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TILP #11: Low time preference business & money w/ Ben Justman
71 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Jim is joined with/by Ben Justman. Ben is the founder of Peony Lane which is a natural winemaking company. He relays the story of how his business got started, his journey in discovering Bitcoin and how his business uses it, and other things regarding his life.
Peony Lane's website: https://t.co/d9Qdi6IHD7
2021 31% Wine discount code: 2021RELEASE
Ben's Twitter: @BenJustman
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jim Kreider and this is the Intentional Living podcast where we have conversations about how to use your resources, your time, your money, your talents for what's important to you in life in an efficient and effective manner. I'm glad you're joining with us today and I look forward to this journey with you.
Guest Introduction: Ben Justman's Journey
00:00:24
Speaker
Hey, in this episode, Ben Justman joins me to talk through his journey of building and scaling his business, his wine business, his experience with stumbling into Bitcoin and learning more about it and his conviction to hold it through ups and downs. And just his takes on where he hopes to see his business down the line and where he sees Bitcoin going and its intersection with his business.
00:00:52
Speaker
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Special Wine Discount Announcement
00:00:54
Speaker
Also, I'll include this in the show notes, but Ben just released a 2021 code for all of his 2021 wines. So if you go to his website for 31% off, there's a
00:01:08
Speaker
code that you can put in, it's 2021, so 2021 release, all caps. So again, for 31% off, Ben's 2021 wines, you can type in the code of 2021 release, all caps, and enjoy 31% off his 2021 wines. And I'll have that link in the show notes. All right, let's get to it.
Wine Experience and Quality Praise
00:01:27
Speaker
All right, Ben Justman, thanks for joining me today on the podcast.
00:01:31
Speaker
Great to see you, Jim. Thanks for having me here. For sure. Well, I enjoyed a bottle of your cab last night for my birthday dinner. Had a couple of nice steaks and some mashed potatoes I threw together. I was surprised how well they turned out. And yeah, opened up a bottle of Cabernet, and it was fantastic. So glad you're here so I could just boast on your delicious wine.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's music to my ears. I mean, having wine as my business is such a beautiful thing because I just kind of get to share those great moments with people all the time as part of my business structure and be part of those beautiful times.
Natural Winemaking in Colorado
00:02:19
Speaker
I guess let's, for those who don't know who you are, then why don't you just tell us, who's been Jessman? Why are you here? What do you suppose we should talk through today?
00:02:29
Speaker
I'm a natural winemaker in Western Colorado doing wine made without any additives or much manipulation at all. So wine with super minimal sulfites and it's wine that makes you feel
00:02:45
Speaker
pretty clean afterwards. You don't get the nasty hangovers, headaches, all from just lack of intervention. It also makes for wine that is more representative of my location, of my high elevation desert region, which kind of brings out some some great attributes and specifically Pinot Noir is what I grow myself. And I am also just a solo entrepreneur.
Bitcoin and Wine Business Intersection
00:03:11
Speaker
who found Bitcoin partway through his journey and kind of just had that plus building a wine business kind of just like reshaped my world in the last few years. So it's been a fun journey getting this going both finding Bitcoin and starting a business.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, I want to talk I guess I would love to talk through your business and your journey on starting and building that and where you think you want to head and then also your
00:03:44
Speaker
encounter with Bitcoin and your journey through that and then the collision of those two things and how you navigate where to deploy capital and you know, that's your thoughts on both those things moving forward. So I'd love to have that conversation. So let's, let's start off with, let's start off with, let's start with the Bitcoin side of things. That's like, that's less heavy than the business. So let's start off with Bitcoin. So tell us about your, your Bitcoin story. How'd you come into this and what's it look like for you?
00:04:15
Speaker
So I was always really basically since college, I got really into personal finance. And through that was taking as minimal risks as I could in the eyes of you have to invest, you have to save a large amount was my philosophy. And in that I was trying to get the best credit cards for percent back the best savings account to at least get like 2% interest at those times. And
00:04:43
Speaker
then do robo investing through just index funds, just be kind of as baseline as possible. I read a book about investing by the Merrill Lynch, Peter Lynch, and basically it was like, oh, yeah, cool. So I'm not going to pick stocks. That's a whole other job. And so all I did was those baseline things. And then in 2019, the reverse repo spike
00:05:09
Speaker
caused interest rates on my savings account to go to zero from
Transition to Bitcoin Investments
00:05:14
Speaker
2%. And I knew that CPI, which was what I used for inflation back then, was 2%. So my world of like, oh, I can just have my savings account, that's just going to keep up with inflation. I'm not worried about making money there. Got my investment account.
00:05:30
Speaker
That like rug kind of got cut out from under me where I was like, Oh, it's just 2%, but it's like, I can't keep up with inflation with saving. There's nothing I can do without taking risk. So starting there, I just was kind of looking for something like this system isn't really working for me.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I moved back home after having started my business and moved in with a good friend from high school who I think is really smart and he was really into Bitcoin. So he just kind of directed my attention towards Bitcoin. And I always had kind of a monetary lens. So I never got really deep into any of the altcoins that seems like a lot of people went through because I was never really looking for a gamble. I was looking for
00:06:19
Speaker
low risk, kind of sure thing. And once I figured out Bitcoin, it was just like, you know, it was all these things popping together and kind of just flipping that whole investment thesis on its head because within the fiat system, it is this continued amount of risk where I just wanted to go super risk off. Weirdly, like I was also extremely risk on by betting on myself on a business and
00:06:47
Speaker
going as all in on Bitcoin as I did just because I think a lot of people who find Bitcoin kind of just get swept up in the hype when I was really getting the hang of it and understanding it. The price was going crazy. So just I was like, I need as much of this as possible. I need to go all in because I think it's going to infinity because that's what it's worth.
00:07:09
Speaker
But it's worth that in my mind. And as a pretty novice investor, it was definitely a harsh wake up call to be like, oh, yeah, the markets are irrational. They do not value this thing like I do. I need to I need to slow down a little bit. I there's so many things I'm sort of laughing at that you just said. Well, here, let's
00:07:34
Speaker
So when did you stumble into Bitcoin? Well, first off, you said a friend introduced you to Bitcoin, a high school buddy. Is he still into Bitcoin? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, he's killing it. He has a family fruit business here. So two young guys in Peonia with family businesses that are hoping to see us thrive in the future. But it was late 2020 by the time I started getting a hang of it. So I'd lived with him for a few months. That's when I started buying.
Funding Business with Bitcoin
00:08:05
Speaker
It was, uh, maybe early 2021 when the final, like the final big like brain blast of I get it now. That was when this one was that like, uh, mid thirties or so. Um, I started buying before the run-up, um, but not much money. And then, um, listen to Jeff Booth with Robert Breedlove to finally have the last thing of like, what does.
