Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Wahoo's Fish Tacos Wing Lam | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 39

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Wing Lam co-founded Wahoo's Fish Taco in 1988 with his brothers, starting with a $30,000 loan from their parents. The chain now boasts 65 locations across seven states, blending Mexican, Brazilian, and Asian flavors into its menu. Under Wing's leadership, Wahoo's has become a multi-million dollar business known for its surf-inspired atmosphere. He also founded the California Love Drop, delivering over 11,000 meals to healthcare workers during the pandemic. Wing's success story highlights his innovative approach to the restaurant industry and his commitment to community service.For More Check Out our Playlist: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPwyhl8CkXiM0cBtuY8A_6JS60FueLz3&si=0_2dnoPkYV6jcSGwCheck Us Out on all Platforms!Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffeez-for-closers-with-joe-shalaby/id1726674707Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KkQWRqHSHcCK3TVfsRKUK?si=hjTnUOjFS5eTDxBjgf4RwQ&preview=noneAmazon: https://www.amazon.com/Coffeez-Closers-Joe-Shalaby/dp/B0CRYLQRW6 Coffeez and Closers Socials & WebsiteWebsite: https://coffeezforclosers.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coffeezpod/TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbnU0T3RrLXdPbC1BR2NLc2lWcExqWklQaHlQUXxBQ3Jtc0tudi1GV2Zod3hRYzRhTkhONFBuMlptblNGSlJ1QzhpV0tzbHh5YThNR0R3Y2RnNnU5NV9ER3E5ZUhxMjdUUWp1UWo4MVl6Q2szeXo1cFh1OHNkYkxDR1F0MXZtMTZ6QnZoakdzSnJpVl9PcWZBOU9zZw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40coffeezforclosers&v=uXvk6LY9lS8Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa2pLZ2pMaUxmSTh4dy1qazMtdlBjX2pVN1AxQXxBQ3Jtc0tua2RUTUNsRmJob0RKWlVqeDhNaUN4US1rdlRvUG9Fdm5SNk1jU1pQNzNLQnVmUmtGMGtMYUViZ2pLMXJkOVJUci1kMk9DN2poTThVV2NFd0tISWdDMzNwOEZ2c3pVb09lbEhjemJHblRsS1RKdHZqbw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpeople%2FCoffeez-for-Closers-with-Joe-Shalaby%2F61556355642488%2F&v=uXvk6LY9lS8 Joe Shalaby SocialsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephshalaby/TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa3p6VlRzR1BWMkJQM1ZIaUdVZHhYVTYyak43QXxBQ3Jtc0tuUXVBOE1oZUJYTmZIZnNENUgxQkhjamk4RXJHb09MWU9OczJhLWpnX0JwN2pENzRhaV9NajJROW5nek1tQ1VvVE40ZFJuUUI2cnI0ajNKLXE4d1VMUUpkTGFHR0tGY0o5NUhnWnZnaXJoZXdEM0piaw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40josephshalaby&v=uXvk6LY9lS8Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josephshalaby E Mortgage Capital Socials & WebsiteInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/emortgagecapital/Website: https://www.emortgagecapital.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Emortgagecap #1 Mortgage Company on Social on 🌎#1 Non Delegated Lender in the Country🌟#1 Broker in CANMLS #1416824"Mortgages Are What We Do Not Who We Are"™https://finance.yahoo.com/news/learn-why-e-mortgage-capital-192000740.htmlAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of Feast Proposers, where we dive deep to the stories of industry leaders and innovators. Today we have a special guest who has made a significant impact in the restaurant world. From blending Mexican, Brazilian, and Asian flavors to creating a unique dining experience. He's the co-founder of a beloved restaurant chain that started right here in Costa Mesa, California. and has grown internationally. He's not only a hyper-successful entrepreneur, he's also a dedicated community advocate supporting education, health,

and many different environmental causes. Get ready to be inspired by the incredible journey of Wing Lamb, co-founder of Wahoo's Fish Talkers. Great to be here, Joe. Always fun to tell the story of how an immigrant can do it, And so can you. I love it. I love it, Wing, and we bonded on that, you know, both immigrants, both founders of different companies.

You just happen to have a very, very successful, internationally known company. And it's just been such a blessing to know you, get to hang out with you on a couple different occasions. And this is our first coffee date. Yes, it is. It kicks off well. I like to start the show off with all my guests with the same question. And that is, what is Wing Lambs morning routine? Morning routine. I wake up and I call it Old Dark Hunter. These days includes walking the dog,

you know, because they like to go out and pee before we go pee, right? But normally I'll either hit the gym or go surf, you know, or sometimes when I'm lucky, I have enough time for both. Then I can make sure I get home in time to make breakfast for my little guy, Levi, and either take them to this now and the year when it's summertime I take them to the junior lifeguard, you know, camp, or I'll take them to school. And then it's all. off to work and go make plans and see what we can do. Nice. What gym do you go to? I go to Equinox. Nice. We're actually going to have the founder of Equinox on in a couple weeks. That would be great. Great Jim's coming on. Yeah, but that's a commute from the peninsula. No, no, in Newport, there's one in

Huntington Beach. Okay. So you go just right down PCH. Yeah. Nice. Beautiful Jim. The new one in Huntington is stunning. Oh, yeah. You can see the oceans right there. Now, what I want to ask you, and you would get this question asked a lot. Like, First off, where did you get the concept for Wahos? Well, the idea is, you know, when surfers, you know, first get their permits, you know, driver's license, before 9-11, it was much easier to drive across the border. So the first, quote-to-quote, surf trip you make outside of California back in the 70s, 80s, whatever, was across the border down to Mexico. And what happens when you surf, you get hungry, and what do you eat? Along the beach is mostly these fish tacos.

And the question was always, how come nobody does it here? And the answer pretty much is nobody, everybody loves to eat them nobody wants to make them. So that was the inspiration. And the name Waho's, how did that draw? The name Wahoos, my kid brother Mingo went to a wedding in Hawaii

and we were jockeing, you know, we wanted to call the restaurant after a fish like Dorado Mahimahi Red So we were like every fish under the sun, you know, Marlins, whatever we can come up with and nothing just sounded interesting and fun. My brother comes back and goes, what about we call it Onos, which is Hawaiian for everything is delicious.

What a great idea. But just like in the Mexican version of Nova, Nova, I says, what if somebody says, instead of Ono, they says, oh, no. I'm like, we're not going to go there, right? Because, oh, my God, you're right. If they put the accent on the wrong part of the word. And then it says, well, the other word for Ono is Wahoo. And I had never heard of it.

But then they said, yeah, Waho's. It goes, oh, my God, Waho's Fish Taco. What a great name. And this is way before Yahoo was around. So that's how the name came about. And we just actually, me and my son were fishing in Hawaiian. I didn't know the Wahoo, the Ono is the fastest fish in the ocean. Yes, it is.

It's the most sought after sport fishing game. I mean, to catch a tuna, Mahi, all those are great. But if you catch a Wahoo, it's unbelievable. Yeah, we caught one. We were just trolling. So the boat caught one. Yeah, yeah. No one really caught one.

