Elliot Kallen: Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I’m Elliot Kallen and welcome to another exciting episode of meet the expert with Elliot Kallen. Wineries, wine, business ownership, expansion. That’s what we’re going to talk about for the next 25, 35 minutes. We can talk for hours on that because we’re talking with Bill Wilson of Wilson Creek Winery in Temecula. We’ll talk about, for those people who are listening, I’ve never heard of the term or the word Temecula. No, it’s not Napa. We’re going to talk about that too. There’s wine in California that doesn’t all come from the Napa Valley and there’s some good wine that doesn’t all come from the Napa Valley. So we’ll talk about that too. Bill, thanks for being here. 

Bill Wilson: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

Elliot Kallen: Absolutely. You want to reach us? I’m at prosperityfinancialgroup.com or Elliot, E-L-L-I-O-T at prosperityfinancialgroup.com. 925-314-8503 is my direct line. Call us. We’re talking with Bill not because we just love wine, which I do. If anybody knows anything about me, they know I’ve got a thousand bottle of big red wine tasting room here in Lafayette, California. And they also know that I’ve been searching for great wines for 20 years or what I consider great wines. But I know if you’re a Bordeaux or Burgundy person, you probably laugh at my taste, but we can get to that different taste of wine. 

Bill Wilson: Hey, it doesn’t matter what you like as long as you like it. 

Elliot Kallen: Yeah. We talk to business owners all the time. So we’re going to talk to one that’s fascinated in the wine business. Welcome Bill. Thank you so much. 

Bill Wilson: And my pleasure being here. 

Elliot Kallen: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about first who Wilson Creek Winery is and where’s Temecula? How do people find you? Let’s start with that because wine lovers want to order right now. 

Bill Wilson: Sure. Sure. We’re Wilson Creek Winery. We’re down in Southern California. We’re about 55 minutes from the airport in San Diego, 55 minutes from airport in Ontario, hour from Palm Springs and an hour and 15 minutes from Orange County airport and an hour and 40 minutes from Los Angeles. We’re literally surrounded by 26 million people that come out here and enjoy getting out into the wine country and Temecula. Temecula is an Indian name for the sun through the mist. And so we get some coastal influences because we’re 22 miles from the ocean as the crow flies, but you got to go around a little place called Camp Pendleton. So we’re just to the east and we have this rainbow gap that kind of filters the cool breezes from the ocean and the convection from the desert out there that, heat rises sucking in the cool breezes. So we get this nice wind every afternoon, keeping it cool. The hottest part of the day at Temecula is at 11 a.m. because there’s no breeze. 

Elliot Kallen: So now everybody knows how to find Temecula, how to get you on a map and how to go out there and enjoy some great wine. And by the way, the wine world, not everybody’s familiar with the wine world, but wine tasting is different than just going to Costco or Bebmo and just buying a bottle of wine because it looks like the right price on the right shelf at eye level.

Bill Wilson: It’s a pretty label. 

Elliot Kallen: Yeah. It’s about wine. And I started buying wine 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, and I thought I would learn what I like right away. And it’s funny, I learned, Bill, what I did like more than what I liked. 

Bill Wilson: Sure. Absolutely. And that’s the whole thing is trying to find something that you like. And again, as I said, if you like it, you’re right. If you don’t, you’re right. Everybody’s taste buds are personal preference. And so when you do come wine tasting, I highly recommend just getting away from the Cabernet Chardonnay mindset and try to open yourself up to some other varietals or some blends that you otherwise would not go to the store and spend the Money and invest in a bottle of wine that you have no idea what it tastes like. So that’s kind of the, it’s a hit or miss that the story got to go through, novels to figure out what you like and don’t like. And then, I have a friend that, he likes what he calls his daily drinker. And, it’s a $22 bottle of Knights Valley Beringer Cabernet, and he just brings it everywhere he goes all the time. And I want to go, but I can’t, he likes it. So that’s his daily drinker. But when we say, hey, we’re bringing, everybody bring your good stuff. And so we bring good stuff. And then he brings the daily drinker like, oh, man, come on. You brought that in your suitcase to, a special dinner in Mexico or wherever we’re traveling. Come on. He goes, yeah, but it’s just my daily drinker. I brought this, haul whatever or, all sorts of other stuff that he’s discovered. So he’s my ultimate wine geek friend. I call him. 