00:08:31
Speaker
What do prices look like in a world with a hard currency? And that was always the flip for me. I was like, is an inflation just built in? Things just always get more expensive. How can it be that things just where do things go if we have hard money? And the flip of just understanding that prices should inherently be getting lower because we get better at producing things was the final, like,
00:08:59
Speaker
nail in the coffin for me. Unfortunately, that happened right before the price crashed to $30,000. So I was definitely in my holy crap mode at a little bit higher price there.
00:09:12
Speaker
I think that's the story of a lot of people. Your basis was education, not hype. It just happened to coincide that your education phase coincided with the general hype phase. Unfortunately, many people buy in the top of these cycles, not due to education, but rather hype.
00:09:34
Speaker
I gave the answer that I would assume, but what allowed
Direct Sales and Customer Interaction
00:09:38
Speaker
you to continue to purchase despite the fact it went to $30,000 to continue dollar cost average along the way versus so many people who buy the top based off of hype and then get burned and they walk away for six years? What allowed for that?
00:09:55
Speaker
Well, it was all education, like you said. So I was full conviction at $50,000, expecting it to go much higher because that's what I realized it was worth. And so I had a stacking goal that, in my mind, was like, wow, if I get there in my entire life, I'm going to be happy. And so
00:10:19
Speaker
invested a ton of money at $50,000. And, you know, at that point, I was like, I'm all in. And then it dropped, like, I think literally the next week, it dropped to $30,000. And I said to myself, you know, yeah, I wish I'd waited, you know, I wish I'd saved that money. But this is the greatest opportunity of my life, because now I have a chance to really
00:10:42
Speaker
make a dent in this stacking goal, whereas previously, it was like, wow, this is just going to get away from me. There's no way I can make enough money to keep up with the price continuing to go upwards. So when it went down, it was just like, I was so thankful that I had another opportunity to continue stacking. So along the way, so it's been a couple of years now, how have you continued to acquire Bitcoin? And I'm assuming you have. So how's that? How's that progressed?
00:11:11
Speaker
So those my first two years of starting the winery, I was definitely pretty fully invested in buying grapes and making wine. But those expenses only come about once a year. So I had huge expenses every fall. But during those first two years, I was also not selling any wine. So I had a full time job and I had an income. And so I was just investing what I had
00:11:37
Speaker
as far as savings goes putting some in the winery some in the Bitcoin and then finding just all the excess money that I could dump into Bitcoin because I had the availability for loans to continue building the business and make wine. Since then I started selling wine and that has become my entire
00:11:58
Speaker
income. And through that, I've been able to just get Bitcoin through selling wine. So I sell wine for Bitcoin, which is, you know, it hurt, I guess, like, I have such a long time preference with Bitcoin, like, I'm not worried about the price if I sell a bottle and the price tanks, like, I'm just happy to have Bitcoin at that price. But
00:12:20
Speaker
all of 2022, I'm selling wine during my busy season of the summer and it's sitting around $40,000 and then later that gear drops to $15,000. So in the short run, you're like, wow, those bottles, I really sold for not much money. But then you get down to $15,000 and I'm starting to really sell a lot of wine for Bitcoin and
00:12:39
Speaker
Now, I mean, just in the course of a year, the value of those bottles that I sold down there have about 3X. So long run, I know this is the right strategy. It's just kind of like anything I can do to turn any excess I have into Bitcoin is what I'm trying to do.
Sustainable Growth and Marketing
00:12:58
Speaker
So I have right now, as you can see behind me, a ton of wine. That looks, that background looks real.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, this is not CGI. This is my wine seller. So basically, I'm just trying to turn it like I know that my margins online are high enough that if I sell as much as I can for Bitcoin and just have that put away, I'm going to be able to have enough money through dollar wine sales to be able to fund continuing to make wine every fall. So everything that I have, like, quote unquote, extra in wine, which I've never hit the limit of that
00:13:34
Speaker
is I'm trying to turn into Bitcoin, whereas all the dollar sales I get kind of just go back into the business and continue funding that.
00:13:43
Speaker
Gotcha. So that's how you navigate, because that can be a risk. We saw that with some Bitcoin mining companies and stuff years back, not managing their balance sheets well. They were maybe holding an irresponsible amount of Bitcoin on their balance sheets when their overhead was payable in fiat. And if Bitcoin drops by 70%,
00:14:06
Speaker
but your bills remain the same, you could be toast. So that is that that's how you navigate that is you you have some the allocate long term and other your fiat bills you keep in fiat. Yeah, if I mean, if I ever got to a point where I was like selling too much wine for Bitcoin, I think I could get into a dangerous spot. But it's not such a high percentage of my sales that I'm getting to that point. And honestly, like,
00:14:35
Speaker
I think in the short term, I would be better off if I converted all those dollars to Bitcoin and was able to kind of just continue paying off debt and investing slowly into the business. I mean, this is how I'm going to build my livelihood. But I know I kind of need to continue taking this long term perspective. So it's not like this systematically well thought out approach.
00:14:58
Speaker
If I get Bitcoin, I keep Bitcoin. It's that simple. And the rest of it is, all right, cool. So if that's the baseline, then I need to go out and continue selling a ton of wine. And that's really my only financial problem is I have a bunch of wine and I just need to sell it and I'll be fine.
00:15:15
Speaker
It's that simple. When I was in Telluride this summer, I went and saw the farmer's market, which you go to the Telluride farmer's market in Aspen and a third town. What's the third place? Basalt is a community pretty close to Aspen.
00:15:33
Speaker
Nice. So you go there and you sell your wine in person when it's not five degrees outside. And then you sell online throughout the year, which I see some Bitcoin last week for some wine. You did? Yeah. Aging well. Both of them. Yeah, so part of that is like...
00:15:53
Speaker
Going into this, I didn't have a ton of capital. My dad loaned me money to start the winery. I had infrastructure from him to start the winery. All of that infrastructure needed to be scaled up. So I've definitely poured a lot of capital into scaling up my business.
00:16:11
Speaker
Essentially that meant like I have everything I can do to get this going as long as I Continue selling my wine. It's good which both of those have worked out and Keeping low overhead has been huge for me. So
00:16:25
Speaker
That's why I've angled towards farmer's markets is I live in a town of 2,000 people that is not all that wealthy. And so I'm surrounded within two hours, a ton of ski towns, a ton of wealth, but my town not really. So I've really not focused on selling to my community at all. And I just travel to where there's money, to where people appreciate my natural wine, the quality of my wine, and are willing and able to pay for it.