But the boat caught one. because we were trolling quickly. But it was amazing and we ended up eating it and it was just an awesome experience. It's delicious. And the good part for us is unlike all of the other tunas, most of the Wahoo Khan, they never turn it into sushi. So it's basically the only way to really eat it is cooking it, right?

You could eat it sushi though, right? You could, but for some reason, I've never seen that anybody's, because it's not like a fatty, you know, like a tuna. They're very lean. Very lean because that's why they're really fast. So the whole idea. of eating something that really in relative terms has no flavor, right? But when you cook it, it tastes more like chicken than anything else. Yeah. Do you guys actually cook a Wahoo there? Like you import

them? Well, we are the largest buyer, Wahoo in the United States. Wow. Yeah. We buy a lot of it. And that must be so expensive to import because they're the Hawaiian fish. Yeah, it's very, very expensive. We buy, as we know, futures in the fish. So before the boats ever leave the dock, we already bought it. So that's the only way we, we're going to. So that's the only way we we can afford to turn it into tacos because we buy a lot of it and we buy you know ahead of everybody else and in relative to speak relatively speaking with the cost of fish right now you guys have a great it's a great deal to eat at wahoos in comparison to anywhere else right now to eat fish you're basically eating the filet mignon of tacos when you eat wahoo's fish taco because it's the most

expensive cooked fish tuna's obviously because depending on their size could get much more expensive but you're going to get, you know, a quarter of an ounce and a bite, not four ounces fillet. Yeah. So, yeah, you get a great value by eating in Wahooz. Yeah. And it's still, I mean, and we talked about this with margin compression now. How are you coping with margin compression in a market where the food is the most expensive in the world? Right now, we're all scratching our heads trying to, you know, nickel and dime our way out of this whole thing.

But, yeah, labor is going through the roof. Food cost is going through the roof. We just got a report on our salmon. Salmon count right now, just telling everybody out there, it's anywhere between 25 and 40% down production from last year, harvest. So you're going to see prices in the next two to three months, you know, go 25 to 40% higher. On salmon.

On salmon. That's not good because we love salmon in my household. Yeah. So get ready. When you see it, now you remember, go, oh, yeah, Wing was telling me back in August. That salmon is going to skyrocket. It's going to skyrocket.

By the time this show airs on the, it's normal cadence, like, people would be like, it already went up. You're already up, yeah. So what is salmon going to cost per pound? Well, if you, right now, let's say it's $8 a pound, it would be $2. Where is it $8 a pound? I'm just saying. If it was eight, it would be like 12.

It all depends what you're buying. Yeah. Farm won't be, it would be different because they can control the farming. But again, farming is not necessarily the best thing to buy. But the wild caught stuff, which is what we use, we got reports today. It's down. So that means the price is going to go up. So you only use wild caught salmon at Wahos?

Yeah, only wildcog. Not farm. What if you pivoted to farm? Well, it's just I don't necessarily want to eat something that's farmed, so I don't serve what I don't want to eat, you know, because I got to eat there every day, you know, because I do a lot of events. So I'm always testing the food. That's why I love our fish, because I can guarantee nobody in the world is making

fish tacos out of Wahoo. Yeah, yeah, and you're right. You're right. It's just too high quality. high quality and it's very pricey. Let me ask you, just because this has always been a question and a debate between me and my wife. It's like, what's wrong with farm?

It's not what's wrong is what they feed them. So if you did it properly, you know, like chickens, everything else, you're eating what they eat, right? So if you end up giving them, like you see salmon that has really bright colors, while there's some food dyes in the food that they're eating, right? Because salmon naturally isn't that bright. Yeah.

So texture size, right? So like cows, right, if you want something, you know, I hate to think about American came up with corn fat. Well, cows don't normally eat corn as a staple, right? Because it's sugar. So if you think about it, you're fattening up the cow. So think about production, right? The only cost involved in fish, chicken.

Any of the proteins we buy is the feed. So if you can get them as quickly as possible to bigger, size, spending the least amount of possible, you know, there's no harm, no foul if you're not the one eating it. So if I know what I'm eating, I'd rather not eat that, you know, because I know that they're not eating something that I wouldn't necessarily want to eat, right? That's amazing that you maintain that level of quality at scale amongst a national food chain. Yeah, it is not easy to do. I'm saying commodity-wise on the other side, like the beef, the chicken, the pork, we're all buying relatively speaking the same product, right?

Because they're doing the best they can to kind of keep the prices down and all that. But on the fish side, I have the option. So I opt not to, you know, go to any of the farm stuff. Now, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Wago's on Bristol. Yeah. That's the first one. That's the third location. Where's the first one in Costa.

Over by Hoag Hospital on the west side of Costa Mesa. That's the first one? Yeah, the little shack on the corner. Yeah, that's the first one. Wow. Yeah, Laguna was the second and Bristol and Baker was the third. That's amazing. And now how many are there nationally? There are 52 locations and one in Japan.

And at its peak, pre-COVID, how many were there? I believe there were 64 locations. So you lost only 12. About a dozen, yeah, about a dozen. And we talked about this briefly, but we could let the world know. How did COVID impact Wahoos? Well, it was like everything else that was not listed on an essential. So I think supermarkets, gas stations, and something,

elsewhere at the top and then everything else was considered non-essential, right? But then on the bottom as a footnote, they said, oh, yeah, restaurants can stay open. Well, nobody read that far down. So on Wednesday, when they announced in California that everything was going to shut down, by Friday, two days, 85% of our business disappeared. Like, our restaurant became a ghost down. So we literally lost 85% of our staff. So most restaurants had a cashier, a server, and a cook, three people, that normally would have like 15, 20 on a shift. Wow. So it was like, oh, my God.

So basically everything was just starting to keep the lights on. But L.A., we had these scenes called the looters and the riots, whatever that was going on in L.A., right? So L.A., that's where the majority of stores that we lost were in L.A. So that got shut down pretty quickly. And we were getting ready to close like five additional stores. So I went to my kid brother and goes, well, what do we need to do? was, well, we need to find a way to get them to, like, stay afloat, like get people in the stores. I'm like, I can't find people to come in.

But I had just started delivering food to hospitals that was going to expire anyway. So once I did a couple of those, I'm like, if I can keep this going, I can maybe save five stores. And my brother goes, yeah, this is great, but somebody's got to pay for it. And I'm like, okay, back pre-COVID, we would always donate to every charity event. But I always remember at the underwriting meeting, there'd be somebody goes, hey, somebody need to underwrite the centerpiece. Somebody needs to underwrite the valet. Somebody needs to underwrite the photographer.

And I'm like, why are we always giving the food away? Why can't we one of those items? So I asked all my charity friends, I'm like, what do you need? When he goes, well, since all the gala's golf, everything got canceled, can I have some of that money so we can use for this? They're like, sure, why not? and one of the first companies that you're going to laugh when your buddies what do you call Loan Depot was like yeah Tony Shig goes we got money and I didn't know that

they were going to have their best year in 21 in 20 right but they're like yeah we give you some money because you've been helping us so I got a little bit of money bare paint everybody's at home doing home improvements they were flash free cash the CFO and I went to you know same fraternity together we got a little bit of money so all of these charity guys say there's nothing else going on and goes what are you going to do goes i just need to cover my costs so i can go deliver meals to the essential frontline workers so i started going to hospitals police fire so i didn't make money but i kept the lights on and i was able to save five stores so i created this movement and somebody says well how can be a part of it goes well you can either come

with me donate money or if you have a service so monster energy drink gave me all the drinks Hint water, give me all the waters, Monster, you know, Yogurtland gave me all the yogurts, Cliff Bar gave me all their bars. And then I had treats, dessert, drinks, and burritos to take to all these front liners.

