0:00 money one of the way to wow shows I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Wednesday at 12 30 p.m Pacific Time 3 30 p.m eastern time and we are here to talk about all things related to careers and business and finances especially wealth building um looking at the financial side of things and before I introduce my guest who um I'm I'm very very excited to uh to talk to uh I'll I'll tell a little story about how we met in a minute um I just want to um
0:37 reminds you that that we are here indeed every week this is our our third show each week we we kind of wrap up with uh people making money and uh on Mondays we have our show uh trusts and Estates weekly which is a somewhat narrow topic for those of you who are dealing with those issues and or want to help people deal with them and on Tuesdays is business lessons from the military and I just want to mention that next Tuesday I have a special guest my good friend Mark Brooker retired Captain United States Navy who is an expert in leadership and
1:14 he's going to talk to us about how leadership principles from the military can be used in uh in in your business in your professional life so without further Ado uh several weeks ago my daughter and I were sitting in a restaurant and we were we're having our regular uh sort of weekly daddy daughter date and I know noticed a table of people kind of across the aisle having a grand time and the uh the waitress I believe it was brought over a couple of bottles of wine from my friend Jeff
1:51 Morgan's Winery Covenant who Jeff was on the show um actually he he kicked off the reboot of the show now about what about a year and a half ago I think it was and so I couldn't resist I went over and my guest Brian was was sitting there and I said you know pardon me I don't mean to disturb you but I just had to say thank you very much for ordering my friend's wine starting he's like your friend who's your friend you know and I'm I'm you know waxing rap Sonic about Jeff Morgan and his wife uh Jody Jody and and and uh
2:27 going on and on and on and meanwhile Brian brings up his phone and there's a picture of him with Jeff together he's actually known Jeff for longer than I have um and it turns out that Brian is in the wine business and and you know my saying the worst day working in wine is pretty much better than the best day working in anything else so I um and and then it you know in turn Brian came to my table and and sat down and was talking with my daughter and talking with us we hit it off right from the beginning and I said I have to have you come on the show and talk about what
3:02 it is to work in the wine business uh Brian does not make wine like Jeff he is a wine distributor and it's de la Terra right is your is is the name of your company uh it's dollar Tara and that the devil I'm sorry it's in the details because when deletery not going to find the website but with dollars okay it means of the earth of the earth okay so and and I will um I'll post a link to your website in the show notes after the
3:39 episode posts on our YouTube channel um my Italian is you know nobody no bueno French Spanish I can do a little Hebrew but you know Italian no so so welcome you know Brian Larkey to people making money thank you so much for for joining us joining me joining our viewers and and you know coming on talking about your career so you know as I always do with our guests I I asked them to start as as far back in in in their
4:14 professional life as they're willing to go um and and the the kickoff question usually is you know what you're doing now is that what you always wanted to do when you were a kid or you know is has this been in essence like a detour from I don't know you know dreams of being an astronaut how you know what was what was that what was that like if you're if you're willing to share that with us was it my original Dream and vision to be in the wine business no I didn't know there was a one this is because we didn't have a lot of wine in
4:50 our house we had a little bit of manischevits for Shabbat for blessings we didn't drink a lot of wine but we had a couple of friends that were into wine and so slowly over the years um they were dear friends very close family friends and they started a winery in the Napa Valley called Whitehall Lane that they later sold um and it's still there and it's doing a great job with the current family that owns it and uh but they got that off the ground they built it two brothers and their families came together and uh that's what kind of put the idea oh wine comes from somewhere
5:26 and uh I ended up uh not going to uh the East Coast um my dad had some ideas about that and I I ended up going to school on the west coast I went to UC Davis Love UC Davis and uh believed strongly in UC Davis so what it offers and um at Davis I found out that that is the you know argumentatively one of the number one wine universities in the world and yes there are more than one um and uh I got fascinated with it and
6:01 that's what really drew me in were friends and family that already had an existing Winery that was a real thing and these are friends and family that I believed in that I that I admired they didn't like fall through the cracks and end up growing some grapes and some dirt somewhere these guys were they were fascinating they were highly educated the brothers and the families um were like cousins to me and we still are and uh um one of their their son's daughters getting uh her butt Mitzvahs this coming Saturday so you know these things are still ongoing and uh but that's what
6:37 really opened my eyes to it being uh a possibility a lot of times all we need when we're young is to know that it's a possible and B someone saying that you can do this too and uh a lot of people have no idea about what's up there um you mentioned everyone being asked around people see more about astronauts than they do about a lot of other things and other things not that astronaut isn't plausible but it's it's pretty select I mean there's there's only a handful of astronauts right um but there's so many other wonderful wonderful careers and uh
7:13 um ways to work in the world that we never know about because we're I'm not gonna say myopic but we're Limited in what we're able to expose ourselves to especially as young people so having folks that tell us hey this is a possibility um those are really important things and I fly planes and I share the opportunity for people to fly in the plane especially young people and I tell them oh do you want to try and fly the plane do you want to understand what's going on and uh I let them know that this is a possibility for you you can go ahead and do this and a plane doesn't have to cost more than a car and a lot
7:48 of people have cars so uh it's uh it's just it's just about open up people's eyes so so my eyes were opened up and I spent time in uh the Napa Valley I looked at the wine industry and I was a you know an amazing school and so I took advantage of that and began studying uh enology which is basically winemaking and some viticulture some grape growing um because they they go hand in hand but what I really loved about it as at this point I'm 19 years old 20 years old and uh
8:24 what I really loved about it was this interaction of human beings and Mother Earth and I was working Laboratories I was doing some work for some research for uh a company called plant genetics that was acquired by Genentech but it was really it was high-tech research and I really loved that too and I was working in a lab and uh there's a lot of don't touch that don't eat that keep that out of your mouth wear goggles and with wine making you could really get in and touch it and play with it and taste it in fact that was the whole idea and at the same time
