E217 Miroki Tong

This week's guest is Meroki Tong. Meroki is a passionate enthusiast of all things wine, and she seeks to highlight not only the best wines for taste and value, but to introduce the world to the people behind the glass. Meroki is also the chief executive officer of the Story Engine Deck, which develops card-based, open-paromped creative tools for writers, game-masters, and educators. In our conversation with Meroki, she shares her journey from working in the theatre and film industry to becoming a wine enthusiast and blogger.

We talk about the challenges and complexities of the influencer marketing industry, the importance of maintaining standards and fair wages in industries plus a host of other topics. You can find Meroki on Instagram at 9 ounces please, and she is also the co-host of the podcast Tasting Together. Furthermore, Meroki is also an award-winning performer, producer, and musician currently working on an upcoming opera-metal EP under her artist name, Ma Zhong Witch, and you can find her on Spotify, Apple Music, and other major streaming platforms. Make sure you check out the show notes for all the links.

Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip. This is Dan.

How is it going? It's going very well, thanks. Doing fine, doing fine. Nice, how's your week?

Not too exciting, but fine. I did not get obliterated on a Christmas party. Congratulations. Thank you.

First time for everything. Yeah, I know. I should have done it though. It's the last one with this company.

Yeah, this is the time to say. Yeah, I know. I should have put it on because I still got to work with these people for a couple more weeks, but until we get traded off to the other company, I should have knocked a lot more back. Well, missed opportunity.

Well, maybe you can just do it next year's first Christmas party. That's true. Well, we got a business unit off site coming up next week. It'll be the last time I see a lot of those people.

There you go. It's on. Take care of it. Perfect.

Done and done. Yeah, yeah. One of my spots, Sugar Run at Sugar Run Bar. That's in downtown Kitchener where Babylon Sisters at Babylon Sisters Bar.

That's up down Waterloo. Come check out what we're doing there. And if you need booze or wine, I'm your guy for that too for Malibu or winery. Terawar wine imports and allore distilling code.

So that's kypb at Babylon Sisters dot C-A to get directly for any of that type of product. Boo spirit. That's the same thing. Boo spirit.

Wine. Boo spirit. It's all booze. Hey, that's commercial sales only or do you direct a home as well?

Direct a home, yeah. I'll probably bring it right to you. Alright. I do.

sales only or do you direct a home as well? Direct a home, yeah. I'll probably bring it right to you. Perfect, good thing to know for New Year's Parties, Christmas Parties.

That's right, we're coming up on those. And so if you want some wine that's consignment only and not available on the LCBO, or do some of the other great spirits from the Lord of the Silly, they have lots of cool liqueurs out right now, especially for your Christmas coffee. So yeah, hit me up. Sigh from that.

If you like what we're doing here on the show, you should subscribe, follow, rate, and review. That helps a great deal. It doesn't take very long to do. But apparently, the people tell us that helps us.

Sure does. And like I always like to say, just tell one other person. Apparently, typing in review will really help us. So please do that if you have a moment.

And if you'd like to be a guest on the show or provide support for the show, you can do that info at the industrypodcast.club. Or you can DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram. That's where the great art work from. The great Zacana exists at Zacana.co, Z-A-K, H-A-N-A-H.

That's the O that Zacana for all your graphic arts needs. Anything else you want to talk about? Nope, that's about covers everything for me. OK, well, good luck on your trip next.

We will be off for a couple of weeks because Dan is headed back to Europe for work. He says for work. Yes. There are a couple of days of fun next day ahead of time, though, so that should be good time.

So yeah, bear with us over the next little while between the holidays and Dan's work adventures. We will be a little more sporadic with posting. But keep following. Yep.

And aside from that, let's get to our guests joining us. Meroki Tong, how are you, Meroki? I'm doing great. And Dan, I want to know where Europe are going.

I'm going to spend a couple days in Trio, Germany, that I'm in Luxembourg for a part of the party party. Oh, it's like Christmas market land when you go. It sure is. So it's going to be fun.

You need to go check them out. They're going to be so much fun. That's exactly what we're doing. That's what we're doing.

That's what we're doing. Oh, nice. Years ago, and I distinctly remember I really wanted a very Eastern European style fur hat. But I didn't want real fur.

But I remember going to a vendor and asking me to try another fur hat. And I'm putting on the hat. And I'm asking, I'm like, is this real fur? And because I want to fake fur.

But I said, is this real fur? And he looked at me. I had to find him deep. And he's like, of course it's real fur.

I'm there. Oh my god. There's a whole animal in my head right now. That's all of me.

So yeah. Well, I'll be expecting some sort of present from this Christmas market then. But I also don't want to wear the animal on my head. So if you could avoid that.

I'm putting it for clothes for everyone. Because I took your job. I'm very glad that you took my job. I ended off to anyone better.

Well, no. Yes. You were very nice in helping me to get that job, actually. So thanks again for that.

And it's great. Yeah. There's lots of good wines from Terroir in Port. But that's how Meroque and I met, which she was my original sales rep for Terroir.

But she has done a whole bunch of things in wine. So we're going to talk about all of that. You're also an actress, a singer, lots of shit going on. So I don't know.

What do you want to start? How did you get into wine or wine sales or service industry, anything related to that? Yeah. So I guess maybe we need to like reason she brought up by acting past.