And then the people that didn't have a product goes, well, can you give me a little bit of money? And they all said, sure. Because they had a bucket of money set aside for charity events, and nothing was going on. So four years later, we're still doing it because now instead of going to a hospital,

which we still do during, like say prostate, breast cancer, all these different national times that we celebrate, you know, the people that take care of us. But we'll go to Brown-McDohmackdoll house. We'll go to Casa. We'll go to all these local charities and say, hey, how can we help you take care of your volunteers? So the movement is there.

And, you know, we find money, people that have money to say, hey, can we take our kids and go with you? Well, yeah, bring them. So that's what we do. We go out. Often do you guys do that. We do it like once or twice a week. We do bread lives, at least.

once a week. So I'm going to get. You're going out on these charities? I go out. Yeah, like. We'd love to get our company involved. Yeah, we'll get you guys to help us out and go in. And your people will be like backpack drives, school supplies, computer monitors.

We'll get the equipment. And when we deliver, we bring food, treats to the kids. And your people help us do all of it. Because nobody's getting paid. We're all volunteering. No, we want to be a part of like a more of a local charity too because it's here in Orange County. And we can decide who it can be the benefactor. So we can do beach cleanups.

We know anything we want. So we created this, instead of just being Wahoos, we created this movement call, the California Love Drop. And we have great partners, KTLA, you know, the news people help us. KLS is an amazing partner. Heidi and Frank have been behind us, because giving us a platform to thank our partners. Helps everybody justify, you know, because somebody goes, well, who's going to know about what we did? I might, we're going to be talking about it every Friday on the radio.

So we have a platform where we can thank people. for helping us. That's awesome. And anyways, we don't need the thanking at a public forum. We just need to be of service. And our number one pillar here at this organization is to serve everyone you possibly can.

This is great. It would be a great partnership. Yeah. Yeah. So this would just kind of line up right with our servitude mindset here and just giving people another outlet. And more importantly, like,

those who don't have their kids doing service work, this would fall right in line with the kids being able to serve as well. Absolutely. And it's fun because like half of it is work, half of it is fun, you know, because we just did a luwa for SEMA, the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association last week on the beach. And I got to hang out with all my old pro surfers, right?

So it's fun. You get to be there. You're making a difference because all the funds being raised go to involve my rental funds, right? So Surf Rider Foundation, CoastCupers, they all get that money. But we're having fun. We're having a couple of cocktails. We're eating great food. And, you know, and you get to hang out with really fun people.

Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks for letting me know about that and we're definitely going to get involved. Now, I want to ask you about your entrepreneur journey. At what age did you realize you wanted to be an entrepreneur? You know, my parents wanted us to all get a college degree. By the way, my parents still on a restaurant on Bobo Island. It's the Shanghai Fine Garden. It's been around for over 50 years, right? So they've been entrepreneurs. But they said, we want you to get a, we call a real job, you know? So my oldest brother became an attorney. My son. second brother became a doctor and I became quote unquote a semi-engineer I call it right I went to work on the space shuttle out of college right but as I say I didn't realize that corporate America their structure my first two brothers didn't have structure because they were technically even though they were an attorney and doctor they were their own bosses where I was working in the department I had you know rules and regulations to follow and it was kind of like wow this is kind of really like

cut and dry way too boring way too boring and talk about the box right There was a box. You couldn't get out of your box, right? And I'm like, oh, my God. And I'm going to be doing this for the next 35, 40 years of my life. I'm like, you know, there's got to be something. I'm out of here. I'm out of here.

But at the time, it was more like, hey, you know, I'm not having that much fun. And my kid brother, Ed was getting out. And I'm like, you know what? This corporate America thing may not be the best gig. Ed was a doctor. No, Yong was a doctor. Ed was graduating from college. And he's, you know, three years younger to me.

And I'm like, four brothers. There's five of us, right? Three in the business. So Ed was in college graduating And Mingo was still in college, right? So Mingo got forced into the business. I don't think he ever wanted to be with us, but he didn't have a choice.

He was like, well, somebody's got to keep an eye on those two guys, right? So Mingo kind of come in and it's been a pretty good journey for him, right? But Mingo didn't necessarily want to be here. He was getting ready to go to law school. And my brother that had the law office because you guys should all come here. And we were literally, I had taken the Alstat, and I was thinking about it. But then after my little experience at court,

I don't know if I want to be wearing a suit all the time. And I goes, Ed, what do you think? And Ed goes, you know what? Why don't we do something more related to the action sports? So we sat around and goes, you know, we literally wrote everything on a napkin. I goes, you know what? I think we can do this.

And we borrowed a little bit of money from my mom and dad. And we started while he was in Costa Mesa. And literally, no plan other than to have a place that he and I could go to work. The problem is there's not enough money in one restaurant for two people. And all of a sudden, well, maybe we should get a second one, right? So we can split it.

And then, and the opposite one was, well, maybe you should get three. So the three of us. And then the rest kind of like took a life of its own. We started opening more, you know. That's awesome. How many states is Wahoo's in? We're, I think, four states right now. And outside of Japan, we have one international. And any plans to grow like in every single state? We've gone back and forth. At one point, we had more states. The problem is, like, say, COVID, you know, operators that didn't necessarily follow the rule. So I'm going to tell everybody,

don't get into, I call food, manual labor thing, if you're going to be an absentee owner. Because I think typically, you know, a lot of franchises there that don't necessarily have to cook everything from scratch. Those are relatively easy to run. Because there's manuals and you literally press buttons. There's two minutes, one minute. It's relatively like, you know, cut bags and, you know, take out of the freezer or whatever.

I'm not putting it down, but that's the system, right? it's relatively, you know, easy to run. Yeah, I can't imagine the complexity of Oahuas. But we make fresh salsa. We make a lot of stuff from scratch. So, again, it's not like the tomatoes and the salts are coming in a bag. I mean, there's fresh tomatoes. You got to cut them.

You got to dice them, green onions, all that, and they mix it together. That's how you make Pico de Gaio. So part of it is our own fault because we chose to make everything from scratch. But part of it is the reason why we're successful, because people realize that we make easy good food, right? So you gotta take the two, right? You can't scale good like that. You can't scale it.

And then you can't buy that many Wahoo's anyway. Yeah. So part of us is like, okay, I wish we would have made things easier. You know, and again, of all the proteins, you can screw up, fish is at the top of that list. 30 seconds in, that thing's over there, right? So everything that we do.

Especially a Wahoo. Yeah, it's the hardest fish, the hardest salsa, everything. So if we made cooked sauces, things that you, you know, like you see in the salsa bars, Those, relatively speaking, you can bag them because it's all cooked. But fresh stuff, like, you know, guacamole all that, it needs to be done when you make it because it turns in like half of the day.

