In this week’s episode of ‘Yes, We Are Open’ Al heads downtown to Calgary’s Beltline District to visit KAKS Bar & Podcast. You read that right. It’s a bar, with a built-in podcast studio! Needless to say, Al is more than a little excited. He speaks with the owners Kass Kielly-Burke and Shawn Chan. They opened KAKS in June 2023, so they’re approaching their first year in business. First years are a challenge for any business, but when you pair that with record inflation and rising interest rates, you have recipe for struggle early on. How are they managing? Listen to find out.
In this week’s episode of ‘Yes, We Are Open’ Al heads downtown to Calgary’s Beltline District to visit KAKS Bar & Podcast. You read that right. It’s a bar, with a built-in podcast studio! Needless to say, Al is more than a little excited.
He speaks with the owners Kass Kielly-Burke and Shawn Chan. They opened KAKS in June 2023, so they’re approaching their first year in business. First years are a challenge for any business, but when you pair that with record inflation and rising interest rates, you have recipe for struggle early on.
How are they managing? Listen to find out.
You can learn more about KAKS Bar & Podcast at kaksbarpodcast.com.
Links of Interest:
KAKS Bar and Podcast_mixdown
Allan: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, I'm Al Greco, and this is the Yes We Are Open podcast.
It's day two of my stay in Calgary, and I've just spent the morning playing tourist, hitting up some of the more famous landmarks of the city. Like Olympic Plaza, where they held the medal ceremonies during the 1988 Winter Olympics. Now, the site has one of the few refrigerated outdoor ice surfaces in the city.
And there are a number of folks out on this brilliant, unseasonably warm day going for a late morning skate. Of course, I also went by the Calgary Tower, a 190 meter freestanding observation tower, offering up 360 degree views of the city and a revolving restaurant. It's the world's largest [00:01:00] Olympic torch.
And finally, I went for a stroll down Stephen Avenue, a major pedestrian mall spanning three city blocks in the downtown core, lined with art, eateries, shopping, and entertainment venues. That was this morning. Now I'm a few blocks southeast of there, in a neighborhood called the Beltline, named after the Calgary Municipal Railway's Route No.
5 trolley. It was home to many of Calgary's first warehouses, some of which still exist. Today, it's one of the premier dining districts in all of Canada, according to VisitCalgary. com. It's also home to hundreds of eclectic businesses. I'm headed to one of those right now. Walking south along First Street Southeast, approaching 10th Avenue Southeast.
On the southeast corner, there's a high end condo building called Up10, featuring the very cool Van Gogh monumental statue. It's a statue of the famous artist holding a suitcase with a large portion of his body missing. One of the anchored tenants in this condo building has their entrance right beside the sculpture.
They're the subject of this week's episode, KAKS Bar [00:02:00] and Podcast.
I enter through the side entrance. To my immediate left is a room with large glass windows on three sides, one looking out onto the street and the other two looking into the bar. The windows reveal a table with a mixer, a couple of couches around a coffee table with microphone boom arms, camera lighting, and a backdrop with the CACS logo and their social media links on it.
It looks to be a fully functional podcast studio. The rest of the place is also really well laid out. High ceilings, plenty of seating around the bar as the focal point. There's a large mural on the far wall of two people sitting at a table recording a podcast. I'm about to meet the two people in that mural.
Kass: Are you Kass? Yeah, I am. Hi, I'm Al. Al, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Al.
Allan: That's Kass, one of the owners. He introduces me to his partner Sean, who knows exactly why I'm there. So he wastes no [00:03:00] time leading me into the studio.
When he closes the door, the din from the bar almost disappears. Despite the windows, the room is quiet enough to, say, record a podcast. So, that's what we set out to do.
Kass: Hi, my name is Kass Kelly Burke. I am the President and CEO of KAKS Bar Podcast. Hey, my name is Sean Chan. I'm one of the owners at KAKS Bar Podcast.
Shawn: When did KAKS Bar open? KAKS Opened in June of 2023. So not even a year old as of this recording.
Kass: There was four friends and we all wanted to open a bar. I've been in the bar industry since I was 14. It's always been one of my passions. Hospitality has always been rooted in my soul. I was running a restaurant at the time during COVID. And this is when we all started to kind of getting together and talking and maybe this could happen.
