Ep. 777 Elizabeth Schneider | Uncorked

This episode is brought to you by the Italy International Academy, the toughest Italian wine program. One thousand candidates have produced two hundred and sixty two Italian wine ambassadors to date. Next courses in Hong Kong Russia, New York, and verona. Think you make the cut. Apply now at viniti international dot com. Hello, everybody. My name is Holly Hammond, and you are listening to Uncorked, the Italian wine podcast series about all things marketing and communication. Join me each week for candid conversations with experts from within and beyond the wine world as we explore what it takes to build a profitable business in today's constantly shifting environment. In today's episode, we welcome Elizabeth Schneider, host of wine for normal people, one of the world's top rated wine podcast. Elizabeth is also an author, speaker, teacher, and today, customer advocate as we drop all filters and dive into marketing, communications, and how the wine world needs to up our game. This one comes with an explicit language warning. Now let's get into it. Hey, Elizabeth. This is funny that we're actually recording this since we talk all the time. I'm going to start us off with a tiny little story. I actually met you at wine to wine four years ago. Three years ago, but it does feel like four hundred years ago. Got it. It was just like a lifetime. Twenty nineteen. Okay. Yeah. I know. It feels a lot longer than that. And I had been given one instruction that year going to wine to wine. From my husband, which was Elizabeth Schneider speaking, can you please meet her? Because he is a fan. Like, he is an absolute dyed in the wool fan of wine for normal people. He's found wine brands that he's loved. I I've made friends in Napa because you know them and they love you. And I'm thinking about the team at Acorn, right, who are just the most fabulous people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's Summa. Yeah. There there's so much good that has come out of my husband being a fanboy of the podcast. But I actually kinda wanna use that as the basis for some of my questions for you today because you sit in this amazing space between the audience and our consumers and trade and our producers. And I think that that gives you some insights especially around business communication relating to the audience that we could all use to hear. One of the things that I always remark upon is that you have innumerable channels. You have, podcast with Just under five hundred episodes. Is that correct? It's a little over four hundred. So it's four hundred. It'll be four hundred twelve this week. Four hundred and twelve episodes. You have a YouTube channel. You are posting to Instagram reels as well as your static post. You have a website. You do corporate classes. You do private classes. You do corporate events. You do private events. You do fan events. You have a book, a best selling book. It is the best selling book. It is in the wine world. Well, I don't really know, you know, we we can talk about the the fact that I have absolutely no idea how popular or well the book has done, all I can tell you is that I'm just happy that people have enjoyed it and that my directive to my PR team when the book launched because I it was published through a regular publisher, not like a wine publisher, was please don't send it to anybody in the wine world. And they didn't. Why was that? Why? You know, I lay outside of the industry in many ways, and I kinda did this with an eye on the fact that I thought the industry really I I and they still do. They just don't care about consumers. So my focus is a hundred percent on wine drinkers and wine lovers. And some of those people happen to be in the industry and use what I do for their work. And I love that. I I first, I I'm not gonna lie. Like, at first, I was kinda like, oh, I don't really wanna have this be part of people's, you know, part of the industry. But I this was all for for people who love wine. So if you happen to love wine and you're in the industry, great. Why not? Right? But I don't need the I don't need the nonsense that goes along with you know, people who they just love to tear each other down in this industry, and it really kills me. And I just that's not what I'm about. So I I didn't wanna be part of that. I had already had some experiences, which I'm happy to talk about, with, like, you know, some of the establishment players just saying terrible things about the show and saying, you know, being so holier than thou about what I do and how I talk. And it's like, you know, I felt like I was back at Wesley. Well, I I I actually do what I get into some of those issues around the the industry. But before we do that, what I'm just clarify, the wine podcast started in twenty twelve. Is that correct? Twenty eleven. It was January twenty eleven. And that was it was crazy because so the way that started is, again, it's so unorthodox. Like, it has nothing to do with wine, very tangentially to do with wine. So there's this guy Rick Breslin, nicest guy in the entire world, runs the Helovino