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Chris Yang

Chris Yang is the Founder of PopCultivate, a chef-driven culinary group creating cannabis-infused cuisine. Chris is formally trained as an organic chemist with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree in management from Chang Gung University in Taiwan. Chris started his career in the pharmaceutical industry, but he soon discovered a passion for food and turned his science knowledge into cooking techniques. Since then, he’s built multiple culinary companies and has been featured on the Food Network.

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Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

  • Chris Yang talks about discovering his passion for food while pursuing his graduate degree
  • Chris’ first steps into the culinary business world: LittlemeatsLA and Zipchops
  • The experimentation that led to PopCultivate
  • What kind of buzz do diners experience with PopCultivate?
  • How Chris utilizes his scientific knowledge to derive the best flavors from ingredients
  • The challenges of building a new brand and unique space in the food industry
  • Overcoming business obstacles and learning to put your effort in the right places

In this episode…

What do organic chemistry and cannabis-infused dining have in common? You’ll have to ask Chef Chris Yang.

Chris started his career path in the pharmaceutical industry after studying organic chemistry in college. Along the way, he discovered a passion for cooking that exceeded his desire to continue in the medical field. His first steps in the culinary world included a delivery-only restaurant and a cooking incubator, but it was a question from a friend that sparked his current company — “Can you add this marijuana to your dishes?” Now, Chris is revolutionizing catered fine dining with his cannabis-infused cuisine.

In this episode of the SpotOn Series, Chad Franzen is joined by Chris Yang, the Founder of PopCultivate, to talk about turning a unique idea into a new niche in the food industry. Chris discusses how his organic chemistry background influences his cooking, the experimentation that led to PopCultivate’s revolutionary brand, and the hurdles he overcame during its inception.

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Episode Transcript

Intro  0:04  

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show powered by Rise25 Media, we featured top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.

Chad Franzen  0:21  

Chad Franzen here, co-host for this show where we feature top restauranteurs, investors and business leaders. This is part of our SpotOn Series. SpotOn has the best in class payment platform for retail. And they have a flagship solution called SpotOn restaurant where they combine marketing software and payments all in one. They’ve served everyone from larger chains like Dairy Queen and Subway to small mom and pop restaurants. To learn more, go to spoton.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b businesses to get ROI clients referrals and strategic partners through done for you podcasts. If you have a b2b business and want to build great relationships with clients referral partners and thought leaders in your space. There’s no better way to do it than through podcasts and content marketing to learn more, go to rise25media.com or email us at support@rise25media.com. Chris Yang is formally trained as an organic chemist. He earned a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from the University of Southern California and an MS management from Chang Gung University in Taiwan. He started his career in the pharmaceutical industry, but soon discovered a passion for food, turned his science knowledge into cooking techniques and started on his journey as a chef. Since then he’s been featured on the Food Network along with some other channels. He’s built a tech inspired culinary incubator and has been recognized for his work in cannabis culinary arts. He also has a passion for entrepreneurship and is currently building PopCultivate a chef driven culinary group that is focused on scientifically infusing cannabis into their cuisine. Chris, thanks so much for joining me. How are you?

Chris Yang  1:54  

Well, Chad, thanks for having me on the show.

Chad Franzen  1:57  

And you’ve got a you’ve got a very interesting background. So when you first got your degree in biochemistry, what were your career goals.

Chris Yang  2:06  

Um, I was on my way to being a doctor. I wanted to be a surgeon, specifically plastic surgery, just had a fascination for how things worked and super technical skills. And somewhere along the way, I realized I can transfer those interests into food and working on my hands there.

Chad Franzen  2:27  

So I mentioned that you were in the pharmaceutical industry. What did you do then when you first got out of school?

Chris Yang  2:33  

Yeah, so I got out of school and I was working for a company called Pfizer, I guess people know quite well for their vaccines these days, but I was doing some business development in in their China market at time. And we were figuring out how to sell vitamins actually, to the local market. And it’s very interesting things, very different feel than what I kind of went to school for. But I understood the science and I understood their products quite well, because that background,

Chad Franzen  3:01  

why did you pursue an MS management?

