Cryptocurrency, Sales are Back, and Wine

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Hey, everybody, Roland Frazier here with my.

Business partner, Ryan Deiss. We're gonna get this down. I think you just say who I am. You just say who I am.

I'm say it every time. I'm gonna say this is me and then this is you. So you guys are gonna hear the whole behind the scenes, how we, how we do this as we, as we turn. I'm gonna try it one. Hey, everybody, it's Roland Frazier here with the Business Lunch podcast with my business partner, Ryan Dice. Yeah, I like it.

I still think that's super stupid, but anyway, we'll go with it.

Anyway, I'm here with Ryan Dice and so we're going to talk about some stuff today. And this is an episode of Business Lunch would encourage you guys to download, subscribe, and like, and review if you enjoy what you're hearing. If you don't enjoy what you're hearing, then, you know, hang on, listen to it for another year or two and then maybe think about reviewing it then. What's going on, Ryan? What's happening new in our world?

A couple things, I mean, kind of. One, I know we talked a couple episodes ago about sales sort of falling off a cliff. Happy to report that they have come back. So that was nice. That was a momentary blip. Yeah, it's always helpful.

What do you think that was?

Well, let's talk about that.

Okay.

Because we've also had kind of on the less good but kind of good side. We. We've had a lot of turnover lately, and I don't think that we're alone in that as a business. I've talked to other people that I know and they've experienced a lot more turnover lately. So I think it might be good to chat about that. And then I want to get your thoughts on kind of from the investor perspective, because that's what obviously you're marketer, entrepreneur, but really, I know I kind of turn to you more when we're talking about buying companies and investing and that kind of stuff. I'd like to get your take on this, this crazy, like, AMC thing that's going on and we can talk about what that is, but you know, all this, like, naked short selling and just the general craziness going on right now in the stock market. Also, you know, bitcoin just had their big conference. There's a big, like, crazy bitcoin conference down in Miami. Yeah. So I want to get your take on as an entrepreneur you know, should. Should I be like, how should I be thinking about crypto and some of these other things? So that's what I. That's what I want to talk about. That's what I ask you. Where do you start?

Can we also talk about wine?

Oh, of course. We can always talk about wine. What in particular?

Let's talk about those four things do.

You want to talk about with wine? Well, we'll get there.

Yeah, I like it. Let's talk about sales being back first.

Yeah. So I think it was two episodes ago we talked about how sales had fallen off a cliff and kind of theorized that it had something to do with it being the first week of summer, going into a holiday weekend, and sort of kicked around the idea that maybe this is kind of what the new normal is going to be, right? As the world is healing and everything is reopening, maybe people are going to stop buying.

Are we on the wrong side of the thing we were on the right side of earlier?

Bingo. And so the nice thing is, I don't believe the wrong side is as wrong as maybe I might have feared that it was, because things did seem to come back truly first week of summer. And this is where it pays to go back and look at what's happened in the past. Now, you can't really go back and look at 2020 because it was such a bizarro year, but when we back at like, 2019, 2018, that. That week before Memorial Day, the Memorial Day holiday, kind of the official start of summer here in the States, is always just a really bad sales week.

And we. We happen to have a lot of things that we were making offers.

Super stupid. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So big lesson number one. Don't have a big launch. Don't launch something new Memorial Day weekend or, you know, some other time. Because really, people, even if we try to sneak it in, it's not that we didn't know that there was a holiday. We're like, oh, we can sneak it in before the holiday. Well, the truth is, is people kind of started their holiday at least mentally, you know, a few days before the holiday technically began. So that's a good lesson learned. And I know in multiple, like in a lot of our companies, you know, we had stuff launching that same week. So it was frustrating. Stupid decision. Got to be more careful, more thoughtful, I should say, in our timing. But I think the good news is that if you were a beneficiary of kind of the COVID craziness of Nobody being able to go outside and spend money on travel, maybe you're not going to see your business go to zero. That said, I do think that we are still going into this countercyclical mode and a lot of businesses obviously that we're doing poorly, whether it's like travel or anything experiential, they are coming back with a vengeance. And so it pays to start thinking about how can we reposition our business so that we're more taking advantage of it as opposed to taking advantage of the past reality.

So I have a question for you on sales, on pricing strategy, because everything is more expensive now. I mean, across the board. As you look to plan your travel, as you look to go out to restaurants, God forbid you're trying to buy a home right now, everything is way, way up. Do you think that we and other people who are watching or listening should be raising prices to kind of stay in tune with that? Or is that dangerous? What do you think?

I mean, I think you should always be testing prices and we talked about this last week. You should always be testing and raising prices. I think you have to decide, right? Do you want to be a part of the inflationary environment or the opposing argument is to drop. I wouldn't say drop your prices, but there's another argument to be made which is when everybody else is crazy expensive, go much, much, much lower. Especially for something that is perceived to be the same thing that everybody else is saying. So there's a guy, entrepreneur, marketer, his name's Nat Eliason, he's in Austin and he did this like a lot of people are coming out with these big courses, right? These multi week massive courses and they're charging thousands and thousands of dollars, US among them. Well, he came out and did a course and only charged like a hundred bucks for it. And he just got everybody and their dog to come and buy this thing. Now the way that he did the course, it wasn't, you know, quite as experiential as some of the other more expensive ones, things like that. There's a downside to this, you know. Now going and selling a higher ticket could be more difficult. But I think the lesson is either, yeah, raise your prices when you have an opportunity to go and test that, or do the exact opposite and drop your prices. Crazy, crazy low. To invert it. What you don't want to do is say, oh, prices are going up and people aren't spending as much. Let me drop my prices 10%. All that's going to mean is you make 10% less money, right?

Yeah, that makes sense.

Do you agree with that or do you think everybody should be raising their prices right now?

I honestly don't know. I mean, I definitely think so. On homes, I know we listed a house, we sold it in three days, and we listed it for almost 400,000 more than the real estate agents were telling us that we should list it for. And we got 300 of the 400. So that was pretty good lesson. In some people, like in this neighborhood, some of the agents keep, like, the idea of keeping things like they were. I think they just feel safe with that and they know they can sell the houses for that. But the truth is the market has moved and they haven't really noticed that. And we kind of forced their hand at it, and it turns out that we were right. So I'm very happy that we did that. We were just looking around at what was available and what was happening in other neighborhoods, and it was kind of like, well, it seems like that's really where the market is. And. And we had several offers at, you know, even at that higher price. So I think it makes sense to test, as you said. I mean, that the market always will tell you, but I do think this is a time to be tested.

And also look around and make sure that. Because what you said there makes a lot of sense. Right. You looked around and that's kind of where the market was. I think, realizing, you know, where is the market? And you can't just say, well, if things are generally getting inflated, you know, I sell, you know, bubblegum, so I'm going to charge more for bubblegum. Like, well, you know, if the demand hasn't. If there's no scarcity in your market, then you may have more. There may not be as much elasticity in what you're selling as there is, for example, homes in Southern California or Austin, Texas.

Yeah, exactly. Speaking of scarcity, I know a lot of businesses are having a hard time finding employees that are qualified right now, kind of across the board, but we've decided maybe to let some folks go and have some turnover to want to chat a little bit about that.