Elliot Kallen: Well, I guess we just haven’t spent enough time together for me to get in that category, but we will. I think we will. 

Bill Wilson: Just from quickly talking to you before this, I think we could be wine geek friends big time. 

Elliot Kallen: Nope. That sounds pretty good to me. So let me, your background is not, you’re not second and third generation wine owner here. You’ve kind of started it and got a good story. What’s the story of how you got into this business? 

Bill Wilson: Well, you know, interesting. This is a financial show. I was a series seven stock licensed financial planner at the age of 25. I grew up in the financial world. My grandparents were stockbrokers. My dad was a mutual fund sales rep. So I just thought that was the direction I would go. And I went left and I went right in that industry and I just realized it wasn’t for me. I love meeting with clients and helping them, but I hated having to get to that point. I hated the cold calling. I hated the recruiting to who’s your next client. And it just drove me nuts. And maybe it was a lack of self-esteem, confidence, call it what you want, because I was so young, I didn’t have a pot to pee in, but I’m talking to you about how to invest your dollars. And I used to say, don’t do as I do, do as I say, and you’ll be fine. So anyway, from that, I had to change careers and I asked my best friend what I should do for a living and kind of saw an opportunity out here with the older gentlemen that wanted out of the business. And I convinced my entire family to quit their jobs, sell what homes they had and come down here to Temecula and start a winery together. Without any idea about the wine business, we just learned from the ground up. And again, if you follow your heart, your pocketbook will follow. And yeah, boy, we were stupid though. As I said, I’m probably going to write a book, too stupid to know better, but did it anyway and having a blast at it. You know, this is our 25th anniversary coming up and I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve built from the ground up without having any knowledge of this crazy business at all. I’m not even, I wasn’t even a wine drinker back then. I was a beer drinker. 

Elliot Kallen: This is a lesson for all these wannabe entrepreneurs. I’ve got a book called Driven, it’s an Amazon bestseller over my left shoulder. And we talk about entrepreneurship and follow your heart, you need to, you need more of the following your heart and obviously to make money. But you took a huge risk and that’s what entrepreneurs do. They are inherent and an innate risk takers that drive banks nuts. You’re the opposite of banks take a risk. We didn’t have a passion for wine. We just liked wine, maybe not even that much. We had a passion for owning our own business or you wouldn’t have done that. So you do have passions. 

Bill Wilson: Yeah, we had a passion of, entertaining people. We had a passion of being with people. And so we created a place where people could come and relax and enjoy and can take the Stress of everyday life off. And I just come out here and enjoy as we say, just over the hill, you got a million miles away from, jungle USA out there in LA. It’s a whole different world out here. You get off the pavement and you come into our property and you just go, wow, where am I? What’s going on here? It’s kind of like, you know, people joke and say it’s a Disneyland for adults and it’s fun. We got a little something for everyone out here and we have 54 wineries in the area and some coming online very soon and some breaking ground as I speak. So, this area is growing it’s, starting to get some good recognition for growing great wines. So again, the passion comes from how many hours a day are you going to work and how many hours a day are you going to Sleep? And there’s a whole lot of nothing in between when you’re starting a business, and you just have to continue to to do it and do it. And just there’s no stop, it’s a, you burn the boats in the Bay a long time ago and you’re conquering that Hill and you don’t have we, which sets us apart from every other winery. We had no money. We did this with equity and from our home loans and from our homes and borrowed from the SBA. That’s a funny story. If you want to know the financials, I met the guy that gave us the go ahead and he says, you know, there’s no rhyme or reason why we should have given you the loan. We actually shouldn’t. The only reason we gave you the loan, and this is kind of noteworthy, he goes, the only reason we gave you the loan is that there was some equity in the property over the year from, you know, since you bought it, but this is all you had. This was everything your family had in its entire was invested in this company into what you’ve got to this day and your entire family was involved. They said, if we give them the, if we don’t give them the loan, they’re going to fail. If we give them the loan, they’re going to work their butts off so that they don’t fail. And we think that’s the recipe for success. So they were a little bit more of a risk taker than bank of America for say that, you know, they refused us, but it’s your local bank SBA bank that said, you know what? I think they can do it. 