9:01 there's a lot of chemistry involved and there's a lot of science just overall science and so I love that aspect and I love the way that we as human beings have been working with Mother Nature in agriculture for years and years and uh and in wine making and you can go back to some of the oldest uh uh wineries at the time which were you know Israel in that part of the world um they go back thousands and thousands and thousands of years and so this is not a new idea that humans have had
9:36 they've been they've been working walking down this road for quite some time and as the Italians would say that means there's there's a why there's a reason why we've been doing this for so long and why it's been integrated into many religions obviously Judaism and Catholicism and religion after religion um maybe not so much Mormonism but many religions have adopted it many cultures have adopted it uh as being an integral part of the culture of the civilization um and once those things once something
10:11 anything is adopted look how handsome you are today no it's not a digression but you've got your beautiful Spanish vest on and clothing is something that human beings have been wearing for since Adam and Eve I would imagine and uh we have expanded on clothing we've created fashion we've created style and you can look at someone and see where they're from by how they carry the stuff how they dress um in addition obviously um what they look like but um wine is is no different it's something that's been integral to many many cultures and may not be made out of they're fermented products
10:47 um in this case there were many grapes but there are many other things that that we can ferment um and uh create a pleasing beverage from and uh so I got fascinated with the development with the evolution of wine and then from there it goes on to kind of the engineering of how is this done and how do you create a winery and the coursework that went on there and uh Heating and Cooling and thermodynamics and understanding those aspects and then from there for me it shifted all the way over
11:23 to uh what we would call today but not not then in uh in the 1980s social media and influencing others and brand building and why is this wine better than that one not really it's different but it sells for three times as much why is that how do we get people to shift and drink and try and what are the objectives so then it got into kind of a marketing and more of a business idea and wine for me is one of the few businesses where you where one must integrate an
11:58 understanding of the natural environment and an understanding of the cultural environment to make a go of it and you throw in a dash of Science and a lot of engineering and you have the wine industry and uh so I started uh at UC Davis and I did a lot of uh worked a number of harvests took time off of college to go to work harvest in the Napa Valley and I worked at farniente winery I worked at donation Dome Winery I worked at you know some some wineries that were focusing at the time in Chardonnay and Cabernet others removed sparkling one and it gave me a very well-rounded
12:34 um experience it gave me an opportunity to kind of dive into that so what does it mean when you say you worked the Harvest I think I know what you mean but for for people who maybe aren't particularly familiar with the wine business what does that mean you work the Harvest oof I lost your sound how about that there you go is that better that's better so in the wine industry you're actually you got to make this stuff and you can't just open a bag and dump it in like you can do for beer making for beer you add ingredients and
13:10 uh for wine making you had grapes so grapes are harvested once a year and uh so we have to go out and harvest The Grapes so you get on your tractors and you run out and you collect all the fruit and that can take weeks and weeks and at times you're harvesting if you're picking whites and reds they mature at different times and uh so you might be out there for four five six weeks as this Vineyard comes and this is a higher cooler Vineyard this is the lower warmer Vineyard these are whites these are what Reds they're going to hang longer so it can take a long time depending on what the laundry makes you make one wine you
13:45 go and you pick that Vineyard and you're done but it's hard to survive on something usually that small so many winers have a diverse portfolio of Vineyards and Wineries and locations and things like that and so we go and we pick the grapes and once those grapes are picked they need to be crushed immediately we're trying to avoid something called oxidation and we all know about that or we've heard about that we know it's bad in our bodies we have things that we we look for called antioxidants they're supposed to be good and uh we use something that performs some of those duties in the in the wine making as well and so basically we've
14:20 got to go out and pick the grapes and ferment them and that's the Harvest and it's not one day it can go on for a long time and uh white grapes are treated differently from red grapes um in terms of just the uh the Harvest basically is a time of uh uh long hours long days hard work um you're getting up and it's dark and you're dealing with fruit as it's coming in and you're pressing grapes off well into the night as uh batches of grapes are going to the presses and then you're taking the fruit taking the juice and
14:57 transferring that with pumps into big tanks and then you're treating it and you're racking it and you're maybe you're inoculating it maybe you're not inoculate but it's the beginning of a long process that really doesn't end it's a lot of physical work you're dealing with heavy things and big machines often and it comes to be a lot of fun you know you're sticky and you're wearing a pair of shorts and you're trying to avoid bumblebees and uh you're hanging out with your buddies and um it can be it can be fun as well so it's uh it's a bit of a celebration it's kind of the end of the year and a lot of cultures again have Harvest celebrations and uh this is this is what's happening
15:32 at that time uh in the honor yeah so I remember watching uh um a documentary about champagne making and then during the Harvest time they would get young people coming from really all over the country to Champaign in France and and they would be like you said they were up before it was light and they're they're it's labor with the bringing the the you know the crates and the grapes and all that and then in you know midday they would have these big meals you know with with bread and water and cheese and and
16:07 then they're back into the fields it would I mean it had quite a almost like a romantic aspect to it to it even though it was obviously a lot of hard work but there seemed to be there was camaraderie a lot of you know kind of joking with the people and and then you know doing the crushes and all that uh it's one of the things that I'm I'm getting from what you said so far is and I don't know you you you strike me as being a polymath in that you know you're your on the one hand you're into sort of Sociology anthropology History Science including
16:43 chemistry and even physics plus you know business it seems like wine making is or or the wine business I should say attracts you because you can be involved in in so many different things as opposed to necessarily focusing on on one aspect you can work Outdoors you can work indoors there's there seems to be a multi-faceted aspect to it this is is does that strike you as as um you know what one of the things that attracted
