I think that that's the biggest part of being a small business owner is the fact that we're all in this together. And there's some really good people out there and you just have to ask for help.
Welcome to the Golding Group Strategic Growth Podcast, featuring expert insights, Interviews with thought leaders and Business Plan Triage hosted by Kyle Golding, award winning entrepreneur, CEO and Chief Strategic Ideas for the Golding Group.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Strategic Growth Podcast.I'm your host, Kyle Golding. I'm joined today by my special guest, Kelly McGuire, wine specialist at WineWithKelly.com. Wine with Kelly, right. And of course, you're the wine specialist, but we've known each other a long time. But once you introduce yourself to anyone listening to the podcast who is not has not had the pleasure of meeting you.

Okay. Kelly McGuire and I have loved wine probably for I mean, I guess I got introduced in white to wine, probably in early nineties when I was in college when we all gained or just wine was that we all get. Yeah. Yes. But I didn't know anything And I think I think that's the truth and the truth for a lot of us that you go into wine, you don't really know anything about it. It's very, you know, intimidating me, just overwhelming. Sure.

So I think you just, you know, you go through the motions, drinking wine, whatever someone tells you, you look at the little shelf thing that tells you if it's a 95 or an 85, whatever. So I just have always been interested. And then over the last couple of years, I decided to really dig in because I got really frustrated with not knowing how to buy wine properly. Right.

You know, like buying an Italian wine or a French wine. Those labels are just so confusing. And so I just started learning more and really gotten nerdy about it. And so I decided to get some certifications through the wine spirit Education Trust. Okay. And most recently, I just thought, well, how can I turn this into a thing, a business? And so that's kind of where I am. But some of the best businesses are solving a problem and following a passion. Right. You're doing both of those in this scenario. You know, I never even thought about it that way. Well, there you go. Of course, everything comes back to business. I think I was actually I started off trying to sell my own problem with education. Right. So my nature is to tell people about things. I want to help people. You know, I met when we both worked in nonprofit, so I'm. I have a real passion for helping people and training people and helping people become better. And so just through this, this, you know, process, how can I help other people who are feeling exactly like I was very overwhelmed and stock and, you know, confused about wine? How can I make them feel more comfortable about it? How can I help them feel less intimidated when they go shopping? Right. And just feel more confident so they can enjoy it and not feel like, you know, wine is for other people. Right. But there's there's also even though a further level of of wine drinking, of being a connoisseur, of collecting, you have gift giving, etc.. There's a lot of culture around wine. So it kind of runs the gamut, right, for everything from entry level and everyone should be able to enjoy a glass through people who are spinning it, investing huge amounts of money in wine. Right. And the thing is, you can have a mix of all of that with one person. Somebody can be a wine collector, but they may not know a lot about wine. Right? They may just have really great people that help them collect wine and investing in stocks and companies that like you're not using the product, but the stock is good. Yeah, exactly. You know, and then there's people that don't have a lot of money that can't really afford to invest in life. But they know a lot about wine and they're very passionate about it.

Right. So for me, you know, I'm starting to buy some wines that I want to age. You know, a little more expensive, but that's not my daily drinker. Right. So I think it's just, you know, you find out who's your who's your customer, who's your audience. You know, I talk to people of all different experience levels will get together in a group and some person may not even understand what a varietals is. Some people, like the other day, had the same experience, didn't know what a variety was. The guy sitting next to her had just gotten back from a trip to Bordeaux, and he has a friend that owns a winery. So you got the contrast I heard right, You know, a group of wines and teaching them how to write through them and enjoy them. Now, the business services, I say business services, the things that you do within your business because some of these things are services and some of these things are just purely educational and enlightenment. And of course, connecting with your friends and your and your network, right. And letting people know what it is you're doing and all the value that comes with it. But you do private tastings, which I think most people would understand whether two, three, six, 12 people get to come in a room and and and have a conversation with you. And there's a ton of education and obviously sampling and we'll be doing a little bit of that later with with this beautiful red that's sitting on the table with us.

