E154 Christen LaRochelle

This mixed guest is Kristen Larocia, currently living in the New England area, Kristen got her start the industry in her early teen years, working every job possible from buzzer to manager. Eventually, Kristen landed a job at a wine bar in Chicago that sparked her interest in wine and spirits. This interest led to Kristen's current role where she manages a portfolio of fine wine and craft spirits and regularly leaves educational events for consumers and trade partners alike. In her spare time, Kristen is the producer and host of a Wine and Spirits podcast called The Booze Hustle.

Make sure you check out her show on all podcast platforms or check her show notes for the links for The Booze Hustle. Enjoy the show. Alright, welcome back to another episode of the industry podcast. I'm Kip, this is Dan, what is going on?

I just hang it up, be an awesome as always, you know, and I'm not a day of paradise, it's always alright to try to leave. I never think so with you. You know, so just fighting with the city of Cambridge, fire department. Alright, well you know, I'll tell you this, that fucking bar opening is never going to go up in flames.

You're going to be able to surround it with kerosene and light it on fire and it's going to be just fine. Oh, that's good because a lot of keros that does burn down actually. That's true. Well, the problem for me is that if it ends up being a shitty ride with this bar, then I'm not going to be able to burn it down for the best money.

So that's annoying. Oh, but hopefully by the end of the month, the Argyle Arms will be reopened in Cambridge. So you're going to want to check that out. Stay tuned to the Argyle Arms 2023 on Instagram to check out when exactly we're opening.

Or you could just call our local fire inspector and he'll tell you. In Waterloo, it's Babylon Sisters, Babylon Sisters bar on Instagram, lots of fun stuff going on there, always follow our Instagram there and downtown Kip, they're sure to run Speakeasy. That's actually going to run bar on Instagram. We have a burlesque show coming up at the last Friday of the month.

We're in May, correct? We're still in May. We have a burlesque show with Sassy Ray who has been a guest on this show. And so you can go back and check that out and you want to come check out the show as well.

I think that's all the self promotion I need to be doing right now. If you want to be a guest on the show, reach out. It's at the industry podcast on Instagram or info at the industrypodcast.club. You should subscribe.

Great. Review the show. That helps. And if you like the podcast artwork, make sure you check out the work of Zach Hannah who does the lovely design work for us.

You can find them at zachhana.co. Okay. Enough about us. Let's talk about Kristen LaRichel.

Joining us from Connecticut or New England, whatever you prefer. See is the host of the Booze Hustle podcast, which you should all be checking out. I just listened to it. It was fantastic.

We'll talk a little bit about that, but we're also going to talk about your career, Preston. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you?

I'm okay. I'm a little hungover. I mentioned that before we started recording, but I'm doing a twisted T right now. So hopefully that helps.

Oh, yeah. I'm just drinking sparkling water like a jerk. I got a question for you. I got a question for you.

Before you ask me questions. What are you going to talk about when you don't have the bar to open in these fights with the city? How are you going to open the show? The intros are going to be much shorter.

Just promo and other show. Exactly. That's how it used to be. And then I started the crazy idea opening another bar, but there's always more shit on the horizon to complain about.

I'm sure I'll find something. I got a list. You can use mine. Okay.

Okay. So, Kristen, let's talk a little bit about you and how you got into the industry to begin with. I know you've had a long career in the industry. So let's talk about that first and we'll talk about podcasts at the end.

Give us a little history of Kristen LaRichel. Dang. I'm not sure if you're going to get into the podcast because I have to encourage them. Well, I mean, I've been in the industry.

I haven't been in the industry for a very long time. I started in the restaurant industry when I was 13. I like to say I was raised by wolves. So I grew up needing money really quickly and a way to get out of my house.

So I started working in restaurants very young and I like to joke that I've done every single job there is to do in a restaurant except I used to take the clean toilets, but then as a restaurant, I mean, I drank clean toilets. So that doesn't work anymore. But yeah, no, I started on the East Coast serving bartending, bartending my way through Chicago, got the stupid idea to go into management. Like, you know, you get that dumb idea where you're like, I can do it better.

And then you're like, shit, working twice as much. We have to make half the money. Yeah, so where's fucking job in the industry? Yeah.