Chris Yang  3:04  

Um, it was a along that same career path. I thought, you know, after working at Pfizer for a little bit, what better way to understand and, you know, figure out how to sell more pharmaceuticals then to work in a hospital and understand the inner management of how hospitals work, how prescriptions work, and how their relationship to pharmacies, and all that. So gotten to hospital management to kind of learn that structure and kind of develop more relationships in that field.

Chad Franzen  3:36  

So then, as far as I can tell, you discovered kind of a couple of passions of yours food and entrepreneurship. How do those How did you stumble across those? Or did you have did you have those for a while and then you just decided, you know, this is what I truly like?

Chris Yang  3:50  

You know, that’s interesting question. I. Now in hindsight, it was very obvious. But at the time, I had no idea that that’s the path that I was going down. As a kid, I’ve always been super infatuated with how food works. I’ve always been very curious and always love to eat foods and like different foods and all kinds of like weird things like, hey, that cuisine never tried that. Let me give that a try. Oh, that root vegetable I’ve never seen like, what does that taste like? So I’ve always had that natural curiosity for food. I’ve never cooked food at all. My parents didn’t cook much food either. Up until maybe college when I moved into a dorm it was the first time I had a kitchen. And I started tinkering with it. But that passion for cooking food and understanding and beginning that you know the paths that 10,000 hours started while I was in Taiwan actually in grad school. I was very into fitness and health time and really wanted to get on a regimented did a healthy meal plan and that led to me cooking all the time and just meal prepping myself. And as I was doing it, I was just kind of so obsessed with this idea of okay, well how do I do this better? How do I do this faster? Like there has to be a better way of doing it. And it actually started with one single YouTube video, it was Gordon Ramsay’s video on how to cut an onion how to diced onion. And I watched it, I tried it, I was like completely blown away completely amazed. I was like, wow, like, there is a way of doing it, somebody else figured it out. And from that video, like literally that day, I watched that video did it, you know, chopped up like three or four onions, like this amazing, and then just scoured the internet for more of this kind of content, just trial and error.

Chad Franzen  5:53  

What made a video about chopping an onion, so captivating.

Chris Yang  5:59  

Like, at the beginning of cooking, you know, and I’m sure a certain point in time, like everyone’s kind of struggled with this, you know, like, how do you actually cut an onion, it’s like, slippery, there’s layers on it, you cut it this way, it kind of falls apart and you’re like, you know, like, how do I actually handle this thing. So to find out that, wow, there’s actually a technique. In doing this task, it’s kind of like a light bulb went on. And I’m like super technical, everything I do is like very technique driven. And that just kind of like, I just like found this thread that I just kept pulling on and pulling on. That was the beginning of it that cut that onion chopping video.

Chad Franzen  6:40  

So you, you watch the onion chopping video, I’m sure there was more that went there was more that went into your decision to you know, leave your job in the pharmaceutical industry, what kind of brought you down that path where you were just like I’m going for it? Yeah,