00:16:54
Speaker
Going to these places, I'm on the road a ton. It's a lot of work, but I have no employees, no overhead, and I make what I feel like is good money every day. Plus, it's a marketing opportunity where I'm a new winery, and within wine, there's a little bit less of people wanting to try the hot new thing because
00:17:17
Speaker
your established reputation is so important. You buy from, I mean, you want to buy from vineyards that are extremely old, brand new vineyards are not as good wine. So everything I can do to build my reputation, both like in meeting customers firsthand, getting to know me, the winemaker, like having a personal relationship with me, people are going to be more willing to buy and also letting them taste my wine. So instead of going to,
00:17:43
Speaker
liquor stores to sell wine. And it's all of a sudden just another bottle on the shelf that I sell to them for much less margin. I'm putting it in front of my customers directly for them to taste. And I found that everything I can do to control the good experience that people have with my wine
00:18:03
Speaker
goes so far because there are people who know wine and are able to kind of disassociate from their emotional stance when they're tasting it but for the most part people come to me about wine and the first thing they say is I don't know anything and so I just see that as like kind of a blank canvas of
00:18:26
Speaker
one, resetting expectations of like, you don't have to know anything. The one thing I want to know is does this taste good to you? Yeah, that's all that matters. You know, I mean, what I'm trying to get through is wine is a status symbol in a lot of ways. So people want to impress their friends with certain bottles. And there's a little bit of like, yeah, I found this new wine. That's really good that you've never heard of try it. There's definitely that aspect of it. And I can fulfill that aspect of it. But getting away this like,
00:18:57
Speaker
this point where you have to spend a ton of money or buy from a vineyard that everyone knows to enjoy the experience.
Impact of Natural Winemaking
00:19:06
Speaker
So if I can control and just like make you happy and make you feel like you're having a good time when you drink my wine, you're going to like it. And therefore, you're going to like it probably the next time because you've invested that emotional capital into the wine. So anything I can do to increase the positivity around the experience of actually tasting my wine is huge.
00:19:25
Speaker
So I've not really wanted to outsource the sales of my wine because then I'm out of control of that. And, you know, I think my wine's really good. Everyone seems to like it generally, but if you put it in a situation where it's not going to thrive, where like the environment's not right for it, every wine is going to, every product really is just going to have this level of like decreased enjoyment. So everything I can do to increase that level of
00:19:55
Speaker
enjoyment pays back a ton. Now, it's not super scalable, but I'm doing. But that said, like,
00:20:04
Speaker
My wine is such a slow scaling business that everything I do is like every bottle of wine that I quote unquote that I make is like two years away from even being released, three years away from really seeing the full gains on that. So as I've been building this slowly, it's just make sure I have this strong base of customers, this strong base of enjoyment, and everything that scales up beyond that will come.
00:20:31
Speaker
Well, I love a lot of what you're speaking to outside of having good wine. And I like that you boil it down like you're removing this.
00:20:41
Speaker
connotation of wine has to be about feeling whatever. It's like, do you like the way it tastes? Okay, that's pretty important. And if you're drinking it for another reason, at least admit that, but you should at least enjoy it. And I really do enjoy your wine. But at the same time, so you speak to that. You simplify things down to its base goal. Is this tasty to you? But then you're also speaking to these other things of creating an experience around it. That's why you...
00:21:10
Speaker
for lots of reasons you mentioned, but one of the reasons you like to deliver your wine and have people experience it there is it draws these emotional connections to it and it paints a story of here's what you're drinking and these things around it. That's what happened a few nights ago.
00:21:27
Speaker
Let's say Friday. So Wednesday, Wednesday night, I believe I received the box of wine. You sent me six bottles and I picked it up. I was outside. I was moving. So Kendra and I were moving right now and I was at our old house.
00:21:42
Speaker
Uh, breaking down boxes and UPS showed up and, uh, you know, I quickly, you know, it's dark outside. It was cold. I was gross, you know, breaking down much stuff. And I quickly opened up just because I was excited to see it. And, uh, I opened it up and just like taking a bottle out and seeing like your labels and just everything. Like it was a.
00:22:03
Speaker
I mean, it probably happened in a fraction of a second, but I was whisked back to September of last year when we were in Colorado. And I was transported for that brief moment. I wasn't on my driveway breaking down boxes, getting sweaty and stinky. I was in Telluride in a 9,000 square foot house with a group of friends enjoying that wine.
00:22:23
Speaker
You know, and that's just that emotional connection. I didn't drink it. I just saw it. I saw your label on it. I knew it was from Ben and I like you a lot. And it was like, oh, this is that moment. And if you could start piecing together moments for people. And that's where a lot of like, you know, that's the Ritz Carlton, you know, they've created an experience.
00:22:44
Speaker
It's, you're not paying for a, just a bed and a TV. If you worry, you should go to the La Quinta and you would save a lot of money there. Like you're paying at the Ritz for certain things. Yes, maybe like comforts and safety or security or something like that, but you're really, you're largely paying for an experience. And if we could deliver experiences throughout the, any encounter we get with a business, like that just, how much more does that add to the value of your business and the value of the experience of the partaker of that?
00:23:13
Speaker
So I like how you lean into that, even just, you know, like with the wine you sent me, you send a couple of your stickers and a handwritten letter from you. I don't know if you do that for everybody. If so, that's fine, but it makes me feel special and I like it. And I think that's awesome. Yeah. So wine is.
00:23:30
Speaker
All of that, and I think a lot of products are all of that, but wine is this extra level of really connection to time and place. Where I made this wine, the wine you bought was 2021. So I made that almost two and a half years ago at this point. And you think back to like, oh, what was that year like? Was it hot? Was it super wet? All these things to make the different wines.
00:23:57
Speaker
The location is so important in wine because that is especially for what I'm doing, the natural wine, low intervention. It's not about me, it's about the place. It's about what the environment brought to make that good wine because I'm trying to take my hands off of the making style of it. It's the wine itself that becomes what it is based off all the inputs from nature.
00:24:22
Speaker
A lot of people look for that in wine and that's why they buy wine from specific regions. You buy wine from France, you kind of feel this like little connection to this chateau in France. And everything I can do to just kind of enhance that connection is huge because wine is this like multiplier effect for experiences where
00:24:44
Speaker
Most of the time when you're drinking nicer wine, you're not like drinking to get drunk. I mean, you can buy Franzia, you can buy Barefoot, all that stuff if you just kind of want to have a drink. But you buy nicer wine because it enhances your quality expenses where you had it for your birthday dinner. That is a nice way to commemorate that moment, kind of think back to all the memories you had maybe over the past year.
00:25:10
Speaker
and connect to this other special time and place and enhance where you're at currently. So in that, it's like I know my wine is going to be drunk in happy times for celebration. And so that is such a beneficial thing because then you associate that product with those beneficial, those happy times. And it all kind of just goes together really well.
00:25:38
Speaker
It's unless you have some wino who gets back on his feet and then the connotation of that wine out of a paper bag is him being homeless. That's not a good connotation, but he's probably not drinking yours if that's the case. That's true.