17:18 you to the business or am I off base here I think that depending on the business it's always good to have an understanding 360 degrees of what you're dealing with what you're getting involved in and in this case it's a little more uh there are a lot of pieces to it um you always have a production issue whether you're making silicone chips or or software or whatever but here you're dealing with Mother Nature in addition to dealing with humans and distribution and the laws and financing and all those kind of things um and I've been told that perhaps I have a short attention span perhaps
17:55 excuse me there's a shiny object over here I'll be right back and yeah I I do kind of get get interested in a number of different things um and so this affords me that that opportunity to uh dive into into into different issues and different pools um some are politics I mean there's a lot of politics in this stuff do I think there should be no I don't think there should be politics in someone's uh culture and uh the food and wine uh and I kind of see those as the same thing quite honestly um but uh um there is a lot of diversity uh in
18:31 terms of what we're doing um there's not a lot of diversity in the United States in terms of culture in terms of racial diversity we're seeing a lot of a lot of white men doing this business and that's you know I think that's where it started from uh but at the same time more and more and more people are coming in from different cultures different race cases more and more women I work exclusively in Italy and we have so many of our producers that we represent the United States um are women and businesses the entire company is driven by women run by women
19:06 and uh um that is that's no longer a thing it's no longer thinking a place like Italy it certainly isn't an issue here in the United States so it's a very open um and welcoming business for that for that for that much to say and I think that uh it's you're really judged so there's a meritocracy you're judged on the quality of what you're putting out and you know you can have quality at 9.99 you can have quality at you know 200 bucks a bottle it just depends on what you're considering quality and I guess I guess one is absolute quality another would be considered value but uh
19:42 uh people people can choose within that that Paradigm where they want to work and it's not all romance and you know Lucille Ball stomping on the grave so all that stuff and I Love Lucy it's not and and a lot of the hard labor is immigrant labor that comes in because it's periodic work and whether people are you know harvesting strawberries or harvesting uh grapes they're Crews that come in and that's true across around the world very few uh very few Nations that are wealthy enough to buy and drink wine are doing a lot of their own labor when it comes to
20:18 agriculture so that that's true for Italy where we work primarily at Street here for the United States um we rely heavily on on immigrant labor for agriculture in general and winemaking or great growing I should say is is no different it's uh and it's getting better and better I think for uh for the crews that are out there um because we have better and better labor laws that are out there um and uh but it's it's a lot of work and there's not a lot of play involved because when when the it's a timeline and the clock starts ticking and once
20:54 that clock starts going the grapes are it's kind of like a bell-shaped curve it goes up and in terms of maturity and rightness and then at that Peak moment when we think okay we got to harvest this Vineyard and then it starts descending you know maybe it's raining that day maybe you have to wait maybe we have too many acres and we can't get it all done in a couple of days and by now it's three four five days later and we're still hustling and so it's a matter of moving crews around and taking care of equipment and making sure area of tractors and things allocating the crew's ready to go at this location um and maybe that Vineyard was was hit by hail in the spring and so we have to
21:29 treat it differently there's a lot that goes into um into the harvested scissors that goes into uh the wine making aspect and I did get a good opportunity after when I when I moved so I finished up at Davis and then I moved to Italy uh and I took an opportunity to go live and work in Italy after having worked in the Napa Valley so I had that experience and I went to go work with a guy named Mauricio zanella and he had founded a winery that's still an amazing Winery
22:05 called condo Bosco and that was in 1985 then I went out to come in Boston I went to go work a harvest and it was an incredible experience and I got to work with a man named sure Andre Dubois and Du Bois was the chef dukov at Dom Perignon his father was and he retired from from DP and had taken an opportunity to come work with a fledgling young Winery in Italy called karobosko and I got there a few years after he was there and I got to see a
22:40 master at work and this is primarily a sparkling wine making facility they also made Reds and whites but it was really became known for franciacorta for the sparkling wine that was made into Metuchen was and so I got to work directly with him and they were looking for that integration of um champagne and what was coming up in the world was Napa Valley what was Napa doing what were they learning and who is this young guy they just gotten out of here in the university did he have any new ideas or experiences um and it was an amazing opportunity to really work with the true master and anytime you're working a trade and
23:17 you're a Tradesman whether you're you know a welder or you're a wine maker it's so important to be able to work with a master and see their style my my internship let's say it was all in French while I was working in Italy and the guys in the cellar were speaking dialects so I I tried to glean as much as I could but after uh a few months there I became a little more comfortable and really began to learn and after a year there um um Michelle said you know Mr Dubose going back to uh he's going back to France he's retiring and would you be
23:53 interested in staying on and taking over the responsibilities of production here and I said I said to him and this is this is my moniker when you're talking about wealth and you're talking about um money and finance and all these kind of things my my motto is it's always better to be lucky than smart and I happen to be in the right place I was there I was seated with the with the owner founder and he gave me an opportunity so I took that opportunity and uh my wife Audrey has a a saying where she would say uh
24:28 her saying was always say yes say yes two simple words you get an opportunity to say yes you can always get up and leave but why would you why would you be calling that in the beginning so I stayed on I stayed there for I don't know four and a half years or it was almost I don't remember how many years four out of five years basically from 85 to 90 and then I came back to the US and by then I was Italian I was living Italy and I became I felt like I was almost an ambassador for what was going on in Italy and that was the Renaissance and what Italy was doing um in terms of wine making 85 was kind of when Italy started coming back on the