Chris Yang  6:55  

it was a that was probably like, you know that that kind of led me to start cooking, understanding and like developing techniques and just better understanding how to do this thing called cooking. And after about two years, in my grad school, I finished, I probably by then put in about like, two, maybe 3000 hours and in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, like figuring out how things worked. And at the end of my graduate degree, I was in Taiwan at the time, and I just thought like there has to be more to you know, what I do then learning how to manage hospitals. And it was kind of a really important moment for me because in when I was studying organic chemistry in my undergrad, I’ve always had this idea of you know, I want to be a doctor and hospitals are a life saving Institute. And you know, when you need help you go to the hospital and doctors will help you. And having spent two years in a hospital from the, you know, seeing it through the lens of a management perspective and p&l and costs. It kind of ruined this idea of hospital for me it was a suits that’s just like, pure, like helpful, like goodness of like hospital kind of ruined it for me. And all I saw were like dollar signs and processes. And hey, like this procedure, you’re only supposed to be using five causes. And every time you use more, there’s like well, there’s a cost. So it kind of ruined this idea for me and I on this like, you know, soul searching Road, kind of came back to Los Angeles from Taiwan and was hanging out here for a little bit. It was close to like the bottom of the procession at the time, and was hanging out in Los Angeles and just kind of students, some soul searching, and meantime was doing a lot of cooking still and enjoying myself and being healthy and fit. And one day a friend of mine said, You Have you heard this thing called Instagram, as you start when you make some cool foods, you start posting those photos. And I didn’t think too much about it at the time. But I just thought it’d be cool to have a place to catalog all the different food items that I made. And in case like one day, someone’s like, Hey, can you make this my Yeah, I can. Here’s my menu and just like all the items, and that just led to more and more followers, and he kept posting and I’m like, Oh, that’s cool. I got more followers today and it just kind of grew and you know, one day after another one day I woke up and I had a lot of followers.

Chad Franzen  9:45  

Was there any particular food item or video that really like catapulted it, or was it kind of just steady growth?

Chris Yang  9:52  

No, it’s steady growth. That’s kind of what I learned about life and entrepreneurship at all. You know it all together. It’s literally One step at a time, like what you do today is going to impact what tomorrow looks like. And just one foot forward just one step at a time. Slow and slow growth. Sure.

Chad Franzen  10:10  

Speaking. So speaking of entrepreneurship, you’re as we, as I mentioned, you’re you’re building the PopCultivate lifestyle. But you’ve also had some other interesting entrepreneurial ventures. The ones I’m aware of are Zipchops and Littlemeats. Can you tell me just a little bit about those?

Chris Yang  10:25  

Yeah, Zipchops and a Littlemeats? I’m sorry? Sorry. Yeah, no worries. Little nice was an interesting, it was like more about culture. And people, while Zipchops was more about like technology, and like, you know, developing in this like new space. So Zipchops was about leveraging delivery infrastructure. And at the time, we were just seeing the beginnings of this industry called Food Technology, right, and DoorDash just raised a series B, maybe going on Series C. And then there was company called sprig and spoon rocket, those are all called, like, first gen, like food tech companies. Now, these things exist as like Postmates, DoorDash, GrubHub, and Uber Eats. But that was like, very fascinating. Me too, that technology had entered the food space. And it’s been around for a little bit, but that was like, when we’re, you know, big, like VC money was coming in, like, hey, how do we how do we disrupt this thing. So I kind of, with the friend put together this idea that a restaurant is is a brand and is you can disassociate that brand with a physical brick and mortar space. You know, traditionally, you would go to a restaurant and that restaurant had a brick and mortar space that you would go to, to dine in, or, you know, even when you’re ordering food you’re ordering from this brick and mortar. So once we kind of separated the concept of physical space and brand, I realized that I can run you know, for all intents purposes, the restaurant out of my home kitchen, and exist as a online virtual brand that people would order on GrubHub. So essentially, is the beginnings of ghost kitchen, which is a pretty common thing right now as well. But yeah, I was running a restaurant on my home kitchen, and Postmates came along, and they had this, you know, you can call it Postmates to come do any kind of delivery. So I, you know, signed contract with them. And it was running a restaurant or my home kitchen, just delivering food out of my apartment. And it was very interesting. My neighbors are very confused as to why I had 10 delivery drivers lined up outside my door waiting for me to give them these packages. And that was about four years ago, five years ago, now. It’s quite a while ago,

