell people my tell. If I don't really like something that I have to post about it is I use no adjectives. I'm like, here's a place. This place exists. They serve food. Have a day. Yeah. So that's the challenge with the older restaurants. My Nashville original series, I think it's important. I'm going to keep doing it, but it doesn't usually do great. It doesn't do nothing, but it's not going to go viral. It's not going to get me a bunch of new followers. It just is. It is a way to recognize those restaurants have been around for a while.

01:02:40Yeah. I don't know. That looks like your whole thing. We're going to keep local life. I like to. Jesse did that article. Jesse, this is what I meant to say earlier, was with Chuck and Willie's. I introduced her to Bill over at Chuck and Willie's. She goes, oh, my gosh, let's do a video for this place. And she did a beef rib Saturday video. And he goes, I've seen at least a hundred of these restaurants. And I'm like, I don't know. It was the most amazing post. I'm telling everybody I know that they need to hire this woman to do video for their restaurant, because I've never got so much ROI. And I was like, good. Well, I'm really glad. I would love to introduce you as one of our NARA influencers that we have. I would love that. Thank you. Well, let's add you to the list. I would love to introduce you as one of our NARA influencers that we have. I would love that. Thank you. After this is over, we'll spend 10 minutes, and we'll talk about what that could look like. Because I think we should put the package together for local restaurants that want to be one of those Nashville original restaurants, or somebody who's really crushing out there.

01:03:47Maybe we can introduce people. But I think there's some really good things for local restaurants. Do you delineate between local and chains? I do. I charge the chains a lot more. 2X, baby. Local restaurants, I tell people, I don't think I've ever charged the same thing twice. I really am flexible. I do appreciate when people come to me and say, we know this is your job, and you deserve to be paid. Even if they say, but we don't have a lot, I'm like, well, tell me what you do have, and we'll make this work. Sure. I really appreciate, too, when restaurants often say, well, I can't guarantee in feed posts, but I'm happy to come and share my stories in exchange for the meal. If they say okay to that, I may go and love it and make content anyway. But I'm just not going to give my, you know, what I charge for away for free.

01:04:52But I reserve the right to, because it's mine. To me, that communicates you have enough belief in me that you're willing to accept my stories, but also enough belief in your product that you think, maybe she'll do something else anyway. I think that's how old Nashville used to be. When I say old Nashville, I mean handshake deals, people caring about each other. I have many sponsors for this podcast. Some people are small companies that I absolutely love. I think their product is amazing, and they're doing it the right way, and they're hustling. I find a way to make that happen for them. How do we need to make this happen? I know my normal fee is this, but I just want to share with people what you're doing, because I think it's really cool. You shake their hand, and you go, let's do this. Let's make something happen. I have this cool company. It's called Cooler Control Solutions, brand new into town, but they're actually doing the most amazing thing with this product that reduces the cooler temperature and the humidity in there.

01:06:02It reduces your cooler temperature three degrees. It reduces all the humidity. Your food lasts longer. Your whole cooler smells better. It reduces electricity, all these different things. I'm like, wow. I've tried it at my house. We've done tests at restaurants. It works. I'm like, I just want to share this. How do I get this out there? They're brand new. They're tiny. We're just building this small company, and I just love that. I want to support them. It sounds like if you're a restaurant that's crushing it, and you're local, and you're doing really well, maybe you don't have all the butts in seats yet. Do you get a sense of joy out of being somebody that could help build that restaurant and help that owner win? I do. Because that's what it seems like to me. Yeah. I love it. So kind of the way I run my account, most of what I post is not paid. Nobody wants to see ads every day anyway. But if someone reaches out to me, then they're asking for me to guarantee content, and that is when I say, okay, pay.

01:07:10But in the meantime, I'm going out every day. I'm going to lunch after this at a place I just randomly saw. They don't know I'm coming. They don't know who I am. Where are you going? I'm going. Well, hopefully I like it. Nobody's going to hear this. It's called The Cookery. It's an Indian food. No, not The Cookery. No, it's on 12 South. Yeah, but that's not what I meant to say. I said that right there. I know. You're reading it. I'm like, that's Rhett Swain's place. It's amazing. No, this is a great spot. I meant it's called The Hockery, and it's on Charlotte. It's new, only a month or so old. And it's Indian fusion. Have you? Should I go? Very nice people. Okay. Well, the point is, I think- Is it local? It is. It might be like all of us. It might be from somewhere else. We live here. The family lives here. Mm-hmm. And they have a pizza buffet, which I think is cool, and Instagram will think that's cool. So that's the kind of place that I'm constantly scouting.