Yeah. And then the whole time that you're just like, why did I do this? I have keys. I don't want keys.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I was in Chicago for 11 years. I worked in pretty amazing places. But then, you know, I got older and wanted to see people again.

So I got into Wine and Spirits distribution and I've been doing that for about 11 years. And now I work as an educator and in sales and in my spare time, I host a industry podcast. Right. So you have also done the WSA courses.

And when did you first discover like this love for Wine and Spirits and wanting to educate yourself about them? Yeah. So I really didn't have a love for Wine. I was bartending in the early aughts in the bonkers time to be a bartender where you were making drinks called Alabama Slammer and B I had this wine director named Shad with an S.

And if I had had any other type of wine like teacher, I would have been not into it. Because there's a level of pretension, right? That comes along with a lot of people in the wine industry. And Shad was just this totally chill dude with long hair and he really got a lead Zeppelin t-shirt under his button down and he's like, oh, let's talk about this vigel today.

I was like, oh, and he was the right type of educator for me. And I'm a nerd. So I realized that the more I knew, the more I could never know everything. And I loved that.

It was like the chase of never knowing as much about anything like because there's always something to learn. So that really kind of sparked my interest. And I didn't really get back into the serious education piece until I got into the distribution. You know, believe it or not, people won't buy things for you know, if you don't know what you're talking about.

You know what's funny about that though, it's not going to interrupt you. But I have a new wine rep who's coming by my businesses and he doesn't know shit. He was in, he was like a food rep for like a food delivery service. And I don't know.

So he came into do a tasting the other day and my chef was like, I know that guy. He used to sell me like lettuce, right? And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's in wine now.

He quit that food stuff and now he's in wine and he admittedly doesn't know shit about it. And he's like, so my chef was asking me, like, does that bother you? Like, don't you, wouldn't you prefer for your rep to know stuff? And I'm like, you know what, at this point, like I've tried enough wine.

I know what's going to work. That person to know that much. Like I, you're so cynical. You're like a grizzled seasoned industry person at this point.

Like you're like, I know what's going to work. We're the same age, bro. I'm sure of it. No, did you guys ever watch Parks and Recreation?

A little bit. Yeah. Okay. There's a character called Ram Swanson and he's like the really surly carpenter, masculine man.

And he has this one scene where he goes to a hardware store and his kid comes up to him and goes, oh, sir, can help you find something? And he looks at the kitty goes, I know more than you. You know, if you're with your wine reps. Yeah, a little.

Yeah. And there are like, there's certainly many reps who come to know a fucking blow more than I do. Some of them have been on this show and like it's always good to have somebody who does who can teach you stuff at the same time. I'm never done learning.

I like to learn things. But then you also have the annoying reps who just won't shut the fuck up about a wine. I'm like, I'm never going to remember any of what you're telling me right now. So what's your style when you're selling?

So those reps that you're talking about, they won't shut out. Those are the get lost in the sauce type people. Like they get so lost in the sauce of their own bullshit that they don't realize that the listener is not listening anymore. Right.

So I think the best way to talk about anything is to just have a conversation like you're talking to your friend about something and really simplify it to here's why you should have it like here's why it applies to you and your establishment. Give you a reason to want it first and then follow up with the story because I feel like people they come at you with the story so hard. And if you're a bar manager and owner and you've heard you've heard 9,000 different brands pitch to you. If somebody comes to you directly like quick to the point, here's something that I think is going to work well for your program.

Here's why. And then they're peeks. They're interested. And then they want to know why many of you tell them you tell them the fucking story.

And then they're already interested in what you're saying. There's definitely like two types of people. There's people who are like, you know, they wax poetic about it and they're talking about fucking bricks. Meanwhile, like guys, like I've got 700 things to do.

If this guy does not shut up. You're going to lose them. Well, and the part of it, like, and you would notice as well as anyone is like selling wine, you do kind of need the story. Like that sells the wine more than anything else.

Your average guess who comes in doesn't know shit about wine anyway. Right. Like it's like, oh, yeah, it's red. It's white.

But if you have a cool story to tell them about the winery or the winemaker, then that really helps move it. Yeah. And the story can't be it's been in a barrel for 10 months. Yeah, nobody cares.

