Ever wondered how a punk rock skateboarder turned into a wine industry pioneer? Today on Elevate Your Brand, we sit down with Michael Juergens, a certified sommelier and best-selling author, whose serendipitous encounter with an old Italian wine at 40 propelled him to international wine acclaim. Embodying the mantra of doing "epic shit with cool people," Michael's journey is a testament to the notion that it's never too late to chase your passion.
Michael takes us on a remarkable adventure through the Himalayas, where he is establishing a new wine industry in Bhutan, a country historically out of the wine loop since the mid-1800s. From the initial spark of the idea to the upcoming harvest, Michael shares the entrepreneurial challenges he faces, likening the process to running a marathon with frozen goggles. Learn about the innovative marketing strategies and the historical significance behind this groundbreaking project, as Michael and his dedicated team navigate the unique obstacles of this ambitious endeavor.
Closing out this episode, we delve into the personal growth that comes from life's unpredictable rapids. With analogies of whitewater kayaking, Michael emphasizes the importance of steering through life's obstacles while embracing the journey. Discover the core values of community and shared growth as we explore his ongoing projects like the Bhutanese wine project and SoCal Rum. Join us to learn how perseverance, a great team, and effective communication can turn dreams into reality.
Our mission here at Elevate Media is to help purpose-driven entrepreneurs elevate their brands and make an impact through the power of video podcasting.
Disclaimer: Please see the link for our disclaimer policy for all our episodes or videos on the Elevate Media and Elevate Media Podcast YouTube channels. https://elevatemediastudios.com/disclaimer
Ever wondered how a punk rock skateboarder turned into a wine industry pioneer? Today on Elevate Your Brand, we sit down with Michael Juergens, a certified sommelier and best-selling author, whose serendipitous encounter with an old Italian wine at 40 propelled him to international wine acclaim. Embodying the mantra of doing "epic shit with cool people," Michael's journey is a testament to the notion that it's never too late to chase your passion.
Michael takes us on a remarkable adventure through the Himalayas, where he is establishing a new wine industry in Bhutan, a country historically out of the wine loop since the mid-1800s. From the initial spark of the idea to the upcoming harvest, Michael shares the entrepreneurial challenges he faces, likening the process to running a marathon with frozen goggles. Learn about the innovative marketing strategies and the historical significance behind this groundbreaking project, as Michael and his dedicated team navigate the unique obstacles of this ambitious endeavor.
Closing out this episode, we delve into the personal growth that comes from life's unpredictable rapids. With analogies of whitewater kayaking, Michael emphasizes the importance of steering through life's obstacles while embracing the journey. Discover the core values of community and shared growth as we explore his ongoing projects like the Bhutanese wine project and SoCal Rum. Join us to learn how perseverance, a great team, and effective communication can turn dreams into reality.
Our mission here at Elevate Media is to help purpose-driven entrepreneurs elevate their brands and make an impact through the power of video podcasting.
Disclaimer: Please see the link for our disclaimer policy for all our episodes or videos on the Elevate Media and Elevate Media Podcast YouTube channels. https://elevatemediastudios.com/disclaimer
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Elevate your Brand podcast, where we help online coaches learn how to elevate their brand, become the experts in their industries so they can bring in more clients and create a life they want. I am your host, chris Anderson, and if you want to make a difference in the lives of others, share this episode, go over to Apple Podcasts and follow us there to leave a positive rating and review and together we can leave a bigger positive mark on the world. Hello, hello, welcome back to Elevate your Brand. I'm Chris Anderson, your host, and looking forward to today's episode and it's a little bit different. We talked to a lot of financial coaches, business coaches, things of that nature, successful entrepreneurs, and this one's no different, just in a different field that we haven't really talked a whole lot in. So the world of wine, and I'm excited for that.
Speaker 1:
My wife and I like wine, so today's guest he is the best-selling author of Drinking and Knowing Things. He's a certified sommelier with the Guild of Master Sommeliers. He's a certified wine specialist and a master of wine candidate with the Institute of Masters of Wine, so he runs a widely popular drinking and knowing things wine blog, which has adapted into multiple books that provides a lot of different wine recommendations. I hope I pronounced this right Bhutan Wine Company and it's leading the development of the wine industry in the magical area of the Himalayan country.