But also and I didn't think about this till I read this on your website, and that makes perfect sense. Virtual tastings so you don't have to be in the room with them as long as you both have the same bottle of wine. Well, or at least the same. If I have the information about the wine, maybe if I've tried the wine. Okay. But actually, technically, if I'm teaching you how to taste, I'm not going to actually taste the same things necessarily as you are or smell them. Right. But my my goal is to help you as the clients be able to understand how to evaluate a wine, not just drink wine. Okay. Most people have been to a wine tasting and they drink wine telling you how amazing this And you're like, Oh my gosh, it is amazing. So I don't want to tell people what to think about what they're drinking. I don't want to tell them what to smell or what to taste. I want them to learn how to taste and to smell and to evaluate the wine and decide for themselves if that's a wine for them or not. The majority of my wine education, ironically, comes from chefs and not sommeliers or people in the wine industry, but more about how to drink a certain types of wine or certain profiles of wine with certain types of food. I'm extremely passionate about that because wine is meant to go with. Right. So and but another that's another intimidation factor to people hear that.

And so they they are afraid they're going to do it wrong. Right. But you can't do it right. You can't. As long as you like it. Right. The worst case scenario is it doesn't taste as awesome as it should. So it's kind of like when you're putting an outfit together, you know, you put your outfit together today. Good color combination. We've got, you know, monochrome matic going on. There we go. Black and white. Put a hot picture in there. No one would be mad at you. That's true. It would just be a different choice and a different style. Right. And some but some people in that same hot pink T-shirt, or you might say that doesn't quite look right with that person. Right. But that's okay, too. Yeah. Yeah. A little experimentation is fine. Just like you said, you don't like. You know, you said you don't like white wine, but that's true. Yeah, we're going to see about that. I used to say that, too. I honestly did. But I would tell you, if you have the right wine with the right food. Mm hmm. It's just like a symphony, right? You know how you when you brush your teeth and you had to drink orange juice? Yeah. Terrible. Wrong combination. But you put something else with orange juice, right? Tastes great. I'm a little bit of a beer snob as well, but a really cheap, simple American lager. Right after you mow the lawn is perfect, right? Exactly. Yeah. And you know, a hot dog with a piece of pizza. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of thing. At the ballpark. Whatever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So something else that you offer is wine consultation. And I think that goes more into that conversation we had earlier about different levels of wine when it comes to a little bit more of an investment, maybe gift giving or things that are a little bit more associated with maybe personal status or an event.

I'll give you an example. When I did recently, I've had a couple of events with this client, did a birthday party earlier this year and they had their own private wine collection and they wanted to share it with their friends for a birthday. And so I helped them curate a list of wines that we would taste as a group of their wines and led the group through the tasting. And then they followed that with a chef dinner. And so I chose wines to go with the dinner they were having. Excellent. So kind of that. I mean, it's just pretty much choosing, you know, laying out the plan, right, Whether it's a birthday party or, again, if you're, you know, giving gifts to all your clients and you want to choose a crowd pleaser or, you know, you you know, depending on the person the same way you would hire an event coordinator or a catering specialist for if it was all food or maybe someone who brings music, etc.. Right. Just bringing expertise and skill and and making their event excellent or just kind of helping them decide and feel more confident about their own decisions. Right now, you and I both as also have in common a love for Napa Valley. You know, and it's hard to not love Napa Valley, but a lot of my wine experience also kind of culminated and yours as well.