I think I've been at the rewind, I don't know, almost 20 years now to baby Meroque. So I was a kid that was supposed to like any good Chinese daughter become an engineer. But I've always had a huge passion for the arts. And one day on the cost of nearing graduating high school, I kind of turned around and said, dear parents, I actually love theater.

And I am no longer going to be an engineer. And I'm going to go to school for theater. Thanks, bye. They were highly displeased, please.

And so I went and pursued that career. And I entered that industry. So I think a lot of us know in the acting world, you end up working in hospitality a lot to supplement your bills because it's one of the few jobs out there that has the flexibility to allow you to also pursue your acting dreams or your performing streams. I spent well over a decade in the performing arts.

So I started in theater. I moved into film. I did live events. I founded an arts festival in Kitchener War, Lou, actually.

So you and I actually from the same hometown, kept like I was born and raised in Kitchener War, Lou. I started an arts festival there dedicated to alternative arts and culture. So like comics and science fiction and fantasy and underground art, like graffiti art and tattoo design. And so I kind of was an actor producer.

I kind of fell into producing probably because of my engineering brain. I was very good at crunching a spreadsheet, really good at logistics, the things that a lot of artists not necessarily are good at. And spent a lot of that. And then eventually kind of burnt out of the career.

It's a really tough, like, let's just be real, like being an entertainment is incredibly tough. It's a really, really cutthroat. And I eventually moved into business. And now I had a company, a publishing company that actually creates a deck of cards called the Story Engine Deck.

StoryEngine Deck.com. We are a deck of writing prompts for people who are creative writers, people who want to build campaigns for Dungeons and Dragons, or even educators to use in school. So we have three decks, Story Engine Deck, Deck of Worlds, which is for world building and our newest deck, which actually just is in the mythical film right now because you crowd funded it last year. So it's going to enter our stores now.

It's called Lore Master's Deck. And it's for leaving lore. So it's great because I got to bring back my kind of passion for the arts. I'm bringing my business expertise to it.

So throughout this entire process, just wine. Wine permeated it. I'm kind of like a super nerd in all things. Wine wasn't necessarily my first love when it came to the boozy beverage.

I think I was definitely like the cocktail girl first. And then I got into beer. Actually more like life circumstances demanded that I learned to like beer because I lived in Northern Ireland for a year for school. And everything is very expensive there except beer.

And I was like, as a starving student, you're going to have to learn to love beer. So I got to beer in Scotches. And then one day I just decided to like go down the rabbit hole of wine and just fell in love with it. Fell in love with learning about it, love learning all the different things about it.

And just spent years like visiting winemakers and producers and winerays and just asking psalms. You know, I went and we gave me the time of day, just questions. And I loved it so much. I always wanted to do something about it.

Like I wanted to combine my, you know, my like, theater background, performing arts background with food in some way. I definitely watched a lot of food network. And I was always like, oh, I want to create my own like wine show. Never did.

And then during, you know, the 2020 when this bad thing happened in the world and never wanted to shut away. And I like many people probably questioned the meaning of my life thought to myself. You've had this huge passion of yours for over a decade that you've kind of auto-diactically learned but done nothing with. Why don't you start a blog on Instagram, super low stakes?

Worst case scenario, no one will ever read what you wrote. Best case scenario, you'll have a chance to touch the industry that you had such a huge passion for. And people apparently liked what I wrote. And the blog took off.

And I'm very, very fortunate now to be doing by moonlight wine media. So, you know, I blog a wine, I review wines. I also have a food and drink podcast called Tasting Together that talks about food and drink and travel and industry stuff, not just about your industry podcast, but you know what? I think the more podcast, the more that are out there, right?

And tithes, rising sales. I think if there's more people out there talking about what's going on in front of house and back house and educating people about the industry, I think the better. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, 100%.

So, we're going to be starting here. So, talking about, let's dig into the Instagram blog. I'm always interested, like I'm old enough that I remember when blogs were first a thing and it was just someone typing into the internet and posting something online that someone could read, right? And so, which is, it's amazing that that ever took off for people to make money off to me, to me to this day I find that bizarre.

But now even more so is the Instagram version of the blog. So, basically you're doing the same thing except with video. And written, like I said. Yeah, but like you're writing a script on, like, would that just be in the description under your photo type?

Yeah, basically. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you look at my very early posts, I didn't even like, there was no production value. It was literally, I had a blackberry.

I can tell you that those things do not have good cameras. It would be like a dirty shot of my hand holding a glass in this grainy photo. It would just, it would be hideous. It would be like an empty bottle of wine.

And it would just me be writing. And like, it started with short form. Now sometimes I write so much that I can, you know, I can run out of characters. I can get so long form.

I think I'm definitely more of an old school blogger myself. Like, I always loved writing. I definitely, you know, wrote my fair share fiction when I was younger. And I definitely had the WordPress blog once upon time.

I was probably still out there in a deep dark web somewhere. And I like creating long form content. And you know, for me, you know, when you talked about, you know, people monetize blogs or people who are influencers, so to say, I definitely always say for anyone out there, if you're in it to become an influencer, then stop. Like, like don't do it.

It's like being an actor. Like, no, I'm gonna be famous. If that's what the reason why you're in this thing, I think you need to like, like, rethink your career choices. I did it because I had a huge passion for wine.