Maybe this dream could happen. And we had a friend of ours. He owns a restaurant close to my house now. [00:04:00] And we were kind of asking for some advice, and then we started taking some necessary steps, talking to banks, and it started slowly snowballing from there. The name C.A.K.S. is an acronym for Four Friends.
It's Kass, Adonis, Kyle, and Sean. As we were progressing through it, the commitments could only be with just me and Sean at the time, and that's fine, that's all it is what it is, so we kept pushing through.
Allan: This is a very unique idea. I don't think I've ever been in a bar that also has a podcasting studio.
So, first of all, well done.
Shawn: Thanks, Al. And, but secondly, what I've always been super into podcasting. Um, Joe Rogan is my inspiration. I know some people like him, some people don't. Overwhelming majority of people that I know love him. That was my main draw. So because I was a super big fan of podcasts, I started obsessively listening to it more than ever.
I didn't listen to music. Eventually, I thought, if you haven't noticed now, I'm a bit chatty myself. Uh, yeah, exactly. I was like, man, I can do what Joe does, and I would love to do what Joe does. And that's what I knew I wanted to do eventually. Did you have any like audio engineering back? None whatsoever. I went to University of Calgary.
Bachelor of Arts in Communications with a minor in [00:05:00] Sociology. I always joke, like, what does that actually do for you? Majors in Unemployment. So, uh, so from there, I went to SAIT and got a Surface Land Administration, uh, Certificate, Certification. I fast tracked the program and I got in with an oil company.
So for a while there, that was my career. I was in oil and gas. I was in surface land. I was in a big corporate world. I thought I'd be doing that for the rest of my life and bartending was always what I did as a part time job. I worked four casts for a while there, as a couple bars, but I knew I didn't want to keep doing the office lifestyle thing.
So it was four friends that wanted to open their own bar together. And like, I always wanted to incorporate the podcast into it. So my understanding is we're the first ones. And how I knew that was when we were applying for the label through the government, they're like, are you a food and beverage business or a studio?
Business and I said, well, we're podcast bar business. And then they're like, okay, if that's the first of its kind, we have nothing like that on record.[00:06:00]
Allan: What was your first thought when Sean said, Hey, I like the bar restaurant idea, but what about podcasts as well? Like, did you think he was crazy when he, when he
Kass: brought that? No way. I was all about the idea. I think it's it. You know what? We're having beers and conversations anyways. That's what we're all doing when we go and hang out.
Shawn: That side of the restaurant is a regular bar restaurant, elevated pub food, not reinventing the wheel there, but as Al can attest, he's on site right now. We have an onsite podcast studio. You
Allan: guys did a great job reinforcing the studio here. I guess you do some video casting here.
Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we have our own show.
It's called KAKS Bar and Podcast. It's on Spotify's on Apple and YouTube videos on YouTube's audios on Spotify and Apple. I run the KAKS Bar and Podcast show. As of this point, we've done over 150. 18 of them under a year. What would you say is the theme of the show? That's it. So I copy Joe Rogan. I'm like a local Joe Rogan.
That's the way I see it. I've had on comedians, I've had on actors, I've had on entrepreneurs. But the difference is it's at a local level. Yeah. Does Cas get in on the podcasting too? Kass doesn't really do the CX bar and podcast show. Kass is actually a huge table, top game nerd as well. [00:07:00] Like on the side.
So Kass is huge in the Warhammer community in Calgary. So Kass has a War hammer podcast. Wow. I think it's called Blood bath.
Kass: It's a big strategy game. You know, you'll start seeing some more of it come out on Amazon Prime. Uh, Henry Cavill just signed a big deal. He's all about it. So, I mainly just talk about competitive wargaming and tournament play and, and winning big tournaments and really being the best possible player you can be.
Yeah, that's what I do on my, my off time. I didn't expect that question. So, thank you. Yeah, that's great. Hey, I'm all to share. I just, yeah, thank you.