Speaker 1:
And on top of that, he owns an award-winning SoCal Rum Company. So if you're looking for where the rum went, johnny, there it is and it was actually recently awarded the highest point score in history for any silver rum actually recently awarded the highest point score in history for any silver rump. So super excited to have Michael Michael Jurgens on the show today. He does a whole lot of other things and you'll have to check out what he does, but his, his long list of accolades could take the whole, the whole episode. So we'll stop there and Michael MJ, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:
What's up, Chris? Glad to be here, man.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely Super excited to have you on here. We were just having a little bit before hit record of just travels and future plans and ideas and all that, and so it's cool to kind of get in your mind a little bit and excited for you to share more with the audience. So I guess, first, just real quick, if you would just high level, like what got you into all the wine industry, rum industry and you know what are you working on right now.
Speaker 2:
So I got when I was about 22, my dad had been on a business trip to Italy and while he was there as a president, somebody had given him this old bottle of Italian wine and he brought it home. And he doesn't know anything about wine, I didn't know anything about wine. He goes I got this bottle of wine, mike, let's drink it. And I go, I don't drink wine, dad. Like I'm a punk rock skateboard kid, you know I'm drinking mexican beer and tequila shots. You know I could care less about wine, your wines for sissies and uh and so. But he talked me into drinking it. We poured it into red solo cups and we sat in the garage drinking this Gatnara from 1975, which I remember everything about this moment, by the way and like that kind of flipped a switch on in my brain that said, oh, I can see why people care about wine, like I didn't know about it.
Speaker 2:
But it was sort of like an enlightening moment and I think that there are certain things that our brains are sort of neurologically wired to do, like running, for example. We ran down prey for 50,000 years. Like in our brains there's something that says you should go for a long run and occasionally you know that switch flips and then next thing you know you're a marathon runner, you know you're spending all your time going out. Wine is one of those. It's been around for so many thousands of years that that was what flipped my switch on. And then, you know, just kind of continued to explore that for a number of years and then got serious about it, probably about when I was maybe 40. I said, you know what? This is interesting enough to spend a lifetime doing? That's awesome and that's crazy too At 40,.
Speaker 1:
You said basically kind of started that wine journey. Is that correct? Did I understand that right yeah?
Speaker 2:
I mean, I kind of I dabbled for you know a number of years and then, at around 40, I was like you know what, I'm going to get serious about this, and I did don't have to be 16 to become successful in something.
Speaker 1:
Uh, and really I mean just with your accolades, like at starting at 40, taking it serious, and you're able to succeed and get, do and and be doing what you're doing is it's cool.
Speaker 2:
So at any time you can decide to really get serious about something and make it happen, which I think is really awesome but you know what I and I totally agree with that, by the way, you look at like grandma Moses, you know who started painting when she was, you know, a billion years old, right, but I think, more important than that, like for me, you know, I came up, you know a partner at a global consulting firm and and coming up, there's this sort of chasing of stuff and chasing of status and chasing of the next level, and that becomes particularly in the corporate world, that becomes kind of how you live.
Speaker 2:
And I made a conscious decision, probably about 13 or 14 years ago, to stop chasing stuff and only do this is. These are my words, by the way, yeah, this is my mantra that I came up with I only want to do epic shit with cool people, nice and and so. So, like, if it's not that, like that's my litmus test. It's mantra that I came up with I only want to do epic shit with cool people. And so, if it's not that, that's my litmus test, if it's not that, I'm not doing it. And so when I dove into the wine thing headfirst, it wasn't because I thought it was going to make me a billionaire or lead me all these places, it was truly, because it was epic shit with cool people and I got to stop the world and do all this crazy stuff and and through that also, I was successful and I and I think that we can all sort of benefit a little bit from that. You know, if you're doing something for the right reasons, success is a lot easier to find.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. It's like the whole thing with elevate, you know, helping people with video, podcast production, like we're a part of someone else's ability to impact people and it's cool to be kind of in the background pushing, helping them push themselves higher to then reach more people to make a more positive impact, and so, yeah, I think that goes without saying kind of is just, you know, the passion, is there the right reasons to doing things, and sticking to that I think is a big thing you said as well because we can get caught up in, you know, more money or more things, and then we kind of lose sight of the reason we started the endeavors to begin with.