Elliot Kallen: Well, that’s called tenacity and perseverance, isn’t it? 

Bill Wilson: Here we are. Now we’re, you know, we’ve parlayed that debt into way more debt building and growing and Growth will kill your financials as anybody knows. But here we are just looking around pinch me. Cause you know, we’ve got such a great team. We’ve got a great staff. We’ve got a great product. We’ve got a great facility. And I feel almost like we’re just getting started. 

Elliot Kallen: Before I talk to you about wine for a moment, Bill, I just want to clarify this for everybody who’s listening to this, who are either entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs. This is really not a story about wine. This is a story about perseverance, tenacity, vision, passion for the intestinal fortitude. There are so many platitudes that I could throw your way and you deserve all of them for your success. And I talk about them in my book, but it’s fabulous that you’ve got them because you, you exude these. And as an entrepreneur, fellow entrepreneur, owning a financial services built up, $2 billion, two firms totaling a billion dollars here in Northern California and a charity, I’m inspired just to listen to it. 

Bill Wilson: Yeah. Thank you. Because it is, it’s, growing, I kind of know how to grow a financial company like yourself. And having people underneath you, it’s another thing to try to grow it, out in the vineyards and make it into wine and turn that into a profit. It’s a, there’s a lot of moving parts into that move, into that deal. It is it takes passion it takes pride. And, but it also, you’re putting your product on the line every single day, by every time somebody comes up and puts a lip to a glass and they sip it and they’ll either like it or they hate it. And, you hope more like it than hate it type thing. And again, we try to find something for everybody. We try to find a wine that you’ll like. And you’re in a whole different spectrum than the majority of the people out there that are thinking about coming wine tasting. So you’ve got to have a little bit of something for everyone is what I say. And and we do, and it’s kind of fun. 

Elliot Kallen: Let’s get a little bit geeky for a moment. If we could about one and parallels behind you and, I, as I studied wine and I’m very passionate about wine and you can see I’m a passionate person as well. And I love wine and I love the people of wine, which is great. And I could, and I agree with you. I can completely disagree with you. Like I’m not a Pinot guy. And, but I know people that could tell you the 11 characteristics of velvety Pinot that they love. And I could tell you just, you should hold that bottle and give it to somebody that would appreciate it more than me. Hello. So everybody’s different. Some people like Movedra, we, you and I talked about that. I’m going to talk about that a second, but I drank some wine from Southern California to the, from the Paso Robles area Movedra, and it tasted like wild mushrooms. I thought this is not exactly what I want. My wine tasting like a Grenache. It tastes like a cherry while I’m drinking cherry wine. But everybody’s different on this. So let’s get wonky and geeky for a second. Okay. 

Bill Wilson: All right. 

Elliot Kallen: First of all, we’ve got barrels behind you. Let’s just talk about the barrels because they’re behind you. There are people that I’ve learned that like only French oak, they like virgin French oak. They’re oak. They don’t really care about American oak or French oak. They just want it to taste good. There are people who say, no, I’d rather have Hungarian oak because it’s more neutral. What do you use and why? 