Tell me the first time you went to Napa and the last time you went to Napa and and kind of how how you you connected with what's happening there and obviously the wine that flows through there. Well, I think my my taste is evolved, honestly. You know, the more you try things, the more you have more of a appreciation for certain things. So I was in a wine club or I still am in a wine club where I can make it. A group of our friends here at Oklahoma City started it. I think like 2008 maybe, and we started going to wine country. And so one of the first places we went was Napa and I just was like, Oh my gosh, this place is so beautiful. Have I not been here earlier? It just kind of made right that I hadn't spent that time there before. And so, you know, the wines out there were just so big and rich and opulent. Right. You know, very big Cabernet Sauvignon. That that that. That's me. That's me. I will tell you, over the years, I started spending more and more time in Sonoma. Mm hmm. And so just being over there and trying different styles of wines over there, I've gotten a big appreciation for Sonoma as well. And that's a really big abbey. So, you know, now I love Pinot Noir, I love White wines. From there, you know, Carneros, they're all just it's very different, different styles, which is why I really want to encourage people to do is just try different things. Yes. And amazingly so you can have very different styles of wine that the grapes are grown 20 miles from each other. Mm hmm. That it doesn't have to be France versus Napa Valley versus Washington versus versus Chile versus Australia. So you can have amazing similarities and differences in and something that's really and even local, even in the Midwest. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you've got you know, when you look at mountain fruit versus valley fruit, that's going to be different. You've got if you look down the map of California, all of the vineyards, there's different you know, they'll source grapes from different vineyards because they're going to taste different. Even the east and west sides of the valley in Napa itself. Yeah. Have have different different profiles to them. Right. And that's where I started nerding out on this. Yeah. Because I really wanted to understand why is this bottle that's from, you know, Mount Veeder twice as expensive as one from, you know, down in Central Valley, California. And what's happening there? Right. And so just learning about all of the things that go into growing grapes and, you know, making the wines and the production and the climate and the weather and, you know, there's just so much that goes into it that's why I am so into it right now, because of I learned how much goes into it.

So you're in Dallas now, but you're you're in Oklahoma, girl. You were you've been Oklahoma for for a long time before that. We're still claiming New Year. Yeah. Yeah, I'm here all the time. Right? Right. So what was it like transitioning? I know so far and culturally, it's not that much different, but it is. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, growing up in Oklahoma City and I grew up in Guthrie, actually, but, you know, we go to Dallas all the time, right back when you could. You had to drive 55 miles an hour. Yeah, it took 4 hours. Right. It was just very different because I think Dallas is just exploded so much. Mm hmm. Yeah, the country has changed because of everybody moving around. So there's a lot of congestion. There's a lot of different kinds of people there, which is cool. There's just a lot of people. But, you know, the access is is amazing. So I you know, I started working part time at a boutique wine shop about a year and a half ago as I was learning and taking these courses and just got to know a lot of great people who are passionate about wine and kind of a cool little community. So the wine culture there is pretty cool. Yeah. Now you have been doing this a short period of time, but you have a great deal of business and nonprofit experience. You've been an accountability coach. You have been a consultant for the Healthy Schools for Oklahoma. You were a director of annual Giving at MRF, an amazing organization doing amazing work and director of outreach for the City Boathouse Foundation. Anyone Oklahoma City would understand where that is as well. And then, you know, and we met each other at United Way. So the things that you've learned as a professional, whether it's business or nonprofit side and now running your own business and this is kind of you're in startup mode. This is new. How how or how was that past experience feeding into helping you figure out how to make this work for you now?

Oh, I would say every single thing that I've done in nonprofit for sure has helped me get where I am today. And I tell young people who are going into whatever career mode, just take what you can from each job, right? If you don't do that job for 50 years, yeah, love it. You're going to get something valuable out of it. And I've gotten so much great experience, especially with Oklahoma City people. I mean, Oklahoma City is a great place where everybody, you know, everybody and everybody helps. And nonprofit work is so rewarding here because everybody truly cares. Right? And, you know, I learned I learned social media skills when it first came out, when I was in nonprofit, because you're working on a shoestring budget. And so, you know, your new business owner, you don't have thousands of dollars to those higher pile necessarily and not always if you if you can, it's a good thing. But but not everyone can. Right. Right. That's true. But I would say that, you know, if you have a service that you're passionate about said and you've got the knowledge, you know, using those skills from your other career perhaps.