Speaker 2:
Well, and the bar moves too right. So you make a billion dollars in Bitcoin, but the dude next to you made $2 billion in Bitcoin, and so now you're a failure because you only made a billion. The arbitrariness of how you measure success will impact your state of mind, mind, and if it for me, I'm like did it? Was it epic? Was it with cool people?
Speaker 1:
right, yeah success.
Speaker 2:
You know, yeah, and with and with that, I've done some stuff that, um, you know, was epic and was with cool people but wasn't necessarily fun. Oh, I gotcha. You know, yeah, like I ran a marathon at the south pole and I almost died, oh wow, um, and coming out of it it was a pretty profound experience, but I'll tell you what, during it I wasn't having a lot of fun no, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:
The north pole, south pole, south pole, sorry, yeah, south pole, geez. I mean, I've run marathons.
Speaker 2:
I can't imagine doing it into negative 30 degrees, 50 mile an hour, winds, blizzard, like I got lost on a glacier oh no awful, but but you know, and you and I and I, I finished, but barely, and uh, and so you would, would I hold that up as, oh, look at this success. But it was, it was profound, and it was like this experience that I'll treasure the rest of my life right, so yeah like if I was measuring it by a certain arbitrary time, I would have called it a failure Right.
Speaker 2:
I wasn't measuring it by that I was measuring it by did you have this epic experience with some cool people, and I did.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think, yeah, how we measure the success matters, like you're saying, and I think that's a great thing to remember, especially early on in entrepreneur, like cause there's so much ups and downs and, in quote unquote, failures and learning lessons, which I mean that's all failure is is just a learning lesson, but it can. I mean, if you don't have the right metric, you end up comparing, or, yeah, you end up comparing yourself to other people, which it just brings you down. So, having that good litmus test of what you're doing, like you know, did, did I, did I, you know, do something to help someone else today, like, did my content provide value? Instead of like, how much money did I make? Or you know all that? Um, so I think that's a huge, a huge thing to remember, especially early on in our journeys, um, and I'm sure go ahead.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I think you know there's another analogy from from that race that that kind of to me epitomizes the entrepreneurial journey which is, uh, around about mile 13 my goggles froze over and I and I couldn't see. But they told us, don't take your goggles off because you'll go snow blind. And I was running in this little trench and on either side there were the snow was banked up a little bit higher, but I couldn't see. But I knew as long as I stayed in the trench I was okay. So what I started to do is I was just running blind and I would run until I got outside of the trench and I would hit the snow bank and I would fall down. Then I would pick myself up and I would reorient and I would run again blind until I hit something and then I would fall down. And I did this for about three or four miles and to the point where that people behind me thought I was having like seizures or something.
Speaker 2:
And they reported me to the medics like we think something's wrong with this guy. But to me that's that almost feels like like certain entrepreneurial journey, certainly like what I'm trying to do in the himalayas. It's you're running blind, you're making progress, but then you hit something. You fall down. You pick yourself up and you reorient, yeah, and you start running again and guess what? You're gonna hit something else. You're gonna fall down and the key is pick yourself up, reorient and keep going a hundred percent that's.
Speaker 1:
That's such a good entrepreneurialism in a nutshell. Yeah, that's such a good you know picture and visualization of entrepreneurship for sure. Yeah, getting back up after you know, knocking yourself down cause you don't know where in the world you're going and you're trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2:
Keep charging ahead. I don't want it to happen, but it's probably going to hurt.