01:08:10If I'm going on my own, I don't tell them I'm coming because if I don't like it, I don't want to post about them. And I don't want them to give me something free, and then not. So I just don't tell people I'm coming if I don't already know I'm going to make a post. Now, with the National Originals, sometimes I do reach out because I know I did one at Midtown Cafe, for example. I was going to post about them no matter what my experience was. They've been around for 40 years. I wanted to highlight them no matter what. So I reached out and said, hey, I am going to make this post. Would you be interested in collaborating, pumping my meal, whatever? And they said yes, and it was great. So if I know I'm going to make a post, then I might reach out. But otherwise, I don't want to be on the hook, and it does bring me joy to just surprise people with this content. There's a place in Antioch. I'm going to forget the name now. But it's also Indian.

01:09:10Ironic that I'm talking. I don't even like Indian food that much, personally. But this Indian restaurant in Antioch is in a gas station. So again, my algorithm mind is like, that's really interesting to people. It has 4.7 stars from like 300 reviews in a gas station. Let's go check it out. Brought my brother, who's this big jacked guy. So that's part of why it did well because everybody was in the comments. Who's your brother? But it did really well because it was unique and novel. They had no clue I was coming. It also did really well because it reached India. That's where you want a guest. But I mean, they're not going to help the business. So that did well. I posted about 1865 Club once. And they did invite me in, but I didn't agree to anything in advance except stories. And I just thought it was really cool. So I posted about it. And the bartender there said, the next time I went in, he said, I was going to have to get a second job and I don't have to anymore because you're your post.

01:10:17Now, both of those went viral. They don't always go viral. What qualifies as viral? How many views counts as something going viral? I think it totally depends on your account size. I mean, 50,000 for me is equivalent to my followers. So that's not viral. But 50,000 when I had 5,000 followers felt viral to me. So for me now... So maybe like a 10x of your follower count? Yeah. Well, yeah, it's gotten a lot harder. It's funny when I only had 5,000 followers, I would routinely hit 100,000 views. But that was two or three years ago. And now I'm so much bigger and hitting 100,000 is harder because there's so much more content in existence. So it's just harder to break through and get those big views. What gets you the big views? Is there some tip you could give? Hey, if you knew the tip, you'd just do it all the time, right?

01:11:18Right. But what have you found? What increases your odds for that? Yeah, it's a little tough because sometimes... I go through these phases. I was thinking about this on the drive here, actually. I go through these phases of everything doing pretty well and me thinking, finally, I have mastered Instagram. I've figured it out. And then it'll just drop off in the next week. Everything will be terrible. All right, so we're going to take one more commercial break and then we're going to finish up the episode with actual recording. I figured out that I was recording it the wrong way. So the rest of the audio is really good. We will be back shortly. Running a restaurant is tough. Staff turnover, rising costs, and the endless tasks that bog you down and take you away from what you love. Let Adams-Keegan lighten that load. They're a privately held Tennessee-based restaurant and hospitality-focused outsourced HR, payroll, and benefits firm. The team at Adams-Keegan removes the administrative burdens of HR administration, payroll benefits management, garnishments, unemployment claims, compliance, 401k, and so much more.

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01:13:27Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen. If you know me, it's my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be. I am just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry, which is why I was so excited when I found C&B Linen. They're out of Waynesboro, Tennessee and they don't charge any fees. So the linen price that you have, whatever that first linen price is, that's your price. And so you may say, well, every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract, right? No, because they don't do any contracts. There's no gas fees. There's no clean green service fees. There's no replacement cost. There's nothing. The only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product. I know it's too good to be true. No contracts. They do floor mats. They'll make custom floor mats for you.