00:25:56
Speaker
How, okay, so your dad did this business before you and you came in and now you've taken over the business since. So tell me about your vision for like, I would assume the business is scaled over the last couple of years. Like there's just more demand. Like you're really active on social media and all those fun things. And yeah, how have things scaled over the last couple of years?
00:26:18
Speaker
And then what's your vision?
Vision for Business Growth
00:26:20
Speaker
Like, do you want to create this empire where you are the next, I don't know, I don't know wine very well, but you're the next big thing and you take this up and you're an executive or like, no, I want to keep it small and boutique early. Yeah. Tell me about, yeah, how you got to where you are and where you are and then where you want to go.
00:26:39
Speaker
While my dad had a winery, it wasn't necessarily like a business that was operational at the time that I started doing this. So he made wine for himself for maybe six years, had a group of people coming to help make wine as well. He had a bit of a wine club, a winemakers club. And the idea was he just wanted to make wine for himself. He grew all his own food, got convinced to plant grapes. They turned out really nice and
00:27:06
Speaker
the rest was history for that. But we had this one massive year of Pinot Noir crop and so he basically either had to sell all the grapes or get a liquor license to be able to make that much wine because he was over the threshold of a home winemaker. So he got the liquor license and for three
00:27:26
Speaker
three, two years he was selling it. So 2012 was his his wine that he made a ton of. So about in 2014, he started selling it. And that was like, he had great success with no real business energy, like he was just like, I have too much wine, I'll just give it to people and sell my sister was living here at the time and was going to restaurants to sell it. And it was kind of like an it wine. I mean, I'm sure some of it was the mystery of not being widely available. But
00:27:56
Speaker
Um, people loved it around here. Um, it was, it was a great wine. And so three years into that, he being a winemaker who, you know, was, I say I'm hands off. My dad was like ridiculously hands off and also like didn't really know what he was doing. Didn't really care about it because it all worked out fine for him. It wasn't in it for like all the money. He was 65.
00:28:18
Speaker
and, you know, retired. So he had his entire wine crop, entire wine go bad one year because he didn't do some due diligence on a barrel that was bad. And it went, it infected all the other barrels. So when that happened, he kind of just said, screw it, I'm done. This is not worth it. I'm just going to make as much wine as I want to make, which is about two barrels for him and my mom for a year. And
00:28:46
Speaker
the rest, he just sold the grapes to people. So about a year or two into that was when I was realizing that I wanted to start a business. I'd had a couple side hustles and was just working as a geologist and was not convinced of any career path. They realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur and kind of was looking for something bigger to like, what am I going to do? You know, what am I going to do with my life? And it just kind of happened that I was like, Oh, wine is
00:29:12
Speaker
that's kind of there for me, you know, I can just do that. And so if my dad did it, I can figure it out. So started there 2019. Like I said, two years of having a full time job making wine as well. 2021 started selling and then have just been kind of growing pretty naturally from there. I started this thinking, like, I don't want to sell wine online.
00:29:40
Speaker
because I'd had failure in previous businesses, it involved me being on the computer a ton was just not. It's hard to be an online geologist, man. Yeah, no, and I didn't want to do that. I mean, geology was not it was like work for the government was kind of the career path that I would have been going into and I would have gone crazy there. So but as then I found Bitcoin, I got on Twitter and people started wanting wine off of Twitter from my Bitcoin connection. So
00:30:08
Speaker
Now it's like I'm in this spot where I'm maxed out on farmers markets. I can't take on anymore. I could hire people to run them, but it's pretty difficult to find labor around here. And compensating someone for the drive as well as the sales just kind of takes away a lot of my upside there. And as I said, I want to have as much connection to the customer as possible. So I'm losing a bit of that by hiring people. So I'm kind of orienting where
00:30:39
Speaker
I'm going to continue doing those in-person sales, go to these places where people have money, build those connections there and then implement more of an online approach. So really keep my costs down.
00:30:53
Speaker
No employees except unless I get to a point where I really need someone to do some things, but see how far I can build on my own and keep as much freedom as possible. Where going into this, I thought, okay, next step is a tasting room, then I want to do an event space and have
00:31:10
Speaker
Um, the whole downtown of my hometown scene, like kind of come to my place would be really fun. But over time I'm realizing that the freedom of this is the, is such a beautiful thing where these barrels, I open them up about once a month, once every six weeks. And other than that, I mean, I could hire someone to fulfill orders. I can send emails from anywhere. So like I'm this very physical.
00:31:35
Speaker
business that keeps me here with a ton of freedom to kind of do whatever I want, where I have winters and springs with no specific commitments outside of managing my barrels. So I've kind of realized that I want to grow very streamlined, do as much as I can online and then if I ever have too much wine, because I have to produce wine two years in advance of knowing my sales.
00:32:04
Speaker
So my production has scaled growing every year and I have barely caught up to production. So if I can scale sales more get to a point where I just am selling all my wine then that's super streamlined super high high returns on my investment if I'm doing all direct to consumer. I think that long term
00:32:26
Speaker
That's not totally where I want to go because a big part of being in this physical place being in my hometown that I think is super special. Well, it doesn't really make sense for my business at this point. It makes sense in the future because a lot of what I'm doing is I want to create the life that I want to live. And that's I mean, that's the reason I'm I love business. I'm kind of in this just because I love doing business, not because I'm like,
00:32:54
Speaker
this crazy wine guy or want to get super rich, it's just I like doing this. So to make my life better, I can use my business to create spaces in my small hometown that I
Aligning Business with Life Goals
00:33:11
Speaker
enjoy. So long term, I think I'd like to go that physical approach and create an event space that has
00:33:18
Speaker
things that I like to do, like music that I enjoy that kind of brings money to the downtown and allows other businesses to thrive around it. But in the short term, it's really keeping streamlines and then get to a point where I do want a little bit more time responsibility. Like maybe that's kind of when I have a family and I'm here a little bit more anyway and kind of kind of have my kids grow up alongside the business and see what's going on there the whole time.
00:33:49
Speaker
Have you ever have you ever heard of or read the story of the Mexican fishermen? No, I haven't.