25:03 map in the United States and uh there was more investment in Italian wines remember back in the day when you had spaghetti and red light tablecloth Chianti um and that's changed and so now we have now Italian restaurants and Italian food La Cucina Italiana is really the most uh pervasive uh restaurant and food we find right here in the United States and we Americans are in love with Italy we have Italian lighting we have beautiful Italian glasses we have Italian shoes we have all this stuff that watches the
25:39 this the fashion the design we love Italy we just love Italy from the food to the wine to everything else and uh when you say you're going to Italy nobody says why why are you going there um they start telling you about their story and how much they love Italy or how much they want to go and where they're going to go because they've already fought and dreamed about it and so it's one of those places I think that most people are just in love with and in the in the very beginning people have different opinions on France but not the Italians um and uh they're just a wonderful warm welcoming uh community and Italy's
26:16 really really a fabric of uh there's 20 political regions in there meaning what you might call States or something in this in this country but uh um they're completely different this is in this country you might see a difference in ideology from one state to the other state perhaps in Italy it's not just that it's language they speak completely different dialects it's it's the foods it's the wines they grow it's they're all these tiny little countries um that were unified the unification of Italy and uh it's still a tenuous a tenuous uh group of uh individual
26:54 city-states you might call them and uh you can see it on television all the time with uh who's screaming yelling for which soccer team right it's all about the locals and uh and we love them there's so much passion right there's so much passion um whether it's um the town you're from the soccer team that you that you that you uh that you root for or the type of food that you've you've come to now the difference I think between growing up in California and studying at Davis which is an hour from Napa Valley and living and working in Napa and today
27:29 our offices for Dollar General were based in the Napa Valley been there for 30 years in Napa Valley um that was boring you wouldn't hear me that was boring I have to have you know six different varietals or whatever it is and Italy has 600 varietals Italy is one of the most dynamic expansive uh it's it's a it's a Sandbox that we can really plan and there are more um there are more grapes uh grown per region in Italy than you know the entire United States as a whole it is the
28:06 largest producer of wine by volume more than France um Italy's the largest exporter Italy is Italy is a force of nature when it comes to the wine business and when you're dealing with volume and Export you know the quality is it's not so great um or it's used as a blending one you know the largest import of Italian laws there I think it's France quite honestly and it's not because they're drinking a lot of Italian wine it's because they're using a lot of it just in blending Lines Just for bulk one and things like that no idea so there's a lot of a lot of production going on but what we focus on is high-end high quality
28:42 um uh uh great drug and winemaking and we work with it with a large uh range of grapes and we work with a lot of things that uh people are familiar with and we work with things that probably nobody has heard of but there's enough of an interest here in the United States it's driven by for the most part Italian restaurants um to make this uh this dream of being able to work in both countries a reality because there's a demand there's a curiosity and there's kind of a baked in customer base
29:18 um which are Americans but they're kind of funneled through the vision of every wine list that you open up I open up that wine list a couple weeks ago and I saw Covenant wines I'm like I know what I want and uh but I was limited to whatever that restaurant chose to offer and so every restaurant is a filter and uh if we're making bringing Wines in from outside the United States uh we have another filter that's that's and that's the filter of the Importer and we have to convince these people to write checks and take our case of wine
29:54 put them on a boat because they're too happy to fly by airplanes so they got to go on a ship and we have to ship them all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States probably to the Panama Canal to the West Coast there's a lot of transportation and costs that go that go into this and uh it's a it's it it's we we we're still kind of experiencing the after after aftershocks right now of the supply chain right and all the issues that went on with that and um it's something that if if you're a domestic producer of wine and you're in
30:29 California Oregon or Washington for the most part that's where many of them are um not such a big deal because your stuff's already here in the U.S and then if you're suddenly threatened with tariffs and all kinds of things because of a political blow up with another country and the current uh Administration well there's some more stress that goes into uh and these are things that you and your Banker never imagined uh and yet here we are and so it's important to have a certain amount of uh uh you need an extra a little bit of fat on the bone because a lot of times the
31:05 conditions of what's Happening um shifting so severely um the things get tough now that was balanced out by greater demand because a lot of people were sitting down like I'm gonna have a glass of wine tonight I'm gonna have two I'm not driving I'm gonna have three and uh so that helped consumption in some ways and at the same time time uh we were stymied because of the availability of containers and the ability to ship things about availability of truckers to move things around and we all saw that um in the United States in what was happening across the board uh as well as
31:41 with the labor pool right I'm sure you've had people on or you've been at people on they're really going to dive into that you know you mentioned uh uh a captain friend of yours who is going to speak about leadership I'm sure of other people that are speaking about different topics um but uh as a as a young entrepreneur we are I am you know tied to all these things so um it's been it's been a really interesting Journey over 33 years from the 1990 33 years and you know I believe that we're still relevant and I believe it because I locked myself in a dark closet I repeat it over and over now I I
32:17 believe we're still relevant because um we still have a vibrant team and because our sales continue to grow because we have solid relationships across the board and a lot of that is due to our new team and the ability to grow and build a business within an industry and my goal is to kind of work myself out of a job my goal is to have a uh a team that's built uh that doesn't need me and I believe that if I'm doing a good job I should be there about now and I believe that we have an amazing
32:53 team and right now I'm not that important to the day-to-day operations I'm not important at all to the day-to-day operations which is uh that was my objective some people they want to keep working they keep their arms wrapped around it super tight um and I want new Minds new ideas younger people um and an opportunity to expand and diversify not just the people not just um the whiners are working with but we've recently uh reached or expanded into the spirits so Italy has a huge history of spirits and uh so we're we're