Speaker 1:
Right, let's go Exactly. And you know, right there you mentioned you know what you're doing in the Himalayas. Tell us a little bit about that and I'd love to hear kind of how that journey is going and things that you've overcome already with that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so the kingdom of Bhutan is a small mountain kingdom. It's tucked in between Tibet and Nepal in the Himalayas, and they are sort of widely regarded as one of the best places on earth for sustainable agriculture. They're the only carbon negative country on the planet and what they do is very sort of harmonious with the environment, and they grow some of the world's best crops there, and odd verticals like red rice or cardamom, or the best stuff comes from Bhutan anyway. So I had been there, I went there actually to run a marathon in the Himalayas and, uh, and while I was there, I just assumed, because they grow all this great stuff, that they grew grapes, wine grapes, and so I was asking everybody hey, I'd want to see the vineyards before I leave, cause I'm a wine geek and like I think you guys probably are doing some really awesome stuff and it turned out they didn't have any um, for, for whatever reason, grapes didn't grow there organically like they did in many other regions, and when the Roman army or Marco Polo marched around the world, they never went to Bhutan, so they never brought grapes there.
Speaker 2:
So so once I found out that they didn't have this, I I basically kind of lit the country up a little bit like hey, you guys are screwing up. You should totally do this. You're you're wasting this magnificent natural resource that you've been granted. You should do something with this. And I and I, I believed it. I was passionate. I didn't set out to do it myself, I just thought they should do it because it would be cool.
Speaker 2:
And so that led to, you know, a couple of years worth of conversations about what I thought they ought to do, and inevitably they concluded we want to do this. And then they asked me if I would help them and I was like, are you kidding? Epic shit with cool people, right? Like, how much more epic in the wine space is that, like, you get to invent an entire country's wine industry? Yeah, and figure out, are we going to do sparkling wine or sweet wine, or red wines or white wines or what? Right, what bottle sizes do we use and what blends and what are the rules? Wow, so, yeah, so that that's kind of how I got involved in it and, uh, it's been great. We'll do our first harvest next year oh, wow, cool.
Speaker 1:
So how long does that take to be able to you know from start to harvest, I guess?
Speaker 2:
it takes anywhere from three to five years for a vineyard to come. Wow, okay, I have six vineyards that are five years old and I have two vineyards that are three years old, okay, and so they're about ready. We probably could have made some wine this year, but, um, there was still some pandemic pressures and stuff on travel, and so I just said you know, we'll do it next year. The other thing is, I think, the last time that a country that had never made wine like invented a wine industry and made wine for the very first time the last time that that happened was in New Zealand in like the mid-1800s Like this has not happened in a while, uh, and it's a pretty historic thing both for the country and for the wine, the global wine industry. So I wanted to also do it right, I didn't want to try to rush it. So, for the better this year.
Speaker 2:
We're going to do it next year um make a documentary about it yeah, I was gonna say okay.
Speaker 1:
That's gonna say, how are you marketing that that? You know this whole launch of a new wine in a new country's wine, like how, what are your plans with that? How are you getting it out there?
Speaker 2:
Talking to guys like you. Awesome, actually, we're doing yeah, I've been doing interviews around the world for actually a couple of years now on the topic, because there's a lot of a lot of people are interested in just, is this possible? This hasn't been done in 200 years. Like, wow, how do we do this? And so, yeah, I've had a lot of support from the global wine community. Certainly my day job running the global wine consulting practice for a large company I have a lot of global contacts and stuff but, yeah, we think it's going to be here's. Here's what I don't know. Yeah, I don't know how the wine's going to taste.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you won't. Well, you want it now. Until after you make it, I guess Until after you make it.
Speaker 2:
So, like the last seven or eight years, we've been basing all of this on the Mike jurgens theory that bouton can produce great wine, but that's that's an open question still that we're going to solve.
Speaker 1:
We'll find out next year and I, and so, with that, are you guys focusing on a certain? I know you said it could have been all sorts of sparkling. Whatever did you, did you land on a certain type of wine? You're trying to figure that out.