Right. You know, the networking skills, the social media skills you have, event planning skills, Fundraising is just like sales and sales people on giving their money away for something they're not even going to probably see. The sales is easier. You go like, I give you this and you give me money as opposed to you give us money and we do things in the community, you know, people who get it get it. But it's it's not a it's not an a-to-b transaction. Exactly. Yeah. So it really it's I'm just I'm used to always sharing my passion for a mission. And so now I'm sharing my passion. Right. Of helping people learn and feel more confident about shopping and enjoying wine. A common theme we have here. And it's a common theme that we talk about on the podcast all the time, about having a mission, staying on your mission, being focused on it, having passion for what you do and investing yourself in the process and you're doing all of that. So congratulations to to be able to pull all those things together and to make it work out for you the way that you are. I'm having a blast. So as we get into tasting wine and which is going to be awesome for us and not as much for everyone listening to the podcast, but that's their problem. We'll tell them what wine did as they can go find it later.

But I've got a couple of quotes from some of your recent social media that I want you to kind of talk about because it's about about tasting wine. In fact, the first one is there's a difference between wine drinking and wine tasting. Definitely. Yes. Yeah, wine drinking is just sitting around and drinking the wine. And, you know, you talk about chefs when you're cooking the food, you're tasting it. Sure. It's ready to go out for your guests. I think the same thing holds true when your wine of your tasting wine, you want to make sure that it's something that you like. Is this something that I want to drink further? Is it a good wine? What would it go well with? Is this something I want to age? Do I want to buy a case of this for ten years? Or is it something I want to take to the pool and just enjoy? Right? Immediately. Right, Right. Like buy it today. Drink it today. Right? Yeah. Well, it's just like time on clothes. You know, You try on a lot of clothes before you. That's the outfit. Yeah, Well made. I like this. I'm going to buy it. Same thing with wine tasting. You go. You go to these wine tastings in order to find out if you want to buy that wine. Not just you're going around drinking wine. Sure. And I really think the biggest takeaway is don't let someone else, some reviewer that rates them that writes this big, you know, Oh, that's terrible. Don't let that person tell you what you like and don't like. Yeah, you know, there's not a bad wine. It's just it may not be for you, right? You get. Yeah. You just got to find the thing that makes that make sense for you. And I think wine or food or anything that's. That's taste based like that. Obviously, like you said, everyone's taste buds different and everyone's palate is different. And even like the day or like, you know, we, we had some warm glasses earlier. We had to make sure came back back to room temperature. Right. All those factors go into whether or not you like a glass of wine. Right? Right. So let's let's talk about this wine. Okay. Let's let's let's taste a little bit of this wine to tell you anything about this wine.

And that's what you got to put me on the spot. Well, no, I don't want to. You're just going to go and look at it and tell me what you smell. Okay, All that. Okay, There's no. Let's do that. I just want you to find out for yourself what this is versus me telling you, okay? And then I'm going to I'm going to challenge my podcasting skills to describe what we're doing here for those not watching on YouTube, but listening. So because we don't have a right, you know, it's true. It's a it's a it's the lighting is a little funky in here. But the good thing is it's a dark red, which I'm happy about. It is a red wine. Let's see what let's see how on the nose. Okay, I'm getting, um, some berry, some blackberry, and a little bit of pepper. Not much. You're really good at this. Not a lot of tip. So typically, the reds are go for are pepper and butter. And I'm not getting any butter and barely any pepper, but I am definitely getting some BlackBerry. I'm not getting any chocolate. Hmm. Okay. So I would say this what it is. I know. But I would say that this is it's not a deep red. 
I would say it's a not and it's not necessarily like ribs. It's kind of middle of the road red. Yeah, it's still a big one. Okay. Yeah. And I'm smelling kind of some dirt on there. A little bit of some some some, some. Some earthiness, but not red fruit for me. But not mineral. Not necessarily like you do often on white. 