33:29 delving into into that um and uh the president that I hired six seven years ago is now my partner and so we have uh we have a transition plan in place and that's going to give us more stability and uh and and confidence and Leadership you know well into the next you know 15 years or so I'll deal with A Five-Year Plan we're giving our our Wineries and we're giving uh our our employees and our Distributors within
34:04 the within the United States um a very very long-term uh picture uh that makes us uh reliable and at the same time we're dealing with smart young folks uh and so we're having you know we have good clever ideas we give a lot of responsibility to our managers we've got just under 20 people working for uh dollar chair to cover the entire United States and uh we're still hiring we just hired uh um actually we're we're interviewing two hire people for some new positions so it
34:39 would include um like Logistics and brand management um and all these pieces as the as the organization grows become integral without these pieces you know without enough bottles to sell you're out of business with too many bottles to sell um your cash flow is killed so there's a there's a fine Balancing Act between those um and how you manage that and a lot of you know going back to what your your next guest is going to talk about leadership you know there's a lot that relies on leadership and in this in this
35:15 type of business people don't think about it but um you need to be able to work very very closely with the families and uh and The Vineyards um and that is that's crucial that's key these are the families that um that we know that we love that we're friends with that we support that we uh there were ambassadors for as we traveled the United States you work across the entire United States and um we're building Brands but we also have families on the other side of the Atlantic that are beholden to us and we're responsible for
35:50 um and we take that very very seriously um it's not just well it didn't work out this year let's try the Vintage next year it's like no we need to find ways to be successful um year after year vintage after vintage and that's why we work with a very select group of producers and for the most part we only have one producer per region um so one producer in Canty classic goes an example um you know one Prosecco producer one Lambrusco producer one producer in Mount Aetna I mean we have you can go to our website and see a map of all of uh
36:26 all of our all of our wineries but it's about selection and we have a highly curated portfolio um and we guarantee certain things to our wineries when when they climb on board and as a result almost nobody leaves the portfolio so stability is really important it's important to us it's important to our importers and our Distributors and it's important obviously to the wanters that we work with and wine is tricky because it's con it's a controlled substance
37:02 so uh alcohol is a controlled substance in every state after prohibition was able to write their own laws and so the laws are very very different from Utah to Texas to Florida to Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to California they're very different laws and they allow for very different things and the importation and the distribution of ones in those States is very regulated so both the sale of it to the public the importation of it the distribution of it the way the taxes are
37:37 collected if you've got a restaurant you have to pay for that case of wine that came in the door today is it do on receipt some cases it is in other cases you have terms um in some cases uh we're only allowed to have one distributor per state in other states we can have multiple Distributors by state so there's a whole plethora of laws that you have to navigate and and uh it's uh um it gets very tricky and you have to know what you're doing state by state can you do an incentive we want to
38:12 promote this one well that's considered a gift and you're not allowed to do that but we just gave them tickets to Beyonce concert that was all no no it doesn't work and then there's fines and there's your licenses are at risk or whatever it happens to be but it varies state by state so it's a very it's a it's a challenging industry there are changes to the laws as uh as we move forward um and as remember back before there was Amazon before there were ways to deliver things um to your home uh well at that point you just go to the wine shop you show your ID and you buy a bottle of wine but now you can order it through the
38:48 internet so what are the rules regarding that interstate commerce rules how do I know you're 18 years old all these kind of questions and uh so that's been a development specifically for the wine question for the reasons that I stated um if you're selling flashlights you know maybe maybe you've got other issues that I'm not aware of but they're not these kind of issues um as well as temperature control and all that kind of stuff when you're dealing with direct to Consumer sales but uh it's a it's a fascinating it's a fascinating industry it's a fascinating
39:23 um business and usually people they gravitate to one piece of the business they're going to be a label designer they're gonna do social media they're going to be the farmer in the viticulturist you know all these things are broken down you're going to do Finance for a winery um which has you know agriculture in general um the way that it's financed is a little bit different from other businesses because the return on your investment can be so long you buy a piece of ground you plant it it's years years before you have uh the first real Vines growing and then uh so maybe three
40:00 or four years and then you pick that and then maybe it's another two three four years until that wine has been in the tank or wherever it happens to be in a barrel and then it gets bottomed and it goes to the marketplace it's a long long time um because we're dealing with an agricultural clock and not with uh um if you're making spirits that's much quicker isn't it you put the raw materials in you uh you uh distill it and you can you can experience or be a lot faster but the wine business is very particular um you know you mentioned you mentioned something at the beginning Kevin and
40:37 that was well it's actually the topic of the topic of the podcast itself is it is it money or is it wealth what what is the what's the actual title what do you so the the name of the show is people making money um but I interpret that broadly so it's both um careers in business but it's also then how do you invest the money how do you build how do you build wealth if that's your goal um I mean on some level and and you hit on one of the major themes of the show when you were talking
41:13 about the families in Italy is it it it appears to me that that your business is really built on relationships um that you're able to somehow establish connections with these families in Italy and then build them and and keep them growing over you know over the years um and and that's a form I would argue that's a form of wealth as well so I I think Business and Professional activities are really a driver of our overall lives and if if you can see this graphic here this is called the three