Yeah, we've had a lot of. Kind of across the different businesses, we have had a fair bit of turnover over the last couple months. And much of that voluntary, much of it kind of involuntary. I mean, so some of it were folks that we said, hey, maybe it's time for you to pursue employment elsewhere. We've also had a decent number of folks who found new opportunities and left. People were like, God dang. It and so I think it's something to be aware of, something that I like happy to talk about here because I know for us, we basically had no turnover throughout the bulk of 2020, right? And we kind of paused a lot of performance improvement type stuff. And people who were maybe on the bubble were like, hey, let's give them a little bit more time. This is a really weird season. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Frankly, we felt, we felt bad about letting folks go in such an uncertain environment. So like, hey, if we can keep them around, like, let's try to make it work during this time. And at the same time, there were lots of people who maybe they were looking elsewhere for a job, right? They might have been looking elsewhere for a job. And maybe the places they were interview were like, no, we're not hiring anymore. So I think it was a combination of we basically had 12 months worth of turnover all experienced in the last couple of months because it didn't happen last year. Yeah, I know. At the same time, you know, we also had a lot of really new managers, so we had a lot of new leaders at the company. And one of the things that we preach is, you know, we take the social responsibility of hiring seriously. Like, we think that if we're going to ask somebody to join our team that, you know, that's a big deal, right? If we're going to ask somebody to do that, we need to honor that and we need to make sure that we put them in a position to succeed and that and that we create a good environment and a good culture and. And I think that a lot of times, a lot of, you know, we had a lot of folks where they may be over indexed too much to the. We take the social responsibility of hiring seriously to mean never, ever, ever let somebody go. But you got to remember that there's two sides to this, right? There's the side that's like, okay, we need to make sure that we do right by the people that we hire. Obviously, if they said yes to us, that means that they said no to another opportunity, even ones that they don't know about. But at the same time, you also need to take the social responsibility of hiring seriously for all those people who are on the team aside from that person. In other words, if somebody isn't working out in their role, you don't just need to do right by them, you've got to do right by everybody else. And very often doing right by that person also means helping them come to the conclusion that this just is not working out. And that happens. Right? That is a fact of business. It's a fact of life. It just happens. And we had a lot of new leaders on our team that just had to kind of learn a lesson of, hey, if something didn't work out, that's okay. I mean, it's going to happen. But allowing them to exist and to linger on a team and to linger in a role that isn't a fit, you're not doing them any favors. Well, here's the sequence that we did. I love. So Richard Lindner, when he was talking to some of our folks, he said, look, we got a person who clearly is not succeeding in a role. We have to ask, why are we allowing them to stay in this role? Is it what's best for our customer? Right. That's the first thing. Is this what's best for our customer? Ultimately, the answer was no. Okay. Is this what is best for the company as a whole? Right. Obviously, the answer is no. Is this what's best for this particular team? Obviously, the answer is no. This person was bringing the team down. Okay. Is this what's best for that person? Person? No, because they need to be given the opportunity to go and look elsewhere. And as long as we are their best, worst option, they're probably not going to do that. Right. And so ultimately, what we realized is the only person it was better for was really nobody. But kind of the excuse of, oh, we want to be nice or we want to be fair, we want to be whatever, was kind of just a reason to avoid conflict. And so I think it was a combination of timing and a combination of a lot of new leaders at the company who just, you know, had to learn some. Some tough lessons. So it's hard, it sucks. It's never fun. But companies I found that the turnover is good for. For. It can be really good for a business when, obviously, when people who aren't a fit leave, you have the opportunity to. To fill those roles with people who are a better fit. But even when good people leave, you know, you have the opportunity to bring somebody in with a slightly different skill set to build upon the previous person's foundation. So, anyway, that's what's going on.

That was one thing I thought was interesting, is because I want to say it was $400,000, $500,000 a year worth of personnel, of compensation that we let go, but we also basically replaced that with an almost equal amount of people that we felt were significantly higher quality. Right. So I think that. That you're always up leveling your staff. And I know one thing that Clayton Mass told me that I really like the rule that he said is the rule of ones and threes. And he said each time that you get to a new level, whether it's 100,000 or 300,000, a million, 3 million, 10 million, 30 million, 100 million, 300 million, your people are very often going to have a hard time springing through more than two of those levels. And. And as we've grown, and we've grown in a couple of ways, we've grown in income, but we've also grown in kind of scope in terms of the things that we do, the breadth of companies and programs that we've got. And so I think part of it is I really feel amazingly good about the executive team we've got now. I think we've got the people who can grow through the next couple of levels. And that's a really exciting place to be. And I think that you have to be careful in your company when you're hiring and who's staying around is, do they match the culture? Because our culture, I think with the people that we have now is evolving to be more motivated and less. And this is going to sound horrible, but less Kumbaya. Like, less. Let's all feel good about this and more. Let's all feel good about this and let's make some money. It's okay to make money. We're good with that. So that kind of is my take on it, that we kind of hit the level of we've moved through the people that we had and, and they were no longer a fit to grow in that one one in three rule, and they were no longer a fit to grow in kind of how the culture is evolving. What's your thoughts on that?

I don't think the Kumbaya and the let's go make some money are necessarily mutually exclusive. I think what you have. Oh, they're not.

But I think that it was way Kumbaya.

And that's what I'm saying. Like, and I think that the Kumbaya factor, like when you see this and when you see people like, oh, but like, we've got to preserve the culture and it's all about the people. Like, very often, like, those are all true statements, but also very often those statements are used by the people who they're not performing, they're not making, and the only thing that they have is really tenure. Right. Very often that phrase, that concept that people first mentality is really just an excuse to keep people around who have tenure but are no longer. No longer merit the position. And so I think the key is it's not about, yes, you want to be fair, but fairness means that we got to have a meritocracy, right? And so if somebody is able to occupy the role and to get the job done, then they should stay in that role. And if they're not, then they should not be left in that role. It's to everyone's detriment. And every time we do it and we pretend like we're being so noble by giving this person a shot, what we're actually doing is spending less time on the people with the. With people who can succeed, with people who really can grow. We're spending less time serving our customers. And frankly, we're now limiting that person's opportunity to go and, you know, pursue their next thing. Far better to go to them and to say, hey, look, I really don't think that this is working out. So either, you know, we can spend the next 30 days trying to get it absolutely back on track. And if it doesn't work out, then at the end of the 30 days, the conversation that we're going to have is, I'm really sorry, but today's your last day at the company, right? Or if you want to call it right now, we'll give you the next 30 days to find your next thing. And we just found if we do that and we're super honest with people, honest people, fair people who get how it works when they know that, okay, I'm going to have a couple weeks. I'm going to have a few weeks to go and find my next thing, and I get to leave on my terms and I get to own the narrative, then you're no longer their best, worst option right now. They start looking for other options, and you find that people can really part with grace and with dignity and in a fair way. And now, like you said, you freed up a lot of budget to go and find somebody who is the right person. It's not about good people or bad people. It's who's the right person for this role right now. And I think that's just. It's easy to say. It's a really hard thing to do when you have somebody in a role who's a good person, especially when, you know they're trying hard, but it just isn't working out. And I think there were a lot of people in our company, a lot of new and emerging leaders who kind of had to learn that Lesson the hard way over the last few weeks.