00:33:58
Speaker
Oh man, so good. Just go check it out for this. I'll send it to you, but it's, I'll ruin it for you. But it's basically, it's a lot of what you described. There's, I'll just tell the story. There's a, like a wealthy investor from New York is down in Mexico, the small fishing village. And you sit on the beach one morning and he sees a local fishermen come in. He just had a small little boat and he had a, he had a pretty good catch. He said, wow, that's,
00:34:26
Speaker
did a great job. You know, if you uh uh what are you gonna do after this? He said, oh, after this, I'll go and uh um I'll go home and have a siesta and uh then play with my kids and spend time with my wife and uh then tonight, I'll go out with my amigos and play some music and uh go to sleep and wake up small and do it all over again. Go fishing and
00:34:49
Speaker
go home and have a siesta and play with my kids and spend time with my wife and go out with my amigos. So wow, that sounds that sounds fantastic. But if you're with how many fish you brought in just on your little boat, have you ever thought about growing? So what would that look like? Well, you could
00:35:05
Speaker
you can go and get a few boats, and you have a small fleet, and that would allow you to scale, and then that would allow you to get a loan, and then you can go get a larger fleet, and then at that point, you're able to really scale this thing, and then you're gonna have to go and raise some money, so you might have to move to the States for a few years, and raise some capital to really grow your business, and then eventually you can go public, and then you'll be able to cash out.
00:35:31
Speaker
He said, wow, that sounds fantastic. What does that mean? He said, well, you'll get a lot of money for that. He said, well, that sounds great. Well, then what? He said, well, once you cash out from that business, you can move back to a small fishing town and you can wake up in the morning and just go fishing and maybe have a siesta in the afternoon and spend time with your kids and your wife and then go and go dance with your amigos at night.
00:35:56
Speaker
And I love that little story. What are you getting at? And so often, what we're trying to do is right there in front of us. It doesn't have to be this elaborate thing. And that's what so many people want is, man, I just want more time freedom. I want to have impact on my community. I want to be able to spend time with the people I care about. And we can't allow ourselves to get trapped in the weeds of what are we supposed to do from a
00:36:24
Speaker
general, you know, whatever this, this book, I'm supposed to 20 exit, you know, it's like, well, why what then what? And yeah, peeling back those layers of what's important to me? Why is that important to me? Why is that important to me? Eventually get at Okay, this is this is why I want this thing. This stated goal, like when I was when I was younger, I thought I really wanted a private jet.
00:36:46
Speaker
And then I was talking with a friend one time, he said, Why do you want to spend all that money on a jet? I said, Oh, man, I just, you know, airports are a pain and security and with a jet, you can go anywhere you want. Easy. So you don't have to have your own jet to do that. You can, you can rent private jets, you don't have to buy one, you can just, you know, rent a few hours. And I realized that point, I didn't want to own a private jet, I wanted convenience of travel.
00:37:08
Speaker
Those are two separate things. We think that a jet equals convenience. That's not what I wanted. Anyways, I love where your business is at and the way you're engaging with people, you're being intentional with it. I think that's a lot of fun. One point on that is, I think
00:37:28
Speaker
out of context, someone says, I love business, I don't really care about like making money. Or like, really, that's not my focus. I think that that out of context, that's like, what are you doing in business then? But what I'm getting at is that I love doing business stuff. And in that part of that is making money. I like making money. And I want to do that. But the baseline
00:37:55
Speaker
The baseline part of it is I want to make a life where I'm happy. And in that, I think that if I'm happy, I will have a successful business and I will have plenty of money coming towards me. So I'm not I just don't worry about that in the in the focus. I want to build this strong baseline of a happy life. And I think the money will follow that. Hmm.
00:38:16
Speaker
I guess I want to go back to visiting your wine plus Bitcoin stuff now, I'd be curious. So as you navigate growing this business, growing your direct consumer, and then eventually scaling into having built a really impact your small town, between now and then, how do you make these decisions for
00:38:39
Speaker
how to grow. It's like if you like Bitcoin, you think Bitcoin is going to go up a bunch, but you have needs for growing your business. Like if I'm going to have grapes or wine in two years, I have to have grapes this year. So you have a need to purchase more grapes. But how do you decide like, all right, I'm going to purchase the bare minimum to grow the business or heck, I'm not going to purchase anything. Any sales, like I'm closing down shop because I think Bitcoin will do better versus like, actually, I'm going to grow the business further.
00:39:07
Speaker
Therefore, it's less Bitcoin I can buy. How do you make those decisions? Where to allocate your capital, be it business, Bitcoin, or the S&P? I know you're a big index fan guy earlier. Yeah, so I've definitely simplified my finances as much as possible, basically just Bitcoin and as much of the wine business as I can afford to have.
00:39:32
Speaker
The last few years before 2023, I was frantically trying to establish a Bitcoin position and
00:39:40
Speaker
kind of like also while staying at the course for my wine production growth where every year I want to produce a little bit more wine than the previous year assuming a little bit more growth until I hit my production capacity which I'm at right now everything is is full behind me and I don't really have any more room so that would be a big infrastructure growth that I'd have to put money into which I'm not quite ready to do
00:40:07
Speaker
or two until I have more wine than I can sell. So every year I want to release wine at two years old.
00:40:14
Speaker
and sell it for a year and then release the next wine at two years old. And so, yeah, there's some fluctuation. My sales are going to fluctuate a bit, and my production fluctuates a bit based off of the production in Colorado. So, 2021, there was no grapes in Colorado, and I had to buy grapes from California. That meant no peanut noir, which is my bread and butter, what I grow, and a little bit of a disconnection from the sense of place that I've had.
00:40:43
Speaker
There's always going to be these big fluctuations and things. It's not like I have this set like, oh, I'll just buy more of this and buy more widgets and I'll sell them and I'll make money. It's what's available, what can I get, and a little bit of estimation.
00:41:00
Speaker
Basically, I just in the beginning of this year released my first wine that was properly aged. So I finally caught up to production where I had to release wine early because I needed money and sell it. But now I'm selling wine from here on out that's at least two years old, which is a mark of quality for me. So
00:41:20
Speaker
I've entered this next phase where now I have as much wine as I need and I just need to get sales. And so I have enough wine that if I sell it all, I'll be totally fine for production in the fall. That could leave me with some excess money. And that's a point that I've never hit in my business because I've either been all in trying to get Bitcoin or just so deeply far out invested in making wine. What I've done in the past is
00:41:49
Speaker
like I said, just sell wine for Bitcoin. Actually, in 2023, that's when everything changed. That's when things changed for me, where I stopped actually buying Bitcoin and only gained Bitcoin from Bitcoin sales. That way, it was like, this is an easy way for me to just put some money aside and have the rest to invest in wine production.
00:42:14
Speaker
I think in the future, I've never had this point where I have enough dollars to put in two different boats. I've never had to make that decision yet. My plan moving forward, expecting to have finally aged in my business, this is the period of time where I can actually start seeing some real returns in it, is to just wait for
00:42:41
Speaker
accumulate capital, maybe invest some in the business if I have excess, but I don't really want to be in the position of timing markets because I've done that so poorly in the past. But also, like I said, going back to the beginning, I've learned about investing and I said that's not for me because that's a full time job. I want to run a business and I want to be happy and I want to have my savings in Bitcoin. So my thinking right now is
00:43:04
Speaker
sell as much wine as possible, have some excess cash, and probably just hold on to it and be able to invest in the business to smaller degrees, not make any huge changes. Like I said, I want to keep things streamlined and then be ready to attack if there ever is another huge Bitcoin correction.