01:14:27They do fresh linens, cleaning supplies. And guys, I just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate. It is state of the art. I'm going to post pictures on my Instagram. You can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts. It's just absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a linen company you can trust who wants to earn your business every single week, go back and listen to our episode with Jason Cruz, the owner of CMB Linen. You'll hear it straight from his mouth, exactly what they do. Or you give them a call at 931-722-7616. Or you can DM me, at BrandonStill, on Instagram for my exclusive pricing through the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. SuperSource develops and distributes high quality cleaning products and supplies, as well as delivers wear wash, housekeeping, laundry programs and food service training. They partner with restaurants, golf and country clubs, hotels and resorts, schools, universities and healthcare institutions.

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01:17:44That's another place that did go viral on all platforms. They said, we're going to have to hire people which we didn't think we'd be able to do for a long time. That's just a little family that runs it. It's super cute. But book talk is really trendy right now. I knew, which is crazy to say books are trendy right now, but they are. I knew that one would do well. I suspected that one would do well because it's A, a trendy thing, but also a unique thing with the different rooms being a different theme. But there have been other things that I thought would kill it, and it didn't. That's the thing. I get an episode, and I'm like, this one, like the Bill Miller episode, I was like, this episode is going to just blow up because the content was really good. I really enjoyed that. He's such an iconic name, pun intended, for Nashville. Do you know who Bill Miller is?

01:18:44Yeah, I listened to that episode. That episode just was like the same numbers as any other episode. Yeah. But the Nick Guidry episode is like my number two all-time listened to episode when you talk about closing a restaurant, and then it just went boom. Hot topic. That went viral for us. Yeah, that's true. But you have no idea what's... No. People respond well to emotional things like a restaurant closing. Those posts always go viral when a restaurant announces their closing. Every time that happens, I think the restaurant's probably like, well, if all of you would have just come, we wouldn't have had to close. In my stories, the most reactions and views that I've ever gotten from any story ever was when I posted about my boyfriend and I breaking up, which has nothing to do with my content. Yeah. But that was the most. People like to see the personal stuff too. That's your biggest post. I broke up with my boyfriend like, like, like, like, what is that?

01:19:47Well, it was very sweet, so I'm not complaining, but I spent the entire day, I was on my couch anyway, I was feeling sorry for myself, but I spent the entire day just responding to people saying, praying for you, thinking of you, you're going to be okay. So you see every comment. Do you read every comment? If it starts to take off, I usually read every comment for about three days, and then after that, I'm like, I've got to get on to the next thing. Yeah. Yeah, I had one on TikTok that I got like hundreds of comments on. It was kind of like a rage bait video, but I got like hundreds of comments. I just thought, after the first like few that I tried to like respond to, I was like, I'm not even going to look at these anymore. I did a video, we did like a fake video where I had the owner's son had a huge, like a five gallon Cambro, and we filled it up with cold water, almost to the top, and then I had him standing there underneath the water. Do you know the joke? Like in a restaurant, you have a trainee, and you're like, all right man, so before you get out of here, dad, you need to empty the hot water out of the coffee pot.

01:20:54That's like a hazing thing where you tell the new guy to go empty the hot water out of the coffee pot. It's pipe dense. It's never going to empty. So I had him stand there with his five gallon bucket, and he was just, and I said, hey man, what are you doing? He's like, oh, Brad told me to empty the hot water before I left, so I'm just doing that, and it was like he'd been there for a while. I was like, oh, that's great. Hey, what are you doing with that? Well, you get the cheese stretcher from the chef, and he was like, yeah man, no problem. It was like a 12 second video, but it got like 11 million views. Oh my gosh. Like 11 million views on all platforms, and I was like, what just happened? All the things, it was like, whoa. I do think, I think about this a lot, especially with businesses. It's hard. I run one of my friends' social media pages. I'll never do that again. As soon as she's like, we're done, I'm done, because it's really hard to post about the same place time after time. I can post something new and exciting and shiny every day.

01:21:55Some do well, some do fine, some just fade into the background, but posting about the same restaurant every day, posting about the same, she's an audiologist, Aspire Audiology, posting about the same thing every day, like it's just hard, and I think the ones that do it best are the ones that are funny. Like I don't know if you know or have been to Mona Mee Coffee in Lenox Village, Nolensville area? No. I love Lenox Village area though. I used to live right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this, I just know they have some Gen Z person running their account. They know the trends. They're good at executing them. It's funny. So I follow them because I think they're funny versus the millions of other coffee shops in Nashville that I don't follow even though I like their coffee, but why do I need to follow them? But you just see a picture of their coffee. Yeah, yeah, but that's hard to do. So I say all that to say my posts that have done the best, that I have a couple that have hit over a million views, they were memes and about Pizza Hut buffet because I did a nostalgic thing with the full house music and whatever.

