Callum Woodcock, Founder @ WineFi

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Callum. Callum, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here, Peter. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, so you are the founder of Winefy, and you know, even though what you do now is all things wine investment, you've had an interesting career journey up to this point. And, you know, I don't think there is a traditional route into what you do necessarily, but we're going to go through your whole career journey, demystify it. And, you know, I think a good place to start there is, uh, when you were at university studying at Bristol doing history like myself, what did you think your career would, would be like back then?

Great question. So I think I had always at the back of my mind that I wanted to become a founder. So my dad was an entrepreneur, so he built and sold two businesses. He retired briefly for about a month two years ago. I was constantly getting phone calls from my mum basically complaining about him saying, you know, all he does is play tennis and whinge. And in his mid-60s, he's ended up starting a new company, raising funding and everything. So he's very much an entrepreneur. And so I almost thought that that was, I I took it for granted that that's what everybody wanted to do. You know, I thought, okay, I'm going to start a company at some point. I didn't really have a timeframe on when I wanted to start that company. I spent, you know, 3 years, 3 very happy years at Bristol. We were talking before the podcast. So I was a brand ambassador for Smirnoff, which was a great job, basically being paid to sell vodka to students, which as you can imagine is a pretty easy sell. I did various bits and pieces. And the thing with history, as you all know, being a fellow history grad, is there's not really a career path. It's not like, you know, if you study economics, chances are you're going to go into finance. And I had read a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, and the advice in that book was if you want to be an entrepreneur, either learn to build, meaning learn to code, or learn to sell. So I thought, okay, you know, I'll learn to sell. And so when graduation rolled around, I looked at my peer group and the majority of people were going the grad scheme route. And so I started applying for sales grad schemes. So specifically in asset management, I was interested in the concept of investing. They were also a little bit better paid than some of the other sales grad schemes. And I ended up joining a large inter— a large asset manager called Fidelity International as a sales grad effectively. So my role was to sell investment products. So in this case, mutual funds to the intermediary sector, which is really like financial advisors. So left Bristol, went into that, and yeah, I guess I ended up leaving Fidelity relatively soon because of another role at JP Morgan Asset Management came up slightly more senior. And so I moved across. And whilst I've spoken about this before, whilst I think that's a it's a great place to start a career. It's a good logo on your CV. I think if you want to become a founder, starting at a big organization is really the opposite of, or you're developing the opposite skill set to what you need as a founder. So you end up being inevitably a small cog in a very, very large wheel. And when you are 22, you know, and you know that you want to start a company at some point, what you should be doing is is optimizing for the skillset you need to start that company. So you, you know, at a very basic level, and I've spoken about this in another podcast, so apologies, it's just top of mind, you know, you need to understand how an organization fits together, basically how a business fits together. And with the benefit of hindsight, you know, ultimately a business is a product and a way to distribute that product and everything else is just the operations that tie the two together. But I remember, you know, in my second year or whatever at JPMorgan, looking at literally the same floor that I was on and looking at a team, you know, on the far side and thinking, I have no idea what that team do, how they fit into the wider strategy, who those people are. And I kind of had this gradually dawning realization that if I ever wanted to be a founder, it wasn't just going to happen. You know, I needed to take active steps towards it. So I'll pause there because I appreciate I've just thrown a lot of early career stuff at you.

No, that's right. Yeah. I mean, obviously that, that first step, it's, uh, it's hard to, to really understand the importance of the learnings and how it's going to set you up for building your career going onwards. And, and I think you, you made it, it sound relatively simple going from a history, not knowing what they want to do, to making that first step. But was there, was there more intention behind that decision than, oh, I just want to get a good badge on my CV, or was it really that's what I can think to do at the time?