00:43:27
Speaker
I've seen you post over the last several months, September was a big month for you, then October was another record-breaking month. In November, what do you think led to all of a sudden these larger and larger months of sales? What's happening there?
00:43:46
Speaker
A lot of my that that was specifically just for online customers. I'd say about 50 percent of my business last year came from four months of farmers market sales. And the rest was basically just through Twitter. People wanting to buy my wine. Those people are Bitcoiners. And so a year ago,
00:44:05
Speaker
last November, December, January was the all time Bitcoin bear market. Well, not recent, whatever. And every one of my customers at that point was feeling very poor, or very poor comparatively, and all their excess cash flow was going into Bitcoin. So I had some people buy wine with Bitcoin at $15,000, but like
00:44:28
Speaker
I didn't really at that point I wasn't orienting towards online sales and then throughout the year just continue to gain traction there and.
00:44:39
Speaker
For some reason, September's have been really good for me. I don't know why every September I've had record sales. And then going through that, just kind of in the winemaking process, sharing my story, people feel connected to me. So they buy the wine because September, October is when I start making wine. So there's a lot more content to share daily. And through that is also
00:45:04
Speaker
Thanksgiving, so great opportunity for people to buy wine and Christmas, which is great opportunity for people to gift wine, buy wine for their own meals and everything. So I've grown through that. And then in December, I had the double whammy of releasing my newest vintage. So it's like exciting new wine. I hadn't released a new vintage in two years. And then also Christmas and
00:45:28
Speaker
people feeling more wealthy after their Bitcoin investment has increased 3x. So it's this kind of baseline. It's just kind of worked out that way. But now looking forward, it's I need to take things more into my own hands and expand my marketing or business reach beyond just my personal profile on Twitter that's done me so well and actually
00:45:58
Speaker
those last few months are like, okay, yes, confirmation, orient your business to online sales, where I've kind of just had that as an option and focused on in-person since then. So 2024 is me actually dialing in, getting focused, and learning how to truly become an online marketing business to move a bunch of wine.
00:46:20
Speaker
Sweet. Well, assuming Bitcoin does well over the next couple of years, if your wine experience is a bear market in correlation with Bitcoin's price, then we would expect a bull market for your wine as well. Definitely.
00:46:40
Speaker
People that are into Bitcoin tend to value slow-moving businesses, ones that are built on quality. They value connections with people, so I've built that with plenty. And the connections to place, connections to building a better world, building through good regenerative agriculture and wanting to eat and drink healthy. While people don't associate wine with being healthy, I think it's a super positive thing to have in your life where
00:47:10
Speaker
like we talked about with your birthday, it adds this extra level of connection. And there's been a reason that people drink alcohol for thousands of years. It can lift spirits, it kind of liberates and can make a time a little bit more special. But also, it's wine that doesn't have all the horrible additives in it. So you can drink my wine and feel
00:47:37
Speaker
very good comparatively the next day. So it's all these things that Bitcoiners seem to really enjoy built in there. And then so that's like saying these are my perfect customers because they really appreciate what I have to give. And then you get to the part where I'm also marketing to the future financially elite of the world. So my brand can grow with them.
00:48:04
Speaker
I know my wife Kendra, she's heavily scrutinizes ingredients on everything she eats and makeup she wears and clothes she wears, possibly to a fault, I think she would even admit. She's very scrutinizing. She was looking at your wine and reading about and everything over the last few months.
00:48:29
Speaker
And she's either been pregnant or nursing for like seven years now. But Adeline, our youngest, just a few more months of nursing and Kendra's certainly excited to try your wine. So that speaks highly that she would, it passes Kendra's test because most things definitely don't. No, it's hard to find wine that
00:48:51
Speaker
you know, passes it. Like, I always just tell people, meet your local winemaker and kind of learn what they are about. That's really the only way because you don't have to put an ingredients list on a wine bottle. It's this, all of wine, the wine industry is this like very secretive, obscured industry. I kind of
00:49:13
Speaker
relate a lot of it to crypto and the crypto and Bitcoin dichotomy because a lot of, especially American wines, are made to taste a specific way, no matter what the grapes produce. And the winemaker manipulates that through a bunch of additives to change everything you can think of, like every sensory experience you can have online, you can change with additives. And so
00:49:40
Speaker
That's like this very high time preference approach of make this very specific wine that you know will sell and you'll make a ton of money. But there's also this very low time preference natural wine approach. A lot of it's found like in Europe, this is just kind of the standard approach is to make wine based off of farming practices that produce good wine and do a lot less manipulation and additives within the wine. So
00:50:05
Speaker
All the people that are producing the more fiat crypto wine is wine that you're hiding behind the label. You're hiding up behind this veil of superiority or mystery and not telling them much about the wine and trying to make them just feel special with words. Where that's what I try and cut through is, do you just like the wine? That's all that matters beyond
00:50:30
Speaker
wine that makes you feel good afterwards. Did you have a good experience drinking this? And so taking that low time preference approach where it's not all just buzzwords and marketing, it's actually making sure people have a good experience, I think wins in the long run. But yeah, I could be doing more in my cellar and just flipping wine real quick and trying to make a ton of money quickly, but I'm trying to build a life that's enjoyable and a sustainable business that people want to continue coming back to.
00:50:59
Speaker
Let's, like with most healthy foods, it's a matter of not more ingredients, but less. So the question is not like, what's in here, but rather what is not in here? And it's sort of like, that's how yours is. It's like, what is not in this? And it's sort of the same time, like the story, we were talking about this earlier with like the overall connotation with wine experience or the rits, things like that. It's not just a bed to sleep in or a drink to sip on,
00:51:27
Speaker
There is this whole narrative along with it and you're the story that you bring is sort of like that. Not how many greens are in this, but rather what's not in this and your story is a lot of like so many other companies. It's there. They are trying to.
00:51:43
Speaker
They have a veneer of crud that they have to tell a story for and your the story of yours is simplicity and purity and It's almost a lack of having to you know, cover it up with all these other things Yeah, yeah, I mean the goal is to let the wine speak for itself and the I think the hardest the hurdle that I'm really trying to cross is how do I
00:52:11
Speaker
let the wine speak for itself when I can't always be there to give you that first taste because there is that level of trust. I mean, you buy a lot of people buy their wine from the store. They like what they buy. Maybe they ask the wine store owner what's good and everything, but I'm asking you to try this new wine and order it online and like
00:52:34
Speaker
You know, pay for, for, for some nicer bottles coming to your house. It's a bit of a risk. I get it. Um, and so I'm really just trying to, to be as open as possible and you know, just make sure it's like, yeah, this is, you know, this is what you're getting. I think you're really going to enjoy it. A lot of other people do. Um, but I'm not here to.