Nobody cares. It's you have to have like something interesting about it because there are 9,000 different spheres to choose from. There's 9,000 different from more than 9,000. You're getting make wines to choose from.

It's like, how is this applicable to me and what's interesting about it? And I think people are really looking for authenticity now. They don't want to buy some mass produced bullshit that everybody else has. They want to have something that's mass produced.

You're making you feel like it's something that's got a great story that I can identify with for sure. Yeah. Do you find that more and more restaurants and bars are trending towards like having consignments out wines like from smaller vineyards than going for like the big? I don't know like a Robert Mondavi or whatever.

So pre-COVID, yes. Right. But I think that it got harder and harder during COVID and after to rely on smaller producers when there wasn't a guarantee of product and people can't hand sell something. So they're going to go towards something people might already know.

And now that we're kind of coming out of that a bit, I think you have to have a mix. This is something I say to Psalms all the time in education. It's cool. If you want to be the cool guy who has the esoteric interesting orange wines on your list, but you have to sell them.

You have to be there to sell them. And if you want to day off, which never happens, but if you want to day off, you have to be able to also have things on your list. That will make you money. You have to have a big name.

You don't have to buy trash, but having some big names to do the work for you and make the GP for you is great. And then it gives you the time and frees up your budget to buy cool stuff that you're passionate about. I think you have to do both things. Yeah, I kind of learned that the hard way at Babylon because I was very, very focused on having a super unique list where it was either, like we focus on female winemakers and much of the can and then also, like we'd like to have either just unusual grapes that people are not familiar with or a grape that's like grown in a region that you wouldn't expect it to be grown in.

Right. So I was trying to do that forever. And then still people and like fighting against like, Oh, I have a calicad. Like I'm just, I'm like, I don't want it on the list.

I just like, you can get a calicad anywhere else in the city, right? And I've had a calicad for like a last year on the list. People like that they like it. No, I know.

They like what they like. And this is the other thing I've, I would tell you something and I don't know how I feel like telling you this, but I'm going to tell you this anyway because we're not recording. I'm reconciled the feeling of being uncool that I used to have when I joined the employer that I have now all of my boutique. I worked to find my boutique distributor and they were saying shit to me like, you're going to work on the death star.

What the fuck? And at first I was like, oh, but I've reconciled it in a few different ways. I had a boss. He was awesome.

He used to say shit to me like, you know, your mouth does not connect to your wallet. Like the things that will make you money or not the things that you like always. And I've realized that people like what they like and it's okay. Like you can appeal to all of those people.

You don't have to be the coolest person always. And I had a boutique wine shop owner. He's a good friend of mine. We used to work together.

He shits on my employer all the time on Instagram. Like it means every time you post one, if I like it or laugh at it, he'll go, oh, sorry. And I sent him a message back the other day and I said, you know what, dude, I checked my retirement account the other day. And I realized that I'm going to be able to do stuff for my kids that I never had growing up.

So that's okay. Yeah, you'll be fine. Yeah. Well, it's good too that you've already sort of done the small boutique thing as well, right?

Like maybe that makes it a little easier for you to work for like a bigger conglomerate. Like it's all, you know, like as you go along, it does become like you're still doing the same job, but you do need to make the money, right? Like at the end of the day. So I went just selling spirits.

Like I'm always interested in this because I feel like wine is very easy to sell to bar owners and restaurant owners because most people like wine and they're interested in like trying cool stuff with spirits a little different because I'm more hyper focused on a spirit of being like, will I be able to sell this, which is kind of counterproductive because really the beauty of buying a spirit is the only to buy one bottle, right? Like where is with the wine you're going to buy at least six. So I should be more focused on am I going to sell that wine, but to me, I'm like, oh, that's delicious. Let's go.

But with a spirit, I'm kind of like, I won't be able to move that here. No one's going to buy it. So what's your trick for selling spirits? Yeah, I think it's a there's a couple different things.

I think that you have to be able to come with a fully formed plan for it. If you're, if you're like, for example, if you're a rubber something and you're pitching a spirit to someone, if it's something that is a higher price point and you don't, it's not going to be a well, you're not, you're not providing them a cocktail recipe. Like you have to have a plan for that. Like what are they going to use it for like and giving the owner of the establishment, the vision to like this is not just going to collect dust on your back bar here's what you can use it for and like really be proactive about it.