It's gone, right? So that's part of the give and take. You know, if you want to keep fresh, you got to make things literally, you know, twice a day, three times a day, right? So there's a lot to it. And that's, again, part of what I love what we do, part about what I hate what we do. Because I go, oh, my God, I can't believe you screwed up. And then I realize it was, hey, I.

I'm asking a kid to cook something that I've been cooking for 36 years, right? So give him a little break, let him feel it out, and then he'll learn how to cook it. Let me ask you, because you're an immigrant and I'm an immigrant, and, you know, when you go outside of the immigrant trajectory, which is what your first two brothers were, which is doctor or lawyer, and that's what every immigrant wants for their kid, you're like, Mom, Dad, I'm going to start my own business. Not only that I'm going to enter the restaurant business, which you're in,

which you probably hate. How did they take that? They didn't like it at all because their whole thing was we didn't send you guys to go to college, get a degree, and come back and work with your hands. That's what they can sit a restaurant, working with your hands, not your mind. But it took a while, but 13 years into the business, literally 13 years, it was the year of 2000, right? We opened in 88, and we ended up in a commercial for Merrill Lynch, a national commercial. and my mom and dad are in the commercial with us.

It was about a small business and what do you do and the American dream, right? So here we are making tacos, a bunch of Asian kids from Brazil. And the entire Asian community goes, we used to make fun of your kids because they realized that they're Chinese born, whatever, but they're in Brazil, whatever,

that they're not supposed to be making tacos, they're supposed to making Chinese food. And now here we are in a national commercial. And my mom and dad are in it, and the best part, we all got paid to be in it. Like, we all got like 20,000 bucks to talk about what we did. And literally put us on the map because it was one at the time, I believe one of the first brands out of Orange County to be in a commercial of any sort

that was on a national basis. And this is before, at the beginning, I called the Food Network and all that. So nobody in Orange County was seen outside of Orange County, other than like said, an in and out or somebody that was already, you know, they've been around since the 40s, right? but we're talking outside of in and out and Carl's Jr. Both that were been around for a long time. Nobody knew about any really other brands from Orange County.

How did you get on, how did you get on the map like that? Well, because Merrill Lynch, well, Merrill Lynch had a broker, Dominic Alvarez that was friends with my little brother Mingo. And they said, hey, we got a memo that says, hey, do we have any clients that are minority-owned business? And it's something interesting that can basically, you know, talk about, you know, what they do. and we submitted, and there were over 650, I think, applicants across the country.

And out of the 650, about 30 of them got picked, and then they interviewed us on the phone. And my kid brother Ed was on the phone, like, so what's the big deal? And my brother goes, hey, where else in the world can a Chinese guy sell Mexican food? This is the American dream. And the guy goes, what are you talking about? Well, didn't you see the look at the pictures? And they looked down, you know, while they're talking to my brother on the phone, they're like, oh my God, there's three Asian kids surfing, making tacos.

And it made for great content. It was, yeah. Diversity, checked all the boxes. And more important, we gave him the slogan for the campaign, the American Dream, which we didn't know that's what it was. So out of the 30, 6 got picked. Of the 6, we ended up with over a half of the campaign's budget. So we ended up on the air almost nightly for a year.

So you talk about giving a company that has 13 locations. $60 plus million in marketing. You know what that does for your brand? Wow. It just puts you through the stratosphere. Everybody that came to California had to go to Wahos because they were like, we saw you on TV. We saw you on TV.

And we're like, what the hell is going on TV? But literally our lines, you know, had 10 people. It is very unique. I mean, just skyrocket.

Three Chinese kids. Cooking fish tacos and Newport Beach. Yeah. It's like the only three Chinese in all of Newport at the time. Pretty much. Definitely the only three Chinese people in the beach surfing. So we're always the only ones, you know, pretty much wherever we were. And then, you know, back then I still had the short hair like yours.

I said, you know what? If I'm going to be embracing this, I'm going to let it grow and see what happens. So the facial hair, the hair kind of grew over time. And, you know, about your signature look. It's like that. Now everybody knows. Mr. Miyagi beard. Yeah.

Long hair. And it's been that way for decades. I mean, because I've seen pictures of you in publicity. And it's always been. 30 years at least. Yeah, always been that look. Does your brothers have that look, too? No, no.

It remained, you know, very traditional because they got to go see the bankers and the attorneys and whatever. Yeah, because you're the only one really in the limelight. Like, you're the face of Wahoos. Like, I didn't even know there was anyone else. Yeah, I do all the events, and that's really the main reasons. Like, hey, they had their families. You know, I have mine too, but it's like, hey, I like being out. You waited to you.

You're like 45 to have a family. No, I did. No, 55. No, I started young, and now, me, my 60. that again, yeah. So yeah, okay, it's round two. Yeah, round two and it's great. So you have older kids too? I have a 37 year old, yeah, Greg, and then I got a nine-year-old Levi. And it's awesome. I mean, this little guy, I mean, dropping him off today, I mean, at the junior lifeguards is awesome. Yeah, yeah, you talk about that. That's awesome. Great kid. So you have a 37-year-old son, too. Is he in

Wajos? No, he's got his own little company that he started with his boss, and it's, they're doing really, really well. He also chose the path of entrepreneurship. He's done very well. Yeah. That's good because he's going to get support from his dad who was an entrepreneur. Yeah. Who understands entrepreneurship in America. Yeah. Like for me, obviously entrepreneurship was not the route that my parents wanted because my dad's a doctor too. Of course. See? Yeah. And he goes, what do you mean you're not going to med school? Like you want to survive? I'm like, yeah, I have no neighbors in Newport that are doctors, not one. Exactly. Nobody in Newport Beach is a doctor. I know. Everyone's an entrepreneur.

I know. See? I mean, even though still, I mean, in my mind, like for my kids, like, I know that being a doctor is probably the least path of resistance. Yeah. Because you just go to school and then you get a job and it's nine to five and you're guaranteed a good salary and you don't got to worry about how you're going to make bills and struggle or work as hard as we do. Yeah. I mean, but then once you're really working and jiving and grooving, you'll never work a day in your life. That's right. You get to do a lot of things that most people never get to do.

Let's face it, there's only one Wahoos and there's only one, like, e-waters. mortgage chagel. So the probability of success or mega success is very rare versus everyone who finishes med school is going to get a six-figure job. Yeah, the failure rate is what 90 plus percent. Yeah. But the 10 percent of us that make it, it's not a bad life. Yeah, it's an awesome life. Yeah. So let me ask you this on that point. Is there any specific skills or mindset that one must have in order to succeed in the restaurant industry? Well, in any industry, I would say it's like, you know what you know and figure out what you don't know and surround yourself. I always say with smart people that can, you know, bring those skill sets that you're missing,

you know, they can compliment you, but also always make sure that you understand what they do because a lot of, I think, successes and failures happen because people don't understand what they don't understand and they don't understand that they don't understand is what I'm getting. So if somebody steals money from you, but if you know what you're looking for and it's harder for them to try to get away with something. So if you know your numbers, you know, like in other words, you don't need to know the job, but you just need to know what the job does, you know if that makes sense, right? So you can kind of keep our eye goes, am I moving forward? Does this make sense? Like, we've done these actions. Should these be the results? Are we short? Are we more?