Chad Franzen  13:04  

a Littlemeats,

Chris Yang  13:06  

Littlemeats was about people. We gathered a bunch of chefs together in this community where we incubated individual chef brands while leveraging the collective, like, I guess, labor efforts of putting on these like pop up dinners. So it’s kind of like a like a supper club. But um, it kind of came out as a supper club where we would do regular events or sold tickets, people showed up for it. And then we would have a roster of chefs that we would kind of incubate they come in and grow the individual chef brand along with a little meats like Supperclub brand, and kind of went from there and kind of led to some interesting things with partnerships and individuals like kind of catapulting and like growing this like massive following. And we were kind of like transferring knowledge as I was growing my like following and it got to a point where they were like, 50 or 60,000, maybe like 80,000 followers on Instagram, and like, okay, cool, like, this is how you do it. And we’re just passing that knowledge and incubating other chefs and getting them to that point as well.

Chad Franzen  14:21  

So now you’re the founder of and owner of PopCultivate, built out of your passions for science and food, what is PopCultivate. Exactly.

Chris Yang  14:31  

So PopCultivate is kind of a combination of like everything that I’ve done in the past, my science background and this like creative foods and like you know, very forward thinking styles of foods that I can make in the form of a supper club, kind of all mashed together with one and be thrown an element of like art and people and community It’s kind of what it is it kind of came about when I was first starting to learn how to do these, like several clubs and like multi course meals, like 567 courses. And I would always have, you know, group of friends come over, like, hey, you know, you guys be patient, I’m trying to figure out how to do this thing. And they were just all sit around, hang out. And the first couple of times, like, there’s at seven o’clock, and I will get sir seven o’clock. And I’m like, you know, like going crazy in kitchen, like figuring out how to execute this thing. And I probably wouldn’t feed my my friends until probably like, close at 910 o’clock at night, because I didn’t know how to, you know, prep ahead of time and do all those, you know, the kitchen execution. But you know, by like dinner number two or three, one of my friends and know the meat are very patient. They’re all just smoking joints hanging out in balcony just chit chatting. When my friends asked me that, hey, keep it put some of this wheat into the food. I’m like, that’s an interesting question. We’ll get back to you on that. And then took me about like a week, two weeks just like scratch my brain, like how do I actually do this? How do I extract it out? Or put it in? How do I measure? You know, dosages? How do I deliver dosages. So it’s a combination of science, and kitchen operations as well as you know, this, like Front of House service, like these three things had to balance for me to be able to deliver a precise exact dose and control that dose for everyone across the board. So it was like a little pet pet project. I was just kind of like kept picking it in like scratching it and making like trial and error. Okay, well, that didn’t work and trial again, doesn’t work and kind of came about from there. Now it’s a, you know, a special events catering company, and we do ticket events for people who are interested in mostly a lot of private private events, a lot of birthday parties, people doing celebratory thing their friends and family. And I’m kind of exists in that realm at this very moment.

Chad Franzen  17:01  

So it’s cannabis infused food. I know cannabis has THC and CBD. What would be an expectation of somebody? How will their state change when eating one of your dishes?

Chris Yang  17:16  

Yeah, absolutely. So this experience is a usually somewhere a five to 10 course fine dining meal. They’re all unique menus, because I’ve kind of retained this idea that I want to be able to create menus and cook whatever I really want. So that’s a piece that I absolutely love. So there’s like this element of surprise when you kind of come in at not knowing what you’re going to eat and no, and just knowing that I’m going to give you the best thing possible. And throughout the five to 10 courses, we offer optional infusions, so anybody can opt in and out of cannabis infusion as they please. The trick with that is we made a proprietary tincture that is very fast acting, sugar figured out is the way to go. And at the end of the course, we aim to give you a high that’s equal to a beer buzz of three or four beers. And, you know, we’ve tried using numbers and dosages and all that and it just doesn’t quite work out the same way. And so I kind of adopt the same system that alcohol uses you standard standard doses standard serving alcohol servings, you know, you don’t talk about how many proof or how many milligrams or milliliters of alcohols and a beer to kind of talks about, you know, standard alcohol beverages. So we kind of adopted that model and it’s been working out pretty well for us, but about three or four years worth of high, like Buzz is what we aim for.