The other thing I'd like to mention, too, is that I think we have in the past, and I think we're getting better about this now, and I like sharing this with everybody, that we would err too much on hiring from within and truly promote people outside their ability to perform and be successful because they didn't actually have the skills that were necessary to fulfill what the job function that they were being promoted to was. And so we've gotten better, I believe, about writing a job description first and saying, these are all of the qualifications that somebody would have to have and then open that to internal people. And we appreciate their loyalty and what they've done for the company as long as they qualify for the job. But at least in advance, we're writing those qualifications in that job description before we think about a human being that might go in there. In other words, before we say, Joe or Mary would be good for this, maybe we say, let's not even think about people first. Let's think about what do you have to do once you're in there to be successful, but what do you need to have under your belt? And then if people within the company can meet that, then we'll put them there. As opposed to kind of in the past, we've just said, you know, oh, well, I mean, these guys are doing a great job. Let's give them a shot at this advancement. Right?

Yeah. And again, I think, let's get real. Let's talk motives. Because I've been so guilty of this and what I would say about me back then and what I would hope that people would believe is like, ooh, Ryan's such a nice guy. He's such a good boss. He's so fair. He gives people chances and opportunities. The reality is, if I'm being completely transparent, it had way, like, yes, I like the idea of that, and certainly I like the idea of being liked, and I like the underdog story. I think as entrepreneurs, we love that because that was us. Right. We were the person that nobody took a chance on. So. So I think we like that it fulfills a particular narrative, an identity that we believe about ourselves in the world. Check, check, check. Right. But at the end of the day, the main thing is it's easier. It's way easier just to go to the person who's standing right there and say, hey, we got this need. I want you to do it. Right. That's why we do it. If we're really being honest, that's why and the reason I believe that is because if you had stumbled across somebody else who didn't work for you, who absolutely checked all the boxes and who absolutely was a better fit for that particular role, you wouldn't ask that person who's there to do that. I know I wouldn't have. So I can't say, like, oh, it was all nobility that drove this. And what you said is dead on. The answer is, define the role. Write the job description and define the role. And then what you need to do before you post it. This is a big trick that we figured out before you post it. Go to people who you think might want to go for that position. Right. Who you think might go for it, either because they absolutely deserve it, or they're just ambitious, right? Go to them and say, we're going to open a position for this particular role. Here's what it's called, here's the title. And either one of two things. Number one, we believe that you might be a fit. Now, we're going to have an open interview process and you're going to have to interview right along with everybody else. I need you to know that going in there is no guarantee. I think it'll be a good experience. But you need to know that a very likely scenario is that you do not get this job. Right. But we would like to invite you to apply. So that is the one conversation, or going to people preemptively and saying, I want you to know we're going to be opening up this role and we're going to not invite you to apply. I know it's something you may not want, but here are the requirements of the role. And as it stands right now, you do not meet the requirements. But here's the good news. Currently, there's nobody in the company who can help you get to this level. This person who we bring in would be able to do that. Now, what we found is if you have that conversation preemptively and you avoid that, that person coming and saying, oh, I want it, and then, you know, you have to reject them where they have a reduction in status. If you just go to them ahead of time and say, hey, I want to give you a heads up, we're hiring for this role. Unfortunately, you don't qualify for it based on your experience, you don't yet qualify. Happy to go over the thing with you more times than not, then they go, oh, yeah, it makes total sense. Oh, yeah, I don't quite have this boy, I hope to do it one day. Yep, this person's going to help you do it. I think that has made all the difference in the world in preserving good up and comers and making sure that you don't. What is it, the Peter principle? Good people are promoted to the level of their own incompetency.

Right?

Well, we've been guilty of that in the past. And so I think writing the job description, having the preemptive conversations and then ensuring if you are going to invite somebody who is, you know, to apply for a stretch role, make sure that there's somebody there who's going to commit, has the time and the willingness to commit to up leveling that person. And we've done it in the past where we're like, oh yeah, let's have this person go. And we just hung him out to dry. We gave them no support, no time, you know, no mentoring. And of course they failed. And then there's only one option and it's bad for all involved.

Right, right. Sweet.

Ooh, before I forget, I want to get your take on the whole AMC bitcoin thing, but when we were talking about the sales stuff, we talked about countercyclical things being events, right? How everybody wants to get back into the event space. Two things. Number one, Traffic and Conversion Summit is happening. You remember that little event?

It is. I've heard of it.

I've heard of it. Yeah. So Traffic and Conversion Summit. Shameless. Plug trafficconversionsummit.com as an event. It is in fact occurring in September. So I know I'm excited about that. So if you're a marketer, you know, a marketer that might be something worth coming to. Also we are doing at the scalable company, we have an event planned in mid November that we weren't even going to talk about for like months. And remember, you know, we were talking about like, what are some things that we could do kind of countercyclically to sell now that, you know, people might want kind of. We made the decision, hey, let's massively move up, you know, this particular event. And so we're going to be, I believe it's. It's scalable impact live or we'll get the scalableimpactlive.com is gonna be the event. So we decided, I mean, if you.

Really want to go, you'll do the research until you find it. We find that if we just told you what the URL was, that's crazy. I mean, anybody can do that, right?

Yeah. I mean, obviously this was not planned, but I do think that it's a lesson Two weeks ago, the question was, what can we do to participate in kind of this shift away from everybody just doing everything online into the real world? And we're like, let's, let's do this event. So we prioritized it to the point where I don't even yet know what the URL is. I believe it's scalableimpactlive.com scalableimpactlive.com is the event. So that's going to be happening in November. So everybody listening to this should be at that one anyway.

Yeah. And I think people, like, for anybody that is, that's taking this in, I think you got to be careful. I know that we have some friends that run masterminds and we have some friends that run events that have been very successful and done very well with virtual events during the, you know, the pandemic and the shutdowns. And also, you know, they've taken their normally live events and taken them virtual and they're very excited about that because they've, they've done well, they've grown their business and they've saved a lot of money. Certainly better margins on live event. But I would be very, very wary. I mean, I know people that are going into October, November, December, doing these virtual events still and not adding any live component. I think that's going to be a problem. I do. It'll be interesting to see how they do.

Yeah, I think they're going to get crushed. I wouldn't do it.

I think they are.

I think like, so you think about tnc. So this event is happening in September. Normally we would have started marketing this like six months ago. Like it just announced today. I mean, so we're like, you know, 100 something days out. I bet it's still, you know, is it as big as it would have been, you know, pre pandemic, with an entire year like what we were planning for 2020? I don't know. Probably not.

Just realistically speaking, probably 60, 70%, that's my guess. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah. But given the shorter timeframe, that's massive. It is.

And keep in mind that we still right now have a lot of people who have not got the ability to leave their countries. Those countries are still shut down and we have a good presence at that event from international. So that's something for everybody to think about. So I believe we're doing that hybrid, right?

Yeah, we are, yeah. Right at the top. I mean, so if you're looking for an, if you're doing an event, we looked into this a lot. Did a lot of research, a lot of study on what's kind of the best way to structure it. And so, you know, literally the headline is it's happening. Because that's the biggest question that everybody was wondering, like, is this event happening this year? So, yeah, it is. And then it's, how would you like to attend? Do you want to attend live? Do you want to attend? Virtually lots of info about, like, what we're going to do in different circumstances and Covid requirements and precautions. Obviously, that event's in California. So anybody who's worried about what are your Covid requirements, the state of California has you taken care of. I can assure you they're making us jump through all. All the hoops. But. But, yeah, I mean, I think. I think now, especially while we're in this transition mode, you kind of got to offer a hybrid component. You got to offer some type of virtual component. But I would be very, very, very careful with the virtual first. Very careful.