I actually love selling spirits. Like, as you can see behind me, I've collected a lot of things. I don't drink as many of them as I used to, but I don't know. I think that with selling spirits, the story is more important because there's only, there's only a number of ways to distill a spirit and what they're made from.

And the making of them is not super different. You know, it's just like the story of the actual brand itself. That's what you really have to lean into. Like, I think people really want to support things that they feel a type of connection to, especially with like a Gavi spirits, you know, there's so much of Gavi spirits now and there's a big difference between celebrity brand and Gavi spirits and then real like Gavi spirits and just being able to speak to the finer points of both.

And understand that there's a place for both of them. But maybe we use the celebrity to kill on the back bar that will just that's your big name thing that sells itself. And then you put the cool interesting artisanal Gavi spirits in your cocktail program. Yeah.

And you can use that stuff on the rail as well. Like if I know what you mean, like the celebrity brands are going to sell themselves. People see them on the back bar. They're going to order them, right?

Okay, let's talk a little bit about the booth hustle. What did you, what like what prompted you to start a podcast? Why did you decide you want to do it? Why do you want to do one about the service industry and yeah, let's start there.

Okay. So during COVID, I have a very lovely friend. She's an actress. She's been in a lot of things.

And definitely, she's also one of the star. She's also one of the stars of Star Trek Lower Decks and she's a musician and her name's Tawny Newsom. She has a really popular podcast called Yo is This Racist, which is crazy and not industry related at all. But during the pandemic, they started, they broke away from a podcast network that they were on and they just started to create a lot of their own original content.

And I was at home, obviously, like many people trying to find some hobbies. And we partnered up for a podcast series at the time called Dream Culture. And it was just really just her and I talking shit to be honest with you. We worked together in bars in Chicago for years.

And those episodes were great. Rest in peace, Dream Culture. All righty. But I wanted to continue with it because I had a lot of fun doing it and I realized like, you know, this is my wheelhouse and then she's an actress and a musician and she's like, I don't have time for this.

So I decided to go on my own. I was lucky enough to inherit a really amazing producer at the time who makes several very big podcasts, mainstream podcasts. And he was nice enough to do a couple seasons with me. And the podcast is great.

It's short informal interviews where I talk to people in and around the wine industry. So not necessarily the restaurant industry hospitality, but like winemakers, distillers, I've had actors, comedians, anyone who wants to talk about those essentially. But yeah, it's been really great. And this is my first season producing it 100% myself, which terrifying audio engineering is a new scale of mine, apparently.

But yeah, I know it's great. Yeah, I don't know how to do any of that shit. That's why Dan's here. Oh, one of my Dan was so quiet.

One of us has a big mouth and the other one knows how to do shit. I wish I had another me. So how do you go? So you've been producing it by yourself for the last season.

And what season are we on now? We're on season three. Great. Congratulations.

How many episodes? I think I'm in. Not a lot. You guys are like way up there.

You're like 150 or something, right? I think I'm only less than 40. Maybe 35. And I should probably know this.

Right. When people are going to go check your podcast out after this, they'll be able to check out what number you're on. It's so much time you take off between recording and seasons. So the reason I'm producing it myself now is because we were taking off a really long time before because we were just doing them seasonally, like every six months.

But I was recording episodes and then we were releasing some of those episodes like months later. And I don't know about you guys, but I can't listen to an episode in fucking January where I was talking about how it is outside. So I couldn't do it. I'm not disciplined enough to not just talk randomly about random shit.

So I had to make sure it was timely and unfortunately my producer had way too much on his plate. So now I'm trying to do them weekly, which doesn't always happen. It's a lot of work to do everything by yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. Do it over the weekend. Plus having a full time job. And kids.

Yeah. My blessing in your dining time. Just recording. Okay.

So you're on your through season and like, okay, you have less episodes. But you haven't pretty impressive guests list. We were talking about this before we started recording. How do you book the kids?

Do you do all the booking yourself? I do. Wow. So how did like tell me how you go about getting like John Malkovich on your podcast?