And I really, really want to share that passion with people. And I'm very fortunate that the blog grew and, you know, now people want me to do campaigns with them. And I do do, you know, paid campaigns and sponsored work with some brands or wine bodies, like governing bodies, like let's say like something that's funded by the European Union, so to say, or like the wines of Argentina. So you're talking about a whole region.

But I do, because I want to inherently share my passion about wine and help make wine less intimidating for other people and make wine fun. And if I get a few bucks along the way, awesome. And it's not my full time, you know, I guess I have a whole other job. It is not a full time career.

I think like there's very few full time influencers out there. And for those to do it, like I don't even know how to do it because they must hustle so hard. It reminds me a lot of being an actor, honestly, like when I, the way we talk, the way client, you know, you talk with the client, the way you want to pitch a job, the huge pool of available people out there who want the same job as you, the low barriers of entry. It reminds me a lot of being an actor.

I feel like you have to really speak up for yourself a lot. I think a lot of brands can definitely push you around and treat you like you're expendable. And that really sucks. It makes people, it's not, it's not a highly unregulated industry.

So I think there's not a lot of protections out there for people who are influencers to not be taken advantage of by a brand or be exploited or be treated as expendable labor. And I think that that's something that we need to change. And you know, I think if you know, you guys being in the hospitality industry, it's a very similar industry in terms of like, you know, trying to have all our workers like know their intrinsic value and treat the industry better. Yeah, for sure.

So like when you're doing, say getting a brand to sponsor your blog or invest in your blog, however you want to describe it, like, do you do ensure that you let your readers know that this is a sponsored ad or are you just like kind of promoting a product? Right? Because I know there's people do it both ways. Like some people are being very much like, oh, this is a sponsor that just, you know, for this brand, but I am reviewing it and others are just don't really let you know.

So do you, is there a difference who cares? I believe in disclosure, I think it should be more regulated. I know at a time in the States, I want to say specifically, I remember back in like the very early days of influencer marketing, you in the States, you definitely had to disclose. And I think there has been a lot more lack of disclosure recently.

Again, this is because this industry is still fairly new. I don't think there's a lot of like ad policies in place around sponsorship. And like, I mean, we can, we can go like there's such a rabbit hole to dive into this too. And I'll try to keep it, you know, in a nutshell, but one, so I do believe in disclosure, I think there's some issues with disclosure because there's not a lot of the policies that exist are not actually like making the grounds fair play either.

So a lot of times when you, you know, like you'll notice like on Instagram, for instance, you can, there's like a, the paid partnership top key things that you can turn on where they're labeled right at the top. And that, you know, the whole purpose of that is to so that you have good transparent disclosure. However, the rules and regulations are lying around a lot of those paid partnerships. When you turn those goggles on, especially because you, I work in like a beverage like Wine, which is an adult beverage, a lot of times your posts get flagged when they get taken down.

Right. Yeah. I have that problem. Like if I tried to do a paid promotion, that they're constantly, constantly suggesting I do a paid promotion for any post I put up for either of my bars.

But as soon as I do, if it references alcohol at all, they'd block it. Yeah. So there's a lot of like, you know, they're like the problem is Instagram's algorithm is not intelligent enough to really understand whether your product, even if you have all the proper labels in place, they still don't necessarily know how to read it. I just a lot of times where my posts get flagged and I ask for review and then it gets put back up.

The problem is, is that a lot of times when your post gets flagged like that, your reach gets throttled, there's just like all these things that happen, that kind of ruin your entire post. And then next thing you know, you have the client wondering, oh, how come you're posting again? And the thing is like, then you're trying to educate your client and understanding this weird volatile space, not a social media. And that gets really exhausting hiring.

If they don't really understand that there's sometimes all these risks that come into place, I've heard of some amazing agencies that totally get it. But I remember we did a Halloween campaign together with them and it was really awful, like almost like, I think out of like 60, 70% of their influencers got their posts taken down because they weren't, they had to use the disclosures and I remember having to say, I'm like, I'm going to disclose in a different way, I put in the body of my post. But sometimes you know, you have people chounding like, how come you're not doing this? How come you're not doing this?

It's not that we don't want to play, like play properly is that there's a lot of things that work against us when we do. And the thing is Instagram also inherently would rather you pay Instagram, like meta, would rather you pay meta for ads versus hiring someone else and putting money in someone else's pockets. So they actually deprioritize a lot of sponsored content in general because they want them to perform poorly because they'd rather you pay meta. So there's like all these little like things, there's all these issues out there in the industry.

So like, I would, you know, before someone inherently goes and like poo poo is on an influencer and say like, uh, like these person just trying to make up, I'm like, look, man, like everyone's trying to do marketing in a certain way and most of us are trying to do it in an ethical way. But there's a lot of pressures out there and there's a lot of things that don't work well. And it doesn't, it makes it really difficult for someone to try and operate above board. I think the other thing is like, I also put a lot of onus on brands and clients because this is why I say that it reminds me a little bit of the acting world because I find that it can be an exploitative industry.

If you have someone who's maybe just started, maybe their blog is just starting to take off. Like maybe someone, someone's blog went viral over and now they're now, they have a huge account and people want to ask them to work, but they themselves are not necessarily a seasoned veteran of an industry, right? It's like, you know, like let's say an actor, someone looks really nice on the street and they're like, oh, you look really nice, you could be a things actor, but they don't, they've never been to act in school, never had acting training, never learned how tough the industry could be. That's when you have those stories about like maybe an agent who exploited their actors or movies that exploited their actors.