We found that being part of a community pub is we want somewhere anyone can be comfortable with, hang out, not only the chatting or filming a podcast, they also play some board games too. And we have classics like Guess Who, Battleship. We find, you know, little dates and stuff for year ended nightcap dates.
They're using the Battleship or they're playing Guess Who or they're with their friends and playing Crokino. It's about just bringing people together. The bar
Shawn: also allows [00:08:00] minors, like our liquor license allow minors. So yeah, so it was almost like a family restaurant as well, if you will. But we do stop allowing minors at 8pm just as our own rule, because 7pm.
8pm, 8pm, in that time frame we'll do our events. We have trivia night as of right now and Tuesday nights, so 7 9 there's trivia nights. Thursday nights we have comedy nights, stand up comedy. Oh yeah? Yeah.
Allan: What about this neighborhood drew you guys to this location?
Kass: I mean we wanted to be downtown. I think it was down here, Kensington is really the location we were looking for.
Sean lives pretty close, so when walking around we kinda, you know, no offense to our realtor or nothing, but we did find this location and then we brought it to the realtor's attention and he's the one who negotiated the deal and everything else. So, we found this by walking around. Walking around and seeing what was available.
We're right
Shawn: near the Stampede grounds. Right near the Saddledome 2 for hockey games. We're underneath the UP10 condo building, which is a luxury condo building. Yeah, that's our location. Right in downtown, but on the southeast end.[00:09:00]
Allan: Talk about a gym. How were you received
Kass: when you first opened? Well, we wanted to open up in March and with constructions, there's always delays. So we ended up pushing it and then we had to push a few more weeks just to do some inspections and stuff. So we decided June 1st, that's it. That's our day. When we opened up, we did a couple of soft opens to just kind of show people what we got and make sure we're working out the kinks before we open the public, which was on the Saturday for the grand opening.
Shawn: We had a rocket good start, a lot of good reception. The first month was like good to us. It was really, really good. Stampede kicked ass because Stampede was right after June, which again, kind of got our confidence going up. But honestly, Kass and I, to be completely transparent, like we were first time entrepreneurs, so we thought we were doing super well.
And yeah, we did do well that first month and a half, you know, but uh, not gonna lie, after Stampede hit, business did slow down. In August, a lot of Calgarians fly out for remaining vacation time. So we realized marketing. is a huge thing we got to stay on top of. Yeah, that's why we're on TikTok. We're on Instagram.
We're on Facebook. We do have flyers we handle manually from time to time, but [00:10:00] there's definitely a little bit of a lull happened and we had to realize like, well, okay, like that was a bit of timing was perfect. That's why that thing had a rocket start.
Allan: Let's talk about maybe your, your staff.
Shawn: Yep. Staff's awesome. Big shout out goes out to our chef. Okay. His name is Emmanuel Stackard. Uh, we call him chef E man. He's from Haiti, raised in Canada, and he's been cooking essentially his whole life. When I first met him, we connected and I remember approaching him like, Hey, Kass and I aren't cooks.
Okay. We're opening a bar. Kass is the true restaurant tier, by the way. When you, when you chat with him, his whole work history has been in the bar game and a restaurant game. So he knows the ins and outs. Like the back of his hand. Okay. So Kass did all the lifting on that front, but I found E man and I asked him, Hey man, do you ever think about cooking your own menu?
Like now's the time. We open a bar restaurant. You can essentially do whatever menu you want. Uh, obviously we'll taste it. And if we think it's
Kass: good, then let's sell your menu. So I only met him in February. This is kind of [00:11:00] recommendation through Sean. You know, he promised he'd deliver. And I kind of gave him our vision for what we wanted.
We're an elevated pub food style restaurants, but mainly we wanted to be pub style. Like we're here for the people. We're here. And so, when I pitched him that idea, it sounds kind of crazy. What do you mean elevated? Like, chicken fingers or chicken fingers? Burgers or burgers, right? He really stepped it up.
You know, there's crispy chicken, you're adding a spicy slaw on the side of it. I wanted a hot dog. I was a big advocate of a hot dog being on the menu. So then he made it a deluxe dog, where it's stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon, covered in onions. It's unreal. So, he really upped the game there. And we have some great appetizers too, like the risotto bites are an elevated Risotto bites?