01:23:05Oh, yeah. But people don't follow me for memes, but that's what gets shared and that's what people interact with and that's what watch time right now is the biggest thing for the algorithm and people, if it's funny, they'll watch the whole thing, but that's a specific skill set that I don't really have and certainly most restaurant owners don't have the time to invest in doing that. So you either have a person on your staff or you hire somebody that can do it or you don't, but I think that's a good thing. It's funny you mentioned earlier about restaurant owners asking you, well, what's the ROI? I'd be like, well, what's your current ROI on your social media page? It's probably nothing, right? The question, what do you think it is? Yeah, I think that I saw a video the other day and I told you about it where there's two videos, same restaurant, two videos and one of them, have you ever watched The Bachelor or Bachelorette? Yeah. One of my favorite television shows. Still? Well, it's Jump the Shark.

01:24:05Yeah. I've watched one season sort of recently, Joey's season and then prior to that I hadn't watched in like 10 years. I've never seen that. We stopped watching in the pandemic when they started doing like the whole season at like a resort and it was like they would like go in a courtyard and we're going to make up a surf date and it was like, oh, they've lost us and this last one with the Mormon wives. Oh, well, that one just got canceled. It got canceled so we were going to watch it. I was going to watch that one too. We've been, we watch Love is Blind now but we wait until, I wait until after all of the little cubicle dating is done and I show up for the show when they start doing the reveals. Yeah. That's when I start watching. I don't, I can't do the other stuff but my wife and I, we like to watch those shows. It's very fun for us. In this one, they had people in a walk-in before their shift doing testimonials. You know like, they'll show on a date and they'll have the little one-on-one interview. There's people going, I got to work with Sarah today and let me tell you about Sarah and it was like these little one-on-ones in a walk-in with all the employees about what their shift is going to be like.

01:25:09Funniest thing I'd ever seen and there's another one where it was like, what do you do for bar towels and if you worked in a restaurant, you know, bar towels can be like gold. Everybody kind of has their secret stash where they hide their bar towels because there's only so many bar towels and you need like four or five a shift. If you run out, mine are still going to be there. When you run out, I know where mine are hidden and it was like in a restaurant and there's still like the bartender walking like, hey man, you got this and he like turns around opens up like a spaghetti box, reaches in and like pulls out three towels and like hands it to him like, thank you. And it's like this whole thing about bar towels. That is brilliant. Those two, I watched the entire thing. I watched them both twice and they both had like 50,000 likes and they were both, but I'm like, that's what you got to do. You got to think outside the box. Not just like, this is a picture of our steak. Like, great, get it. But like, where's the, I wanted to do, I think like a whole, if you were out there listening to this and you wanted to get, I think like that idea of the walk-in with the confessional, but like a full-on like drama style daytime soap with like the person that pulls the last glass out of the rack and then sets the rack there versus taking it back or somebody puts the last glass in a glass rack and doesn't flip it over and replace the rack.

01:26:26But like the drama around that, like, Sarah, you can't just take the last glass. Yeah, well, you did like this whole, like this 30-second drama about somebody not yelling rack over and replacing the glass rack would be epic. That just, and like a whole series around that. And then you have like little characters like, oh, well, Sarah Beth never, never wears silverware and she doesn't roll silverware. Oh, there goes Sarah again, hiding her silverware. Sarah Beth over there, look at her go. And like just following people, like almost like this. I don't know. I love it. Here's my ideas for you out there. If you're a restauranteur and you want to spend a lot of time on curating a whole show around your service team. Well, I think that is something that people don't understand as well. Even if you're not doing an entire soap opera, content takes a long time to do. And even, there are some, some of my fellow creators that just turn out videos. So they go to the newest places and they are the first to post because they can whip out a video in 10 minutes.