So it sounds really pathetic, but when I was at uni, you know, I didn't know the steps that you needed to take in order to start a company. And in hindsight, I wish I'd started at a much smaller organization because I would've, one, worked out how a startup fits together, you know, what it takes to run one. And two, you know, I think I would've become a founder as a result much earlier than I ended up becoming one. But really I was, you know, in my third year, I was looking at my, peer group, you know, people that I really liked and respected. And it just seemed to me that 99% of them were going into grad schemes. And, you know, you're, you know, you, you, you're at UCL, you understand exactly what it's like. It almost becomes the focal topic of conversation when you're in third year. You know, everyone's talking about what comes next. There's those jammy people that have done an internship or whatever the summer before and then have that grad offer lined up. And so I almost think that, In hindsight, I was railroaded into doing the same thing. And that's not an excuse. You know, ultimately it was my decision to apply for a grad scheme. But I don't think I even realized that I could go and work at a startup at 22, because you absolutely can. You know, what startups are really looking for are kind of Swiss Army knife type people, especially early stage startups where someone is going to be willing to get stuck in, to, you know, to be involved in every aspect of the business. There are no silos in an early-stage startup, but I didn't know that that option was available. Uh, and so because everything at uni is about grad schemes, I ended up taking that particular route, which in hindsight I actually think for me personally was a mistake. Um, you know, regardless of how good a logo is on a, on a CV and how many, you know, great resources a business like JPMorgan can afford to invest in you when you're that age, you know, in terms of training and upskilling and exposure. I think if you want to go further faster and you want to become a founder, starting at a smaller organization is probably the way to go because your pace of learning is accelerated. You know, at a big organization, you're effectively trained to do one job really well.

Yeah.

So, you know, you're— in our case, you know, we were obviously being trained to bring in new business and upsell existing clients. Whereas in a startup, you know, one day you'll be focused on something operational, the next thing you'll be focused on something commercial, you might be doing something product related. And the depth of experience that you acquire at a much earlier stage is really notable. You know, it's amazing when you speak to a founder, everyone has exactly the same story, which is I learned more in my first 6 months of being a founder than I learned in the last 6 years prior to becoming one. And that's really, really powerful.

Yeah, I think with the graduate, I've had a bit of a realization recently where I used to just say, you you know, we're spreading awareness and transparency for the sake of people landing their dream job. But actually, I've learned to be a bit more critical of that statement, in that for me it's about the allocation of somebody's like natural intent and what they want to do to actually getting into that. And I think that does start with the awareness. Um, you know, interesting enough, something you were saying earlier on is about almost when, when you make that first step and you're trained to do something, it's very hard to untrain yourself. And, and, you know, when I used to sort of teach skin shotting, I would always much rather, um, get someone who'd never touched snow than someone who used to like be— have thrown themselves down the blacks and developed some awful form. So that's me. Um, yeah, I think obviously we do focus on that first step, but yeah, I think it's an interesting insight to get from you how you unlearned that and, and actually what the startup world gave you? And also, you know, you said you wanted to be a founder, but a lot of it, people, they put it on a pedestal and that, but they, without actually knowing what problem they want to solve. And there's an element of you having to wait for the right one to come along. And clearly it has, right?

No, I think you're right. And as much as I would love to say, you know, I always planned on being, you know, starting a wine investment company. It is about the opportunity that comes forward. And I think I wanted to be a founder for unrelated reasons. I think if I'm totally honest, I'm quite bad at being told what to do. It just grates and has done since I was a little kid. As you mentioned, I was a bit of a nightmare at school. And I think that sense of building something that is authentically you was also really important. It's not about lifestyle design for me. What I enjoy is work and how many people can say, I would rather be doing what I'm doing now than anything else. And you almost certainly have this with what you are doing. But I think that that's really, really powerful. When you are 11, no one dreams of, I was about to say, working in like being an insurance broker. I'm just using a random example. Everyone wants to be something whether it's a founder or an athlete or an actor, everyone has these much loftier ambitions. And then suddenly when push comes to shove and you're 20, 21, you're deciding on a career, the decisions that you make then can inform in some cases the next 30 years of your life. And I think for me, when I came to the conclusion that I needed to be out of that big corp environment if I was ever going to found a company whilst still being relatively young, which is something I wanted to do, I had to basically rip off the plaster and leave, you know, the kind of career that by that point I was several years into. And that's a really difficult decision to make. And it's very easy now, 6 years later or whatever, to look back on that experience and go, oh yeah, it was the right decision. At the time, I remember being terrified because number one, everyone builds narratives around their own careers because it's the way that you get telling a good story about your own journey is the way that you get other jobs. And I remember my friends, some of them were completely gobsmacked that I would leave a business like JPMorgan because of the brand equity that that business has in order to go off on this very undefined path. And I mean, my parents were very supportive, which is good because I think that's a— and my fiancée was very, very supportive, which I think is great. But A lot of people are like, what are you doing? And when you're quite early into your career, you don't necessarily have the proof points to go, I know this is the right thing because you haven't done it yet. You know, in hindsight, I would make that decision like that and leave the organisation. But at the time it was a huge decision because you have a load of people going, you're an idiot. Like, why would you throw away this great career in order to go and be a founder? And it wasn't like I had necessarily the idea at the time. I just knew that I had to start taking steps into startup land, as I said earlier, to understand really how to build a company.