app, which is really now I I think a little bit he does more on the data and business side because he had, like, a lot of people sign up, and he's he's a tech guy. And I was writing content for Helovino, the app at the time. And he his wife was, like, somebody I'd worked with. I mean, it was just I had dinner with him and my husband and his wife one night and in Sonoma. And he said, I was trying to tell him, like, what I was trying to do. I wanted to have I wanted to reach more people. I was like, maybe I want a TV show or something, something to really, like, teach people about wine in a way that they would like it and get away from the way that people talk about wine and talk about it differently. And he's like, let's start a podcast. I was like, what? What are you even talking about? And he was like, let's start a podcast. So he explained it to me. He sent me a mic. He did the editing on the first couple times. I remember sitting with a blanket over my head because it was too echoey. I mean, it's hilarious. And then By the end of the year, he got too busy to do the podcast. I pulled my husband in who is, you know, him. He's kind of like an entertaining guy. MCIs. Yep. Yep. MCIC is an entertaining guy. He likes to he likes to ham it up a little bit. He's dad humor, as my kids say. And then by the end of twenty eleven, I started getting, of course, this is the story of my life. I started getting emails from people who I went to business school with who were like, hey, did you know you want iTunes new art best new arts podcast for twenty eleven. I was like, what? How come nobody sent that to me? Like, nobody from I to and sent that to me, but it was very cool. So, yeah. So how have you seen before we kinda get into the the customers and some issues with the industry. How have you seen the change in content or the change in communication going back eleven years with the proliferation of dozens of different social media channels some, which have succeeded, others which have fallen by the wayside. And now, of course, in the past two years, everybody and, you know, his aunt rolling out a podcast. Do you feel like that it has created a richer content space, or do you feel like that it's really watered down the the environment? No. I think that this is just part of the trend. So podcasting is very unique, and I'll I'll talk about if I can talk a blue streak about that. But what I'll say is when I started, I started a blog in two thousand nine because if you remember, blogs were the big thing. Everyone had a blog. There were a million blogs. I had a blog. And that was the thing. And everyone started it. But it became quickly evident a couple of a couple things became evident not quickly. I guess it took a few years. And the same exact thing is going to happen with podcasting, but I think it's gonna be quicker than it was with blogs. One, it's a lot of work to maintain a blog. And people get busy, and there's not a lot of time to do that. And two, the idea that you're gonna get free stuff all the time and and promote it and stuff like that, after a while, it loses its luster, and then people are less interested, and then people stop selling sending you things. And, you know, the other thing is only the best rise to the top, and that is who is going to continue to be at the top. Right? So the only, oh, I mean, think about what's in the blog world to my friend Tom Work who runs work at the fermentation blog. I mean, what's left? He writes about this all the time. There's no bloggers left. I mean, they have the wine bloggers conference. They changed it to the wine media conference in the US because they can't there aren't any bloggers anymore. There's nobody really doing that. So And yet, blogging in other industries is making a comeback. There's a huge shift back toward owning your own content. I mean, we can talk about wine and wine media and whether or not there's actually, in your opinion, what the future of wine communication looks like if you want. You know, is it is it going the way of the dodo? Is it turning into small sound bites? Is it long form YouTube content? Is it sub stack? I don't know. I I really don't know. I wish that I had more kind of insight into that. What I can tell you is that there is an interest in in wine, obviously, but It is the industry has is changing. I think we're we're going to see a contraction of what's going on. Like, there's not and I don't even understand. I feel like somebody needs to go knock on the door of the people that run Silicon Valley Bank and drag them into a marketing class because I don't understand how every year they're like, oh my god, wine. It's a disaster stir. Everything's horrible. All these industry publications. And I'm like, you guys are I I'm I'm sorry. This is just like such bullshit. Look at the data in a mature market stuff plateaus. If you're not gonna look understand how market dynamics work, what do you think that a mature market is gonna keep growing forever? That is not how market dynamics work. Okay? So look at freaking like peanuts. Okay? Like, maybe every now and then there's a thing at planters where they do honey roasted and they get a little growth off of it. But I have worked in marketing. I have worked. I I have a a an MBA I worked for freaking Advil. I can tell you what a mature market looks like. Growth does not come in ten percent increments a year. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't even work in one percent increments a year. It levels out it becomes stable. Sometimes it declines a little bit. That does not mean that people are stopping con consumption of wine. And I think that this is, like, it drives me crazy. So there's But hold on. Let me jump in. Let me jump in. Let me jump in, please. Advil. Advil spends money to market Advil. Yes. To stay relevant, so they can hang on to their own market share, right, that they have. Okay. You gotta maintain. So you are given the space that you sit in, you have a very unique insight into who our consumers are, how we're talking to them, what they're feeding back to. I mean, you have a private Patreon community that you communicate with all the time. Can you tell us what they're asking for from the wine industry? How can we do better? Well, I think, honestly, you're not gonna like what I have to say, but there are way too many wine brands. There are too many skews, and there is too much focus on the story and not enough focus on quality. I mean, I have to say that when I worked for the Big Hawking winery, which whose name I will not say, because I don't wanna get sued, I mean, all it was all about spending money on marketing and not about quality. How stupid do wine brands think people are? I'm not gonna answer that. You can answer that for me. That after a few years, you're gonna degrade the quality. And you think people aren't gonna notice? No. Do you think that do you think that that that particular story, though bifurcates between our large scale commercial brands and independent brands. Do you think that there's a difference in interest in the story and the love affair and the passion versus the broad market spend? Nobody cares if if the wine tastes like shit, no one is gonna buy it. Okay? Except, you know, maybe, I guess, you know, you've got But there's a lot of there's a lot of wine out there. That too much fabulous. And yet they still and yet they still have trouble selling. Yeah. I mean, some of them has to do with the distribution system. I mean, if we're gonna talk about the largest market in the world is the United States, whether people like to hear that or not, many people do not like when I say that, but it's true. The United States has more people, right, to drink the wine. So even if only a small sliver of what we drink is, you know, a small sliver of the population drinks wine, it's still enough to make a lot a lot of money here. So if we talk about the US or the UK, you know, what how do how do you get your wine out there? I mean, one of the major tenets of marketing is place, right, is distribution. And if you cannot get distribution of your wines, no matter how good they are, you'll never be able to sell them. I mean, this is one of the huge challenges I have with when I have guests on the podcast. I don't let people come on the show if their wines aren't distributed. Doesn't mean that they're not great. But I can't send them I can't send people out, have them listen to this person talk about the terroir of their place, about all of the things that are going on with their winery, and then they can't get the wines. So, again, there's a basic, you know, thing. And as consolidation has happened, especially in the unite United States, and, you know, all of these changes that have gone on smaller wineries don't even have an opportunity anymore to get on shelves. I mean, it's impossible. Hold on. So so taking the broad market and setting it aside just for the the purpose of of this argument, do you think that in a D to C space? That that storytelling matters? It does accept how is anyone going to find you unless I mean, that's the thing. It's like you have to get out in front of people. D to see only happens if someone comes and visits to you. Right? Right. Or they can get your wine somewhere. Again, it's all about distribution because if you can't get wine in people's mouths, they are never gonna find out about you. That's that's the basic. Right? Here here's the thing that I'm hearing as a marketer, and and it's a little different from what you're saying. So I just wanna kinda feed this back. It sounds to me like there's a real mismatch between expectations and in some cases, early business practices. So there's a we we exist in an industry that is very romanticized. How beautiful it is that someone's gone out. They've made their millions in tech. They're gonna go buy a winery. They're gonna sell their pants off. You know, they're just the world is gonna love their wine. They're gonna get written up and, you know, pick your favorite magazine, and life is going to be good. When we all know anybody who's worked in wine that unless you are Kylie Minogue, this is not actually how new brands get started. So taking that MBA and