41:48 pillars of attainment and it's based on three pillars self relationships and Pursuits but the ideas in the end they all work together and they all support each other so if you're going to have uh success in the Pursuits pillar it's probably because you have strong relationships and you really understand who you are and and what it is that you want to accomplish so they all they all work together um but in any event it's it's really to answer your question a long answer to your question it's really it's really both aspects of that
42:23 when I was what I was looking at this industry I never thought about wealth I never thought about making money um and it's honestly never been my goal in building this company so we're a National Organization and uh a lot of people have worked for dollar chair in excess of a decade and it's a very good beautiful stable culture stable family for the most part and that goes true buff on on our side the dollar side the winery side that that portfolio doesn't rotate um very much at all we hope it's stable
43:00 as well as our distribution Network aside from Acquisitions and things are happy independent of us in the US market so when I think about making money what I think this is me personally yes um uh it's never been my objective or my goal what I've always been interested in um is experiences I was always interested in funding a lifestyle and I've done a pretty good job of funding a lifestyle for people that are interested in the wine industry it is a lifestyle it's a beautiful lifestyle it's a lifestyle of culture and people
43:36 um no no offense to the aluminum signing industry but I I've never been to one of them I've never been to one of their dinners I don't know what they sit and chat about but when you're dealing with winemakers and wine lovers and they come from all walks of life it's a wonderful unifying force and so it's a great industry to to work and we have the same issues of funding and distribution and supply chain and all that kind of stuff but we all love a a common a common interest and uh um so for me it's been more about funding a lifestyle and building a way
44:11 of life and I see that in the wineries many of the wine Honors that we work with are many many generations so three four five plus Generations six Generations um and we ourselves after 33 years we've worked with in some cases the father had found it and then and then he stepped back then the son or daughter that took over now their children so we've already worked in many cases with three generations of of owners and of family members and why do they stay well they don't all stay some go off and they do other careers but there's enough
44:47 within that within the industry and the family and the way of life that people choose to stay in the business now it's a lot to help a lot easier to stay in the business if you inherit a wider division let's let's be perfectly honest it's a beautiful thing if you can if you're born into that but even folks that have been born into that have grown and built and developed these wineries within we work within their within their um purview while they're running the show that's extraordinary and it's like oh my God they were given
45:22 this yeah but look what they built since look at the Quality look at the image look at the way that they've redesigned both the infrastructure and the exoskeleton purchasing and growing new new Vineyards and creating new wines and developing new teams um so at any level uh it takes a lot but there's so much there uh in this particular industry I'd like to encourage anyone that's that's curious about it to to to take a look at it it's not um you know they're quite honestly there's I I see personally I'm going to go on a limb but I I see respect for
45:58 alcoholic beverages opposed to abuse within it because we're not in for that and uh um I think growing up with it and uh my own daughter as we're having wine with dinner it's like oh yeah we have modern friends like you get to drink wine it's like yeah yeah would you like a glass We're not gonna like sneak the bottle off but we're gonna enjoy a glass of wine because I said earlier wine for me is food wine is another natural um accompaniment to food and uh everything everything within reason everything needs to be balanced but the quantities
46:33 um that you're drinking as well as ideally the quality of what you're drinking um but uh I think that wine adds a lot um when when done properly like anything else um wine is uh can be synergistic and can be a beautiful addition um to the quintinian life to uh to our table to our families to our friends in a way to share um uh an experience and maybe even maybe even heighten it the acids the delicacy the tannins the structures of what we're
47:10 tasting if you stop for a moment to think about it which is always always the challenge and always a beauty you know there's very little we do more as human beings than eat and drink we do it every single day so if we can stop for a moment and pay attention to that and focus on on what it is and where it comes from and why why is it that way I remember that other advantage of this other thing and how that was different and how that responded why was that and once you start being curious once you start asking questions um then I think the world becomes a much more interesting interesting place so
47:46 those are just a few highlights yeah I mean so again you've hit on one of the sort of through lines of the show and that is you've defined what success means to you as opposed to taking some external definition of success and saying well this is what I have to meet so whereas you know accumulating huge amounts of wealth maybe one person's definition of success yours was as you put it funding a
48:21 lifestyle and and in many ways it seems to me you've lived a very integrated life one that is as is truly an expression of Who You Are and and I I I look at your life and I I don't see much of a um a separation between your work the things that you enjoy doing um you know who you are as a human being the the kind of things that you value it seems to me you've you've put all that together in a very holistic way
48:56 um and uh I I don't know what you know if was that by Design is is that who you are how did how a is my perception accurate do you think and if so how do you think that came about because I think I think most of us strive for that to live this sort of integrated life right as opposed to I got my work over here I got my family over here and you know whatever else yeah I don't I don't do well in compartmentalization so um for me it's it's who I am and how I how I make sense of the world
49:31 essentially actually um and I just pulled up a quote I'm going to read I'm going to read a quote I don't usually read other people's stuff but this is attributed to James Michener okay I think it's attributed properly but it's a classic quote and it ties in exactly what you were just talking about Kevin it says the master in The Art of Living makes little distinction between his work and his play his labor and his leisure his mind and his body his information and his Recreation his love and his religion he hardly knows which is which he simply pursues his vision of Excellence now whatever he does leaving others to
50:07 decide whether he is working or playing to him he's always doing both so I think I I don't know that did I achieve that on a daily basis but overall over the past you know three decades plus um it's uh it's been a balancing act and anytime you're especially as an entrepreneur there's highs and lows obviously but it's the fact that you really I'll just speak for myself I really love what I do and I love all the