It is interesting because a lot of people do have this idea that they go earn their badges at corporate and then they can just easily slot into doing this founder journey. And you're right, like, it's very easy to go, oh, poor you. You like, you went from a great job and employment, and then you just took a risk when, when you realistically, you de-risked it as much as possible. So it wasn't, you know, the most outlandish story. But I think actually, if you're, if you're thinking about what makes somebody happy and you're just assessing it merely on, on that and not like the privilege of position, you had been wanting to do this your whole life and you were not doing something that you wanted to do. So I think that, would you say, was the biggest desire to push you from making that next step? That's how you knew the next step was ready?

For sure. I think I wasn't living the life I wanted to be living, which is fine. Everyone goes through periods where you're grinding and stuff is relatively miserable. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about directionally, I felt like I was moving in the wrong direction. And that's actually a very painful thing to experience because you feel trapped. And you're commuting in, you're going, I don't feel like my life is my own. And I think that anyone listening to this podcast who has been in a role or in a career where they know it's not what they want to be doing longer term, and more than that, they know it's kind of almost taking away from what they want to be doing because inevitably time is your most finite resource. And if you're going to invest 3, 5, 10 years doing something that ultimately isn't going to be your long-term career, well, what's the point in that, um, you know, it's, it's a, it's a painful place to be. And I understand that that sounds very first world problems, but the reason I talk about it is because there will be dozens of people listening to this podcast who are in that exact situation, who want to start companies and are working in banking or recruitment or law or whatever it might be. And people end up staying in those careers sometimes for decades, even though they know that they wanted to do something else because Every minute you stay in that career is then a sunk cost, right? You know, you're like, oh, may as well wait to get my bonus in 6 months' time. Or maybe if I move company within the same sector, I'll be happier. But if you fundamentally know that it's not what you want to be doing longer term, then you should not remain in that role. And I think people would save themselves a lot of really heartbreak by making that decision earlier. And that's why I talk about ripping off the plaster, because the only way that you learn the skillset you need to become a founder, and I can only speak of You know, I can only speak to becoming a founder. The only way you learn that skill set is by doing and taking those first steps when it's terrifying and nebulous and all your friends are telling you you're stupid for leaving a nice cushy job, but you still have to take those steps. And I think in hindsight, I procrastinated indirectly by reading a huge amount around the subject, listening to like every podcast about starting a business. And actually, you know, the first 6 months of working actually on Winify, deciding, you know, how we wanted the business to be, I learned way more than I had in my career to date, reading around the subject and reading the theory and everything. And, you know, I went as far as to do a master's in business and entrepreneurship, which inevitably is very theoretical because you're not actually starting a business. So I feel like I can speak to that. But, you know, the work itself needs doing. You can have all of the theory that you want, but until you apply that theory, you're not going to take steps forwards.

And let's talk about the idea that, yeah, I say idea, it's now a very profitable established business. But obviously there's a lot of steps in between it going from this idea to where it is now. What about the startup you went to go work in? Entrepreneurship degree, the mindset you had at the time made it the perfect breeding ground to actually go ahead and start this? And why was it such a compelling project to work on?