You know what I'm getting at? So you can kind of say, okay, how are we progressing as a company, as a business, right? Because the last thing you want to wake up is one day goes, oh my God, we made all these strides and here we are losing money. How's that possible? Well, because you didn't really understand what the actions that were being taken, what the ups and downs of it is, right? Like, what's the risk, what's the reward, all that stuff. So always make sure that you keep an eye on. You don't have to know what they do. You just need to know what they do. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's, you know, for me, like having two brothers in the business with me. You know, yeah, because in, hey, the attorneys, the CPAs, you know, the low, you know, brokers, everything that

happening from a business and this and that. I know just enough to just kind, okay, you know, Ed's got it, Rema's got it. So we always know that because we always say, what is good for Wahoos and how is this helping us? This is not about, hey, am I getting something out of it, right? So a lot of people in business, you know, whatever position they're in goes, hmm, I could really benefit person. How can I align my pockets? Yeah, you know, whatever that means. And then all of a sudden, if the alignment of their pocket is not in the same alignment as the company, something is going to give, right? And it's usually the company, not the pocket. And I've found that, you know, having my siblings in my business, even my business partner, we've been best friends since 14 years

old. My brother works with us. My sister works with us. Yeah. You know, they don't have a vested interest other than the company succeeding. Exactly. Because if the company succeeds, we all succeed. It's when I succeed and I really don't care what happens to the company, that's when you got to be careful with. And there's a lot of that going around. I mean, and it's just, you know, people, if you understand, I mean, most of the people, they're selfish. I'm going to help myself first and then help everybody else second. You know, and if I go down, I'm going to make sure everybody goes down before I go down, right? So I don't think that's a good, you know, alignment.

But as long as everybody says, hey, the company's first, everybody else comes second, then that's a good alignment. Yeah. That's actually great advice. Yeah. Now, what do you think was the biggest motivation for you to start Wahoo's? Was it a mentor? Was it like just the vision? Was it the fact that you wanted to surf all day?

No, it wasn't, you know, the idea of surfing our day was there, but that didn't work out that well. Because, you know, the parents being Chinese, goes, you've got to work. If you're going to take borrow our money, guess what? We want to make sure you keep an eye on it. It was mostly, I guess, to tell the people around, because, hey, we can do this, right? And corporate America is for some people, but not for us, right? And we wanted to really be different, right? Because here we were, you know, just kind of like, you know, grinding it out.

it wasn't that much fun. So it wasn't like so much anger. It was just to say, hey, I think we can do this, and we're going to prove all you guys wrong, basically, that we are a lot smart and you think we are. But all my friends says, do you realize that, one, you're Asian?

Yeah, you don't think I know that. But they were like, and you're going into what? A business that is 90% failure, right? Why don't you just take over your dad's restaurant, you know? It goes, no, we really want to make our own, you know, brand. And so we went against everybody, and we're still here. It worked out.

I mean, you know, what you've done with Waho's is a true testament to, like, the American dream because the failure rate is insane. It's probably higher than 90%. But the fact that you did it in Mexican food as Chinese immigrants. Yeah. That's like, I don't even know. You're one of one. But there's a funny part is we open the door.

There's a whole generation now. They're about 10, 20 years behind me that, you know, whenever I ran into them, they goes, hey, thank you. Because when the argument came with our parents or our friends, they're like, hey, wing did it. We can do it too. And they're like, you're right. You know, it's possible.

But before us, you know, the possibility wasn't really there. People are like, well, really? Nobody's done it. But now, you know, it's a little bit easy. I'm not saying easy. It's a little bit easier for at least to get started to convince your friends that you can be done. Because they see us and goes, okay, well, who's just done it, right? but it's still a lot, a lot of hard work, you know, in front of you.

Now, we talked about this, and I'm going to circle back to this, is Wahoo's is like, I think, one of the original godfathers of guerrilla marketing. Oh, yeah. The way I knew about Wahoo's as a kid was from Ed Rock the Mollett. Yep. And Wahu's Tock, Wahoo's Taco Flyers were stickers were everywhere. Everywhere you parked your car was a Wahoo's sticker. Yep.

especially at the beach. Yep. You couldn't go anywhere in Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, anywhere without seeing Wahoos on everything. Yep. Stop signs. Yep. You know, and you guys started that.

Well, you know, we piggyback on the surf industry, right? So the original guy, Dan Flecky, own the company called Flecky Silkskin. So, and then he went on to start Blackflies. But back when he started, he came into the restaurant. And being a kid, I'm like, oh, my God, we'd love to get some stickers. And stickers, by the way, are not cheap.

But Dan goes, well, I'll make it so we can make it for you guys. So what I'll do is when I have a sticker sheet, I'll throw in a couple on the end, you know, basically for you guys. So we just, you know, had a few, right? And eventually when they started Blackflies, they were making a lot more stickers. And then they goes, well, we'll make a whole sheet for you guys and we'll just trade. So it became affordable for us because they're not cheap again. I mean, because remember, you can't just buy one sticker in a sheet.

There'd be like 30 slots, right? and 30 times 100 sheets, whatever, it's a lot of stickers. So we basically said, well, what are we going to do is, well, we're going to do a lot of events for black flies so we can trade for stickers, right? So it was our way of doing it. And the more we traded, the more parties they started having, the more stickers we would get. And this cycle just kept going, right? So it was like this unlimited amount of stickers forever.

Now, I mean, we do spend a little money buying it because Flecky no longer has, you know, screen printing. But you're also not doing guerrilla marketing as much. Yeah, not as much because when you're small, it's easier, not to get caught. Yeah, now you see a Wahoo's Taco yeah sticker and you're gonna be like I'm just gonna go find wahos. Yeah, you're fine wahus.waths.com, whatever. But back then it was also instead of, you know, putting banners which cost more money than stickers, all these things cost money. So stickers was a really

great way to tag places and let people know you're there kind of a thing. And again, guerrilla market was all about marketing yourself without paying big bucks, you know. So Eddie was our guy. So there's still some guerrilla marketing tactics. Who's going to out there slapping stickers. It's not you. No, but we give them to the kids and the kids do it now. Because that's how all those surf brands do. They give them to the kids and the kids go out of boom, boom, boom.

You know, they cover the skate parks, the surf parks, whatever it is. They just put them on the trails. They put them in a lot of places you're not supposed to. But we're not doing it. The kids are. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I remember. I mean, that's really like how Wahoo's just catapulted. They were everywhere.

Yeah. It's everywhere you went. Yeah. Now, let me ask you, how did you get started in the extreme sports industry? And how did you dominate extreme sports? Like, not only did you start in extreme sports, but like you dominate. Like every pro skateboarder, surfer. I mean, and then now you're in like hockey stadiums and basketball stadiums.

And, you know. The thing is, did it always was, did it start with extreme sports? It started with surfing. So the real story is we couldn't afford to. go in and sponsor anything that was legitimate anyway. When I say legitimate is like basketball games cost money, football games cost money. Everything costs a lot of money to put your banner or your sign anywhere near any of the games, right? Surfing and skateboarding and snowboarding in the 80s and 90s, nobody cared about. It was basically what we call athletes that by most standards were kids that

couldn't do the real sports. They're like, oh, yeah, the guy is not tall enough to play basketball, so that's why he skateboards. Oh, the guy is not good enough to do this. That's why he serves. It was mostly that. Or, oh, yeah, he can't really swim fast enough, so he can surf, whatever, right? So around the world, you know, it's a really cool thing.