Right, Right. Okay. But I mean, I think there's like some vanilla in there. So now let's see. We got some decent legs for those of you listening. But there's no legs or when you, uh, that's going to tell you that, you know, it's probably it's not a light alcohol wine right in the body of it. A little density. That's all it tells you, right? If it's a good wine or there's a lot of myth and there's a lot of myths around that, there's a lot of and there's a lot of posturing around wine. Right. And that's what really wears me out. Yeah. And that leads back to that intimidation factor we talked earlier, which keeps people away from it. And people need to understand, right? You said whether it has good legs or not, whether all those other factors. Do you like it or not? Yeah. Do you like it or not? And is this a wine that is lasting? Is it quality? So I'm sorry. Go. We're going to taste it. All right, let's do it. Well, Kelly swishing around a little bit in her mouth like a professional. Oh, yes. She's got much better technique than I do. I'm drinking wine, and she's tasting wine here bigger than I thought it was going to be actually bigger on the palate than it was on the nose. But easy to drink. Fantastic. I'm getting more of them. I'm getting more dirt now and I'm getting more umami. Okay. Yeah, I know. I love that's one of my favorite words in all of this. So fun to say. It's like this. Almost like a savory kind of. Yeah. You know, that's an indicator that's a little older. Um, so, yeah, there's a lot of different things going on here. Yeah, this is. This is a great wine. This is a wine that when you do, tell me what it is, I'm going to be happy to put it on my list to, to try again, because I like it a lot.

And you're going to laugh when I tell you how much it costs. I was going to ask you at some point. I was going to I was going to bring up the conversation. The fact that we've talked about, if you like wine, then it's a good wine. But also just because it's expensive, does it mean it's a great glass of wine and vice versa? And or it could be very inexpensive and it can still be a great tasting. While the wine I had a wine recently, um, it was I think it was probably $250, $300 a bottle and it was just way too big, way too big for me. I go for the more I like older wines and you know, and it was a Napa Mountain fruit wine. I won't mention the name, but it was it was a good wine. It was a solid wine. I would have enjoyed it had it been older, older, older. Right. That's when come back in five or ten years and see what that. Yeah. But, but the fact that it had such big fruit on it means that you can age it for a long time Right. It just wasn't old enough. It doesn't mean it was bad. This one I had this is this, this is a it's called Vineyard Cotterell It's from Rioja in Spain. Okay. It's a 2015 reserva, So it means it's got some age on it put out. And um, yeah, so it's mainly Tempranillo, probably some good not dry and it's 13 and a half percent alcohol, so it's really not as high as some.

Yeah, it's still pretty big. And the fact that it's eight years old and it still has that much fruit on it, it's I feel like it's a really good wine. Pretty good indicator. I don't drink as much Spanish wine, but I'm like in this one a lot. Spanish wine is a great value. Um, that makes sense. It's funny when I have it, I like it, but I never think about it until someone serves it to me. There we go. Yes, Because you've nailed your first read with me perfectly. All right. And guess what? This costs retail. See it? You've already tip your hat. Then it's going to be much less expensive than I. Then I think it's going to be. Yes.

$50. No, 20, 20. This is an amazing wine for $20. That's my point. That's a great value. I buy a case of it. A $20 should. Yes. Yes, for sure. Yeah. So that's I mean, that's the big thing is that, you know, you, you can find good wine, right, for under $25 all day long. Right. You know I, I buy wine everywhere. You know, I obviously have great connections to. Sure. The number of wine clubs that are in California. I mean the industry, you know, so I get these. But you you feel confident because you're doing all this work and you've research and you have all this understanding. And so there are a lot of people right now they're listening to podcasts, like and they're saying, I, I don't know, I don't even know where to start. So what's your like top five?