I think that's happens a lot in the influencer's beer too where they'll be like, here's an opportunity. Now we're going to give you these really tear, we're going to underpay you, we're going to devalue you, we're going to do this. But if you don't work for us, we're going to make sure you're blacklisted and you can't work again and that other brands will work, but you know what I mean? And you're asking someone who doesn't have the opportunity, who maybe is not like experienced to negotiate for themselves and speak up for themselves.

I'm very fortunate. I was, you know, I worked in a very, very difficult and tough industry that chewed me up and spat me back out and I know how to speak up for myself. But like a lot of people don't know how to do that. So I think sometimes an influencer might not be able to, you know, they might feel nervous if you're new to think, oh, well, if I don't pretend that this is an organic post because the brand wants me to do this because they want me to, they want my post to reach more people, right?

Because obviously an organic post sometimes goes a little bit further than a paid post. Then they're like, okay, well, maybe I'm going to have to do this because I want to make sure that these brands don't like out me, right? It's really tough. It's really tough.

That's interesting. I never thought about that side of it too. Like because so many people are just like, oh, maybe I'm a good looking person. People have like my shots on Instagram, one of these fucking brands reaches out to them, and it's like, I'm just posting shit for my bars or the podcast.

I don't have a personal Instagram account, but I constantly getting companies DM me to see, oh, we think it'd be a perfect fit to promote such and such a brand or whatever. You're like, oh, maybe I can make some money off this, right? But like if you don't know any better and you don't, you don't have anything you can talk to, don't have anyone who can protect you like an agent or whatever, then yeah, they can tell you to do whatever and you're probably just going to do it because maybe they're giving you a few bucks. Yeah, and it sounds exciting at first, right?

It's like when you're like, you know, anyone who's, I used, you know, I train and I work on movies sets and there's a lot of people who are, especially people who are background actors, they're just like average Joe's who just love the magic of being on a movie set and they get paid like a couple hundred bucks a day to show up and they're like, wow, I mean, this is like movie, hell fun. But as you get further and further in the industry, it stops being fun because you realize now this is my livelihood, right? And you realize that when you like, let's say, you know, this, you run a business, right? When you do marketing, it even to make it fricking, even to make a fucking Instagram post, where you have to be like, I need to take a photo and you take this nice video and you edit this video, I don't need to do a little voice over that's like, come to Babylon, this is where I'm gonna have DJ's, I'm gonna have to write some copy, you're researching stuff if you have to talk about that new wine, right?

You're doing hours and hours of work. Now imagine if someone said to you, yeah, can you do that for my brand? And in exchange, I'll give you one bottle of wine. Right.

Yeah, yeah. Right. It sounds like, it sounds exciting. It's like, oh, someone's gonna give me free shit for something I was kind of doing already, just for myself, right?

But then you realize- Yeah, I'm starting to get more and starting to get more. Yeah, it's like, okay, now I'm doing all this work for these brands and I'm really just getting like a little bit of swag from it, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's the same, like, it's funny, even in our industry, in the podcast industry, it's pretty hard to make money doing this as well. Like, the small amount that we can sell ads for doesn't pay for the work that Dan does behind the scenes, that's for sure. Yeah, I can tell you, it's a fellow podcast where I totally understand it. Yeah, yeah.

And there's so a fucking many of us now, too, right? That's the other thing. So, like, to have this funny, because, well, like, we have a decent amount of downloads. We've been doing it for a long time now, but like, we have, and we're like in a pretty high percentile of most downloaded podcasts, which will sound impressive if I tell people what that number is, but not very impressive if I tell them how many people that actually is, you know what I mean?

Because there's just so many fucking podcasts there. It's not hard to be in the top 90% and up in actual downloads. Like, you could be probably 50% of downloads with like 50 people listening to your show. So I think it just, like, I think the industry just needs to be better regulated from all fronts.

Like, I think influencers need to be protected. I think brands need to do better. I think influencers, people who are not educated in like the sphere who are becoming influenced is probably should become more educated in proper disclosure policies, maybe someday, right? Like, like, add to Canada or Castle Rules or whatever, like, they're going to come in and probably start making it where you have to ensure you disclose and that, you know, you are at risk if you start doing non-disclose content.

I guess the question we also always have to ask ourselves is like, these lines have also always been blurred, but where it's really easy for people to point fingers at people. Like, if you think about how brand placements work in movies, right? Like, no one says this is a sponsored by Coke. It's just like, we now know that when that computer screen is up and that Apple's flashing the audience, that wasn't by accident.

Like, we know about brand placements. And frankly, there's so many quote unquote legitimate publications out there, like, Wine Factor to Wine enthusiasts, like, like, half of those organic things in their reviews and stuff, they pay for those reviews. They pay for those things. Like, it's not 100%.

That's why there's stuff like the point reviews that you see on Wine Factor. I was like, I guess people think, man. No. Yeah.

And I guess people think that's going to be helpful if you don't know anything about Wine and you're going to the LCPO. But don't kid yourself that some of that hasn't been paid for too. And like, what's his name? The Whiskey Bible do, Jim, whatever his name is?