Speaker 2:
So, like the, the low end of the country is about 500 feet in altitude, okay, and the high, the north side of the country is like 27 000 feet in altitude, okay, and that distance is only like 400 miles, wow. So there's a whole bunch of different climate zones, from jungle up to glacier, you know, in the country. And so what we did was we planted a bunch of different stuff at a bunch of different altitudes with the intent that probably 70% of it's not going to work. Okay, um, and which is fine. I, I, I am trying to figure out what does work.
Speaker 2:
Um and so, like one of our matter of fact, I was talking on Sunday to one of our vineyard managers and it looks like at that particular vineyard we're going to go all in on Malbec and Sauvignon Blanc. Those two grapes are growing really, really well there, and there's some other grapes, like Chardonnay, that we have planted there that aren't growing at all, which is fine, let's get rid of the Chardonnay, we'll go down to Malbec and cool, and I anticipate that over the next 50 years the country will continue to really sort of dial in what works perfectly well, where, and I'll be dead.
Speaker 2:
But this is a long term play. Yeah for the country for the country.
Speaker 1:
That's and it just that's really cool and I'm sure the process, I'm sure you've had a lot of obstacles, like on this entrepreneurial journey just in itself that you've had to overcome. You can't even begin to imagine you bring it wide to the whole country.
Speaker 2:
That's never done it there so like what have been some of the to get a country committed to a vision. So there was a whole bunch of stuff on the front end of me explaining like why wine's important, why people care about wine, why it's great for a country to create a high value export product that goes out to the world with the name of where it came from on the bottle and then people interact with. I mean shit, you put it in your body Like that's, that's, you're interacting with that product, like pretty intimately, yeah. And so you know, there was the front end piece, so the strategy piece, that the tactics of doing things like trying to get foreign species into a country without screwing up the existing species in the country and managing that we have interesting pests and diseases which are new, like we have monkeys Not a lot of monkey problems in Napa or better back.
Speaker 2:
So I have a. I have I get standing updates every morning from all of our vineyards and then we have a like a weekly call with everybody. And so this on this week's call, on Sunday we were running through the different vineyards and they're like, okay, we got this problem in this one vineyard. And I go, okay, what's the problem? And they're like yeah, uh, we now have bears, and so, like we didn't the bears figured out, oh, there's some grapes growing over here, we like grapes, and so now I have to solve for the bear problem at one of our vineyards, wow, and I'm doing all this obviously from the other side of the world, which.
Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
how do you I mean, how do you stay on it all?
Speaker 2:
so the good news is is we have a really great team in the country. So we have about a hundred people there, um, and that I have a french guy who is our vineyard operations leader, who really kind of knows grapes, and then I have our our chief operating officer over there. Um is a boutonniere person who really kind of knows grapes, and then I have our our chief operating officer over there um is a boutonniere person who really knows how to get stuff done in the country. And so you know the the combination of those two allows me a lot of leverage. Like their, their goal is solve for this stuff. Bring me the problems that me, the problems that they can't solve for locally, and then we'll figure out how to do that as a team. So without them, there's no way this could be done. It's impossible.
Speaker 1:
And that's I mean, yeah, a lot of. You know there's a lot of solopreneurs out there still starting out, and so don't get discouraged if you don't have a team out, and so don't get discouraged if you don't have a team. But once you're able to get that point, and even if it's someone who sees your vision and is volunteering to help you like the right people, make such a big difference in accomplishing your goals. Even if it's just if you have someone who is of the same mindset, who's going towards their goals, and you guys just network to support one another, that can even be a huge teammate to have just in the in the beginning stages, because you guys can support and just encourage one another until you can get to the point where you have, you know, the people on your team actually doing different parts of the of the job and of the business. So it can be done at any level. It looks different at the level you're at, but I think we can only go so far by ourselves. We go a lot farther with other people.
Speaker 2:
Well, and I think for us, the key to making that happen was to really communicate the vision in a way that people can get their hands around and this whole idea of like we're going to do something that hasn't been done in 200 years and we think it's going to be really bitching because it's Bhutan, you know, and and I have people to your point from a networking perspective I have people that are absolutely like, willing to help me.