Chad Franzen  18:50  

Does cannabis infusion significantly alter the taste of a dish that you might have without cannabis in it?

Chris Yang  18:58  

Yeah, so it absolutely doesn’t, I’ve created it so the tincture is odorless and tasteless. So it just gives you the effects the psychotropic effects you would feel with THC without any of the tastes or smells and we just be enjoying a very tasty meal.

Chad Franzen  19:19  

So I’ve watched some of these shows that you know on the Food Network I’ve actually seen you compete in some of these shows where she you know, chefs are given a certain number of ingredients maybe that don’t go together and they somehow masterfully combine them and make some incredible dish does your How does your science background help you do that? I know when I hear them talk they say like I add the acidity of this you know I just know that cilantro goes well and guacamole but I don’t know all but everything that everything about that. How did your science background help you?

Chris Yang  19:51  

Yeah, I guess it’s more. It’s more about like the science background and training and understanding really molded The way I think about things, very, very analytical and technical, and it’s very much like a chemist. To me, every, you know, every flavor or taste or ingredient is broken down into smaller pieces all the way down to a molecule. So you know, the way like cilantro, for example works is there’s the the flavors of it, and then the actual fibers of it and the you know, what you can turn that into whether it’s like a powder or a juice and oil or, you know, you can dry it into dust, and you can kind of change the form of what this thing is, but ultimately, at the core of it, like, what is cilantro? What, you know, what are the things in it that actually make it cilantro? So being able to break things down and understand, in my mind, these ingredients and dishes and flavors, like what is composed, what composes those things? And how do I break it down into its individual elements is kind of where that science lives in my head and how it impacts and influences all my food?

Chad Franzen  21:06  

Is there a significant difference in your cannabis infused food today than maybe there was when your friends first decided to encourage you to try the idea?

Chris Yang  21:17  

Absolutely. I prefer definitely speak to the, you know, my culinary technique and level, it’s definitely grown significantly, in every dinner, every event that I put on, I learned a little bit more, it kind of refined my skills a little bit more, it’s like sharpening a knife is just a little bit sharper, a little bit better. Every time, the style of cuisine is changed in my understanding of like, what components need to be on a dish has changed to be able to deliver, you know, this, this high experience. So it’s, it’s really forced me to change or learn and understand how food works, and how people interact with food, and what are the different components of food.

Chad Franzen  22:04  

So you had had some entrepreneurship experience before but in the early days of PopCultivate, what were those? What were those days, like?

Chris Yang  22:12  

Oh, man, those are rough. You know, it’s, I kind of equate it’s not, I’ve always thought about it as a building a catering business, but it’s not quite the same. Because you it’s a product that people don’t know about, and they don’t know that they want. And once they kind of get a flavor for it, they’re like, this is absolutely amazing. But I had no idea this exists. So it was a lot of it’s very strategic, but it was very time consuming and tiring. But I had to build not only I have to build a brand in this space, I actually had to build the entire space because this was not a thing like people did not go seek cannabis fine dining. And at the time when I started it, we started with what we call it the you know, the more advanced users. They’re kind of more enthused cannabis enthusiasts. And they got a kick out of it. Because there’s like, wow, this is a new way of consuming cannabis. This is phenomenal. And then as time went on, now, we’re kind of shifting gears a little bit. And we’re seeing a lot of first timers and recreational users, things like that just be like, Wow, we want to try cannabis, but never, you know, didn’t like the experience of smoking or going, you know, eating inedible or gummy. And this is just the a much more refined way of consuming cannabis along with this kind of communal dining style, which is a huge element of lifestyle. His community factor in consuming cannabis.

Chad Franzen  23:48  

So he said those first few years or you know, first your first few years probably of operating PopCultivate were rough. When did you feel like things were starting to be not so rough? And what were some of the turning points do you think?