I would as well. And we have. I'm waiting to hear hopefully today, but we have some pretty cool celebrities that are going to be here, so I'm very excited. We have a duo that you and I have wanted to have there for. And we can't announce it just yet, but we're right on the cusp, and that's going to be very exciting. But, yeah, so that's going to be great. But definitely I would be careful if I was leaning on virtual and having great success over the last year, because I think that is definitely changing. I think people want to get out and about.

I agree. All right, let's talk investing, stocks, crypto, all this fun stuff. I want to get your take. First of all, what's going on with. So amc, just a movie theater company. Right. I mean, it should be the most boring company. Arguably, it should be dead. Right. It shouldn't have survived the pandemic. And it had this crazy run up along with. What was the other.

GameStop.

Yeah, GameStop. Yeah. So GameStop and AMC had this crazy run up from all the Robinhood people going and driving it up like a meme stock kind of thing. Kind of just saying, hey, let's just screw with Wall Street. Then it kind of came down and now it's had another. Some more craziness. Can you just explain what's happening and then give me your take on that?

Yeah, it's really interesting. I was taking a look at everything that's happened. The first thing that everybody should understand is what a short sell is. This comes about as a result of. There are these people who I believe are just actually pure evil who get together in syndicates and they will short a stock. And shorting a stock means that if you believe that the value of a stock is going to go down, then you can borrow shares of a publicly traded stock from somebody else and sell those shares, and you have to replace them at some point in the future, within a specified period of time. So if there's stock that's trading at $100 and I think it should be trading at 50, I can borrow Ryan's stock and sell that stock. I get to keep all of the money from the sale. I sold it at 100, and then I've got to give it back to him, say 90 days later. And if 90 days later the price is 50.

Yeah. Then you make the spread, right?

I make the spread. So what happened, though, is that that is an evil group of people. And so there was a group of the Robinhood people that saw that the stock was shorted more than 100% of the shares that were available. So, like it was over shorted. And which that's not.

So that's a naked, like, that's not even. Is that even legal anymore?

I thought, well, that wasn't even naked short is. It is legal. It's just, it's just that there's too much, there's too much turnover. Naked short generally means that you're short without having any ability to cover. Right. There's no, there's no place for you to fall, so you could actually take a hit for, you know, the stock could go, you know, to the moon and you would, you would not be protected at all. So I think it's kind of cool that, that these guys on Reddit saw that this was, this was way, way over shorted. And they said, they pointed it out. And so everybody got together and said, let's, let's put the screws to the shorts for a change. And instead of them putting a company out of business, because a lot of those shorts will just keep on hammering the stock, borrowing more and selling, borrowing more and selling to drive the price as low as possible so they can maximize their profit. And they don't even really care if they put the company out of business. If they put the company out of business and it stops trading, they don't even have to basically go out and replace the stock. I mean, it's like they can't even buy it. So it's, it's a really, you know, potentially profitable thing. But Just nasty. And a lot of times they'll create fake news about the company and they'll just created.

I mean, that's the thing. You're not. There's no value. You're not adding liquidity in profit without value.

Plus you hurt people's lives.

Yeah, you're just kind of like. You're just a butthead.

It is.

I mean, I don't know if that's a technical term, but you just.

I think butthead is a technic. It's a term of art in the law.

Yeah, yeah, you just being a butt head.

So what was interesting is that they all got together and basically said, let's buy and let's put these shorts out of business. And so they were all buying and buying drove the price up. And then the shorts are going to have to cover at significantly higher prices than they sold for, which could even put those guys out of business. And AMC was the next one that the guy identified. What was cool about AMC though, is how AMC has embraced what's going on. First off, I just read that the CEO of AMC, his net worth increased by about $200 million as a result of what's going on. Because obviously he's got AMC stock as part of his compensation package. So good for him if it lasts. Well, what's cool too is that the percentage of shares that are owned by individuals versus institutions of AMC has shift. Shifted pretty dramatically. And so AMC leaned into it and said, you know what? These people are our friends. And rather than just kind of sitting back and going, what the heck, this is all messed up, they are embracing it, reaching out. And so they're saying that all these shareholders now can get free popcorn at AMC and can get tickets and all kinds of other like, it's kind of like a premium package that comes for these individual shareholders that are AMC people and they've set up a portal for them and they're communicating with them and embracing them, they're treating them like actual partners. That's absolutely brilliant. And I think it'd be really cool if that's where companies go, because I feel like they've. They've moved so far away from thinking about their shareholders and that are individuals and thinking about institutions. And clearly these people, these individuals have the ability to move markets and that's. That's kind of a new thing. So that'll be really interesting to see how, how it all shakes out. Now, the danger is that it is also a bit like a Ponzi scheme, because is AMC worth 2000% more than it was worth a few days ago. When something like this happens, you know, probably not on the fundamentals. So it is much like bitcoin, you know, very volatile and based on demand. And the only reason that bitcoin has value is because we say that it does. The only reason that the stock has a value higher than what the fundamentals, you know, of. Of the operating company are is because a bunch of people are clamoring for it. So if you're on that ride up and you stay too long, just like if you were in Bernie Madoff's thing too long. Not. Not that this is anything like that, but it is. It is. Get out while everybody's buying, because when they stop buying, it's going to go back down to its original value, most likely. Now, here's the brilliant thing that AMC did, though. They floated a debt offering for a few hundred million bucks as well. So they said, well, while the stock is up and in huge demand, they have the ability to get. To go out and get some actual debt at a very, very low price. And so they've done that. So they're fortifying themselves against whatever might happen in terms of the share price, in terms of the shorts.

It's pretty doing it at a time when movie theaters are opening back up and people are wanting to get back, you know, and watch the movies again. So.

Yes. Yeah. And they'll invest that. They're not doing that, as far as I know, to acquire a tomato farm. Like a lot of crazy acquisitions are. You know, we're in the. Not in the movie business. We're in the people come and eat at our place business. And tomatoes are one of those things. So let's buy a tomato farm. I'm not even kidding that. That's how those decisions are often made. So. So they. They seem like they're doing that, you know, in a. In a really smart way, but it's really interesting to watch. And I forget. I don't. Did you read. I. I don't remember if it was in the generalist, or. It might have been one of the things that you and I both read, but. But there was a whole article on PFOF which I think is payment for offer flow. I think that's what it stands for. But they were talking about how Robinhood and a lot of these other Schwab, a lot of these other individual friendly discount brokerages are effectively not getting their shareholders the best price. And so that's kind of interesting because Robinhood, obviously steal from the rich, give to the poor, is you know, positioned as this super consumer friendly thing. But because of this pfof, they are not necessarily giving the best price that someone could sell their shares for because there's a.

So, so what is that? I don't know. I think you read something that, that, that I didn't. So pfof, let's pretend I don't know what that is.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there's a bid in an ask price, right? The stock might be trading at $28 and that means, and the bid price, somebody that wants to buy the stock might be willing to pay $28 and somebody that wants to sell the stock might want, you know, $29 for it. And so there's this spread in between, and that's where market makers, the people that are actually processing the transactions, make their money. And Robinhood made, I want to say it was about $50 million last quarter in this PFOF because they're basically charging the market maker for the ability to execute the trades that they get from their members. And so what's interesting about that is that the market maker then pays Robinhood for the right to get the ability to trade, to process the transactions, and then they kind of get to pick where within the bid and ask they're going to actually execute the trade. So the fact that somebody says the bid that's published for the stock is $28 doesn't mean that you can't get more for it. And a good fair situation, and this is all kind of being debated right now in the SEC and Congress, but if it was fair, there would be a charge for that. Not that you can make part of the spread.