It's a great question. And I think people often, when they're looking at founders, think that there's a light bulb moment where someone comes up with the idea. I don't know, Elon Musk comes up with Tesla or whatever. Well, he bought Tesla, so it's a bad example. But he has a light bulb and then he ends up creating that business. Businesses, in my experience, are almost never the exact same idea that you start out with. And Alex Hormozi talks about this in a really nuanced way. So I think when you first come up with an idea, you have this unrealistic optimism where you go, okay, this is great. I decided that I wanted to solve what I saw as the major problems inherent within wine investing. And I think we have gone a long way of solving those problems. But the initial iteration of the concept, it's very different to what we actually ended up building. And so you start with this kind of unrealistic optimism. And then the more you dig into this, you know, a concept, you see all the hurdles that come along with it. And then you go into this kind of valley of death, you know, informed pessimism slide. And that's where most people give up. They come up with a business idea, they might come up with a logo, they might buy the domain name. They start looking into it in detail and go, oh no, there's all these challenges. Actually, I'm going to go back to the drawing board and start with another idea. When actually what you have to do is push through that uninformed pessimism decline, and then you end up with informed optimism, which is where you go, okay, I understand both the challenges and opportunities associated with this idea. So I think with the core concept with Wineify is my fiancée's family were very big in the wine trade. Her dad was a wine collector. And so I was always vaguely aware of wine as an asset class. And I basically, you know, when I first had some money to invest, I thought, okay, great, I'm going to invest in wine. And very briefly, and this isn't a pitch for Wineify, but wine has some really interesting characteristics. So it's offered more attractive risk-adjusted returns than mainstream equity, bond, and commodities indices. It's uncorrelated to those asset classes. It's a great diversifier. And then the big one is that in many circumstances in the UK and other jurisdictions as well, wine is exempt from capital gains tax, which is very, very unusual. So I was thinking, okay, this is fantastic. So when I first started looking at investing in wine, I was really, really put off by the experience. It's really expensive, it's really opaque, it's unregulated. So you end up with, anyone can set themselves up as a wine investment company. And because it's so esoteric, meaning it's a real specialist subject, you don't necessarily know as the buyer whether you are getting the best wines, the best advice, et cetera, et cetera. So the kind of starting point was, this is an amazing asset class, existing channels to invest in it suck, and how can we make, you know, fine wine so accessible that you can invest in the same way that you'd invest in an index fund or, you know, place a trade on Robinhood and eToro. And the way that we've gone about doing that is we have this unique syndicate structure that allows investors to co-invest in a managed portfolio of wine. They hold the wine directly through a bear trust nominee, which effectively means that those CGT benefits carry through to the end investor. And they maintain day-to-day control of the assets through a voting system. And nothing like that had been done. But the only way that we came up with that model was by having conversation with law firm after law firm after law firm. And I remember just as I was starting that business, it seemed like from a regulatory perspective, we would never be able to get it off the ground because you can't hold, if you want the capital gains tax benefits to carry through, you can't hold equity in an SPV, which is traditionally how people would go about investing in, you know, co-investment, for example. So we had to structure this different model. And really the eureka moment for us came when we finally found a model that allowed us to do that. But had we not put up with conversation after conversation with lawyers who are telling us, you know, how to approach it in a way that we knew wouldn't really work for us and as a result wouldn't work for our customers, you know, we never would have got that off the ground. So you do have to keep pushing through these challenges as they appear. And that will inevitably involve like tweaking the, tweaking the model and tweaking the way that you approach things. And I think what the mistake that a lot of people make when they're founding companies is they get married to the platonic ideal of their, like, initial concept. So they're like, I want to build this. And if it doesn't work, I don't want to build it. Or if this exact iteration of the idea doesn't work, I'm not going to build it. And that's why so few people actually end up starting companies comparatively to those that say that they want to.

Yeah.

Sorry, wordy explanation.

No, I mean, I'm in danger of asking questions, like, very uninformed about a business that I don't know. I mean, it sounds like an incredibly great company and one that, uh, you know, it, it's not obvious how you'd go about building it. So you did have to push through and persevere there. And I wanted to take something from what you were saying that I found very applicable to careers and networking more generally, which is the idea of, okay, that youthful naivety that delusional optimism that you have to build a business. I think you need it to build a career nowadays. I genuinely think to go into a conversation with somebody that you have no right to, whether that's networking, whether that's applying for a job that you don't think you have the right to, I think it's necessary. For you, in your experience, be that in your career or in your business, what do you think, um, what do you think helped you develop that mindset? But then also hold onto that same naivety even when you are becoming more informed?

Sure. It's a great question. Honestly, I think pain. So I felt so stuck and everything I was doing, I told you I've read loads around the subject, et cetera. I was like, well, this isn't working because I'm not where I want to be and it feels like I'm not moving in that direction sufficiently fast. And it got to the point where I was like, well, clearly something needs to radically change here, or I'm not going to get the outcome that I want, which was really just to start a company. It's not, you know, build a company and sell it for millions. It was really just, how do I go full-time on a business? And I think it was, you know, you have to get rid of ego to a massive degree because you have to recognize, okay, maybe I'm not equipped to do this right now. And the big, I remember it was a New Year's resolution. I was basically like, you know what, I'm just going to start asking for help. And so for a year, my kind of internal motto was just ask. And so I would be speaking to people that had done it. And I don't know why I didn't start doing that earlier, because the moment that you start asking people, so obvious, you know, how did you, how did you end up going full-time on a company? Like, you know, what options are there? You know, how do you, how do you, how would you approach this if you were me? You start getting shock, you start getting answers.