all of your experience with these wine brands, are we coming back down to early business practices and realistic expectation and strategies? Like, where do we start to overcome this? If if you and I are living in our bubble and we're saying, right. Here's the way that wine changes this. Where did we begin? Well, I mean, there there's just a I mean, I can't even yes. You need to have a business plan. Right? You can't just make wine and expect everybody's gonna love it. You have to have a business plan. And the biggest part of that business plan is how are you going to get the wine to the people who you want to drink it? And understanding How many people can you get it to? I mean, everybody needs to drink your money. If you're a small whiner. Yeah. That's the other thing that just boggles the mind is that there needs to be some sort of alright. Let me give you this example. When I wrote the proposal for my book, one section of a book proposal for when you write your book someday, Poly, is that you have to come up with the target market. This is a basic business plan. You have to come up with who could potentially buy your book. What does the person look like? What's their profile? Who do you think they are? And by the way, and you and I have had this conversation a hundred times, and I'm gonna have it a hundred more. And I know you disagree with me somewhat. Stop with the demographic bullshit. It doesn't work. Democrats and wine Look, after your past twenty one, maybe twenty five, twenty six, it's not working. That is not the way that wine is sold. It's based on do you connect with that kind of customer? And that customer is of all different ages. There are different people in the world. So I I'm the first one to say I think demographics are dead. I don't actually believe in relying on old school demographics. I do find that psychographics are very effective in identifying our wine brands. And one thing that we've talked a lot about is that, you know, there's all this bullshit about the boomers and the Gen X because we do exist in the Millennials and now the gen z. Wait. We did. Well, actually, I know. Right? We're not really as hidden. The there's so much research that shows that you can have a boomer who is an early adopter, is tech confident, who is living in exactly the same access space as a thirty two year old. Yes. Twenty five year old, especially when you're looking at a balance of economics, if you've got a boomer who's headed into retirement and you've got an up and coming, you know, potential gen z, early millennial consumer, Well, actually, we might be speaking very similar messaging to them. Completely. Maybe maybe the spaces that we get to them are a little bit different. But, so I okay. Let's go here. Let's talk about this. First thing, I think that in line, my experience has been that we like to paint with a very broad brush. So whether that is for our customer persona, our market, whereas you have with your patrons, and, of course, with the podcast audience. I mean, it I I've seen the numbers, even though I've been told not to talk about them here. I just don't wanna know. And it is. I don't look at the numbers. Well, the global numbers, are incredible, and they really are global numbers. So you're receiving feedback both within the community and from your podcast listeners from around the world. You know, would you say that there are any stark differences between Let's take the American consumer. And the the UK antipodean, South African, we can kind of bundle them together versus the old world European versus maybe not. Okay. Okay. Well, no, break it down for me. You can't The UK consumer is very unique, and, I I personally really love my UK listeners. I will say and I I mean, I love everybody, but I love some of the questions that they ask sometimes are just like, wow. I mean, you, like, I don't know how so. How they find me, but they're they're really some of the stuff is like, jeez. That is I mean, it's it's stuff that I've thought about before. I've gotta research a lot of times for for some of those UK customers. I think that they're pausing me out. Okay. Now this is what's interesting because you say, wine knowledge, non snobby wine knowledge. That's really the space that you've always wanted to live in. No jargon, no Yes. Right. One communication, I would say. Right? Like But you do keep saying nonstopy. Like, that's not Yeah. What this is what this is what I would say. Okay? And I will I will bring it back in, like, sort of a personal context. The one thread throughout my life since I was, like, five years old, I cannot stand bullshit, and I cannot stand the the fancy, flowery, whatever. Just tell me this is such a New Yorker thing. Tell me what I need to know and make it easy if it can be a little funny that would be awesome because it'll be more memorable. But just give me the information and give me some context around it so I can remember it. And then we're good. So so that is not snotty communication, but it is also it's like incredibly I I don't I mean, maybe it's just like a Jewish New Yorker communication. I