Speaker 2:
Like the monkey thing. Here's a perfect example. I was reaching out around the globe to say who's solving the monkey problem and I got this winery in South Africa where the owner reached out to me, had somehow heard through the grapevine. That reached out and said okay, we have baboons in our vineyard. Here's exactly how we solve for them. Here's our protocols. Now it turns out their protocols were shoot the baboons with paintball guys. I don't know that we'll deploy that particular monkey damage protocol, but uh, but to your point, yeah, like that person had no skin in the game other than yeah these guys are doing something really, really cool and I want to help them.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but we got there by being able to communicate this vision globally in a way that that was interesting and and people want to help.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, which is that's really neat because you know, no matter what you're doing, there's so many people and there's so much room in markets. I mean, you might people might say it's saturated, or you think it's saturated, but there is really. There's so much room for everybody, kind of to play in the sandbox and and like that. Just an example of them reaching out to help, not speaking anything, because I mean you have the people, the mindset, who's like, oh, I hope the monkeys eat all their grapes so we don't have to worry about it. But that wasn't the case, uh, which is a really cool thing. Um, have you had any negative kind of? Then you don't have to mention names, but like anything, that's kind of someone tried to hinder your plans with this. I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:
I don't know that I've had any people that have sort of really been negative about it or tried to hinder. I have had skepticism, okay, yeah. And so, particularly around things like dude, it's the Himalayas. And so, particularly around things like dude, it's the Himalayas. And when you think about the Himalayas in your head you probably think of, you know, yeti and glaciers and snowmen and salt yeah, salt. Like you don't necessarily get a vision of Napa Valley and these large. There's some merit to that. I think it the the nuances of the way that the country is laid out, like altitude, wise, part of it does look like that, but part of it doesn't. And if you haven't been there, you don't know. And so it's easy for you to sit there and say, well, this will never work. And here's why. And I'm like well, have you been to Bhutan? They're like no, like you any pictures of Bhutan? No, you done any study on it? No, okay, so you're just sitting on the sidelines throwing rocks. Okay, cool, Right, go ahead.
Speaker 2:
But, while you're throwing rocks, I'm going to be planting more Merlot over here and trying to make it happen.
Speaker 1:
Right, absolutely. It's like the quote I've heard. You know, if you won't go to them for advice, then don't take their criticism to heart, like if they're not someone you'd listen to, then just it's whatever, it's like okay, you just don't understand, it's cool and kind of move on yeah, it's, they're making noise and cool, yeah, but but I think for the most part, I think people have been just because it's a cool concept and vision and idea and it also doesn't it's not really biting into anybody else's markets.
Speaker 2:
You're like, there, there's nobody doing this in the himalaya, so right if I do it like it doesn't threaten robert mandavi in napa, you know that right at all, uh, and they're like, oh, this is, this is really neat, let's see what could happen?
Speaker 1:
that is cool that is. I mean I think it's. It's awesome to I mean you're, yeah, starting from scratch in a whole another country, so that's really a neat uh, and I'm excited to see them in the stores. Do you plan on putting them in big box stores right away, or is it? How's that work?
Speaker 2:
I mean in my. What I believe is that I believe if we do this right and we can really capture the essence of Bhutan, the wines are going to be really high quality. I'm kind of thinking it's going to be a $150 to $250 bottle and quantities will be limited, so we'll probably do sort of more allocation basis to higher end restaurants and small specialty retailers. Probably won't hit the big box guys. If at some point we get the volumes that we can. Great. My guess is that's probably not going to happen for at least a decade, Gotcha.
Speaker 1:
But that's cool, I still need process and getting it out there. And so you know, with that I mean if you could, you know if you could go back, you know, whatever 30 years, what, what would you tell your younger self you know to?