50:42 aspects of it um that's not true I appreciate all the aspects I don't love all the aspects um and so some of those aspects I'm doing less or none of them today um but I do respect them and the importance of all of them and I think that uh that uh that drive for excellence uh in an organization in support of other people's organizations in many cases we're just a support player um we are making some of our own wines but um 99 of what we do is focusing on on the on the the work of others and uh I
51:17 think that it's that drive for excellence day in and day out that keeps it fun I mean you can't do this stuff if you're not having fun I don't think you have to have something that gives you Joy in the process um and I do find joy in this process day in and day out where did and where did that um desire to strive for excellence come from do you think I don't know I grew up I have wonderful parents and they kind of began to show me at a very young age
51:52 um uh the world and uh the world what what the world is comprised of and that that included um experiences in different cultures and different countries and different um different opportunities and I think that that and in each one of those there was Excellence there was an opportunity to grow and do more and uh um I think that it was a matter of for me like I said at the beginning it was a matter of seeing what was possible and I had to be able to integrate that and know that these things were possible whatever it was I'm not even business
52:27 just whatever that whatever one somebody's passionate about and that opportunity to see those the you know excellence in music excellence in art excellence in business Excellence um in sports excellence in whatever people are are getting extensive writing um and just appreciating that quality and and understanding the difference um I think I think volume only matters in ice cream I love it other than that it's quality and so okay okay gelato gelato is another story that's that's quality but um I think that uh it's a matter of
53:02 understanding and appreciating Excellence across the board um and then striving for that in our own lives with our own families for their own relationships um and uh it but it all takes a lot of work you know it all takes a lot of work um and ideally we both love and work in our relationships and uh the same is ideally true about uh about careers and you know what people get divorced and you know what you don't have to do the same damn job you've done for the last five ten years you can change gears you can go back to school you can leave school you can I mean it's okay to change lanes at the same time and uh we
53:40 grow as human beings and people I happen to found an industry that um is the one industry that I've done for the most part professionally for my career and it's so diverse that I love it um and a lot of people stay within the industry they'll start a winery they'll sell it they'll move they'll do this they'll do that but it is a very interesting um uh environment in which in which to work and especially even now even today um maybe more challenging than ever why because of uh obviously global warming and the environment and things are changing and if you're in agriculture
54:15 and you're in a farming I don't care what continent you're on it's changing and does it still make sense and what are we doing a to combat that or recognize that what are we doing in The Vineyards in the fields um in agriculture to deal with it so um all these things are are growing and changing and uh the challenges they never stop so if you're looking just to get it to that right point where you can finally take your hands off the wheel and just cruise on autopilot doesn't happen everything everything needs uh attention and work and maintenance and development
54:53 um and if you love those kind of things uh you'll be forever happy hahaha there's plenty of that to go around yeah um but I I I I I do have a lot of uh a lot of respect for uh uh the the world of Agriculture and the world of wine growing in particular um and uh it it takes time and opportunity to develop that both on the production side as well as on the appreciation side um and it's uh wine is it's not for everybody obviously um and not everybody can afford it and
55:29 uh but even but the quality of wine today um there really are no more bad wines there's quality wine out there at all price points and so I'd I would encourage people to trust their palette and try something new try something different don't drink the same thing that you you had before uh unless it was you know someone else's house and you took a picture that that leave me like I really like that good for you go ahead and try things try different things um expand your palette and uh turn your think about what what you're drinking what you're eating the pairing turn your mind in a sense into a little bit of a
56:05 database so you can start comparing different Villages different varietals different areas so you can start to make sense of it for you because nobody can tell you um what what you like and don't be influenced by others um trust your palate trust what you like and and go with that because that's the only thing that's gonna that's gonna suit you for your lifetime and uh there's there's so much good information and reading and uh maps and and virtual tours to really be able to to dive in a relatively short time um to learn an incredible amount about
56:41 uh the wine industry and wanted food pairing and restaurants usually offer it by the glass selection so Sunday you can go ahead and try um to focus on and uh my wife used to she used to um she used to challenge me by saying that I often buried the lead and so one of the leads in in us being relevant and here all this time is this is a the business model that I developed way back when um and that in the back in the late 80s and that's uh basically Winery direct
57:17 and so all of our wines are imported directly into each market and so basically what that means is we've taken one of the steps um out of the importation distribution model so it doesn't go to a national importer and then it gets separated out and it goes out to other Distributors and then it goes out to restaurants and Retail we eliminated the national importers so our lines are sold directly to the distributors in each market and so I think one of the things that keeps us relevant today is value and we have a little bit of a better mousetrap we have a little we have a we have a different
57:52 business model um that's on our website and it's a business model explain with numbers and yet nobody has chosen to my knowledge anyway to uh to recreate that and I think it's a little bit too late to do it you need a certain critical mass to make it work and we work at relatively lower margins on purpose we work as a as the sole U.S agent for uh for these Wineries and uh we were kind of commissioned and so for others to go ahead and do that as opposed to Market so we don't necessarily uh in in most of the import
58:30 World whether it's food or wine or whatever it is any kind of product the idea is to push down the cost to the whoever you're buying it from get a better deal and then you want to lift up your price as high as you can you're going to live on that on the Delta you're going to live on on that margin and uh that would would put us and does put others at odds with their suppliers you're trying to make money at their expense and with us it doesn't work that way or with us we're perfectly aligned with all the wineries because we work on a percentage they make more money we make more money they sell more dollars we sell more numbers and so our suggestions are uh models our plans