Okay. Well, that one I feel like it would be cheating if it made it sound like I got John Malkovich to be on my podcast. My friend who I was talking about for Tawny, she's an actress. She did a Netflix show called Space Force that had Steve Corral and John Malkovich and you know, me being shameless.

I was like, um, you know, you have to get Malkovich to be on my podcast. And he actually has a winery in the South of France. And these are bonkers wines like bonker, Pino or Cabernet blends like, and, um, yeah, and so I asked her very nicely. And he was, he's just like, most random cool dude who was just like, no, okay, I'll do that.

That's amazing. Yeah. But Tony has, they're very expensive. Right.

Yeah. That does sound like a weird blend. So I'm just very interested in how it turned out. I mean, he likes them.

And I think to be totally honest, if he doesn't sell the bottle, he's not that bummed. I think he makes them for himself and to lower his overhead of wine consumption. I don't know. I know they were trying to get him distributed here.

It's, you know, it's like a tough sell. I don't know. I don't want to talk shit about Malcure. So fair enough, fair enough.

So I listened to your Daily Graph one, which was superluminate. That guy obviously likes to talk. So what's, like, for your interview style, I don't know. I'm not sure if you're watching our show.

It's very much guest to guest. Like some guests, it's like pulling teeth to try and get some information out of them. And you can tell that they're very nervous about being on a show or whatever. And then other guests, it's just like, I barely had to say a word and just let them go.

Yeah. I know which bucket I've fallen to. That's good. These are the easy ones.

That's true. I'm trying to make you look good. You know, I feel like it's, wait, what was the question? Like, how do you find a guest to guess about like, um, did you ever struggle to draw them out or, you know, yeah.

Yeah. Well, I find that if I just act like a dumb dumb people tend to like chill out a little bit, you know, my stylist, I very much, uh, disarmed people with humor. I think that's, that's just the way that I go. I, um, I think in the last couple of years, I don't know what happened.

I think it's getting older and just having a lot less shit to give about stuff, but I lost my nervousness gene, whatever that thing is, when you get up in front of people and you're nervous, I don't have it anymore. And I think it's because I do so much education and I'm up in front of groups of people so often in the market, like, you know, it, it can sooner events and dinners and, you know, I'm the person that will come in and that they'll have come in to do the whiskey seminar or a wine tasting or a wine dinner. I think it just, I've lost it. I think it's a lot of people that talk to people.

I think me not being nervous talking to them makes them not nervous talking to me. I don't know. Yeah. I think, no, I think that makes sense.

It's the same. Like I've had to do it shit ton of public speaking in my life as well. And you just, once you've done it enough, it doesn't even bother you anymore. It's so weird.

Like, just, I totally, it just kind of falls away. And how would you describe your podcast in general? Would you describe it like formal or more conversational? Like tell our listeners why they should check it out.

Yeah. So this is, I actually said this to the interview that came out today. I interviewed a wine maker from Napa, Sally Johnson Bloom, who's incredible. And I was explaining to her in the beginning, I was like, this isn't guilt.

All right. We're not going to like put people to sleep for an hour and a half where we talk about bricks. Right. And she's like, oh, we'll talk about bricks.

It's easy for me. I'm like, oh shit. We'll talk about some bricks. But no, I always just say like, I just like to know like the whole concept of the booze hustle in general is that everyone in our industry, like we all have the most crazy weird diverse backgrounds.

I find it fascinating because every one of us has not ever just had a one job. We're all hustlers. We've all done this and that and this and that to get where we are today. And I really love the story arc that brings us all to where we are in our career.

Just because you know, you talked to distillers where you know, that started out in horticulture and gardening and you talk to people. I interviewed a guy. He's the director of operations for Cornerstone restaurant group, which is a Michael Jordan's restaurant chain and he was a he was a ballet dancer. And I just I find it fascinating that like somehow we all ended up in these spots, but like we all have completely wild backgrounds.

It's not like I was on the Harvard Law trajectory from high school or I was I knew I wanted to be a doctor. You know, it's it's world is wild. Yeah. Do you feel like that because like whether it's distillers or winemakers or people are in the service industry, which is more what our show concentrates on?