01:27:31And I, fast for me, fast is like 30 to 45. If, and that's only the video part. That's not counting like me going and getting the content and all that. But I just don't understand. And I'm saying that as somebody who does this every single day. Yeah. And it still takes me 30 to 45 minutes. If I'm quick. It's not easy. Okay. Sarah Beth. Yeah. We have been talking for over an hour. Wow. That's how fast it goes. It does get fast. I don't even know what we covered today, but I feel like I've learned a lot about you. And we've got to talk about content creation. And I think if you're out there, you need to go follow the tip jar Nash, because there's some really, especially if you're a millennial or is any old like me. Yeah. And tap into her audience. You know, if you're a restaurant owner out there and your demographic of people, you want dining.

01:28:34There is your mid thirties, early forties people. They have the money and they're the ones who are going out to eat. Family friendly stuff. A lot of them are families like me. So, yeah, that's why we can't afford houses because we go out to eat all the time. That's what they say. Anyway, and the yeah, there's a lot of other reasons, but I'm not going to get it. That's a whole nother hour of conversation that we're going to have to jump into. Thank you so much. Right. Tell us any way people can contact you. Obviously, DMS are your phone numbers right there on your page. As far as message the person. DMS are fine. I get a lot of DMS of varying importance. So I do sometimes lose things. So if somebody wants to work with me, it's easier to email me. It's just the tip darn ash at Gmail. So it's the same as my handle, just a gmail.com that I mean, I will respond to DMS, but I won't be as prompts.

01:29:36Probably I'll they. Sometimes things get thrown into my hidden message as if they are sending me something nasty. I get that too. It's a perfectly fine message. So email is better for professional communication, but DMS are fine. Love it. Thank you so much for coming out today. I have enjoyed this conversation so much. Don't forget to take a picture and sign the door. I always forget to do that, and I'm just reminding you that we're going to do that. Best of luck. And again, everybody go out there and follow the tip jar Nash. All right, there it is. Big thank you to Sarah Beth Schulte for joining us on the podcast. And thank you, Sarah Beth, for your patience in us getting this episode out. We recorded this like three weeks ago. So it's really funny because I was mentioning at the beginning of the episode about our experience at Star Chefs, and I got to my table. We're at table number nine.

01:30:37Shout out to everybody at table number nine. And I'm meeting everybody at the table, and the executive chef and general manager from Corey were at my table. And I was like, my God, I get to check your place out. I just learned about you on my podcast. So there it is. Corey across from Rose Pepper. You heard me talk about it. I will definitely be going to check that place out. Shout out to them. They were the nicest people ever. Nobody seems to be so nice these days. Gordon Food Service, final thought. You know, I've said this many times on the podcast about using influencers. There's a lot of ways in order to grow your business to get butts in seats. And right now, I think that using influencers is important. I think a lot of people downplay it because the perception is people just want free food.

01:31:38But there's real traction with people like The Tip Jar Nash, where she's talking to people who are engaged, who want to come try your restaurant. It works, and it's inexpensive, and you're supporting a local creator. So find more of those. If you're a local creator out there and you're listening to this, message me. And I'd love to have many of you guys on our NARA roster so that we can recommend you to restaurants that are looking to do this sort of thing. We'd like to figure out exactly who you are, what you're doing. I love the elder, millennial, zennial vibe that Sarah Beth has. We'd love to help you out. And if you're a restaurant, do the same thing. Ask about who's following them, what kind of engagement they get. They obviously can't guarantee engagement, but a lot of these people are helping restaurants. They have an influencer night because it gets the word out to the people who are following them. It's very, very important. So if you've been one of those people who are like, I hate influencers, maybe it's time to change your mind on that.

01:32:42Maybe it's time to open your eyes and heart and look at maybe utilizing some local influencers like Sarah Beth. So that is it. I hope that you guys are having a wonderful rest of your weekend. We're going to be back here real soon with another episode about NARA. And then next week, I'm going to be all over the place interviewing chefs. We're going to have like chef month in August. It's going to be all these local chefs. We're going to be talking about the Nashville scenes. Best of episodes of your magazine. If you are voting is about to start, we're going to hopefully give you the names and restaurants that you could potentially be voting for. Thank you again for listening today, guys. I hope that you are being safe. Love you guys. Bye.