Right.

And a lot of these stocks, especially thinly traded ones, have big spreads. So there can be giant fees that, that effectively take money out of the pockets of the people who are selling their stock, get them a lower price than they could have gotten from a different market maker who didn't maybe pay so much for the right to be able to do the transaction processing. And, and that's not a good situation for the little people, you know, the individual people who are members of these things. So that that's, it'll be interesting to see how that evolves too. This is really bringing that to light because there's so much volume that happens when these individual investors go in to a stock like this. The spreads are great because they're usually relatively thinly traded and there's huge, huge transaction volume because they're, everybody's coming in off of the, you know, the momentum of this let's buy. Let's, you know, punish these shorts. So kind of interesting what's going on with that.

So, all right, so I'm listening to this, and I'm an entrepreneur and I'm seeing. I remember this thing that happened with Robinhood on the Gamestop, the AMC thing. And I agree with you, by the way. I love how AMC is lean into it. I love how they're now thinking about their shareholders as individuals. Whether or not it sticks around or if this is just kind of a marketing gimmick, we'll see. But I do think there's something to the. The broader democratization of all of these things. I mean, we're seeing institutions fail. We've seen it with politics. Right. I mean, individuals outnumbering, kind of the giving more to political campaigns in the large institutions as well. Right. So this is not a new trend. This is just kind of the fracturing, some would argue the fracturing of society. But I dig that. Right. So that's all interesting. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm listening to this. I'm trying to grow my business. What do I do with all this? Like, what do I do with amc? You know, I was thinking about dabbling in bitcoin. It went up to 65,000, dropped to 35,000. Been hanging around there for a little while, like. But I mean, I feel like I should do something in crypto because other people. What am I supposed to do with all this stuff? How are you thinking about this?

I'm thinking in terms of. Well, I think a few things. One, in terms of crypto, I think it's. That it makes sense for you to have some, because I think that's where things are going. But I will say that especially of late, while you had the president of. I think it was El Salvador say that this was going to be one of their currencies that was announced at the bitcoin convention in Miami, that at the same time you have China saying, we're shutting down the miners, and you have, you have the sec, the securities and Exchange Commission, and several other securities agencies across the world saying, we are not going to let this continue to be unregulated. It is a security. And so things are going to change. You also have registration and information requirements that are, you know, that are coming more and more and reporting and things like that. So it'll be, it's. We're. We're going to have an epic battle. I think of the culture of these currencies, these cryptocurrencies and their Secrecy and privacy compared to the government's ability and desire to control that. So that'll be interesting to see. So I think it's a gamble, but I think that it makes sense to become aware of it because I don't think it's going to go away no matter how it shakes out. And when you see a big dip like we saw with bitcoin, I think it definitely makes sense if you're going to play with this and you have the money to lose, to go in and, you know, and just get a taste of it, because there will be a lot of opportunities coming, I think, across blockchain as all of this stuff evolves. So that, that'd be my take on the crypto.

How much then? How much then? Like, what, what, like, what would you say, And I know this is not individual, individual investment advice, but, like, because in all the stuff you said about, like, well, some, some countries are going to outlaw it, some countries are going to invite it, there's going to be regulation. I've listened to people take those same arguments and some people say, and that's why it's going to go to zero, and other people list those, all those things as, as reasons it's going to go to 100,000 and beyond, specifically bitcoin. But really the same could be said of any of the kind of crypto stuff. So I think the answer is we certainly don't know where it's going to go. So given all that uncertainty, how much, like, how much should I put in? I mean, is it like, and I'm like, I got there a couple of grand at it. Is it, you know, you should have, it's like, of your portfolio. Like, what do you, I don't think.

It'S a percent of your portfolio. I think it's, it's one of those. We talked about the barbell theory of investing the other day where you say, you know, there's, it's good to have the bulk of your wealth in safe, secure, stable things. Nothing in the middle, really. And then some small bets that could pay off tremendously. And so I think that it's one of your barbell bets. And so whatever that is for you, based on your scenario, like, you threw 10 grand in, you know, several years ago and now you've got a ton of it. It's gone up, you know, tremendously. But would you, you know, let's, I don't know what it's worth, but let's just imagine that what you bought is now worth a million dollars, you know, Would you throw a million dollars into it now? I mean, relative to your available money to invest in new things, probably not. My guess is. But if you have $100 million liquid, would you throw, you know, a million dollars into it? You probably should, right? So I don't know. As a percentage, a good way to.

Think about it is like if you're a gambler, like if you just go to Vegas, you're not.

So it's a straight out gamble.

Yeah. Like, so if you're. So here's what I'll say. Here's, here's, here was my approach to it. And I know Roland, you don't, you don't gamble. We. You don't, you don't play anything. One of my favorite moments, craps.

But I lost so much money with whoever it was that was teaching me how to play that one time. I don't even.

Oh my gosh, we. So Roland and I went, I finally got him because I love playing craps. I just think it's fun. You get a good table and it's just fun. And I never bet more than I'm happy just to call. Like, this was entertaining, right? And so I drag Roland. I was like, we're going to play craps. This is going to be great. And I've never had a more unlucky rolling streak in my entire. I mean, we lost so much money and I say so much money. We lost, you know, we lost a frustrating amount given the time that it took and how it was so fast and it was never good and it was not fun. But I think, I do think a good deal, if you've ever gone to Vegas or any kind of thing and you, whatever amount that you'd put on the table and say, I don't care if I lose it, I'm just going to have some fun. Fun with some friends. That's probably the amount. I would agree with that. Unless you're just a true believer. But I just, I don't know, I worry about a lot of these entrepreneurs who are spending so much time researching and trying to figure this stuff out, when they could be growing their, growing their businesses. I mean, do you, you were going to say something about kind of the AMC and the stock thing. Do you think that falls in the same category?

I do. I am going to say about the.

Stock market in general.

Yeah. I'm going to say something more about the crypto to, to, to what you just said, that the confusing of it is one of my private clients right now, they have invested, they took out a, you know, a seven figure plus loan to acquire Bitcoin, you know, a year or two ago. And, and they've got that as an asset because it was taken out in the name of the company. And so the company has this asset kind of like Elon Musk bought, you know, a billion and a half or so of it and they've kept it and now they're selling the company and I'm helping them with the sale. But it's very complicated because the value keeps changing and they've got, you know, they've got a lot of bitcoin but they've got a lot of debt related to it. And so in the middle of the negotiation when the volatility, you know, it falls almost in half, right? And the sale of the company includes this asset which is ever changing. It's really hard. It complicates the heck out of the sale. And I've tried to get them to bifurcate, like take that out, let's do that separate, you know, but they, but they want to keep it in and you know, and they're like, oh, it's going to be, you know, 100,000 next week. And then it fell to 30 from 60, you know, something. So that's crazy.

How do they do that?