59:09 um our strategies one by one brand by brand are trusted they're they're not they're always questioned um but the wineries understand that we're on the same page they understand that we're pushing for the same objective and if we say the mind can be a little bit more expensive because like very little of it supply and demand okay but if we also stay at the same time don't raise your price well you don't want us to make money how can we be here if you don't no we want you to overall make more money overall we want you to make a little bit less or keep the same pricing but overall we're going to sell a lot more models for you because we're
59:44 going to hit a particular price point or a particular strategy and uh so those points are very well taken because we're literally all in the same boat and I think that's another when you're talking about teamwork I think that's a really important uh concept uh so it's been developed over over over uh decades here here at Dollar Terra and yet the it's it's very very slim margins or very lean we're very effective we're a very efficient organization and it's tough for others to uh to work similarly
60:21 um which is why I think we're probably the only uh one of the only organizations if not the only one that's working with this business model um so it's uh we continue to refine it um but it's it's a real Joy you can um you can do good while doing well and you can do well by doing good in this industry by supporting families across the board growing it giving more diversity to the American Consumer um and at the same time making enough profit to continue to grow and build the company and expand hire new people take on new winers take on new Fields such as
60:56 Spirits um and above all people can tell that we're not just moving widgets around we love what we do we really love what we do and uh and it carries through and uh I mean come on no no one is more fun than many times we laugh every day it's just they're so much fun foreign ly and I I told you this was going to happen we I we have to wrap things up because we we've actually gone a little bit over our hour together um and and there's that there's I I
61:32 could spin out the questions I want to ask you but I do want to take a couple of minutes just to kind of sum up you know what what I've learned from talking to you so I I think first of all is is the idea that um we need to really sort of cast our our gaze as broadly as we can to really understand what is out there what are the things that we can do what's not on our radar so to speak that that might really um pique our interest and be something that that we can be involved with uh and it really you know enjoy doing as
62:07 opposed to just going to the office and sort of filling it in so I think that's number one number two and I I one of my dearest and longest friends um has this same philosophy that that that your wife gave you which is you know say yes or he puts it just say Yes um and and he's become a doctor at Nasa as a result of that philosophy after you know working at the Metropolitan Opera and and um scuba diving in Antarctica and all these amazing things that he's done and a lot of it has come and that is such you know we he he said to me one time he
62:44 said we live in this Society where where we're we're we're we've been told for decades just say no and while that may apply to certain things in life it's much better to just say yes and or another way to put it is it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission right true and then and then you know I think two um you know emphasizing um finding where success is for each one of us how what does that mean for us as opposed to following someone else's model of success and and in your case
63:20 that entailed you know building relationships with these families in Italy being involved in something that really didn't impose boundaries on on how you lived your life and and and crafting a profession and a way of supporting yourself that that was very authentic to who you are and and and that I think that can be very scary but I but in the end it seems to me it's really the only true path to to in enjoyment right because otherwise we're not we're not we're just not putting we're not being who we who we want to be
63:57 so I think you know I passed those lessons along to our viewers and and and and gosh like I said I I there's so many more questions I would ask you but I'm we'll have to make that for another time or maybe we'll do a show flying or something I love laughing so um but all my friends who have small planes you know they've all sort of dispersed to other planes no pun intended challenge so um and then and there's you know there's all those other aspects um that that we could have covered as well you know how
64:33 flying fits into this and all of that so Brian I I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show today it was just it was so terrific to just listen to what you've learned over your career and and and and and to learn from someone who you you clearly love what you're doing you you are you are living being you know Brian Larkey in a way that most of us I would I I think would love to be able to live you know who who we are um and and I think two you were very
65:08 honest that it wasn't always easy there were certainly you know um roadblocks that you had to you know deal with along the way and and uh and and that's that's life right I mean uh I I would I would venture to Guess that those roadblocks actually added the spice perhaps to the you know the the sweetness and the tastefulness of of the life that you enjoy now no matter no matter how much work you put into it you can still make it worse yeah now there's there's a lot of ups and downs um and uh I think uh in addition to uh
65:45 uh the the points that you highlighted that you brought out it's um it's tenacity it's not giving up it's sticking with it it's getting you know the old saying of you know as long as you get up one more time you get knocked down you're gonna make it and so it's a matter of sticking with it and uh finding something that you they love enough that you can dedicate yourself to um and it's it's at least in my case um I I believe in that wholeheartedly absolutely absolutely well that wraps it up for today just a quick reminder again next week 10 a.m
66:22 Monday trust in Estates weekly um and Tuesday at 11 A.M business lessons from the military with my friend uh retired Navy Captain Mark Brooker and then uh next uh Wednesday we'll be back here for uh um uh people making money and I'm trying to remember who my guest is for next week on that show and I I it's slipping my mind but if you check our social media um or go to our Eventbrite page you'll you'll see all the upcoming shows and would love to have you join us either
66:57 live or um you know certainly watching it streaming um if you have any um questions about anything we talked about today feel free to host them on on social media I will post Brian's website so if you want to check out what he's doing and like he said his model for business um the way he's aligned himself with the people he works with in terms of aligning their interests I think that's a that's a great lesson to keep in mind as you're developing your business um because that way we can all grow together so thank you very much for
67:33 joining us Brian thank you once again for being my guest and that just leaves me with my sign off and that is to remind my my dear dear friend who uh hopefully is watching down on us right now from from Heaven Marie darling you are and ever will be my belt thanks a lot folks enjoy the