Yeah. So they're basically You know, it's arancini, but it's a little risotto, uh, deep fried, and with a truffle sauce on top. It's simple, elegant, and it's a completely elevated dish when it comes to sharing appies at a pub. All
Shawn: the food you see, it's his concoctions, his thoughts. Like, we have a portobello mushroom tempura battered medley, okay?
I know, like, that one is a dish you'd probably serve at a five star resort, but chef makes that [00:12:00] as well, in house. We're kind of hybrid y, you know, because we have some, like, high end food. That's why we call it elevated pub food.
Layne: My name is Lane, and I am a bartender and a server here.
Allan: Okay, and how long have you been working?
Layne: Since we opened. Since
Allan: you opened?
Layne: Yeah.
Allan: Now, what's your favorite part of being here?
Layne: I think just the sense of community. Like, we have a lot of regulars and friends that come in here. We're all friends that work here together anyway, so it's nice to come in and just have fun when you work.
Do you
Allan: have
Layne: any podcasts? Yeah, I did do one podcast. It's kind of a riot. It was my first one that I've ever done, but you know, working here, I figured I should probably do one. I was going to
Allan: say, it must be like a prerequisite to
Layne: work here. No, not necessarily, but it did seem fun. It's a pretty hilarious.
It's about a bad date. So if you guys want to check it out, it is on YouTube.
Allan: What's it
Layne: called? Um, it is called chatting with queen lane. That is me. That is my alter ego.
Adonis: I'm a Donald Ramirez and I'm the bar manager.
Allan: Okay. How long have you been working here?
Adonis: Well, like six months, six months.
Allan: And uh, what's your favorite.[00:13:00]
Adonis: I just like meeting new people. Not yet, but I started like thinking what topic conversation I want to start. Yeah. I'm, uh, I was a big Magic the Gathering player back like, uh, 18 years ago. Casually, but I keep up with all the news. So like, that's something that I will be interesting. Like a few of my friends, since they like it.
So like, I think that's what I'm going to start doing. Perfect. Thank you very much. No worries.
Allan: I'm in podcasting as well. So I know this for a fact, there isn't a lot of money in it. Do you treat the podcast as part of your business as a boss leader? Or is there, are you getting any revenue for
Shawn: that? Yeah. So we rent out the studio. So. Yeah, so this studio rents out for 60 bucks per hour. That works out to be a dollar a minute.
So you don't need to bring anything. That's the way we advertise to the customer. We do all the filming. We'll make you a raw video MP4 file and raw video MP3
Kass: file. It covers its rent. [00:14:00] Sure. So, so at least if it covers its rent, that's okay. Cause it's only up from here. Right.
Allan: So how many podcasters
Shawn: would you say are taking advantage of this?
We've had our 60th different content creator out of this room now. That's a lot. Over the course of a year. Yeah, yeah. Somebody was said to. Me, same thing. Like that you asked, Hey, if you're not making money off this, why do it? But I'm like, I would do this because I love it. Yeah. Like, like when else would you and I have sat down and chatted?
Yeah. Yeah. No, it wasn't for the context of a podcast.
All they know is like cats and I are chasing a dream. That's it. Like, like we, to be honest, we tried to do this before COVID. That was the timeframe. Uh, COVID hit this dream got put on hold for
Kass: two and a half years. I come from humble beginnings and so does Sean. And we're two guys that wanted a dream and kind of work for ourselves.
And I think that it sounds cliche, but if you believe it, it can happen. Do you? You gotta put the work in, you gotta really fully believe it, but, you know, people will help you get there. And we couldn't be there without the people's help. We had a ton of help to get here, but we still pushed through.
There's hard times, there's good times, and we kept [00:15:00] pushing. Up
Allan: next? In less than a year, Kass and Sean have figured out a way to combine both their loves of running a bar and podcasting. Their opening was wildly successful. What happens when inflation? And rising interest rates threatened to put an end to their venture prematurely.
Stay tuned to find out.