Like how to get started with wine? And then after that, I'm going to ask you kind of the top five mistakes people make, but start with to start with with, you know, how how to get really going. Yeah, I think drink wine. Yeah, a lot of wine. And it doesn't have to be scholastic like I have been doing. It can just be dry trying wines that you've never had before and you just don't know, you know, make friends with the guy at the wine shop, you know, if you are near for sure. There's some great ones here in Oklahoma City. Yes. And that's one of the reasons, too. You know, ten years now, maybe 12 years ago now in Oklahoma, chase other liquor laws. This has popped up in my timeline recently, I was congratulating our friend Stephanie Bice for getting the liquor laws changed in Oklahoma when she was a state senator. And every Twitter back in the day right. Everyone said, well, now if big box can sell wine and spirits and High point beer, then it's going to crush liquor stores. I don't know of a liquor store that's gone out of business since those liquor laws changed because we don't go to liquor stores to get the best price or or the biggest selection of the major brands. We go there to get specialty items and to have that conversation. Like you said, your wine to me, make make friends with the wine people at your local liquor store or somewhere that you go on a regular basis be try otherwise, right? Because they're in there on the daily basis. You know, that's their job because they're tasting those wines where they put them on their shelves or even choose to put them on their shelves. And so they know. They know what they do. Right. Same thing with with some of your better restaurants where they have a white wine program where they're not just taking whatever the stripper gives them, but they're selecting wines to go with their menu they're tasting, then having conversations.

They try new things, especially if you can buy it by the glass, because you really get a chance to experiment with for not a lot of money. And if it if it's not great, you know, it's it's exactly go get you another one. There's so many topics that Wright has brought up that I started. Oh, that's great. But that's exactly why you know what, social media, I take those topics into a post, you know, because there is a big write, you know, thing about just choosing wines on the wine list. You know, how do you find the right wines? The store. Yeah, you know, like the top five. Okay. So back right, right, right. So you said that you said drink wine, make a make. Right. There's so many great websites. Sure. Vivino wine searcher. I mean, I haven't had every wine. I'm familiar with most wine as far as the countries and the styles and the grapes. But I'm not going to know if this is a good winemaker versus that one. Right? There's so many you know, you've got the the World Wide Web. That's right. The World Wide Web. Yeah. So you can just, you know, look it up when you're at the stores, like, is this a good value even if you're going to the restaurant, you know, before you go there. Yeah. Look up the wine list and see are the are these good violet values? Are they good wines? The same way we learn anything else? Right, right, right. You just, you know, and just get advice from friends. Also, there's you know, there's books out there. One of my favorite books, and I don't work for them. Wine Folly. It's a great book for a beginner. It's got great infographics, it's well-written. It's easy to understand, you know, there's newsletters you can subscribe to, right? You know, take your information in bite sized pieces. I do a newsletter on a weekly basis, and all I do is give a wine tip, a wine region and a grape, and I cover that in bite sized pieces. So, you know, week by week you can understand, okay, this is what happens in Napa Valley.

This is what the Pinot noir grape is going to be all about. You know, and when I tip my shirt was, you know, the white, white excuse me, the right wine temperature serving, you know, versus, you know, a chilled wine versus a very chilled wine cellar temperature. You know, there's a lot of confusion around that. Sure. Just things like that. Just take things in bite sized pieces and have fun with it. Perfect, perfect ideas about how to make yourself just feel more confident, more comfortable in the idea of drinking wine or buying wine, giving it as gifts, etc.. All right. So what are the top five mistakes that people make? Hmm. Well, I or let me let me rephrase that question because we don't want to make someone feel like they're making a mistake. What are the top five kind of myths or things that people are told by other people that goes back to that intimidation factor? And it's like, stop listening to the people tell you it has to have great legs or it has to have this out the other and and just, you know, dive in and have some great wine. Right. I think there's the whole like the grocery store mass produced wine versus expensive wine. That's a that's a whole discussion because there's things like, you know, the grocery store wine, you might have two different wines on the shelf. They're the exact same. Yeah, it's just got different labels. So that's a whole other topic. So I think just maybe even just, you know, branching out from the grocery store and you don't have to spend tons and tons of money, but I think you could still go to more of a specialized wine shop and still get really good bottle of wine right, for a great price, Right? I would say that's something that you might, you know, maybe a misstep like thinking you're going to learn all about wine and get all these great wines when you only shop at the grocery store. Right? Okay. Not that you can't. You can, but yeah, but I would also say only going by the the shelf, they can't shelf talkers.