So I think don't get that messed up in your company. If you're going to do that, do it separately because it does create tremendous additional complications if you're trying to sell your business. And it does distract you a lot because then you're all worried about what's the value of that. But the truth is you can't do anything about the value of that. Right? I don't know any way to significantly impact the valuation of Bitcoin unless you're Elon Musk. So, you know, that's something to be aware of. As far as the how do you use this? In general, I think that it is the same in investing that if you're an entrepreneur, unless you happen to have a company that is being shorted, in which case this might be something that you would try to get the attention of some of these guys that are in the subreddits writing these things. But if you're not in that situation and you're just saying, what do I do? I'm not sure there's a lot for you to do other than to, you know, as an investor say. One thing that I'm pretty clear on is that this group of people can run up a stock. So I've seen it happen a Few times now. And if you are watching and monitoring and you're on the front end of it to throw that money, that's the Vegas craps money that you don't mind losing into that for a brief time and take a run up of 8 or 10 extra money over 30, 60 days, it seems like that's going to keep happening until it doesn't. So, you know, could you make some money on that? I think you could. I don't like doing stuff like that because I am, I'm just a, like, I like investing in things that I can affect. So that's not really my game. But I definitely see people doing it and I think that as long as you get out just like a Ponzi scheme, as long as you get out soon enough before, you know, before whenever that magic thing is when no people decide they don't want it anymore, it can be an interesting way to profit.

Man, it freaks me out. I'll tell you what freaks me out. It's not the amount that I would lose. What freaks me out is what it would do to my mindset. When I think about what does it take to build a valuable enduring company, right? And I don't mean enduring in that you gotta run it forever, but the kind of company frankly that somebody would spend lots of money on that type of mindset and that type of ca. Like just, that's fundamentally different than this skimming mindset. And I just don't know if one person can occupy both of those roles and do that. It seems like that would bleed over into making this similar short term decisions. Maybe not. Maybe you're the kind of person where that's what you got to do on the weekends to get that out of your system so that you don't do that for your company. It's like, oh, I need to go skydiving or do something kind of crazy so that I don't do crazy stuff with my business. But I don't know. For me, I think you got to know yourself. For me, I'm afraid that I would get in that like, quick hit. Oh, that was fun. And it's really hard not to let that bleed over into your longer term. But I think just be really careful. Be really, really, really careful with that. As an entrepreneur, I think it's way more dangerous than if you're a wage earner and you're throwing some money at it because you're bored. I mean, I remember when I was, you know, all of my. There was one year where every team I liked was Just terrible. Like, one year, like, every team that I was a fan of, like, the Longhorns are bad. Like, every Houston team was awful. And so I was like, you know what? I am going to do some sports betting, and I'm literally going to throw, like, 100 bucks at something just to make this interesting because it's so boring and I want to watch sports. Right. Which I realized, by the way, even saying that out loud is super stupid. But that was it. It was like, this is a way to kind of have fun on Saturday watching games that I wouldn't care about. People do the same thing with. I didn't have the patience for, you know, fantasy sports and picking players and any of those other things. So I think if that's what you're doing, it's fine. Man, it really makes me nervous because we know, like, we know very, very, very, very, very smart entrepreneurs with really great companies who are getting wrapped up in this stuff. And I don't know, I'm just not seeing them spend as much time on their. On their business, and it concerns me for them.

Yeah. That distraction, I think, is dangerous. And just remember, I mean, neither you nor I really play around with those kinds of things, and we've made a whole lot of money building businesses. So don't forget, you can also do that, and you get to control it so you're not at the mercy of a market and a situation that you have no control over. So I think that's.

That's. Never play craps with Roland.

I think.

I think the lesson is never take Roland with you to the craps table.

I could be, but there were lots of other people there. So there's not really any correlation that you've been able to establish that it's me, but it could be any of the other people that were in that group of people that you. That you misled. I mean, that you took to the. To play that.

Here's the thing. And this is just math.

Teach how to play.

This is math. This is math. Are you ready? Because you can't argue with math. 100% of every time I've taken you to play craps, I lost all my money.

I can't argue with math. It's not an exact science.

It's hashtag science, hashtag math. 100% of every time I've taken you to play craps, I lost money. Well, see, that's logic.

You can't argue with logic. For sure.

Yeah, you can't argue with any of this stuff. All right, hey, enough business stuff. Let's talk about wine.

I was gonna say, speaking of things we can control. You can control the wine that you drink. So we're trying this thing that. That my son Ryan has shown us. So I'm going to click this tab here, and if all goes well, our recording won't blow up and there will be. Can you see this, Ryan?

I can.

Okay.

And I think the thing that everybody. This is probably going to be the most valuable segment, most valuable thing we talk about. Because out of everything, I think what most people want to know is what's our favorite wine?

I am excited. Well, you might have some things that you discover that are fun. So we wanted to talk about. About Cult Cabs, particularly from California.

What does that mean, cult? So if I drink this, then I worship Satan.

You do? Yes. Yes. No. Oh, no. No. So these are really, really hard to find. Small production and coveted by a lot of people. These are lists that a lot of them are wines that most people never even hear about. Certainly most people never drink. They're almost impossible to get because production's really, really small. And they have waiting lists to get on what they call an allocation that can take years and years to get on the list. You can find these wines through brokers, and you can find them sometimes in restaurants and things like that. So I thought it would just be fun to take a few of them and have you and I rank them and kind of see where we would put them on the scale using a tier. So I've got the first one. I think that's Isley. Where would you put Isley? If we say these are quintiles, meaning 20%, the top 20% would be a one. You know, the next 20 would be a top 25.

Then back to math, not be top 25%. We got four. We got five.

I got five. This one just. He forgot to label. Oh, okay.

I'm only seeing one through four.

He forgot to label the last one. So it's so bad that it doesn't. We don't. It doesn't even rank right. That's how bad that.

Okay, so quintiles, not quartiles. Yeah, quintiles. Okay, Quintas.

Where would you put Isley?

I mean, let's read them out. Like, read out all of the things just real quick.

Okay, so there's Araujo Isley, which is here, down at the bottom. Then Checkerboard, which there's a picture of King's Row, which is a little tiny chess piece you see there. And next to it, it's kind of a checkerboard. That's Aurora, which is one of three vineyards they've got. We've got Fairchild, we've got Bryant Family, which is up on Pritchard Hill. Some of Fairchild is on Pritchard as well. This one I have a hard time seeing. Is that Abreu? I can't see what it says. I'm going to say it's Abreu for now at a B, R, E, U Bond. Colgan. Colgan also up on Pritchard. One of the Bonds up there as well, I believe. Cardinal is here because we couldn't find Lakoya easily. But La Coy is what we're going to really be talking about, which is the high end version of that. Dallavale makes one called Maya, which we also didn't have a picture of, so we were using Dallavale. Dana Harlan, which is owned by Bill Harlan, same guy that owns Bond. And Promontory, which I don't think is on here. 100 acre. Joseph felt's insignia. Oh, there's Promontory. Promontory. So we got three from Bill Harlan. We're obviously fans. This one is a funny, messed up picture. So I'm going to guess that's Realm.

It looks Realmy.

It looks like Realm the Absurd. Then we've got some other realms there. We've got Scarecrow. We've got the Old Sparky. Remember when you slammed your fist down on the table with that glass and broke it in half at the Pamplemousse restaurant here?

These are not true stories that Roland is selling.

Ryan set his glass down. We were talking and it just totally disintegrated as we were drinking. Old Sparky.

Then you've got Screaming Eagle drunk. That angry drunk guy. But I was just uncoordinated.

No, it was just totally. The glass was like super, super weak. Screaming Eagle, we got Hillside select from Schaefer, Sloan and Tusk. So we'll do it kind of fast. But what do you think, Isley? Where does Isley go in your world?