Chris Yang  24:03  

Yeah, it was. It was it was really just a, you know, a, I guess market thing. It was It was rough in that I had to create my own business. Like I had to like sell this idea to somebody and then after they’re like, that’s kind of a cool idea, then I got to sell them and get the business of spending money on this thing. The turning point was probably say about two or three years ago, where there was like, this mass shift of acceptance and how cannabis was perceived in society as a recreational you know, vise I guess you can call it now. People started smoking cannabis and being okay with it. And then the, you know, the not just like the younger generation, but like the older generations who have actually been consuming cannabis for a very long time now or very open about consuming cannabis. And then when that kind of happened I felt this like massive shift in society where everyone’s like, cannabis is cool. Now it’s okay, it’s accepted. And then that’s when, like, you know, I started feeling this like natural push of like organic traffic, people started seeking out this kind of experience and even to this day, like, I would say close to 100% of my business is organic traffic, literally people googling cannabis, fine dining, and boom, dropping onto my website, the TV shows helped a lot as well to just give so much exposure because, again, that was just an indication of what society wanted. Now they’re want this kind of cannabis content, they want to see what else you can do with cannabis. That was just like a massive like swing, like, almost overnight, you can say,

Chad Franzen  25:55  

did COVID affect PopCultivate?

Chris Yang  25:59  

Yeah, absolutely, um, you know, much like any, any other food industry, I guess, minus, you know, food technology delivery, it slowed things down for a lot of people. You know, people were not doing massive gatherings and birthday parties and things like that. So, we kind of went dormant for a little bit again, you know, given that we’re, we exist as a catering business. You know, we just kind of like laid low for a little while, it definitely hurt. Kind of sucks, to be honest. But now we’re kind of coming back out of it. And people are no back at it at looking for dinners and celebrations and looking to get back to what, you know, a normal, pre COVID life will look like,

Chad Franzen  26:42  

did it change the way you guys do business? Or is it? Or did you just kind of survive it and wait until things get back to normal?

Chris Yang  26:50  

We just kind of waited it out a little bit. Um, we tried to some more content, just kind of keep it top of mind for buddy that we kind of existed, but it was more the push was born. So after COVID, you know, we weathered it through, and then now things are kind of coming back. And we’re like, Hey, guys, we made it, we’re still around, come do dinner with us.

Chad Franzen  27:10  

You know, I’ve talked to several entrepreneurs and chefs, and some of the most valuable moments, especially early on is maybe like, a mistake that they made that they learn so much from that they never make again. And then they built off what they learned. Was there any, you know, big prep, pitfalls or mistakes that you learned from?

Chris Yang  27:30  

Yeah, that’s a that’s an interesting one. Um, you know, I think this is probably very unique to my business. I’m very early on, I put in a lot of effort, and I pushed the growth of PopCultivate, like very hard. And if I can put in like, you know, like, 50% gain, like 1% growth, like I will do it. Somewhere along the way, I learned that there’s this, you know, rule, this 8020 rule where there’s a certain amount of effort, you can actually push into it, but after a while, like, is that effort actually worth it, maybe you can redirect that energy elsewhere, and you put in maybe, you know, 2%, and you see the same kind of growth. So yeah, that’s kind of what I learned repop called sway and realize that this is kind of like a waiting game. And after seeing that, hey, two or three years that first, the beginning of I push so hard for the growth, but literally, it was like an overnight swing, when society changed. That’s when I saw like that uptick. So seeing that and having experienced that I kind of realized understand, like, hey, something’s like, you just have to let it kind of do its own thing you put in your time and effort and let it go. But you know, you don’t want to, you know, just for it on this one project and just keep burning out for that little incremental growth and just let it do its thing.

Chad Franzen  28:58  

Yeah, sure. I think that’s good advice for both for everybody. You want to get a return on your effort, not just for yourself before you can get the return before the return is even possible. Yeah, absolutely. So I see on your website that PopCultivate has three locations. Is that right?