But in terms of, I could call it, you know, recognized sports by the Olympics and all that, it was nowhere on the map, right? The X games didn't exist. So when you would go to a surf contest or a skateboard contest, you were lucky if there was anything there to eat or drink because there is no budget for hospitality. This isn't like a football, you know, game in college or something like that. This is like a bunch of guys getting together

and some brands going to say, we'll put up some prize money or have some money for, you know, the judges and whatever. But there was zero left for hospitality. So when I approached the bill of bonds and the quicksovers of the world and say, hey, can I come and do this with you guys? And this is, well, we can't pay you for any of it because we don't have a budget for it. I'm like, well, you guys make t-shirts and shorts?

I go, yeah, goes, can we trade for it? And they're like, you're going to take $1,000 worth of T-shirts and shorts. I'm like, why not? I can give them to my vendors. I can, you know, give them to my staff. I can give them to anybody I know. And then maybe I can trade for more beers. I can trade for more, whatever I can trade with, right?

You were bartering with, that's awesome. So that's how we did it. And then all of a sudden, we did one surf contest, and all the kids that came, not all of them served for Billabong, some of them served for Quicksilver, some of them were O'Neill, some of them were Gotcha. They went back and told their team managers,

guess what? We just went to this contest, and they had while who's there. We should have them at our event. And then I would get a call and say, hey, I heard you did this for Quicksilver, or you had to the Billabong, can you do this with us?

I'm like, sure. And it was like, just trade again. And then all of a sudden we became synonymous. So when skateboarding started, when snowboarding, we were doing all of it. And people are like, this is crazy. I mean, there's no real value here, right? Because only the people that were there.

But it goes, yeah, but these kids, I'm betting that some of them will end up somewhere down the road. And sure enough, they've been in the Olympics, summer and winter, they've been at the X-Games, all these events. So was that, you know, so today, yes, I'm synonymous with it. But back then, everybody goes, who's this dummy that is willing to, you know, bring a grill onto a beach and you know and not surf and everybody else is surfing around him you know because it was me you know so i did it into snow i did in the skate parts motor you were working for

shorts i was working for shorts and features yeah you know that that that that idea like it sounded crazy probably at the time oh it sounded crazy and dumb but my brother's like what are you doing but it that's what catapulted you guys yeah now you guys are like the the the and and and And this is a testament to people listening. Like, you may think your idea is crazy. Yeah. But look at what it did for you. Now you are the kingpin of these sports events.

You're at every event. You're in every big stadium here in SoCal. Yeah. And it started with you just giving away food for shorts and t-shirts. Yeah. And the coolest part is, like the other night when we did the luau for Seema, the first guy I ran into is a former world champion, Sean Thompson from South Africa.

and he used to be part of a brand then in the 70s called Instinct, and it hasn't been around for 30 plus years. He bought the license back. And the first thing he goes, wait, you want to do something together? And I'm like, hell yeah.

So this is the kind of conversation that, you know, I've been doing it for so long. They all know that I'm crazy about doing collaborations, partnerships. And that's really the key to all this, is when you find, again, going right back to the skill sets

that you don't have. I don't make clothing. But somebody who does, let's do something together. So whatever event he's going to come up with. So we're going to meet up, you know, and talk about some of the opportunities and see what he's got in mind and I'll see what I want to do. And then somewhere in the middle, we're going to do some really fun stuff. Collaboration is everything. Collaboration. Yeah. And that's another one of our company pillars is community and collaboration. Because, you know, that's how we're growing as a company. Yeah. We have 900 independent people here. Exactly. But but these independent people all have. a unique skill set.

They all have a different talent that they can bring to you. Yep. They can catapult your business. That's it, yeah. That's awesome. The story of Wahoos is just so fascinating just because it's a cultural icon, especially here in Southern California, which is, you know, a hub for culture globally. Oh, yeah.

This is where, I mean, coolness, you know, between. Surf culture, skate culture, everything. Sports, everything's right here. You know, mountain culture. Everything's here. Yep. And you're at the cusp of it. You're one of the founders of like cool.

Hey. Why you still look cool? I just made cool good food for a lot of cool people. Yeah. You're like just every cool person that everyone knows. Yeah. So like you look super cool. What are some of your hobbies and interests?

You know, what I love to do is I love to surf still. I mean, as much as I can. I like to snowboard because I actually, my group of friends, we run the U.S. Snowboard Association. So my joy is not only being able to do it is taking my friends and their kids to do it. So this last winter, you know, my son decided it was time to go snowboarding. So my pride and joy was getting him into the snow and holding his hand and having him go, you know, down the hill with me. So that to me is exciting. I love golfing.

I wish I had more time to golf still, you know. And basically that's, you know, and I'm going to, you know, amazing concerts and you know hanging out with amazing fun friends on their world tours i mean all these garage bands from the 90s 2000 whatever now the world tour is i which went like the green days of the world the you know dirty don't they live in newport yeah yeah they all have houses here uh but yeah they're touring the world right now uh the guys from dirty heads the guys from offspring you know there's a bunch of really cool bands out there that you know we met them when they were you know we're young I mean, Blink 182 when they were young,

and now they're touring the world, you know? So it's fun to be able to say, I knew them then, right, when they were playing garage bands, you know, stuff. Yeah, and you know everybody. Yeah, so it's fun, yeah. And being able to bring my friends along for a ride. That's really cool, you know, the whole.

Take me along a ride for the Blink. Oh, we will. Yeah, yeah. We'll go out and see those guys. They're fun guys. I mean, it's just something to check off your box, right? Yeah. Like, going to a concert is awesome.

being on that stage when they're performing in front of 20, 30, 40, 50,000, it's just a whole different experience. I can't imagine. And it's just something that goes, check, you know, I've been there. You know, like even a game, you know, being on the field, check, you know, just some of those things, you know. But then you take it a step above, like you go on stage, and then you're done, then you go backstage, now you're cooking them food and then you're putting a smile

on their face and their kids' face. Yeah, and that's the real fun. Yeah, and that's the joy right there, you know, like, There's so much joy in feeding someone. Yes, there is. And again, it's breaking bread together. It's super fun. It's just something that goes since the beginning of time.

Yep. And when you break bread together, there's just, there's so much associated with that joy. Absolutely. Especially when you're the one preparing it and serving it and you're seeing the smile on their face. Oh, yeah. A lot, a lot of fun. Like you said, like at the Summer X games, they're eating and then they're going out and competing, they come back with a gold medal.

You're like, well, thank you, you know. Thanks. I won this gold medal because you put a smile on my face. That's right. No, no problem. I got you. I got you. Next time, I'll get another one.

Yes. Yeah. So what is, I'm going to ask some, some cool mantras you like to live by. Sure. So what's your favorite quote? You know, the quote is more of like the only book I remember to this day is Siddhartha Gautama. It's about a, you know, I call it a monk, right, that spends his life, searching for the meaning of life, right?