I genuinely believe like nothing in my career started. Until I began asking questions on this podcast.

For sure.

I was so blissfully unaware.

And, you know, when you're coming through the education system, for example, um, you know, there is a— because you're, you're following a curriculum, um, you know, you, you know that you're going to be taught to do certain things, um, and you might ask for help on how to do those certain things. But suddenly you emerge from university and it's the first time really for most people that they have gone off that that track that they'd been on where ultimately you're following a structure and suddenly you're in this very nebulous stage of life where you can go in any direction. And there are, I was about to say there's no right answers. Of course there are, depending on what you want to be doing, there are right answers, but there are multiple right answers, multiple different ways of approaching it. And it's only by asking questions of people that have already done that, as you start to narrow down those options. Because I think almost the curse of starting a company is you could start anything.

Yeah.

And you could grow it however you choose. And actually cutting off certain paths, which can really come with taking advice, because until you've done it yourself, it's actually very comforting to talk to someone who has done it. And so, has that proof point already and say, well, if you were me, how would you approach it? And then if you follow their advice, if you deem their advice to be correct and follow their advice and get an outcome, then the next time that you arrive in that situation, you are going to have that proof point yourself. And I've made a huge point now of taking that to extremes. You know, it's, you know, for a long time at Wineify, the core challenge was distribution. We were, you know, how do we grow AUM? How do we reach more investors? And I just started reaching out to people that had run successful investment platforms or had run similar alternative asset businesses and saying, oh, you know, how did you go about distribution? Shock, within like a month of starting to have those conversations, we've got a distribution strategy that's working. But still I hadn't learned the lesson because I'd sat on that for 3 months trying to work it out myself. And I think people just need to be like, people talk about like no ego, but just be, just don't be worried about being naive. And if you are worried about being naive, Everyone was a beginner at some point for everything. There's a ton of stuff that I've done that people might ask me for advice on. Great. There's also a ton of stuff that I haven't done and that I'm useless at. And I have to constantly remind myself that the only way that you get good at those things or to the standard that you need to be, a passable standard, is through reps. It's through repetition. And just starting and, you know, trying to get a mentor. I know everyone talks about mentors, but speaking to people that have done it before is such an obvious recipe for success. And I think so few people do it because they're worried about looking stupid. And so basically when I, when I talk about not having an ego, I mean like be prepared to look stupid.

Yeah.

And that, you know, it is painful because you're like, I'm going to look super, super naive. You suck it up. You know, you will look naive and there will be some people that go, this guy's really naive. But if you don't do that, I don't see how you could even take that first step. So yeah, I think that was kind of the big unlock for me.

I think a big thing we like to do on this podcast is try and make sure that every person from every background, every context has their story and their context in relation to careers heard. So when they listen to something, it's authentically resonating with them. And I, you know, I would like to know from you because I think a lot of people can put you on a pedestal of like, you know, you've had the dream career from the outside looking in a lot of ways. You know, you've got all the badges, you went to a good uni, you built your own thing, you're passionate about it, you're loving it. And, and I think it's very easy to just assume that you always had it figured out, but I think there'll be people that are actually you know, from your background, maybe they, they have a sense of privilege and afford time to work out what they want to do, but that ambition isn't being applied anywhere, but they would like to. What would you say back to, you know, your younger self that was maybe that lost, confused— yeah, in terms of, yeah, really sort of believing yourself to build something that you, you're worthy of?