Oh, I know what you're talking about, but I can't. I want to say Jim Miller, but I know it's not anyway, if he doesn't show you probably know what I'm talking about. So just excuse me. But yeah, like, there there've been rampant rumors that that guy gets paid off for reviews, right?

Like, there was a number of one- Is that giving the crown royal? The crown royal? The crown royal? They're one best whiskey of all time?

Or is it best whiskey of the year one year? That was the Wizard Maple? Yeah, something like that. Maybe it was Maple.

Anyway, but like, yeah, I mean, there's tons of this shit that goes on behind the scenes and almost anything you read, anything you use as a tool. So I think you're right. It's crazy to point fingers that anyone else who might be taking money to do anything. It's like we're all trying to make a living at the end of the day.

But I really think that your point at the beginning of this conversation was the best. It's that don't get into this if your goal is to make money, or to be famous. Like get into it because you like doing it. And then if you end up monetizing it down the road, that's great.

But like, just, but you got to do it because you want to do it and you're enjoying yourself, not because you're trying to get rich or fit. Yeah, I remember one of the things I actually said to myself when I first started doing this and when I got my first, like, not even, I didn't even get my first paid gig, when I got my first samples. And I was like, oh my God, like my first pretty bottle of wine. But I remember, and then I remember getting my first paid campaign.

And it was pretty underpaid because again, I was really excited to just foster this relationship. Plus I really did like the brand and I wanted to support them. They had a very philanthropic element to the brand that I wanted to kind of also highlight. But I remember thinking to myself, especially the first time, like they came back with edits or this, you know, suddenly like the more and more brands came with asks, but then the demand got more demanding or they wanted more control.

I remember having to sit back and really ask myself how deep did I want to go down this level? And one of the big things I said is like, I wanted to leave this still loving wine. Right? When I left the art, like acting industry, I was very burnt out and I really hated the like, really hated the industry.

That's the reason I stopped taking the wine courses because the studying was starting to make me hate it. Right. And sometimes it's like, you have to realize it's like, you can love something, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to work in the thing, right? And like I realized at the end of it, I still wanted to love wine and I still wanted to be able to talk about it on my terms.

But I realized there were a few, there were a few core elements that I really valued and had some core values and I need to adhere to those core values no matter what. So I'm pretty strict. Even with sponsored content, I usually say like, it's my voice. You can't have me say just like a bullet.

I give you a head really. I want you to pair these words. I'd be like, great, I'm going to say it's an ad and you're going to give me more money because that's my reputation on the line. And sometimes I just decline them.

Honestly, I actually do say no a lot more than I say yes. I say no for, if the project is not paid well or what they're offering is just not fair. And I actually do tell them too. I often say like, I don't think this is considered like a really good industry standard for the amount of work that needs to go into it.

And I really hope more people who ever get asked to do campaigns will speak up for themselves. And you can do it very politely. And I think like when you apply for a job and you get an interview, like, you know, we negotiate our salaries, we negotiate our worth. So I think this is the same.

I think you know what I think is an issue here though is that everybody has to be on board with speaking up for yourself because it reminds me of what's going on with commercial rents in our area of the world right now where it's, they keep getting higher and higher because there will always be someone swooping in with a chain restaurant or whatever who was willing to pay it. And if I'm the landlord in that situation, I don't blame them. If they're not at fault for that. And if I was the landlord, I would want to get make as much money as I could also.

Why should I care who rents the spot? And I feel like in the same situation, unless everyone speaks, like if there's 18,000 people willing to take, like you said, a bottle of wine to do it and also being told what to say and how to edit their video, well, then there's always going to be someone willing to do just that, right? And it makes it harder for someone like you once have some standards about it. I mean, that's the whole act.

I mean, that's the acting industry, right? As long as an actor is willing to say they're going to work for free or work for less. And this is always the issue with industries with a lot of low barriers of entry, right? The food industry, like hospitality industries literally like this.

I see jobs posted all the time that are substantially underpaid. And for every comment that says this, like you're asking for a head chef and you're paying $18 an hour, that's absolutely absurd. You get six guys who are like, absolutely, I'll take this job. I'm really in the job right now.

Especially with the amount of immigration that a new Canadian is coming in right now who just legitimately need work, right? So that's part of the problem as well. Like I don't know how to solve it. And I'm not blaming anyone, like any one coming into our country and who wants to work, let's put them to work, right?

But like if those people are willing to take a little bit slightly less money to do it, that makes it harder for anyone to demand a larger salary. That's why I said it's like an education component, right? I think like you need people need to be educated, people need to. I don't know how to teach this either.

I was always like a tough kid. So even when I was a broke ass, even when I was broke as an actor, I wouldn't negotiate a pay. Even when they were like, well, we could replace you with someone else and be like, then do it, then do it. I dare you to, right?

You hired me for a reason. It's because you think I, my expertise, my look, my skillset outweighs someone else. So I think you should pay me what I'm worth. I fought for it all the time.

And it was scary. Like I was so poor as an actor, there were times when I literally walk like, you know, I was working Toronto a lot. And I would like walk long, long, long walk between somebody stops because I couldn't afford a token, right? I'd rather save the two bucks.

And, but I fought for it because I realized like no one's going to fight for me, but me, right? Like at the end of the day, who else is going to speak up for me? And if I don't learn how to speak up for myself, no one will speak up for me. And I needed to, and I taught, and I really like, I fought tooth and nail for those things.