Do you find that that's just because of the nature of the profession in a way that you almost almost everybody I know who does to still doing say service industries type jobs for like our age in our age group is they fell into it and did not expect us to be their career going like for their life and now they're still doing it. So maybe that's why it's like they in a way we all have more fascinating backstories because this is never where we meant to end up like you said not on the law school or med school trajectory. Yeah, I think it's that we all have ADHD. Yeah.

It's possible. I think it's just you know, you have like the dreamers and the thinkers and the people who can't sit still and the people that want to feel like they're in control of their own destiny and there's a real piece of that that exists in industry people. It's I make my day. I make my week how I want it to look.

Nobody is dictating it for me. Even if you have a boss that owns the bar even if you have a you know, a friend house manager that's a dick. You still feel like in control of your own destiny when you show up to work because you're engaging with a different group of people every day. You're getting to control the energy in the room.

I think there's a lot of powers that I think and I think the people that are drawn to that are really dynamic interesting. Some of the best work ethic people. I mean, I would hire anyone from the restaurant industry tomorrow to work in as a distributor just because the work ethic is unmatched. Every person I ever hired as a distributor manager from a restaurant background just crushed it.

They were just, you know, there was no expectation of like I clock in I clock out. It's that she doesn't exist. No. And I think this is like sort of a backlash from people who do our sort of jobs were living against like structure and repetitive.

Nobody wants to like you say punch that clock goes in an office and do the same thing. Like our industry does not attract that type of person. Now the flip side of that is we tend to we get a lot of flakes in our industry as a result. And we were talking about this before we started recording, but like the challenges of I always say joke with Dan that like he's getting an eye opening look into like what my life is trying to organize people to work at my bars when we're trying to book guests on the fucking show because how many of them play those at the last second is like herding cats.

Yeah. And I mean, there's a really an interview I did last week with Jill Cox and I don't know if you know, Carson, she's a bad ass. She's like a hospitality queen. She has four concepts in the states that are really incredible beverage programs.

And we talked about this at like so definitely listen to that episode, but we talked about how I think a lot of younger industry folks don't realize the opportunity that they have sometimes and they squander it, you know, especially like because it's not a job that comes with like a here's what you do here's a uniform. I mean, it's very like you show up. You can wear what you want sometimes depending on where you work. There's not like a formalized depending on where you were going to talk about like Olive Garden here, but we're talking about like in general, you have a framework that you have to follow, but there's a lot of flexibility within that.

And I think that freedom is good for some people and bad for others and it does attract more transient person who's figuring out what they want to do and they want to make some quick cash. And it's hard at the outset to look at that the people in an interview and be like, are you a transient person who's telling me what I want to hear this job or are you somebody who is a little wacky and fun, but like would crush it every night in this place like I think it's hard and you take chances on people and often it doesn't work out. Yeah, it is like it's one of the reasons that I like you know that there's like a work shortage for people in the service industry since COVID. A lot of people went and found other jobs.

I was and a lot of people in my like in my line work had any ownership side were panicking about this. I'm like, just give it time. They're coming back because people who are attracted to do like the real pros in the service industry. They don't they're not going to last up those other fucking jobs.

It's too much too much structure is too much repetitive. And they will be back like I remember when I was first got the industry people always even it's like I'm going to teachers college. I'm like, well, that's going to work out like, but there's always that job that they're going to right now. I find it's everybody wants to like they leave the service and I'm going to be a real estate agent and then that's not as easy as it sounds.

Yeah, that's a new way. I'm way. No, I feel like, you're right though, but I also feel like it kind of thinned out the superfluous people who didn't want to be there. And you got you had the people that stayed with the people that wanted to be there, you know, like the people that were invested in the business and making it work and hospitality in general.

They don't know nor do they want to do anything else about that. You know, I went to school for journalism. So I was going to be a writer that was when I was bartending and managing restaurants. I was like, well, I'm just going to be a writer one day.

So none of this matters. You know, turns out that didn't happen, but I figured out you could make money doing other things in the area I already knew a lot about, which is great. And that's probably all in a where we end up. But that's the translate to your podcast, at least.

There's that at least one day I will make as much money as my job. Right. Exactly. I'll be found it with getting advertisers on your podcast because we've had some advertising on ours, but it's been a bit of a struggle because it's a niche podcast that doesn't our reach is never going to be massive.