It's a great question. Um, I think it's very easy to assume certain things from the outside looking in. You know, I was very lucky to get into a good university. I was very lucky to get those grad schemes. But, you know, there's a very interesting study that basically found that human beings, every single human being has 3 problems at every time because it's what the brain can focus on, basically 3 big problems that they're aware of. And what's really interesting is, you know, you could be a multi-multi-millionaire on a superyacht and those 3 problems, whatever they might be, and it could be something as simple as, you know, I can't believe we're 6 hours behind schedule or something on this, like, you know, luxury cruise that we're on. But your brain will interpret that as really, really serious. And, you know, for me, I got trapped in this pattern where I was, you know, doing relatively well at work, but was really, really miserable and felt incredibly trapped. And I would've swapped my life with anyone who was feeling super fulfilled and doing what they were doing, whatever they were doing. So I think that the first thing that I would say is that is part of the human experience. I think the way that you need to approach that is to get yourself onto a trajectory that is leading or could lead in the direction that you want to be going in. Opposed to doing something completely unrelated. So I think that's point number one, because as long as you're on that journey, you're going to feel like you're making progress. And I think that sense of progress is what leads to fulfillment. So that's, that's, you know, thing number one, I suppose. The second thing we've touched on already, but is asking for help. And for some people, they don't know what they want to be doing. You know, I am lucky in some ways that I knew I wanted to be a founder. So I had that North Star. For other people, you know, you might have to, you might have to have conversations to work out what you actually want to do. You know, it might be for some people it's more appropriate to start, whether it's at the grad scheme route or going traveling or becoming a ski instructor for a few years while you figure that out. You know, if you don't have kind of a defined path or even kind of a nebulous ideal, because for me it was this nebulous ideal. It's like, I want to be a company because I want to run a company because I want to be in control of my own life effectively. Sometimes, you know, having conversations, having certain experiences can lead you to figuring that out. And then the final thing I think is around the narrative that you tell. So only recently have I felt confident enough to be able to say, look, I started at, in asset management, these big corporations. I knew it wasn't for me, so I wanted to, I became a founder and I went through all this kind of soul searching period while I was trying to work out how to transition. And all of this kind of anxiety around that. But really the narrative that you tell about your own journey is what people are going to take away. So if I wanted to paint the most flattering picture possible, I would say, you know, left Bristol, super interested in investments. I went into asset management, then left to do a part-time master's at Cambridge, working at a scale-up because I knew I wanted to be a founder. Then I rolled that investment experience into creating Kawan Investment Platform. All of that is true to some degree, but that's a much rosier and a much more like, wow, you know, this guy's nailed it story than, you know, going into work feeling completely, you know, uncertain about where you're headed, having no idea how to get there, not knowing whether you're up for the task of actually being able to start a company, looking at people in your age group starting and growing successful companies and thinking, well, why can't I be doing that right now? You know, what is there about me that means that I haven't taken that first step? And everyone goes through that. And then the final point, sorry, I appreciate I've taken 10 minutes to answer this question. The final point is that the uncertainty doesn't get better. There is always a huge nebulous fog around the next steps when you're starting a company. And that's an inevitable part of entrepreneurship. And if you aren't prepared for that, well, I was about to say if you're not prepared for that, then you can't be an entrepreneur. That's not true because I don't think I was prepared for that. But I think I naively thought, okay, you know, you do the first 6 months, you do the first year in business, and then the next steps become clear. They certainly become clearer, but there is always going to be uncertainty. And what we now remind ourselves as a team is like, we have to choose a course of action, go down it, and then the fog clears for that stage, and then it appears in front of you again when you next have a big decision to make. And I think being at peace with that and knowing that that is normal is really, really comforting. And that's exactly what a mentor that I was complaining to this about told me, and it is really comforting. And then the bias then becomes just taking action, like taking those steps no matter how small towards a certain objective and continuing on down that path, I think is the critical thing because answers only come from action.

My final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, is that when you first started out on your career journey, you know, graduating from Bristol, going into the world of finance, you would've had a certain idea of what a successful career would look like back then. And then, you know, fast forward to where you are now, having built a company that you are very proud of and happy working in. What is your current definition of success and how has it changed?

I think my definition of success has always been the same. Freedom. And there's a quote that I love, which is, the secret to happiness is freedom. The secret to freedom is courage. And for me, that courage meant building a business that would give me freedom to do what I wanted. I mean, it's a bad example because I'm working way harder than I've ever worked in my life. But freedom for me is being free to live the life that you want. And I want that life. I want to build a category-defining business within the wine investment space. It's what gets me up in the morning. I think about it 24/7, and I feel like I'm in control of that. Destiny. And that's what freedom means for me. And interestingly, I don't think that that has changed from when I was a grad. Because if you focus on material outcomes, you're inevitably going to be unhappy because you're just chasing the next thing. Whereas if you focus on that sense, focus on an objective like freedom and define it however you choose, you're in control of the definition of freedom so you can tailor it to you. And I felt that way for sure at 22, and I feel that way now at 30. Maybe it will change in the next 10 years.

We'll have to do another, uh, yeah, well, I think, um, it's really important to have like an anchored mindset, um, to keep going back to. And I think freedom is a, is a really great one to have. And, you know, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story. It was a pleasure, mate.

Thank you very much. Yeah, great to be here.