So, you know, I think everyone should believe in their worth. And I think as people get like, you know, people might do the first job, but maybe their next job won't be like that, maybe their next job won't be like that. And hopefully we all learn. And like I said, hopefully there's more standards and regulations, right?

Like minimum wage exists for a reason. It's to make sure that people don't absolutely exploit workers because I'm sure there's certain people who would if they give an opportunity. Yeah, probably more than you think. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, we were literally talking about in the States, right? Like, you know, like being down the States and going out for dinner, we were talking about how like Massachusetts has pretty good, like, you know, better fair wage policies, but there's a lot of places, especially down the South, right? Like it's like $2 an hour. And then if you make like more than $6 in tips, you lose your hourly wage and you have them work on 100% tips.

It's absurd. Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, I'm, we should be glad with what we've got here in Ontario, but it's still, yeah, if we didn't have those bottom line regulations, it would be the Wild West here as well. It's just like, it's, this is capitalism at work.

If there are people willing to work for less, there are people with no problem paying on less. Well, it's discrimination, right? Like even the commentary you made about someone putting out a lower wage and then you have new Canadians coming in who, you know, are desperate for the work. It's really, it's what's really shitty is then like months later, you get people turning around and being like, you know, those damn like Indian people taking our jobs, right?

I don't know if you like there, you know, there's like a, there's a Facebook group in Waterloo region. I'm not going to say the name, but there's a, there's like a food page, right? And I actually in like, for Waterloo region, and I think it's like absolutely disgusting some of the stuff they put up there right now, because like there's a lot more, you know, whatever is like a new Indian restaurant that's opening up, but they're saying, oh, this restaurant closed in a like a shawarma place to go, but they're always like, like, this is not Canada anymore. They're taking over.

I'm like, are you for fucking real? Right? Now, like how disgusting is that? Like, it makes me ashamed to be from the city when I read some of the stuff that goes up there because I'm like, that is nothing like you're not any more Canadian than these people are.

Right? Like, we don't give me down that rabbit hole of what these imaginary lines that we've drawn on the map of the world are and whoa, but, but, and that's why we can quote and quote, keep people out or whatever, right? Like it's to me that whole idea is ridiculous, but alternatively, my answer to those people is like, oh, such and such a cool spot close. And now there's another Indian restaurant blah, blah, blah.

Well, if you were fucking supporting the other spot, it probably wouldn't have closed. So that's the one that drives me nuts. Like they keep raising these commercial rents because they can because there are other people willing to come in and pay them. And if the people who were there originally could afford the rising rents because their businesses were booming, they would stay open.

Yeah. It means very easy to have commentary from your behind your laptop screen and just like clicking the clackling away all your opinions from the comfort of your home. That's right. To me, it's like when people ask me about it because it is such a struggle, especially in our area of the world right now to keep these smaller cooler spots open.

But I'm just like, it's nobody. There's no, like I wish there was someone I could blame, but there really isn't. There's no specific person to be mad at. I can't be mad at the landlords for trying to make as much money as they can.

I can't be mad at people who are going through high inflation and don't have the money they used to have and can't afford to go out as often as they used to for not wanting to go to a spot that's like has to be a little bit more expensive because it's a smaller independent spot and has a high rent. I'm not mad at those people either. And I'm also not mad at anyone else who has the money to come in and say, you know what, I can't afford that rent. So I'm going to pay it.

Like there's no one really to blame. And I think that that's part of the problem here is a lot in these situations. We're all kind of looking for someone to be mad at. But in this situation, there's really no, it's really nobody's fault.

Like. Have you ever read like, have you ever read for economics? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I remember that was like the most, I find economics one of the most like depressing things to ever read because it's like the state of the world. And then you read and you're like, I feel absolutely hopeless. Right. These massive shifts of these like tectonic collective consciousness and like small things that maybe you don't have any direct control over at all and they have this domino effect because it's like a huge web in this huge web.

So when pulled a string like over here, it might not even have anything to do with the hospitality industry, right? But it has this effect that ripples through and can impact you and things are complicated. Like things are way more complicated than people make them out to be. And sometimes we need to just like find ways to be a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more understanding and maybe educate ourselves a little bit about how to do things.

And sometimes things just don't work out. And we have to be okay with that. Take responsibility for that. I think some of the things I think we're failing at humanity over the years is being able to just really own up to our own shit.

Good or bad. Like, you know, there's so many people there to make a mistake and people can't just say, like, I'm in a mistake. Like I'm wrong. No, instead we decided to dig or healed and die on the hill, die on the proverbial hill, even if you're like wrong, completely and absolutely wrong, you're bad to just die on the hill to admit like, sorry, man, I made a mistake.

Like it actually is very strange to me. The foremost humanizing and like easiest to forgive words of all time are like, sorry, five words are like, I was wrong. I'm sorry. Just saying any of those words, like either those two sentences individually or is it or in a unit would go so long with people go so far with people because it's like, we're all human.

We all fuck up and we if you own it and apologize for it or if you're just wrong about something like you said, like, I mean, nobody's right about everything. Like, if there was that person, then we wouldn't we would know them, believe me. Like the person. We got sent today.

Nobody got sent to a saint who already left us earth. That's right. You know, like we're out. We all fuck up on a daily basis and like, even like when you're running a business or doing like what you're doing, which is sort of a, I don't even know how we described like this, and multi-tiered level of businesses that you're involved in, which I think is the future for most humanity right now is like to be this gig economy where you're doing a bunch of different things, right?