Like we're not going to be doing like what ESPN podcast numbers have to right. So have you had a struggle with? I know you do have eyes on your show. We've listened to it.

Yeah. So a couple of things. One, I think the reason that I try very hard to make my podcast listenable for anyone who's not in our industry is because I'd like there to be an aspect of, oh, this is just a fun conversation like Mark Merrin, you know, like where this is just two people talking about things that I find interesting and we can we sometimes will delve off into a philosophical concept or, you know, someone's life story that's really interesting. And I feel like that general perspective will help keep more people who are not necessarily in our industry engaged and appeal to a broader group like that.

My desire is I work in the wine and spirits industry, but I can't listen to wine and spirits podcast like don't hate on me. Like, please, like people give me so much shit for that. But I can't. I'm just like, if I have insomnia, I just have to put one of those on instantly.

Because, you know, the nerds are going to nerd and I'm a nerd, but like I'm not that kind of nerd. And so the nerds are going to listen to those niche. I can't really super into it regardless of whether it's entertaining or not. But like I'm trying to not just talk to them and trying to talk to them and everybody else who might just want to think fun to listen to in their car and make me about an interest somebody on it that they might like or whatever.

As far as advertising go, I mean, I think booze in general is going to be always a little bit hard to get people like the name of my podcast is also like I'm already kind of having a bunch of people and not wanting but surprisingly the advertisers that do it's surprising to make the ones that are on there. But you know, they're all just trying to I think they cast are not really wide and they try to just make money on whatever they can be going on. The podcasting frontier is still so very new. And for a while there was exploding with too many and there were too many people with a fucking microphone.

So I'm hoping it's simplifying again. Yeah, you got to figure because it does it is a commitment and it's a fair amount of work, right? So like you got to figure some of these ones that like a million sprouted out, especially over the pandemic, right? People were like, what the fuck am I going to do?

I'm not working on me as well as a podcast. I think that's what we did. That's why we're all here, Jim. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, you figure that some of those are going to cut back just because people aren't committed and don't want to do to work after a while because it sounds like anything to do. You get a microphone. You talk, right?

Oh, if I have a nickel, can I just tell you this really quick because this is industry related. But if I had a nickel for every time somebody said to me, Oh, cool podcast, I should do that. I'm going to do that before. Also, when I tell it, like when people here that I work in the wine and spirits industry, all the time people go, what a fun job.

Maybe I should do that. Getting the fact that the last like 25 years of my life, I've been doing this. Yeah. It's so insulting, right?

Like it's just like, Oh, you could anybody could do that. It's the same with it's akin to like, and actually, this is related to what you're doing is like people will come in and see me doing a wine tasting at the bar and they're like, well, don't you have the most fun job in the world? I'm like, fuck you. It's like your job is just so fun all the time.

Yeah, that's all I do is sit here and try wine 24 minute. I'm going to one up you. I'm not a one over. But I'm going to be here.

I do a lot of events where like I'll do a high and wine tasting. And for some reason, when a woman is behind a table and I'm not making this about women men, but I will say when a woman's behind the table pouring the wines, nine times out of 10, the assumption is I'm just like a paid agency lady that's there just a poor wine, which is fine because I do. I hire agencies all the time to show up in four one for things like the model of the car show. Exactly.

But when I start to talk about the wine, they don't immediately go, Oh, this person represents the winery. They just go, Oh, wow, you memorized a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

All the work you put into it, your case of like training and studying and working the job. Yeah. I'm going to get card and memorized it. Yeah.

Like, you know, like I do have a wine tasting tomorrow, but it'll be after waiting around for a guy to install a dishwasher for 14 hours and then like, you know, like, I do find that the tastings are a beautiful little reward at the end of the usually pretty annoying and boring week. Yeah. All right. Well, Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Everybody should check out the booze hustle. Where can they find it? Everywhere. Everywhere.

You just go outside it hits you in the face. Yeah, it's right there. Well, thanks so much. It was super fun.

You're a great interview and you're, we really like the podcast. It's awesome. Thank you. So keep it on with that.

Yeah. Oh, I will. Thank you. Yeah.

Come on the show. Yeah. Thanks, Chris.