Where this is tough is. So many of these are at the same kind of tier. Like, I feel bad putting, really. I mean, getting down to the bottom of this.

Well, maybe none of them hit the bottom because these are the best of the best. But keep in mind that we're ranking them in the context of the best of the best, not in context of, you know, all wine that is out there.

I know. So let's. Okay. All of these are amazing. Can we just say that?

We can say that, yes.

Okay. Where is Isley? And this is Raho. Probably two.

Okay.

Where you got it.

Man? I've just had some 1994 a few times now. I've got a few bottles of it and it is profound. It is quite amazing. And we're only in California. We're not talking about Paris or French or anything. So I'll leave it there for now. Let's see where we come out. How about checkerboard?

I think if you're going to go all the way back to 94, stuff gets weird. I've never had that, so. All right, now we're on checkerboard.

Checkerboard. Aurora.

I mentioned I'm kind of. I think I'm. I don't know how much of this is just like disappointment. I'd maybe have that at a four.

A four. Ooh. Interesting.

I'm a little sad because I had. I had some that was amazing. And I feel like maybe it peaked or if I mess. I don't know.

You had it again and it was not so good.

It wasn't. Yeah. And I don't. And that's the problem. I don't know if it's my fault.

Okay. It could be. I don't think it's also the mood you're in. Just sometimes you feel like it, sometimes you don't.

This is kind of where I am. I'm kind of a crappy mood lately.

This is kind of where I am with 100 acre right now. Is that Hundred acre is a very club you over the head kind of wine. So I. And I've been feeling a bit more. Because I've been drinking a lot of French lately. And then I go back to 100 acre and it's like, bang. It's just so big. So I'm gonna actually, I'm gonna go with hundred acre and I'm gonna put hundred acre at three for right now.

That. Then can I have your hundred acre?

You can't. You can come here and drink it with me. Absolutely. And we can. And I can complain about it while you tell me I'm wrong.

Sounds good.

How about Colgan?

Colgan to me is still a one.

Yeah, I agree. Colgan's is a slam dunk one, particularly the Tixon Hill. If I was looking at. Colgan has several vineyards. This is nine Estate ix. That's down there, which is one of their vineyards. I would probably put nine down here in the two. And I'd probably put Tixon up at the top and then Carry Ad, which is another one of theirs. I'd put at a three.

Three.

But overall, Colgan is a one. What about Bond?

Bond? I'd have bonded a two.

Okay.

Do you agree or disagree?

It's kind of fun to do this because I want to look at them once we get them. So what about. We're going to call it lacoia, not Cardinal.

You know, a lot of this is like. I think I feel the same way about laquoia that you did. I had so much of it, and so I don't know how much of that is just. Yeah, I think I'm like a three or a four on there, too.

Okay.

How about Harlan one?

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, Harlan is. I don't know. Harlan's hard to beat.

How about Scarecrow?

Scarecrow for me, is a one. Scarecrow is my favorite right now.

Is it your favorite?

It is right now. It really is. And again, I think it's. You know, when you're so right about context. The last couple times that I've had Scarecrow, it's been in a celebratory kind of thing. And when I think about the last time I had Checkerboard, I was pissed off. I'm not even kidding. I was pissed off. I was like, you know what? Screw it. I had a sucky day. I'm gonna open a nice bottle of wine, and I think I brought my own just general. Just crankiness to the wine.

Isn't that funny?

It's probably not fair. It's probably not fair. I need to go back. Today's a good day. I'm gonna go back and have some more Checkerboard. But, yeah, the last few times I had Scarecrow was like, great days, and it kind of capped it off.

I love it. It's another one of those right now. That's a bit on the overfruit side for me, but we'll leave it there. Have you had Absurd from Realm?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. Where you put that? I wouldn't put it. I mean, I don't know. It's kind of like a two and a half. I love it. You got it all the way to one.

I would put it as a one. I think it's just insanely great. It's. And it can have, like 23 different varietals in it. I think it's. It's just really, really great. Maybe if it's got a little bit of.

A little bit of what, age? Yeah. You know, I. I haven't opened my bottle of Absurd. I think the last time I had it was when we were out there years ago.

So, yeah, it's. It's great, man. And if you had it now, the next time you come out too, we should do one of these tastings y and maybe make that our podcast, because it would be fun to taste all of these. We should do it blind, right?

Yeah, I think so.

What about Screaming Eagle?

I have not had screaming Eagle in so long. When I did a blind taste of it, though, the first time, I remember it ranked third for me between after Colgan and Bond and some other ones. That one, to me, I respect it. I think it's great marketing. It was kind of the first real Colt wine to go nuts. I think the first one to be sold for more than two grand that I saw. And I don't know, but to me, it still just isn't up there with some of these other ones.

Yeah, I agree. I don't know if you remember, we had it also at war room a couple of years ago. As for the winner of the Wicked Smart, and we got to try it then when Frank was there. So maybe what, three, four years ago? And it's great. I just think the value isn't there. What about Sloan?

Second flight, Their second growth is great. I think if you can find it, it's pretty good.

Well, and the price, it's called second flight, and the price of that's gone through the roof. That's like 800 bucks now. So it's gone to me, where.

Yeah, when it was like 3, 400, it was used to value. Yeah.

Value wise, I don't see it.

Sloan. I love Sloan, and what I love about Sloan is you can find it, but to me, it's kind of more of a 4.

4. Wow. Okay.

You have it. You have it up a two.

Sloan for me would be a three. It's. It's got a profile similar to 100 acre for me is in terms of how big it is. So, like, you have to be in the mood for it.

Yeah. I think maybe the reason I've got it lower is because I'm valuing. I'm looking at 100 acre and Screaming Eagle at 3, and I just. I'm not, I guess, emotionally putting that on the same. At the same level.

So for me, it would be up here. I think it's on that plane.

Do it.

Yeah.

I don't think there's any person listening who's going to say, oh, I'm going to take Ryan's advice over Rollins on this one. Not even knows.

You know, I'm going to put that I Think it belongs.

Do it.

I think it belongs there. Okay. What about Bryant? Bryant, family, Pritchard Hill.

I haven't drank a lot of Bryant, so I would yield to you on that one, but I think it's.

I'm going to put it here.

All right. On three.

It's smooth and great. Have you had Fairchild yet?

I have not.

Okay, Fairchild. I'm also going to put up here. How about Old Sparky?

I mean, I had it that one time, and I feel like I showed up and then I broke the glass again. It's probably not fair.

It is one of my favorites. I'm going to put it here.

You got it? Number two on the second row. Yeah.

I haven't. I want to revisit, but how about Phelps?

I mean, I don't know. That, to me is. Yeah. Lower.

Yeah. I think Phelps and Schaefer, both great.

I agree.

They both go there.

Well. And what I like about them is.

You can find them Realm, generally, I'm going to say, in terms of, like, value. And this is the whole Realm lineup. So there's several, but they're Moonracer, Dr. Crane, Beck stop, or Toquelone. They're really great wines. And I would put them generally up here. They're also very affordable compared to a lot of these.

Yeah, shockingly so.

We had to taste at Promontory, if you remember. That was fun.

I do. What.

Where would you put that?

I like Promontory. I especially like their new. Was it Penultimate?

Yes, it's really good.

Yeah.