And hopefully making a living off of doing all these different things that you want to do and maybe if hope that one of them hits into a way that you can sort of scale back the other ones, that's kind of like the model now. And it seems to be sort of what you're doing. Even in that situation, you're gonna fuck up in all like one of them or do something wrong that you wish you had done slightly differently or oh, I wish I had handled this situation a little bit better. Just fucking own it.

Like, yeah. I mean, mistake. 100% and like honestly, like we're all learning too. You know, I think what did they say?

Like the moment we stopped being curious or the moment we, it was like, I've never seen a quote recently that said that if you say you're an expert in something, you're like, you have very little to learn or something very little to grow or like a very room left to grow or something like that, right? Like if we can never have a minimum wrong, we're never gonna have the opportunity to grow and like, damn, that's kind of sad. The expert thing is a scary word to me. It was anytime I get introduced as like an expert in a field of anything when I'm like giving a speech or a talk about something or hosting an event.

I guess so. I just cringe because I'm like, that's, first of all, they're gonna expect too much from me. And secondly, I know I'm not really an expert in anything. I know a fair amount about a few different subjects, right?

Because I taught myself, but more I've taken courses or what else has taught me or I've had the life experience. But to consider, like you said, when you're considered an expert, there's not a lot left in room to grow there, right? Where I kind of feel like anything that I even know a lot about, I'm constantly learning more about all the time. I do take it as a point of flattery when someone introduces me as an expert or like a wine expert, only because it's like, it was something also passionate about.

I definitely kind of, I probably self-deprecate more than like, carry some wine confidence because in the end, like I'm not formally trained. I learned a lot of some of my own. That was gonna ask me about that. Yeah.

Did you take any formal courses? No, I have no formal courses. But I can speak to this as well as someone who has taken courses, but I've talked wine with you a million times over the time of like, you trying to sell me wine or whatever, right? Or just that's shooting a shit.

And like, yeah, you know more about wine than I do and you're self-thought. So, right? Yeah, so I mean, like not everything requires a degree in education. Right.

Obviously, it lends legitimacy. And someday, maybe I would take a course just for my own interests. But when I was first interested in wine courses, I was starting after I couldn't afford wine courses. Why is it like, it's expensive.

Fucking expensive. And it's time consuming. It's time consuming. I've never talked to someone before about, I talked to about like diversity and inclusivity in the industry a lot.

And I know one of the things I've said is like, there's a lot of definitely exclusivity with wine, especially in terms of like Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism. That's not what I'm saying. But also like, yeah, it's like wine is a lot of classes in wine.

You know, as far as a certain amount of money to invest in participating in the wine industry. I understand. Like the courses are fucking expensive. And you also have to have time to devote a shit ton of time to studying.

And most people are trying to work for a living, right? So, and most people are doing it or trying to do it at the same time. Now, I think that's why a lot of people who are servers get into it because they have like you said, someone like when you were referring to like a lot of actors end up being servers as well. Because you have a little flexibility with your schedule, maybe a little more time to do these other things if you're in the service industry.

Or they hope it augments their position, right? Becoming a song is probably pays more than being a server or you can kind of like move branch into different elements of the industry or you may be finding trust or maybe your workplace like tells you to go and do it, right? And the good like the ones that I shouldn't say the good ones because it's the ones that have money as a real answer will maybe also support you financially while you take those courses, right? Because they feel that they're going to get a return on the investment.

The flip side of that is like I don't have at my spots excess money to send someone to Wine School. Like I'm just trying to fucking pay the bills, right? I still cry a little inside when you hear when you tell me stories about how often your core of and gets damaged. I'm like, I understand you're just putting a needle in like, how do you break it?

I use the same needle in my core of and bring years. It's almost like every time you get into taste with me, there was another broken core of it. Ow. Too aggressive.

They're just being too aggressive. You're like, I can't fund your wine training because you're destroying my wine stuff. I can't go on like this. It's funny though.

Some of those core events, I had one blow up on me in the middle of a wine. So my very first wine tasting because I just got into this like wine sales thing while basically when you recommended me for your job. And at the very first tasting I had, the core of and broken the middle of the tasting, nothing to do with me. Like the, you know, the piece that slides?

Yeah. It just slid right off the end. I love it. They're basically going to get back on.

More of it for how much they cost. They look kind of cheaply made. Yeah. Especially the newer ones.

Like the newer ones, they have that like shiny plastic, which for me looks like cheap plastic versus fancy plastic. I have a core of three. I don't know how many like, I was like, my core of three is like a brick. Like you could club someone over that.

If somebody tried to rob me, I could probably club them with that core of an to save myself because it is like, it's so ugly. You know, it's like gray and it's like old nat plastic, but damn it like it holds up the shit, you know, like the new ones don't for sure. And like they have all these new models now too. And there's like a shower.

Yeah. Yeah. There's the one that has that someone showed me the other day. It's somebody who reps for Corbin now their wine agency that has a Corbin account.

And the one they showed me was like, it looked like a children's toy. Like it was so tiny and it was like had like a bend to it. Like even the part where you put the cartridge in almost looked like it could bend. And I'm like, this is going to last like, this is for someone's home, maybe.