And at the end of the book, you know, the monk, you know, he's in his deathbed and one of the other guy comes and goes, dude, I spent my whole life searching and I never really, you know, found it. He goes, that's right. Instead of living it, you spend your life looking. And I'm like, hmm,

because so many people are not happy until, right, instead of being happy with what they have, they're always saying, well, I'm only going to be happy when I get this. And when you get it, you're like, now I'm only going to be happy when I get that.

So it's okay to want it. Like, you know, so the thing is, enjoy the moment while you're searching for, you know what I mean, aspiring, whatever it is next, but enjoy it now as well. And most people don't enjoy the moment. That's, I think, the biggest thing.

Because they're only if. I'm like, well, if that if never happens, you're never going to be happy, right? So the whole thing for me is like, you know, enjoy. You know, so like, yes, I wish I had a bigger whatever, right? But if you don't enjoy what you have in the moment, right? So there's a lot to be said because the people that enjoy the moment and you'd be surprised because there are, you know, those guys that work in a factory.

And Friday night comes, they get their paycheck and they go bowling and they're as happy as can be. And that to me is like, I wish I could do that. But in my head, I'm like, okay, I can't work in the factory, but I wish I could just go bowling Fridays and be happy. Right? But that is the moment, right? It's truly enjoyable. Being that camaraderie, your friends, and just that, right? But to me, it's like, well, I'm only going to be happy if I do this or that.

And so sometimes I wish that I could just simplify because I'm like, oh, unless I'm at the stadium and da-da-da-da-da, right? So part of me sometimes I'm at, you know, my worst enemy too, but I said, you know what? I just got to be more enjoyable. So like surfing. See, in that moment, I'm enjoying it, right? Yes. I wish I was in Hawaii surfing better waves. But right now, Newport doesn't...

I mean, Newport's waves are... I was just in Hawaii and we have better waves right now. Yeah, I know. I'm just saying, you know, so again, enjoy. Yes, it's okay to wish for Hawaii, but enjoy the moment. They're not always that great in North Shorewood. No, they're not. But they're not always great here, but you know, you got to enjoy it.

Yeah, you're right. And we're at this podcast right now, enjoying it. Enjoying it. This is the moment, yeah. What do you think is the greatest life lesson that you've had? I think it's watching my mom and dad, you know, just like what they've done in their lives, the fact they've outlasted all their friends, what they've done for the Buddhist...

Oh, they're your mom and dad? 93 years old. They're still working? No, they're retired, but they're a fact that they're just enjoying themselves. But what they've done for the Buddhist church and all the community things that they've been involved with is always putting other people first, you know, never really worrying about themselves, you know? And at the end of the day, that's a pretty good, you know, again, way to live.

inspires you to basically say, hey, put other people first. Don't be so self-centered. Things are going to be okay for yourself. Just take care of everybody else. That's awesome. Great way to live. Yeah. And then what do you think is the greatest hardship you've ever dealt with and how'd you overcome it? You know, there's been a few. I think, you know, like losing family members, right? My oldest brother passed away, you know, about 10 years into the business. Maybe that was the lawyer. Yeah, the lawyer. Yeah, he was in a car accident. And again, it was unexpected. You know, so not one of those who was old or whatever, it just got in a car accident, right?

So that moment, it changed a lot of things, you know, but because it was unexpected. And we've had a few other, you know, incidents like that where, you know, people have died. And it's just one of those where he's like, wow, you know. But in terms of all the economic stuff, we've seen all the recessions, you know, all these crazy, you know, market collapse,

the internet boom, the real estate. Yes, it sucked, but you get over it, you know. Yeah. But the people, they're not going to be here, right? Yeah. So having fans, I mean, you just found out another one. Today, the worst phone call I get is when somebody says, did you hear? And I'm like, it's going to be somebody to happen, right?

So I got one yesterday. It goes, hey, did you hear it? I'm like, oh, here we go again. That was about salmon. It was about a friend that was riding a motorcycle that I used to ride with. and a car, a truck, whatever, a tire came off the wrong side of the freeway and instantly hit them on their bike, killed them. And then when you go, oh my God, I didn't hear that. But so whenever now I get a phone call, because somebody who haven't talked to in a bit, and they start

with, did you hear? I'm like, oh, God, not another one of those. So that right now is where I'm at in my life because it's happened a lot more, you know, often than not. And, you know, you're, you've know you know everyone yeah so you get a lot of weird calls like that yeah i get a lot of yeah people that i haven't seen a while did you hear what happened to this person so a friend from college a former my beer rep i mean just weird but it's like oh my god not another one you know what do you think the most famous what do you think what is like your primary business principle it's have fun right if you're not having fun stop i mean get out stop complain like i can't be anybody that complains because if you don't like what you're doing go do something else you know

I truly enjoy what I do yes it's a lot of hard work but it's a lot of fun and the fun part is not making the tacos yeah is who I'm with and where I'm at because what I do doesn't change I'm still making tacos but when I'm surrounded by great musicians great athletes great whatever it is it makes the moment fun because my food is making that possible to make it better Now, you've known so many famous people. Like, we talked about this before, like, from Tony Hawk to, you know, every actors. And now you're seeing part of these mastermind groups and YPO.

And of all the relationships you've made, what do you think the most monumental relationship is that you think? You know, it's funny as I would say, the most unexpected. Eons ago now, I don't even know how many years ago. almost 15 years ago. One of Tony Hawk's charity events, we used to call stand-up for cause, whatever, and the money raised for building skate parks around the country. You know, there was always these items

that were really cool to buy in the auction, you know, and Cars was one of them, right? And there was always this really crazy guy named Dana White that would always outbid me. And I'm like, I'm never going to be able to outbid this guy because he's got more money than God, right? So Dana was always like, I don't care how much money.

you got, I'm going to buy that Jeep, I'm going to buy that anyway. So at one of the events, there was something very unusual, right? It was an auction item for two-night stay in Abu Dhabi. And some event that I never heard of in my life. And, you know, in my head, I'm like, only time I ever heard the word Abu Dhabi was in Aladdin, which to me was a fictitious place, but it turns out Abu Dhabi is a real place, right? But at the time, I'm like, oh, it sounds like, You know, but if I see it in Anyaosha, it must be a real place, right? But all I remember was Aladdin. And I thought, hmm, you know what, it would be fun to go see this place.

