Ep. 1041 Shawn Burcham | Leadership Without a Safety Net

·44 min·4 clips

Shawn Burcham started selling chicken breading from his garage, leading to a nationwide food service business.

Joel Goldberg hosts Shawn Burcham on Rounding the Bases to explore leadership and business success through a sports lens. Burcham is the founder and CEO of PFS Brands, a company behind food brands like Champ's Chicken, Blue Taco, and Hanger 45 Pizza. He started his entrepreneurial journey with a mowing business at age 14 and later ventured into selling coffee machines, which he describes as a failure. His breakthrough came when he pivoted to selling chicken breading from his garage in Willard, Missouri, bootstrapping the business without external funding. A key turning point was in 2006 when he signed two wholesalers, expanding his distribution nationally and prompting him to get a pilot's license to balance travel and family life. Burcham emphasizes the importance of 'GRIT,' an acronym he developed for goal-driven, responsible, involved team, and tolerance of failure, which is also the title of his bestselling book. He discusses his leadership evolution, noting that in his 40s, he shifted from a one-size-fits-all approach to treating employees differently based on generational studies and behavioral assessments. Burcham highlights the low employee engagement rates reported by Gallup and advocates for open-book leadership, goal-setting, and financial literacy to improve it. He shares insights on trust, stating that great leaders give immediate trust to subordinates rather than making them earn it. The episode includes baseball-themed questions where Burcham recalls his biggest 'home run' (the 2006 wholesaler deals) and a 'swing and miss' (the coffee business). He also talks about the importance of structure, using calendars and routines to manage his growing enterprises. Burcham reveals he only read two books before age 40 but later became an avid reader, citing Jim Collins' 'Good to Great' as highly influential. He concludes by discussing his future plans to grow PFS Brands as a 100% employee-owned company (ESOP) and create wealth for employee-owners.

As heard by us

A grounded leadership conversation about goals, financial literacy, grit, and the daily work of building culture.

Leadership lands here as a practical matter: how people keep working with purpose when engagement is not automatic. The guest ties that challenge to shared company goals, personal goal setting, and financial literacy, then gives grit a clear working shape through goals,…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want leadership advice with dirt under its fingernails, built around goals, culture, and a gritty acronym.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Rounding The Bases With Joel Goldberg