There's no way it's going to last in the setting of a bar or like a wine salesperson. Yeah. I remember like, I can now have all the different needles like for like they call like the vintage core, if it's like an older wine, fast poor. And I never had a thought to myself, I was like, if I had a really old bottle, I don't even know if I would core of in it because I don't know, like even though hypothetically speaking, you know, it injects the art and gas it preserves it.

This wine's so old, the second I'm like, you know, removing volume and liquid from it. And no way that wine isn't transforming super fast. I wouldn't want to corven or if I do, I'm corvening it over like four days and drinking it over four days. I'm not corvening it and putting it away for three months to see how it's going to be in three months.

I know like technically they're supposed to give you three months, but I really trust that I was even like, I was, I had corven some wines the other day for I was doing for the tasting and I'm like, now I make sure before I go to the next tasting, I at least try it myself before I go because it's like, I don't buy that three months yet. I think, you know, like, I found there's some of my quirks, they don't seal back up like something that's stuff, right? So I put the wine on side and I come back a day later and like there's a pile of like goop on the floor because the wine was leaking because the court didn't reseal. There's times where, you know, maybe when the capsule's running low, I think it's not injecting as much bargain back in.

So maybe all I'm doing is draining the bottle and it's just slightly like, let's like now it's just empty with oxygen inside. Like there's too many little variable factors. I definitely toyed around with the like, with the length of the bottle for sure. And I've had some that last longer and I've had some that last the less longer and I think there's such a huge variety of, you know, factors involved from the kind of cork you have from maybe the seal of the bottle, from maybe the wine had a bit of a fault in it.

I had a wine that was a bit faulted when I corvened it once and that when I at the time, it was fine. Like it was a little bit of fault, but it blew off. But because of just even introducing that whole from corvening it, that fault in the bottle got way worse. So the rest of the wine when I opened it was ruined.

Really interesting. Yeah, that's why it's crazy, right? Like it's just, yeah, I like it. We were like, let's talk about wine and then we just like spend an hour talking about everything but like wine itself.

Well, that's how this show generally works. That's what I told you we came into it. We just like, well, we might think we're going to talk about something but we usually just end up talking about something completely different. That's why I like doing this show though is like you never know where the conversation is going to go and it always tends to be interesting especially when we're talking to someone interesting.

So thanks so much for coming on, Marocchi. We really appreciate giving us the time and we should have you come on again and actually talk about wine. Talk about all the other shit I do. I'm an also metal singer.

I do a little music singles out. Yes, tell her about that. Tell her about that. Tell her before we let you go.

Tell us about the opera singles. We just listened to one. It's fantastic. And the tell her about getting all that stuff.

Tell us and everything else you're doing because you got a lot of shit going on. Sure. If you like learning about the various aspects of Marocchi so like I told some of the opera ones, I'm an opera metal singer as well. My artist handle is Majong Witch.

You can find me on Spotify, Apple Music, all that fun stuff. And I kind of an owe to my hair did a little bit of Majong being gambling game I really love playing. So Majong Witch on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, what they have you if you like opera metal. I like I said have a wine blog you can find me on Instagram at nine ounces please.

That's the number nine forward ounces forward please on Instagram. You can hear my food and drink podcast and talking about food, drink, travel and all that fun stuff as tasting together which is also on all the platforms and then if you really like creating writing and wanting to get creative and create campaigns but as you love your Dungeons and Dragons and Tabletop RPG games you can check us out at storyengine.com. Awesome. I do want to talk about the opera metal.

It's an opera metal. It's an opera metal. It's an opera metal. It was this before we let you go because I'm very curious.

We listened to the tracker. It was like honestly it wasn't a genre that I was even where existed before I met you. I remember you told me that was something you did but I was like oh yeah yeah and I don't think we ever discussed what you were doing it under and then when we read your bio we're like oh yeah so we've listened to it. So was this a genre that you were interested in before because it's a very specific genre or was it just do you have the pipes for it?

I definitely was super interested in the genre. It's a very like Scandinavian genre so there's a lot of bands from the Netherlands. I just read it as middle earthy. Yeah there's a lot of bands from Northern Europe I will say that do like sing in the genre of music and so I discovered it when I was younger and got super super into it.

I did sing in choirs and I trained in voice and I love and I'm classically trained pianist so I love my classical music but I was definitely a metal head and so when I discovered the genre I was like aha that's combined my loves together. I must also make this myself but it took a back seat you know from you know chasing all the different elements of my career and you know like I said sometimes I'm spending too much time trying to make a living versus making music and I'm just very fortunate to be in a stage of my life where I can finally make some of my music happen so yeah. That's good everybody should check it out it's super cool like there's no question about that and obviously you have the voice to handle that style of music so I hope that all goes well for you I mean what a dream that would be if you could turn that into a full time career but it's not like you got too many careers on the go already. Oh I've already said I would love to like one day become a famous opera metal singer and I could release a wine and then like a name like it like tied it with music and make it all like musical I don't know put my lyrics all over I don't know I have dreams those are my dreams can never stop dreaming.

I'll post links to all that in the show notes as well. Yeah. People can easily find you. Thanks Maroki this is super fun and I know you're on the road right now so like normally we would do this in person but the fact you were able to zoom in still and do the interview we really appreciate it enjoy the rest of your time in the US and we'll see you when you're back in town.

Thank you so much guys. Thanks very much. Yeah. That's pretty much.