Chris Yang  29:14  

Yeah, we’re, we recently did a push for expansion. So we’re based in Los Angeles. Now we’re in Denver and Las Vegas as well, too. We’re just kind of moving around to seeing where what other you know, communities and local cities would would enjoy our product and seems like Denver, Las Vegas are the ones

Chad Franzen  29:40  

and these are physical, their physical PopCultivate locations. No. So

Chris Yang  29:44  

we kind of continue to exist in like catering form will do pop ups will do ticketed events. But our bread and butter is catered events, like birthday parties. That’s for some odd reason. That’s the one

Chad Franzen  29:59  

Okay, What are some of your goals for the future professionally and you know how how you can personally plan to those?

Chris Yang  30:06  

Yeah, go for future I, I’ve always had this vision of what PopCultivate will be and PopCultivate in the future will be a boutique hotel, a cannabis friendly community boutique hotel. Because what’s actually special about PopCultivate, you know, the food is great. Cannabis is cool. And it’s a very unique experience. But at the end of the day, it’s about that community. It’s the PopCultivate community and you know, who you sit next to at that dinner table is like minded, you know, you connect because everyone’s there to enjoy this unique cannabis experience. And that’s the, the future for all today. And I’m excited to realize that future soon.

Chad Franzen  30:54  

Very exciting. A couple final questions for you. We’re big fans of gratitude around here. We like to give people the chance to publicly acknowledge people who’ve been influential to you, who are some of those people in the interest industry that you respect and have helped you along the way?

Chris Yang  31:09  

Yeah, I think, you know, this is such a new industry. Um, you know, cannabis itself, you know, not just cannabis foods, that it’s a, it was hard to find some of these local to where you’ll follow a path or mimic something, it was literally day in day out of grinding, and like walking around the dark, kind of finding my way. So the, you know, I have to give gratitude to my family, my brother, my mom, they, they’re, they’re supporting me, in this like, crazy venture that, you know, crazy path and journey that I decided to go down. And, you know, it wasn’t about looking forward to like, Hey, what is next? Like, what’s down the road? And how do I get there’s literally like people around me, keeping me going like, hey, just keep walking, just keep walking and just blindly walking to this dark abyss to kind of see where at the end of the path is,

Chad Franzen  32:08  

are you still putting videos out there on social media? A little

Chris Yang  32:12  

bit, here and there. A little bit less content being out there. I think we’re going to probably turn that machine back on now that you know, that the world is opening back up and we’re seeing some normalcy again, but definitely going to turn that machine back on and create more content.

Chad Franzen  32:28  

Is there a place maybe people if people were curious even just to see your old videos? You mentioned Instagram? Is there a place they can check you out?

Chris Yang  32:36  

Yeah, the the website PopCultivate.com, PopCultivate.com is a great place for all the you know, the content, we got all the TV shows, there’s a couple amazing episodes that we’ve done some with like Roy Choi cup on Amazon, Amazon Prime, like Netflix has some great content there. But the majority of all the photos, videos and everything else lives on Instagram.

Chad Franzen  33:01  

What was it like to compete in those TV shows? Those have really kind of gained steam in popularity over the past few years.

Chris Yang  33:08  

Yeah, the TV show is it’s a different world, how it’s very different, like a TV kitchen is very different than like a restaurant kitchen. But you know, I go in light hearted. I’m just there to have some fun. And I always have a lot of fun. The competition is great. I live on this mantra, especially when I’m competing, very competitive person that not only do I want to win, I want to make sure everyone else knows that they last.

Chad Franzen  33:35  

Nice. Very nice. Hey, Chris was great talking to you. Give us your website. One more time.

Chris Yang  33:43  

PopCultivate.com.

Chad Franzen  33:45  

Okay, perfect. Hey, thanks so much for joining me, Chris. It was great talking to you. And it’s great hearing your story.

Chris Yang  33:50  

Thank you so much. Chad. Pleasure being here. So long, everybody.

Outro  33:53  

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