don't know. I mean, I sort of think of this as, like, I can't I don't have time to, like, go through the whole pretty, whatever. People wanna know information. I'm here to give you the information Like I said, if I can make it a little entertaining, a little funny, a little comprehensible, better than what, you know, is in a large wine tone, that's what I'm here for. Right? That's my role. My role is timid to for that. I wanna go back to your UK. Your UK audience Erudae, great deep questions, really thinking about wine. You may position yourself as wine for normal people, but you aren't just talking to the consumers who don't know a lot about wine. You're not just talking about newbies. You've got an audience. My husband, the fanboy, being a great example. You have an audience of incredibly knowledgeable wine drinkers, who much of the wine industry does care about. Right? Yet they are still seeking no bullshit, no hyperbole, honest truths about the wine that they're drinking. If we just are looking at that audience, Right? So take your UK, audience as an example. There's a I I in fairness, what is it what is it that we're getting home? What is what? So what is it what is it that we is what is it that someone like me as a wine marketer? I'll put myself on the block for this one. What is it that we're doing wrong when we communicate to those people? How can I better communicate to the enthusiastic? I can't stand that particular language for our personas, but the enthusiastic up to erudite drinker. Okay. First of all, I do wanna say that it is not just the UK drinkers, but they they're it's a smaller audience and more discreet. So that's why because I think if you're looking for a wine pod, if you are if you care enough about wine to go find a wine podcast, you're already in a different league. Okay? That's all I'm gonna say. So already, you care more about wine than the average person. And I do wanna say that the only reason that I singled out the UK, because I don't wanna say anything. I mean, I love my audience. You know, I spend most of my time communicating with my audience. But the reason that I single out the UK is because it's a smaller audience and it's a little more uniform, In the US, I've got newbies. I've got people who've been drinking wine for years. I've got, you know, and everything in between industry people, whatever. So and and they actually the Australia looks a little bit more like the US, frankly. There's more of that broad Spectrum. And a little bit in New Zealand, you'd be happy to know. I think there's, like, four patrons that are from New Zealand. But this is the thing. Those people are not I mean, I guess that the the the thing that gets people excited is I don't consider myself a storyteller. Okay? That's not where I go. I don't think that I'm telling you a story. What I'm trying to do is give you a full picture. And I don't think people do that in wine. I think that wine marketing is so self serving that people think that they are so special everyone gets a trophy. You know, no. I'm sorry. So we we suck at the customer centric is what you're saying. Yes. I mean, look, look at what you just said. You just said before, and you're hundred percent right, that some cattle farmer from whatever earned a bazillion dollars and then went and started a winery. Do you know why I stopped visiting Napa and talking about Napa? Because the story was exactly that. It was exactly same. Grocery Mobile. You know, Rana ran an advertising agency, had a great cattle farm, Rana, whatever, for investment bag was part of Silicon Valley and started a winery. What do I care? The wines taste the same and the people are, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same. What do I care? So then it takes me to other places where perhaps It's more interesting because you have you mentioned Bill and Betsy from Acorn. You've got yeah. They were they were at Bank of America, and they did their thing. But Bill, I mean, the guy's a farmer. He's a self taught farmer. He sells his grapes to other people. He farms his own stuff. He does field blends. All he wants to talk about, he doesn't wanna sit there and tell you about his life story and yada yada. He wants to talk about the soil and the dirt and the slopes and all this kind of stuff. And in the end, it shows in the bottle, and then people care about who made it. This is basic business. The basic business is we we're getting back to just basic business marketing tenants, which is you know, you have your four ps. You have, if I can remember them. Right? There's, like, four seven eleven. It depends on how you talk to. Right. Whatever. But you got people. You got place. You got product. Right? Product product always comes before any of that stuff. And so, and I can't remember what the four p is. But, but but the but the fact is that these you've got to get a good product. You have got to have the people who are going to want that product, and and then you've gotta have it available for people to buy. Okay. So let's let's talk about we know that taste is a factor. Taste is a language that has