You're listening to Yes, we are open. Kass, Kylie Burke, and Sean Chan have successfully opened their dream business. Heck it's my dream business too. A neighborhood bar with a podcasting studio. Their grand opening less than a year ago, couldn't have gone better. But the two new entrepreneurs were about to get a rude wake up call when interest rates began to rise, making it too expensive for their patrons to pay their [00:16:00] rent, much less go to a bar.
How did they get through it? Have they gotten through it? Let's find out.
Shawn: What's been your biggest struggle so far? Our biggest struggle is the struggles every Canadian's facing right now. It's economic.
Like this condo building. And again, no fault of their own. They have a mortgage as well. So when the interest rate went up, their mortgage probably went up and then it had it caused a cascading effect where every other tenants rental went up. So I remember having these great regulars that would come down.
This would be their spot at least two, three times a week for dinner or nightcap before they go upstairs. Cause it almost has a resort feeling. You live in the posh high luxury condo and you come downstairs to the bar, right? But all of a sudden, you know, they started slowing down in presence and one day we caught him and the few of them were just like, Hey, I'm moving.
Am I ready? Got jacked up by 500 bucks. And I was like, 500, like for a year, no, per month. I was like, [00:17:00] Whoa. And at that point, if you start hearing that more and more from a bunch of other people, and that sucked, you know, cause like we really catered to them. And from a business standpoint, they were great, consistent business, as well as the people I want to hang out with.
And now they're gone and all that work of marketing and building up that customer base, like those ones moved on. So you have to always start from scratch and just keep building new customer bases. But the inflation has had absolutely a direct
Kass: impact on our business. It's pretty. It's been tough. We've had to cut back on, you know, our staff hours and get back on the bar and do our thing.
And instead of, you know, working out and working outside the door, we're living by the door. And, you know, that's one of the mottos. You can't live by the door, you die by it. So we're trying to do both. And we understand that, you know, not everyone can afford it. And that's totally fine. Like, groceries are through the roof right now.
And rents are going up in this very building. We're underneath an apartment building. And all the rents went way up. And not everyone can go out and eat. Right? But I can't make it cheaper. So, there it is.[00:18:00]
Allan: So you said that happened around November? Yeah, that's when we noticed. Yeah. Did you have to adjust things? Like, did you have to get rid of staff?
Shawn: Yeah, we pivoted. So Kass and I originally, he handled more operations of the bar from a manager standpoint. I was focusing on the podcast, pumping out content, but now both him and I, we bartend.
So yeah, no, we have to cut costs and operate lean wherever we can. And we do that with minimizing labor. Uh, managing cost of our ordering product before we predict, Hey, bigger group coming this week, so you know, stock up on chicken wings or something, right? Now we go for the lower order. We just pivoted all numbers.
I'm sure every restaurant must be doing the same thing. Otherwise, if you just keep ordering as if the place is going to be full consistently, then you're sitting a bunch of product and losing money later. So we just, we pivoted every which way.
Allan: At any point during that downturn, did you and Sean ever get together and say, [00:19:00] have like a go, no go meeting.
But like, if we don't hit a certain revenue or something by, by this time, we may have to, did you ever
Kass: have those tough conversations? Yeah, we've have, I think our belief in what we're doing is stronger than all those conversations. Like we, we know that anyone who's going through this have been through the stage that we've been through, um, or still going through sometimes.
Right. And it's about pushing through and believing what you want to do and believing that this is right and not giving up. We're just finding other solutions to get forward. So yeah, we've had this tough conversations and then we had a great night the next night. And it's just like, okay, no, this isn't going to work.
Like people do love it here. We are getting a name for ourselves. I mean, you found us right. And I fully believe in what we're doing here. You know, I come back from a hospitality background and it's just the guests that come here, they stay here. They're always here. They're here every day. Sometimes we have guests that come three or four days at times in a day, which is awesome.
Like it feels so good because we're actually providing that community for everybody. And I know what we're doing is right. It's just. About getting there [00:20:00] is the hard part and, and convincing and showing people what we are, which is the struggle. Any new marketing that you did in order to come out of this?
Yeah. We hired on some marketing guys. They have an Instagram channel right now called West Good Calgary. They are videographers and they are fantastic. So we went with them and we found that a lot more people are engaging on our Instagram now and then once they start engaging on our Instagram, they start coming to the store.