00:52:54
Speaker
My philosophy, like I said, is wine sells itself. So I'm not here to totally sell and push the wine. I think the story, the wine at all will work out in the end, but there is this barrier of, oh, we've never tried it. How do you trust that this wine is good? It's like when people start businesses, it's like, oh, what's your marketing?
00:53:15
Speaker
scheme. It's like, oh, it's gonna be word of mouth. It's like, well, if you don't have any mouths to have words in, it's not gonna work. You have to have, you know, mouths for those words. And for you, it's like, oh, well, you know, it's gonna be just by how they taste it or people who taste it. It's like, but we have to have the tasters to taste in order for it to grow. Yeah. So that's why starting with the farmers markets was such a big thing for me. And then at this point, so many people have
00:53:41
Speaker
ordered online within the Twitter Bitcoin community that there's enough word of mouth at this point that things are going well. The 2024 for me is about expanding that. I've kept things super streamlined. I've done zero marketing. And things have been working well, but now I just have a lot more wine to sell. So it's formalizing things for me.
00:54:01
Speaker
What's having drinking your wine when we were in Colorado this past fall, like since then? Whenever I want wine, I intend on just ordering more of yours because I've tasted it. I really enjoy it. I think it really does taste great.
00:54:17
Speaker
easy to drink and that is, you are now my go-to grocery store wine. Maybe that sounds bad. You're my go-to wine because I've tasted it and I trust. I know that this is a quality product that I know what I'm getting out of it versus, and I know what I'm getting out of it from a taste, but also I'm not, again, there's not this, what am I actually drinking sort of thing? I was watching a video, I don't know if you ever come across this guy, seems like Ethan Chablowski,
00:54:46
Speaker
on YouTube. He's like a home chef, does a lot of awesome tutorials. I was watching a video of his other day and it was talking about truffles, white truffles versus black truffles. And he was talking about how so much of the truffle oils and shavings and stuff that we have are actually these other chemicals and things that are created to make it all taste the same. And yeah, so you're wondering like, not only what like
00:55:12
Speaker
What is this I'm eating? Am I actually eating the thing I thought I was? Or in your case, the wine. I know what I'm getting from a quality perspective, but even from an actual ingredient perspective, which is certainly nice to know. I want to go way back in the conversation. I was laughing. I had so many stupid jokes in my head. You mentioned your geology and different things. I'm sure you had lots of geology jokes when you were in school. What did you study in school? Wine or bones?
00:55:44
Speaker
But geology is rocks, Jim. Rocks. Rocks. If there are bones long enough, they turn to rocks, right? That's how it works. It's true. I promise I'm not an idiot. You're digging stuff up. I'm sure if you're digging for bones, you probably come across a lot of rocks, all right? Yes, sir. It might be good to have a rock nude on hand if you're looking for bones. Just in case you come across a weird rock, you don't know what it is. Bring over the geologist. Everything. Yeah.
00:56:13
Speaker
Anyways, so earlier you said a few things that I thought were hilarious. So you mentioned like back when you're an index investor, you said you like things that are low risk and more of like a sure thing, which we obviously know like there's no investment, it's a sure thing, all the disclosures, whatever. But it's pretty funny you say that because you pretty much only own a small business, which is very risky, especially in like the food and beverage industry, like super high turnover there. So that's a risky investment.
00:56:41
Speaker
And then you own Bitcoin, which is also perceived as a very risky investment. So you said you like low risk and sure things, but you own these two, uh, perceived as highly speculative assets. Tell me more about how you, how do you, how do you sleep at night with that? Um, how do you bridge that gap of I don't like risk, but I own these things. Well, there's two different things of risk where investing in, um,
00:57:08
Speaker
Investing in the market is investing in other people. And investing in Bitcoin, buying Bitcoin is buying math that doesn't change. And investing in myself and taking the bet on myself is something that I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't do. So I know Bitcoin is volatile and that creates opportunity. Like when I
00:57:35
Speaker
was given the opportunity to buy at a lower price. That's amazing. But if I went my entire life not taking the risk and investing in myself, how could I sleep at night? So yeah, I had a lot of sleepless nights starting the business, not really knowing where I was going. My first couple of years, I had some wine go bad, basically just because of inexperience and
00:58:03
Speaker
through that, I've made it to the point that I am. And I guess I just, I see investing in yourself as the most important risk you can take. And for a lot of people, it's like, most people would not succeed as entrepreneurs. I mean, it takes definitely a
00:58:24
Speaker
a high level of risk tolerance that I think I gained through just exposure for risk through skiing and being comfortable with being somewhat out of control or being in that moment of, wow, I really have to make this happen. There's no one that can help me in this instantaneous moment. So I just am naturally like okay with high risk tolerance. And if there's something I can do about it, it's great. But I know that I'm also not a like trader and financial expert and able to
00:58:54
Speaker
be timed in with everything. So essentially, my comment there with not wanting to take risk was not wanting to take trade risk, not wanting to bet on other people. And I was just doing index funds through the lowest cost
00:59:13
Speaker
virtual automatic investor because I knew that within the fiat system I had to take risk. There was nothing I could do but take risk if I was earning a wage. I have to be able to keep up with and grow my wealth past inflation, which now I'm on this other paradigm of I have Bitcoin that mathematically will grow if it doesn't fail. I'm also in the camp where if Bitcoin has to succeed, it will succeed. And
00:59:42
Speaker
I can just bet on myself and continue growing where I think I have skills. So I think I'm good at what I do and will continue getting better at it. And with that will come good returns. I love both your responses there. There's so much of that. Yeah, investing in businesses, investing in people and their marketing efforts and board of directors and their sales, all those things. Buying Bitcoin is your
01:00:09
Speaker
you're investing in math and adoption. Yeah, I think that's true. In the matter of investing yourself, that's something I used to get a lot was, what if when I started my own business, it's like, man, aren't you afraid of it not working out? It was three years ago today. It's the anniversary. Three years ago today, I was fired from another firm. It was funny. January 10th is my birthday. Three years ago yesterday, I was cooking dinner for my wife and I.
01:00:37
Speaker
And the kids were down, I was cooking dinner, and I was supposed to have lunch with my boss the next day. He said, what if tomorrow at lunch they fire you? I said, ah, there's no way they're going to do that. They know that we have a baby due. Our third baby's due in two weeks, and we just moved here to start this company. They're not going to do that. No one would do that. And sure enough, the next day, my lunch meeting was canceled. I got canned.
01:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty cool, but it's okay. I was intending on starting my own firm eventually. I'm a very bad employee because I'm super opinionated. Riding was on the wall there and no hard feelings.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, it was a nice confirmation. Anyway, so today's the anniversary of me getting fired. And that was pretty funny because I was going to quit. And I was actually just thinking, man, if I go start my own business, I'll probably never be an employee again. And maybe being fired is an experience I sort of wanted to have. And I literally was thinking a few days before, I was like, I never got fired from a job in my life. And I got, I had it. So that's pretty cool.
01:01:40
Speaker
I actually have a similar experience with that where since all my sales were during the summer during the winters I was moving to a ski town to ski and work in a restaurant to like gain a little bit more connection with wine but really just get out of my small town and make some money over the winter because I didn't at that time I didn't have enough wine to really to sell and so I did that the first winter 2022
01:02:06
Speaker
And, you know, did well, had a relatively enjoyable experience at the restaurant. And then 2023, my winery was picking up a little bit. And I was kind of in this mode of like, yeah, I'm making good money here. I don't totally enjoy it. And I don't need it. And I got fired last winter. And that's the last job I'll ever have. Yeah, well, then you shouldn't have been eating people's foods while you're trying to deliver to them. Come on, you know that.
01:02:32
Speaker
Well, yeah, maybe you probably won't be an employee ever again. So that was your one chance. I'm glad you took that one shot, that one opportunity to get fired.
01:02:43
Speaker
Oh, I was going is when I when I when I left that company, not my own my own choosing, when I when I left that company, I had some friends reach out and say, hey, you can go get a job at these firms and you can do really well. And I could I could make a pretty good living. But I wanted to start my own thing. And I had friends who thought I was crazy. Like, Jim, you're you're about to have your third kid, your wife, my wife, Kendra stays at home with our kids. We have four kids now. It's like you should. Aren't you nervous that it won't succeed?
01:03:12
Speaker
And yeah, are you afraid of that? And for me, the best way I could put that is for me personally, the fear of failure was far outweighed by the fear of regret of never trying.
01:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, if it don't work out like who cares but I know that if I was 60 and I never tried it I would have so much regret of like what if and that that what if What it was way stronger than like don't work out what like, okay cool. We'll go try it. We'll do something else I'll go get I'll go be an employee for five years and we'll try it again like I'll keep coming at you like if anything I'm persistent Yeah, you can always
01:03:50
Speaker
you can, there's always a fallback. Like, if you set high goals and don't reach them and things don't work out, you learned a ton. And I mean, so much of this is just learning, building and doing better the next time. But something that you have that I don't and was that pressure of supporting the family, where if I fail,
01:04:16
Speaker
you know, I've lost some money, but it's really just me and I can go get a job and find myself on the way back up. But if you failed, you had a family to support you, people counting on you. And so that's just this like extra level of push, like this extra level of I have to make this work and I'll figure out a way. And that's sometimes I think you might not have taken that risk if
01:04:39
Speaker
you hadn't been kicked out of the nest. So in some way, like getting kicked out of the nest and being told like go be telling yourself but like really kind of the universe telling you go fend for yourself was probably the best thing that could ever happen to you. Oh, yeah, it's fantastic.
01:04:57
Speaker
What the other thing I wanted to speak to is I love the way you said this earlier is you're talking about Bitcoin and how like you started buying it a bunch of 50 and you mentioned that you have a high conviction of where Bitcoin will go. But then when Bitcoin dropped from 69,000 to 16,000 over whatever.
01:05:15
Speaker
eight-month period. It's all a blur. But when that happened, you said, your reason there is not that I'm irrational for buying it at 50. Your reasoning is people are irrational that led the price to go from 69 to 15. Obviously, everyone knows there's irrationality in investing. So you could pin that on yourself of, yeah, I made a stupid investment. But rather, you pin that on the general market of being irrational and not understanding Bitcoin.
01:05:41
Speaker
Can you, uh, do you expound upon that? I think that's hilarious. And I agree. Yeah. I mean, so much of investing is not necessarily like knowing the, in the short term is not knowing the underlying value of the asset. It's knowing the value that other people perceive that asset. So the underlying value of Bitcoin is infinite dollars in my opinion, but obviously people don't agree with that in the short term. So, you know, I,
01:06:10
Speaker
at that 27, 28-year-old winemaker with no real investing experience. I like macroeconomics and it's something I'm interested in, but I guess I wasn't mad at myself because it's like, look, the goal is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. I could have more Bitcoin than I do right now if I time things correctly, but I also learned a ton in those times of really
01:06:41
Speaker
having.
01:06:43
Speaker
just such a visceral, wow, you did that wrong experience, like pretty instantly. And so now it's like, I'm glad I learned those lessons early, I could have more Bitcoin, but if I had more Bitcoin from timing things correctly, I'd probably make those lessons, learn those lessons later, and it might cost me more money. So I'm thankful for the slap in the face right away. And then with the way I see every price drop is I think the way a lot of Bitcoiners see the price drop is
01:07:13
Speaker
I'm thankful that I have an opportunity to stack more stats at a lower price because I don't see
01:07:21
Speaker
I view long-term future, yeah, taking advantage of Bitcoin wealth. But short term, it's really, I have to make this business work. And that's where my capital is going to come from. That's where I build the life I want. And then all the sprinkles on top, that's all Bitcoin. So it forced me to really get out of the, wow, you're going to get rich quick on Bitcoin mindset. Whatever I had of that just had to be driven out from me because
01:07:47
Speaker
I made some purchases at both tops. The first one especially, but the second one was a low, slow, long grind down to a pretty low point that winter. Since then, it's just been, I think everything, that was a turning point for my business. That was a turning point for figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.
01:08:15
Speaker
having a bunch of things kind of coalesce at that point and really hitting a low and then building both myself and the business and watching the Bitcoin price kind of grow along with me slowly has been pretty confirming that I've built this really strong base heading into 2024 and the rest coming along.
01:08:35
Speaker
Sweet. Well, man, I think you'll do well. I think your story, your connection with people, the quality of your wine, the lack of things that you're putting in your wine and just allowing the grapes to speak and how you grow them and everything, I think is phenomenal.
01:08:55
Speaker
I would be absolutely astonished if you don't continue to grow in parity with Bitcoin's adoption rate. May your adoption rate scale as well. Ben, thanks for joining me. I know we covered a lot, but I had a lot of fun, so thank you for coming on. Yeah, thanks, Jen. This is a great time.
01:09:17
Speaker
Hey, thanks for listening to the Intentional Living Podcast. Now, today's show is simply entertainment and educational in nature. Do not take this as tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are looking for tax, legal, or investment advice, you should go talk with a tax, legal, and or investment advisor. Again, this content is simply educational and entertainment purposes.
01:09:44
Speaker
Thanks again for listening. We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.