proven very difficult for us. It's difficult across different reviewers, different palettes, different cultures, different cuisines. So in eleven plus years of communicating wine, What are your insights on how we use the language of taste better? Oh, I don't have an answer for that. I do not have an answer for that because I'm really rely on language of place And this is why there was just an article in wine searcher and got I love Don Kavanaugh, and I think the work that they do at wine searcher editorial is unbelievable. I just wanna say that. But occasionally, there's some shit that comes out of there. And this one was just like, are you kidding me? I mean, this is occasionally something that people say about the death of the classification system. And this is a brand new thing that happened in nineteen thirty six and We should just get rid of it because it doesn't oh, my gosh. You might as well just pull the rug out from every single consumer in the world if you do that who drinks European wine. The whole point of the classification system is to create some standardized system where people know what the hell they're getting. God love that I can easily convey place to you. And then it's up to you to decide within the spectrum of Sancerre. Do you like the ones that are fruitier? Do you like the ones that are grassier? Within the giant confines of Bordeaux, are you attracted to something from Margot or Sonna's Steph? Thank god for France. Thank god for Italy. Thank god for Spain and the ever increasing restrictions on Spanish wines and the appalachians there. You you briefly touched on publishing, and sometimes articles are just a little bit too far out there. And this kinda circles background to the content that you produce. One of the things that we deal with a lot, and I was ranting about it today online, is analytics, engagement, reach, programmatic advertising, digital ad spin, all leading to click baby shit, leading to the same content over and over and over, leading to, you know, what to have at your Super Bowl picnic party articles in every food and bev magazine there is. So, one, do you pay attention to analytics? Okay. I could not care less. I could not care less. I don't use. I use different metrics. Right? The metrics that I use are it's like how you gauge success. Right? How do you gauge What metrics do you what metrics do everybody has? Different? I mean, everybody has different things. So on the one hand, You know, if you can't support yourself, why should you have a business? So that's, you know, that's obviously a lot of people's basic MO, but some people just stop there. Right? How do I make money? Financial sustainability. Yes. Or no. It's more than sustainability. Some people want that as the main goal. So I'll give you an example. See, this is, like, why I'm such a freaking weirdo. Right? So I don't take money from wine brands. I never have, and I never will. In fact, most of the time, I won't even take samples from them unless I know that I like their wine because honestly, I don't wanna have to take the wine and then have to tell people that as someone who's asked you to take money from wine brands in the past, I can attest that that is one hundred percent true. I do not take money. I don't take money from from Appalachian I don't like. Either. Right? So now Appalachian are coming to me and asking me to teach sponsored classes. Right? So I teach the way I make money is by offering education to people. And so I can't afford to offer free classes to my whole audience, so it is wonderful that these appletations are allowing me to do that. But I have very strict parameters. You can't control the content. You can't control my presentation. You know, you're certainly never gonna be able to buy space on the podcast, you know, buy my the the way that I do that. Right? Like sponsored podcasts. I mean, I did it one time. I wouldn't do it again, except for my advertisers where that's a separate deal. Right? Like, we're talking about their product. That's something very different. But, I mean, for no. I don't take money for that. And so is money my number one thing? No. Would I take money to be an influencer? No. I get those emails all the time and I hit delete. I'm not interested in that. Also, I say no to most people's PR pitches because I I I need to know you if you're gonna come on the show. This is a family to me. Right? My audience is my family. And, I get to know these people. I go out and I see them. I I meet them. I get to know them. I get to know some of their personal struggles. I care. I actually I know. It's weird. I care. So money is one part of it. Yes. I have to have sustainability. But then also I don't care about the numbers. I care about the engagement. How much do people actually care about what I'm doing? Did they like the podcast this week? Did they think it was a crappy one? Does it thought I mean, I look at the download and how do you how do you receive that? Do they email you? Is it through Patreon? Is it on social media posts? Where are you guardian? Yeah. Patreon. I mean, Patreon is where I trust the