So that was one of the things that we did. Having events almost every night and doing something every night and just being engaging in the community. So we pivoted
Shawn: by putting on more events, giving people reasons to come out to the bar. Like, Cas put on a board game Wednesday League. Then, uh, a crib tournament naturally formed on Monday nights at Game Crib.
So, like, these weird little sub communities have started showing up.
Allan: Would
you say you're out of the weeds now and you're
Kass: kind of at a [00:21:00] comfortable level? No, we're still, we're still, February just ended, yeah. Yeah, January, February are always slow months. And the thing, but it started to feel the uptick where we're definitely a lot busier. Happy hour feels good. Lunches are doubled in sales already since last month, which is really nice, but we're still struggling on some parts of keeping people in and keeping them going, keeping them engaged.
I think part of the struggle everyone has to realize is that the only person holding yourself accountable is you and the amount of work that you put in, it will pay off. It doesn't seem like it. It's incremental that you're not going to see the changes right away and you can't get that instant satisfaction or gratification on little things, but they do add.
Uh, anything positive that you're making and problems that you're solving positively compounds positively. If you keep focusing on the things that aren't working and being negative, that compounds negatively. You have to focus on what you're doing right and then make sure it compounds on top of each other.
Incremental change, incremental improvement. But you have to understand that, like, the satisfaction isn't going to be there yet. And it probably won't be for, like, even for me. It won't even be there for a couple years. But it will be. And then, if I could focus on that will be, then we're good.
Shawn: So yeah, [00:22:00] but we just keep trying to be creative.
You know, like, at the end of the day, being an entrepreneur is no guarantee. You get as much as you put in. So, um, yeah, we just keep hustling. Basically, that's that. And, I don't know, our bills are paying right now, so that's good. I mean, no one's driving a Ferrari, but
Allan: Was there anything that Moneris did to help you guys through the tough times? Oh, absolutely.
Kass: I had another competitor, uh, I was recommended. They had a great idea, you know, with integrated systems and everything. It was just a garbage system. I tried to make it work with them. Always on the calls with them.
It was just I've worked with the Moneris for probably 15 years in my career. And I don't know why I didn't just stick with them. So I ended up calling my rep and I was like, Hey, how fast can you expedite this? Because I want it ready before stampede. Cause June has been miserable. It's been just nothing but anger and frustrations and customers taking double payment.
There's a bunch of things that were happening and I had to deal with it. So I got Manaris [00:23:00] and it was a two day turnaround. I got the machines and boom, done. Let's go. I mean, everyone says the rates are better, but I think that's what everybody says. And I just don't care to switch anymore. I'm serious. I just like, why would I, oh, you can save me a cent?
Like, sure. I'm a small business, but like, come on. Well, you're wasting more of my time. Coming
Allan: up after the break, we find out what the future holds for KAKS bar and podcast.
Cass: Success in business doesn't come without moments of struggle. Moments when you had to face your challenges head on. As the proud partner of Canadian business, Moneris plays a critical role in empowering businesses with the payment processing tools they need to succeed.
Together, we are building stronger businesses, where business owners everywhere can stand up to their challenges without slowing down. Moneris.[00:24:00]
Allan: Welcome back to Yes, We Are Open. As Kass and Sean approach the first anniversary of their grand opening, they can hopefully look back at the year of ups and downs and take solace in the fact that their doors are still open and things seem to be looking up. Would they dare allow themselves to look to the future of KAKS bar and podcast yet?
Or is it still too early? Let's find out
Shawn: what does the future for CACs look like? Well, we're gonna build a patio. Oh. So yeah, so the patio will be coming this summer. We did not get the patio last, last summer on time. Uh, just due to timing of permitting issues. So there's gonna be patios. Some extra 40 seats are gonna be out there.
Okay. So during the summertime, that should be more revenue for us and more podcasts being shot at the studio. Eventually, uh, even better production, um, like as in, you know, there's even better cameras or whatever. Yeah. Eventually get a editor, maybe as a student or something like that. So. So that takes a workload off me and I keep podcasting.