Yeah. So a lot of these guys have second wines that are quite delicious and about a half to a third the price of the big boys. Where would you put them? Two or three?

I'd buy probably three.

Okay, so we got lots of threes, which is cool because that's kind of the average. Right. Have you had Tusk?

Yeah, but only once.

Where would you put that, based on your memory?

I don't remember.

I would do three on that one as well.

All right.

That's Philippe Melka. You have to be invited to be a member, and you have to know somebody that is within, I think, two degrees of separation of the winemaker or something. So I just got. Actually just dropped off that list. Donna, where'd you put those guys?

I love Anda, but, I mean, to me, it's kind of the same as Schaefer.

Yeah, I agree. So Onda would be down here if we. If it was on here, it didn't make the list. Donna is their nicer wine. Anda is the second. So There's.

Yeah. And that's the one that you can find a lot. And so I like it because, again, I like the ones that are really good and you can actually get. Yeah, because I'm not on all the same lists that you are on, so I've got Poor man's taste.

That is so not true. You're on so many of these lists. But, Donna, the nicer. Well, their first wine is they have three vineyards. There's Helms Lotus and Hershey. And so it would rank, I think, probably more up there. For me, if it was Onda, I'd probably put that down in the green box. Not because it's not good, but it's inconsistent. Dalla Valley is that as well. While I love their Maya wine, this is. Looks like this might be Colina. I can't see it well enough. But their. Their wine. My experience is the older ones don't hold up, but it is absolutely fantastic when it is not too young, but not too old. So I would put that up here as well. And then the very last one is Abreu. And where would you put Abreu?

I haven't had enough. We've kind of gone through mine that I have enough experience to feel like I could rank.

Okay. I would put Abreu probably on that.

So Abreu we tried to go to and couldn't get into. And we were out there, as I recall.

Yeah, that's a hard one, man. So would I put. So I think for me, if I was playing with this, now that we've got them ranked, I would.

What you got? Number one. Like, what's your number one?

I'm. I'm playing. I. I like all of these. Quite. I don't think Isley quite as up there, but Scarecrow.

Yeah, see, you're cheating because you're. You're basically making everything a number.

I'm not. I'm. I'm looking here. I'm like. You're like.

You're like, oh, look, all these are number one.

Scarecrow, Harland. I actually, Scarecrow.

You would move Scarecrow down. And so you're gonna give me those, right?

Hey, Brew. Probably put abrew there. I really do like the Sparky. Like, I. I will go. I like Sparky quite a bit, but Bond definitely belongs up there. Hyundai, I think. Bryant. I feel good about what we've got here. This probably belongs there. Promontory probably belongs there. I like this. What do you think?

Yeah, I feel better about Promontory being up there. I like it. So what do we got number one. Read them off.

So Colgan, Harlan, Scarecrow, Realms, Absurd and Bond.

Those are our top four. Yeah. Yeah, I would.

Five.

Five. You're right. I can't count.

It's okay.

I think we've established it's all right. Gotcha. All right, so the second quintile down.

Second is Isley. The entire realm lineup, which is vast, Abreu, Schrader and Promontory.

Yep.

And then on three, we got Hundred Acre, Lakoya Cardinal, Screaming Eagle, Slash, Second Flight, Sloane. Sloane's second wine, by the way, asterisk, is insanely great and a ridiculous value, but almost impossible to find. Bryant Family. They have a second wine called Bettina, which to me is hideously overpriced. I would get the family estate before I would get that. It's good, but I don't know why. They've just jacked the price on it so much. All of Fairchild's stuff is really, really high quality. They've got vines that they have next to Screaming Eagle, and some of the top guys. Tusk. Probably not worth the price. It's kind of like an Hermes, Chanel type brand. Like, they put it in these fancy boxes, and I think that it's good, but I don't think it's. It definitely doesn't hold its value, and it is very expensive. Donna, I think, is great, but inconsistent. Maya is great, but doesn't last. Well, Checkerboard.

So that was the third. So the third one, we are so uppity. So we have 100 acre and Scream the Eagle on the third.

Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty funny, huh? And I feel like Schaefer and Insignia and particularly Checkerboard are getting screwed a little bit. I would probably put Checkerboard on that third line because I. I do, too.

Yeah. I don't feel. I don't feel good about this anymore. Checkerboard. And honestly, I think I brought my own bad data checkerboard. And I'm going to go back tonight because I'm feeling good. If today continues to be a good day, and I hope it will be, I'm going to open another bottle. We're going to see how this goes.

I like it.

That's it.

I think we've done well. So for all of you that are out there that want to invite Ryan and I over to your house as long as you have, at the same time you're opening Colgan, Harlan, Scarecrow, Realms, Absurd and Bond, we're there. Right.

We might consider swinging by if you also opened up a bottle of screaming eagle or 100 acre or any of the above, but. But maybe not.

I got a new one for you, though, that. That we did not put on here. And I just tasted it for the first time today. I have been trying to. I've been trying to get into this winery for our trip. So we have dinner at Hundred Acre. We've got. I think Scarecrow is the other one. And. And this 100 acre's not going to.

Let you in after this show, buddy.

Yeah, no, they're gonna let us in. They're not going to watch this.

They might let me in.

But this is like. This would change if you and I talked about this a month from now. These would move around, right?

Yeah, I think you're right.

It depends on where you are. Like right now I'm drinking more blends in French, so the bigger, fruitier, clubby, over the head cabs, I'm just not as into right now. I was talking with Dan Chapman. The Somme from. From Velladora is here actually at the house right now. We went out wine shopping this morning. And anyway, they had this bottle of McDonald, and so McDonald is fantastic. And I did manage to get on the list, but I haven't gotten an allocation yet.

Is it the golden arcs or the golden arches?

It is neither of those. It's even better than you might imagine. A wine that was produced by the McDonald's Donald's Corporation would be. But it's really great. So next time you're out, we'll have.

To get Mac Donald. M A C or M C. I.

Want to say it's M.C. okay, M.C.

Where are they? In Napa. Is it a Napa base?

Yeah. Yeah. And what's not on here? Because it's not Napa, because we were only doing Napa was. Was Sonoma has a just amazing winery called Sine Quinon, which I am madly in love with now. So next time that you guys come out, Ryan, we got to do Sinequinon and McDonald for sure. And I think you said you hadn't had absurd in a while, so I think that's kind of shaping up to be. And you haven't tried Fairchild, so now we got some good stuff to tap into.

Yeah, sounds fun.

That's it for today, guys. I hope this was fun for you. I hope you enjoyed our wine snobbery. And there is no right or wrong wine to drink, by the way. What you like is what you should drink. And so these are just some that we've had an opportunity to play with that are cult cabs. We don't only drink these things, we drink French wines and Australian wines and wines from other parts of the world as well. But in Napa and for the Colt wines, these seem to be the cult cabs. Anyway, these are some of our favorites so I hope that that was helpful to you guys. Hope you enjoyed the episode. If you liked it, please take time to review us. Also, please subscribe so you don't miss any of these. And loving the new format. Hanging out with you Ryan, Anything you want to say before we hop off?

No, I mean, I will say keep an eye on your inbox and all things for announcement about some events we have going. Let's meet face to face and maybe pop some bottles while we're there.

I like it. Popping bottles.

We'll get some bottles.

Yeah.

All right.

All right. Thanks every. You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser.

If you're enjoying the show, let us.

Know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information go to businesslunchpodcast.com.

Thank you for listening.

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