most because people are pretty honest with me. And they'll be like Because they pay just effectively. Yes. They contribute so they feel a right too. They absolutely do, but they also know I am receptive to it. That's the other thing is, like, I don't think I know better than them. I happen to have expertise in this field. And and and it's hard won. Right? It's hard won. It's from a lot of study and a lot of research. I'm a researcher. Right? Ultimately, like, my goal is to give people a hundred percent accurate information all the time. They know that. I have their interest at heart. I'm doing research projects every single week. That's what the podcast is. You know? If if we circle back around though, you do kind of have a first to market advantage in the sense that you can have this active patron set because you have been around so long, do you think that someone who was new, who was starting out, who was providing great value, and doing the research, could tomorrow go into Patreon and launch and have any success with it, is it a is it a time factor more than value? Or is it first a time factor and then value? You know? If someone came in now to any podcast space, and I don't care if it's wine or anything else, we have a crowded market of people where it's gonna be very hard to get in front of people. Right? So this is, again, this goes back to you. You have to get in front of people. And it's very difficult. It's it's just difficult to do. But again, you've gotta have all of the right components. I mean, I I think it's hard to have. It's So what does that look like? What are the guidelines? What are the tips and what are the tips and tricks of the trade that you'd share with someone coming into this space? I mean, the only One, do your research? That's what you told me. Do your research. Right. We talked about this. Do your research for on the market. Yada. Yada. But the the bottom line is for a wine maker, we're talking about wine brand. I mean, I'm gonna say the same thing I always have said. Find your people and get your wine in front of them, and they will buy your wine. You wanna see who buys wine, you wanna see what goes on, go hang out in a wine shop for a day if you're a marketer. Go see how people don't don't stalk them, but, you know, sit down and watch how people buy wine. You'd be floored. You would be floored at a, how much you underestimate, what people know, what they don't know, and then just looking at the process of how they buy wine. I mean, if every wine marketer went and spent some time looking at, you're sitting in a, a fairly busy wine shop, looking at how hard some of these wine people, you know, the salespeople, what the kinds of questions they got up got where the wine industry would be, the marketing would be completely different. I mean, it's and it's I'm not talking about wide widths where you go with a distributor rep and go, oh, here, buy this bottle. I'm talking about sitting there. You know, with a glass of wine at a at a place and looking and seeing what people do because that is we are so out of touch with that. You know, the reason your clients, Poly, are successful, is because you're not giving them that information. You are not telling them that they should have the world. You're telling them who they should commune with, who they should have a relationship with, how it should work. I mean, removing barriers to success is part of a marketer's job, I think. And part of that is to figure out who is appropriate for the brand and who is not appropriate for the brand. And then focusing in on the people that you want, not the people you don't want. And that creates a more positive thing all around. It might mean cutting your list in half, but it's gonna mean raising your sales. Elizabeth, thank you so much for being here with me today. I think you're I think you're awesome. You're one of my very favorite people in line, and I appreciate your time Well, I appreciate you. And you are actually one of my favorite people in wine or out of wine. So I'm just gonna get to have to pull that card on you. Our our our big mutual admiration society is complete. That's right. And that's a wrap for this week's episode of uncorked. Thank you for listening, and a very special thank you to my friend Elizabeth Schneider for joining us today. The Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world. And the only one with daily episodes. Tune in each day and discover all our different shows. Be sure to join us next Sunday for another look at the world of wine marketing. Hi, everybody. Italian wine podcast celebrates its fourth anniversary this year, and we all love the great content they put out every day. Cheaching with Italian wine people has become a big part of our day, and the team in verona needs to feel our love. Producing the show is not easy folks, hurting all those hosts, getting the interviews, dropping the clubhouse recordings, not to mention editing all the material. Let's give them a tangible fan hug with a fusion to all their costs, head to Italian wine podcast dot com and click donate to show your love.