So just keep on hustling, keep on growing, keep on staying on top of [00:25:00] things as far as like podcast trends and things like that
Kass: go, keep trying. The plans are to kind of keep growing this thing for the next couple of years, really, really get involved with the community. I kind of want to be a main place for everyone to kind of go whenever they're going out in the city, going downtown.
You want to see a cool spot, very welcoming spot, welcoming staff. That's what I want to be. And that is the future outlook of this place when it comes to the company itself. You know, it's always great to look at the things that you're going to expand and get other ones. Franchise out and stuff. So, you know, that's always in the thinking big and I'm, I'm a chaser of the big.
So,
Shawn: and as far as the food goes, like man, like our food's good. I know it sound biased. I'm confident you're gonna love our food. Like KAKS food could just be another offshoot because our chef is so talented. Like I eventually see him doing his own thing too. And hopefully we could collab with him because at the end of the day, we're all under KAKS Inc.
That's our incorporation. So it's not limited to just a bar restaurant. No, like I'm thinking big, man. Like, it's like, I, I, like this is what I plan to do until I'm dead. Like just keep growing as an entrepreneur.
Allan: You've built it. This is your [00:26:00] vision. You've created it. It looks
Shawn: like you basically did what you wanted to do. How do you feel? I'm happy. I think I'm actually happy as far as my life goes because a lot of people aren't happy. They hate what they do for a living. Like I'm literally doing what I want to do with my time, but at the same time, I'm also the most challenged I've ever been.
I'm learning to be able to handle challenges on the fly and not be so, uh, restricted. It to, to a perfect scenario because I realized now as an entrepreneur, nothing's perfect. And you have to roll the punches. And I just know if I pick away at this continuously, I can visualize, you can see it already.
Like this will be like this as a grind, maybe for five years, maybe longer, but like this will all have been worth it. Everyone I've ever looked up to everyone, they've all took that plunge. And I feel like that's something everyone needs to do. It's gratifying.
Kass: Yeah. This is one of those small things that you have to live in the moment and enjoy that moment.
I mean, we built this thing. It was, it was, it was just concrete and nothing. And we did it with our vision and what we wanted to do, and we wanted that street urban vibe. And that's exactly what we did. And are you proud? [00:27:00] Absolutely. Yeah. Some days I'm not , uh, but people tend to remind me and the support structures I have in my life tend to remind me that you've done nearly the impossible.
So it feels good. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, of course.
Allan: Sean anKassss is CS Barn Podcast Open. Yeah. Yes, we're open.
That's the story of KAKS Barn Podcast. I feel like one of the big reasons more people don't start their own business is because they're afraid of their own inexperience. They don't know what they don't know, and they'd rather learn their lessons on someone else's dime. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But at some point, if you do want to become an entrepreneur, if you want to be your own boss, you've got to take that leap and sink or swim on your own and trust whatever you lack in experience you can make up for in [00:28:00] hard work. That's probably the biggest secret to entrepreneurship, yet the most obvious lesson.
Entrepreneurship is hard work. Both Kass and Sean had varying experience in restaurants and hospitality, but little to no experience running their own business. But they took the leap anyway and built their dream. Over the past 10 months, they've experienced the highs and lows of business, and they've been able to persevere with hard work and creativity.
They've learned many lessons along the way, which just adds to their experience and makes them better entrepreneurs. And even though they told me they weren't out of the woods yet, I'm confident that both Kass and Sean are more than capable of making the adjustments and putting in the work to make it work.
Next time I visit Calgary, I hope to sit in that studio again. Only then, I hope it'll be Sean asking me the questions. Oh, and by the way, I tried that elevated hot dog. Kass was right. It was delicious.
Yes, we are open as a Moneris podcast production. I'd like to thank Blaine, Adonis, Kass, [00:29:00] and Sean for taking the time to share their story. You can learn more about KAKS Bar and Podcast at KAKSBarPodcast. com You Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at CaxBar Podcast. I'll also post links to all the podcasts mentioned in this episode in the show notes.
Please support this podcast by writing us a review on Apple Podcasts or rate us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at podcast@moneris. com. Tune in next week for another story of small business struggle and survival on the yes, we were open podcast. I'm Al Grego. Thank you for listening.