Opening bid, I put open my hand, nobody else bids on this thing. So I ended up winning, you know, and I'm like, oh, God, nobody else bid on this. I figure I opened somebody else with Biden, and I'm over it, right? So I go back to my girlfriend and, you know, my wife, now Kelly, and says, guess what? We're going to go to Abu Dhabi, and she was, what? And at the time, that movie had just come out, uh, sex and, the city too where they go to, I think, Abu Dhabi or Dubai, whatever, right? And I thought, hey, two nights at this seven-star hotel, be kind of fun. But in my head, I was, well, I'm going to have

to buy some more hotel rooms because it's only for two nights. And it's some event I never heard of, right? Well, it turns out that the event, again, when you have faith in whatever, so turns out Tony Hawk was one of the three U.S. ambassadors to this organization. It's worldwide called Lurials. And it's basically the Oscars for sports. So think of the SPA Awards. on steroids. Because SP is only for Americans, I think. But the Lurios is for worldwide. So we go to this event,

never heard of it before, and the U.S. ambassadors are Tony Hawk, Edwin Moses, the hurdler from Atlanta, and Mark Spitz the Swimmer from the 70s. They're the U.S. ambassadors. And as their gift for being an ambassador to this program and using their likeness to use sports to help kids, right they would get tickets to this event so tony and all the other members would auction off or donate

them to whatever they did so tony decided to give his two tickets to this charity event which we bought so we just two nights that's all it included and tickets to the event flights and everything else was on our own and i thought i'll use it as a great you know because in my head i'm i'm never going to go back to this place because it's in the middle of nowhere halfway around the world and more important it'd be cool to tell everybody goes hey i got engaged to my now wife in Abu Dhabi. So that was kind of my whole idea when I was after I got it. Because when I originally bought it, I was like,

I'm not going to get somebody who's going to bid on it. So then I do a little more digging. And then sure enough, we get there. And we're at the night before reception. And it's freaking amazing. It's a yacht club right above the Ferrari world in whatever, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, whatever we were. And I'm like, this is crazy.

and we see the program, and there it is, the athletes and the teams that are nominated for different categories. Now we're finding out what we're in for, right? On the extreme athlete category, individual, there was Sean White for snowboarding, because I think he had just either one the first or second snowboarding thing. There was one of the Hoffman guys for BMX. There was a world surfing champion kite surfing, wind surfing from Spain. And there was Kelly Slater, something else. So I'm like, oh, this is really cool. Maybe we'll see Kelly here, right? But at that reception, we're sitting down with this guy from Spain who was like 24 years old, really good looking kid. And I look at his sale and had the Quicksilver logo. So I'm making small talk. It goes, hey,

you're sponsored by Quicksilver. We're from California. We know Bob McNay, da-da-da. And the guy looks at us like, whatever, right? You know one of those like you're just dropping names like you really know anything, right? Of course, you know Quicksilver because they're California base. And so he gives us this brush off. And as he does this, Kelly Slater's walking by, stops right above us. He goes, Wayne, what are you doing here? He goes, well, we're here with Tony. You know, congratulations on your nomination. He goes, well, I'll see you tomorrow night. And he goes, okay, see you later. And he keeps going. And the Spaniarder goes, oh my God, you know, Kelly Hughes? I just told you. Kelly Slater sponsored by Quicksilver. You

response to my quicks over right and then they changed you know the narrative he goes oh my god so he started being really nice and i'm like whatever right so kelly slater ends up winning the award because he had just won the 10th world title so he wins the next night at you know this award uh rachel nadell won for tennis the spain soccer team they just won the world cup so all these amazing athletes are there golfers tennis i mean everything is represented and i'm trying to you know plan this you know, camel ride, engagement. The problem is they built this huge tent on the beach at the hotel, and the camels I couldn't find them.

So I'm like all day long going, what the hell? My whole plan of getting engaged with a camel on the beach in the Gulf of Persia, whatever, it's all gone. And then, you know, so we ended up waiting until the end of the night when we're back, you know, in our hotel room on the balcony under the moon, and that's when I proposed her. But that was not the idea. The idea was that we're going to do it with a camel, blah, blah, blah.

She's going to get on it. I mean all this. Camel's gone. Everything's gone. But we had an amazing trip. And we ended up going to two more of these because Tony then auctioned one to England and went to Malaysia. And we went to all three of those amazing people because it turns out that, again,

growing up in Brazil, Pelae, I had already met, but Emerson Fittipaldi Formula One driver was another kid that I idolized in the 70s. He was the Brazilian ambassador to this. I became friends with Emerson. So imagine as a 10-year-old watching this guy win Formula One and now being able to hang out with the guy that you grew up with, right? All from that event. All from that event. Yeah. So we ended up going to, and everybody else said asked it was, oh, you don't want to bid on this. It's not that good. And we would buy it and we go to another one. That was a great event. But we met amazing athletes. So take that, Dana White. Yeah.

You got all the cars, but I got to go to Abu Dhabi. And then a couple last questions. What is a personal goal that you have for yourself? A goal that you have for Wahos and a goal that you have for your family. You know, for myself, I still like to go helibboarding one of these days. You know, I've been many times, I just haven't had the time. So one of these days, I'm going to go heli boarding and or surf somewhere in Tahiti, right, where they just had the Olympics, somewhere down there, right?

So those are my two things that I, one day I'd like to do it before I'm too old to enjoy it. For the business, you know, it'd be nice to be able to come up with a, I call it a system where we can finally get out of this whole COVID and get back to, you know, real profitability, you know, and basically leave a nice legacy behind, you know, for the next generation to do, whatever that means, you know, but selling, not necessarily, you know, top of our mind, but just leave something behind, right? And for a family, it's just us being able to really enjoy our time together. And just, you know, I joke with my wife because, hey, whatever makes you happy,

I'm going to go try my very best to do. And I make a point of, like, hey, searching and doing things. But the one thing left on my wife's bucket list that I haven't been able to do, I'm going to do one of these days, is for her to meet Eddie Vedder. Everybody else already checked off. Everybody says, ah, I go to me, I go, boom, I found a way. What was Eddie Vedder living now? I think somewhere up there, Washington, Oregon, somewhere up there.

Yeah. But one of these days, she'll meet him. But I already met him, you know, over the years because he's involved with Surf Rider. But, you know, the other guys that were on her original list, new list, there's another guy post Malone. So I'm going to figure that one out too. But the other guys, the reason is they've all been involved with Surf Rider. So Perry Farrow was involved with Surf Rider. Ben Harper was involved, Jack Johnson. So all the guys that have given back to the ocean causes, at one of the events, we've all been around together. So I've been able to introduce us. them too, whatever. I've done events with almost all of them. And one of these days, Eddie will be the guy that will say, hey, we'll check that off the list. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to meet Kelly Slater, so if you can make an introduction. Kelly, it would be easy. We just got to find out where he's going to be next and we'll, yeah, that's easy.

Then maybe I'll get him on the show. Yeah, we'll get him on the show. Yeah, we'll try. Hey, you never know. Yeah, you never know. Yeah. I'm coming for you, Kelly. Yeah.

And then what my last question I'd like to ask everybody is, when you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? Hopefully, Dad, you know, I did okay, took care of everybody around me, and I should be able to go away. You know what? I know you for sure have. You've been a servant at heart. You always give back.

You give back to everybody. You started your whole business on the premise of giving. So God bless you and your family. I wish you much abundance. I hope you hit every goal that you have. Hope Eddie Vedder comes and eats at Oahu's very, very soon. Yes. So you check that off the bucket list.

Thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for the show. And if anyone wants to connect with you, how can they find you? Especially if they want to get involved with their charities. Just look me up at Wahoo's Wing and Instagram or on LinkedIn, Wing Lamb, and they can find me. Boom. Thanks. Thanks so much, Wing. Thanks for coming on the show today. We appreciate you.

Waho's Fish Tacos, everybody. Wing Lamb, co-founder, the genius, the face behind Wahoo's Fish Taco.