Speaker 2:
to maybe not specific about wine, but just in general to help your journey I think this, this whole um mindset shift of stop chasing stuff and starting chasing epic shit with cool people um, to me, that was really the inflection point where I was able to elevate my life in every single way possible. So I might tell myself that earlier. That being said, I don't know that I was ready to hear it when I was in my 20s, and so I think I had to go through what I went through in the journey to get my head to the point where I could even accept this, this idea.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And I believe the universe kind of takes us on the path that we're supposed to go on, and so I think that for me, that that's what I needed to do to get to this point. I, I, I remember 23 year old Mike. That kid was an asshole. I remember 23-year-old Mike. That kid was an asshole. He had a lot of ego going on, Wasn't a good listener. I'm going to do my own thing. And yeah, turns out your own thing.
Speaker 1:
You run in and fall down a lot. I think that's a huge, huge point Because, yeah, we think, yeah, if I could go back, I would tell myself you know, just get started right away. But I think, like to your point, if we would have started right away, like if we were able to go back and tell ourselves that I don't know how it would turn out, because our journey is such a part of where we are now, how it would turn out because our journey is such a part of where we are now. Like, I think of mine. Like you know, I say this, I talk to people. I'm like, yeah, I tell myself you know, don't go to college. You know, just start a business right away.
Speaker 1:
But it's like, you know, going to college was a huge part of my story, helping me overcome a lot of mental and spiritual and emotional things. And then I'm like, but the debt wasn't worth it. I was like, but it's teaching me to be better with finances and it'll help me show other people the different options, that it doesn't have to be just college. So my journey, if I wouldn't have, would look different now and maybe not as successful as it could have been, or if I wouldn't have went there. I think that's a great point to remember. Like the journey is, you know, the the biggest part of how we got to where we are right now not to forget that, even though sometimes it's not the best, it's still gotten us where we are.
Speaker 2:
Totally and the the. The analogy that I sometimes use is the like, the whitewater kayaking analogy, which is like life is moving yeah, you're, you're, you're not going to stop. You know time and the universe going where it's going to go and you can get your kayak and you can get in the middle and you can try to steer a little bit and paddle a little bit. But if you fight it, you can't paddle upstream. If you try to fight it too much, you're going to get slammed into the rocks. Your best bet is to just take the ride. Let it go where you're supposed to, let it take you where you're supposed to go and try to steer around the big obstacles and to take as few lumps as humanly possible. But but the second you think you're controlling anything.
Speaker 1:
You're high, you know you're not the exact world you do not control the world so true, and that's that's a good analogy too, because you know, I've been whitewater rafting once and you know you go through the rapid, then it and it, you know it's it. It seems like it goes forever, but then it's so short, and then you, you have some moments of calm and you can kind of re recollect your, your know, your senses, and then get ready, and then you know, here comes the next rapids, and so it's kind of like life you have those moments and as you continue to go down. So I think that's a great analogy and a good one to kind of wrap things up. You know where can people you know connect with you more to stay in touch with what you're doing over in Baton and everything you've got going on? I'd love to have that out there for people.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so, uh, if you go to drinking and knowing thingscom, um, you can certainly sign up for, uh, my, my wine newsletter. You can. It has links to all the books that I've written. Um, a little bit about me. Um, you can contact me through there. You can go to Bhutan winecom, which is the? Um, the site that's specifically for the Bhutanese wine project. Um, or follow us on Instagram, bhutan wine? Um and SoCal rum all SoCal rumcom. And so we're not very creative marketers, but it's we're. We're easy to find.
Speaker 1:
Um, and, yeah, like, if if people are all interested in any of this stuff, happy, happy to always respond to emails or direct messages or whatever. I think so much for being on the show and now having this connection together. I look forward to everything.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for having me on and giving me a shot to chat about stuff I like talking about.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And if you guys found this interesting, took those golden nuggets away, make sure you like and subscribe and send this to somebody who might be going through something or having ideas to start something and are on the fence. Subscribe and send this to somebody who might be, you know, going through something or having ideas to start something and are on the fence. You know, because together we can reach more people. We can make a better difference together instead of singularly. So, but until next time, guys, go out there and continue to elevate and thanks so much for tuning into this episode today. If you found value at all from this episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It just helps us get this show, these messages, out in front of more people. And don't forget to share this with someone who you think could benefit from listening to as well.