You know, it's like oh Robert the little tags, right. Yeah. Robert Parker's a controversial figure anyway. I mean, what kind of wines does Robert Parker like? So he's going to write, you know, maybe that's not your style. Okay, If I had to rate wines, I would. I would give reds much better scores than whites. That's because of what you like. That's what I like. So that's that's another thing. Just don't don't be influenced totally by the scores. And it's a great place to start, but don't be influenced by that. I would also say don't limit yourself to a certain type of wine. You know, like you were talking about your love of Napa caps. I've done a tasting. I did a tasting a couple of weeks ago and it was cap adjacent wines. Okay. I brought out some malbec from Argentina. You know some or low just some different things that are just kind of in that same realm but just a little bit different so people can see that there are different things like this. This is you know, yes, Spanish, real hot. Yeah. This is something you should be drinking. Yeah, and I will because I loved it. But those are those are just a few things. I think the main thing is just don't limit yourself and don't let other people tell you what to drink. Right. 

Last question. We're going to bring it back to business, right? A business podcast and you have a new business. And we were talking before the camera started and my first eye rolling. So want to have this conversation again is the the ability to start a business with a website or with a course or something like that, as opposed to the old days of having to have a brick and mortar having to like if you're going to be a wine expert, you have to, you know, have a warehouse full of wine and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. So as someone who has has a new business, you're in startup mode. How did you go from, you know, this would be fun to do and I have passion for this. And I now if I could figure out a way to make this a business and was it 5 minutes, 5 hours, five weeks, and did you start writing notes or did you call people like, how did you go from I think this is something I want to do and I need to find a way to make money doing it, too. Here's here's the plan. Here's how I'm going to do it. Well, I think it was just seeing what other people were doing all over the country. And the beauty of social media. Yeah. Is that, you know, the things that I do, I'm not in competition with anybody. I don't have competitors that were like, I'm going to cut my prices. And no, no, we are a wine community. Yeah. And I saw a couple of people on Instagram, honestly, that were doing all these things that I'm now doing, and I thought, that looks like a blast. That looks so fun because I was exploring how can I, how can I do wine? What, what, what is my role in the wine industry?

And, you know, because of the fact that we travel so much, I couldn't really think about doing any kind of, you know, 9 to 5 job where I was, you know, working for a distributor or selling wine. So I had to make it work. It could be virtual, it could be on my own time and using my network and my passion. And so I saw people that were and I met someone actually at one of the courses I did in Napa Valley that she's doing this kind of same concept in San Diego where she actually sells wine, but she's doing these kind of settings where, you know, you're in an educational forum, right? You're teaching people. But, you know, there's layers that you can add, layers you can add on to this. Right? So you actually took a little bit of a problem, could go have just a regular 9 to 5 job that would would fit a passion you have. But instead you took that problem and turned it around and made it an opportunity. Right. And that's of what we do. Yes. If we come from nonprofit. Yeah. Every day we take every problem and make it operative. Zero. Yes. All the free advertising, we get people to be on boards to help us with marketing, you know, all those things. So it's, you know, what can I do with my knowledge and still help people? Well, you know, I can I built my own website, you know, using a little you know, using can be a good starting place. 
Yeah. So I'm just, you know, I'm starting small because there's only so much time I can do this right. You know, you can just start with these resources. And then when I build on to maybe other programs within this or add on layers, then we'll see what happens. And last thing I want to emphasize what Kelly said about it's not about competing with each other. It's about embracing your strengths, your situation, where you're at and who you can serve, and the way you can serve them. And other people doing similar things are going to do what they do, where they do with who they do it for. Right? And it's all good, right? I think that that's the biggest part of being a small business owner is the fact that we're all in this together. And there's some really good people out there and you just have to ask for help.

This has been my friend Kelly Maguire Wine with Kelly. You can find out more at wine with Kelly Dotcom. Make sure you spell it correctly. Kelly Why Make sure you get that second E in there. Wine with telecom. Of course, that link will be in the show notes for sure. I might even tell people exactly what bottle of wine we're drinking here as well. In the show notes. I appreciate you coming on and giving us a different perspective about how to start a business and follow a passion based on something that that made sense to you and your head before it ever made sense on paper. That's right. 

Thank you. Thank you so much for being on the podcast Kelly.

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