Bill Wilson: It’s a combination of the thing. If the French oak imparts more delicate oak flavors it takes a little longer to extract those flavors from there because they’re a little tighter grain. The American oak is a little bit more peppery. So if you want a little bit more pepper so a winemaker will use an oak barrel or the different varietals of oak barrel and the different ages of oak barrel, like a chef would use spices. And so they taste their wine and say, okay. Yes, it needs oak, but does it need French oak? Does it need American oak? Is the French oak going to be too soft for a Zin? Is the American oak going to be too harsh for a Pinot? What’s it going to taste like? So a lot of times we’ll use a combination and always a combination of years, 80, 20, 30, 30, 30, 30 as far as age. If it’s one year, it’s going to get more oak. If it’s two years, it’s going to be less oak, three years, even less. The fourth is neutral as far as the amount of oak that it can extract. And so the barrels are really only good for three years. And the French oak will cost you 1500 bucks a barrel. The American oak costs you 750 bucks a barrel. And there’s a unique twist in between as a European oak, that’ll cost you about 1100 to $1,200 a barrel. Not quite as much as French, but it’s sourced from the same oak forest that the French oak, it’s just the French think that they’re much better skilled and craftsmen and designing a better product, which, they’ve had generations to do it and they might be right. So you got to pony up to say it’s in French oak and, by just saying it’s in French oak, everybody goes, oh my God, ah, it’s in French oak, but that’s not necessarily the case that you would want in some of the wines that you make, you want a little bit more spicy, like the Zinfandel loves American oak. 

Elliot Kallen: Let’s continue this on the varietals for a moment. When I first started learning about wine of what I liked, I didn’t realize how much I would like peppery Zinfandel, which barely exists anymore. It seems peppery Zinfandel, it’s been jammed up. 

Bill Wilson: The white Zin market killed it. Everybody thinks Zinfandel is white Zin, so it’s absolutely killed it. 

Elliot Kallen: Yeah. So Zin is one of your products, right? 

Bill Wilson: Yes. Yeah. 

Elliot Kallen: So is it, am I right when I say that the market, cause more about the market than I do, has gotten jammier or fruitier rather than spicier in the Zinfandel market? 

Bill Wilson: I think all wine has gotten jammier and fruitier because that’s what the majority of the population loves. It’s a special breed like yourself that likes that spice here. Note that a little bitey in the beginning and let it age for five to 10 years to take that away. Yeah, I think they’ve gotten a lot more jammy by design because that’s by demand and you gotta, when you’re making a wine, it’s hard to make it for the one percenters like you and you’ve got 99 people coming through going, oh, that’s horrible and you’ll love it. They hate it, and then you make, we have what we call tank 15 Zin and every once in a while we get a really good batch of Zin and we’ll put it in tank 15 because back in the early days, this was circa 2008 we get an after shift drink, everybody gets a glass of wine, sit around and talk about the day. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day. And people were walking over to the barrel room cellar room and grabbing it right straight out of the tank. It’s not even in the bottle and bringing it back over and everybody’s a little, wait, you went over there and you didn’t get mine. Where is it? Take 15. So it was tank 15 Zin and they’d be bringing over carafes and we’d be sharing it to people. And everybody’s oh, I can’t wait until tank 15 comes out. So it began a trend of tank 15 Zin. This latest tank 15 Zin is like a fruit bomb. It’s so sweet. And I don’t like it, I’m embarrassed. I don’t like it, but the population loves it. So what do you say to that? 

Elliot Kallen: What do we know? 

Bill Wilson: Yeah. What do we know? And where I’m as I’ve told you before, I’m a big Petit Seraf fan. I love the big Petit Seraf, especially coming out of out of here. It’s not a jammy Petit Seraf. We make it almost like Cabernet taste. 

Elliot Kallen: Let’s talk about that for a second. I, since I’m a red wine lover of full disclosure, I, my, I have seven or 800 bottles, just of Napa Cabernet that’s big and tannic because I like big and tannic. I like spicy food, have maybe 200 bottles of Zinfandel. Only some of it is spicy, unfortunately, because I just can’t find it. And I’ve got maybe 40 bottles of Petit Seraf and I’ve scattered after that. And I’ve got maybe three bottles of white. So that’s my style in there. But let me talk about what I like Petit Seraf because that I have been increasing my amount of Petit Seraf. In the old days that people said you like Petit Seraf. That means you eat a lot of stew. You eat a lot of hearty soups in the winter. That’s not really true. We don’t live in the middle of the Rockies where I’m eating stew all winter. It’s just not happening here. 

Bill Wilson: I ask you, I ask people to find out where their palate is. How do you drink your coffee? 

Elliot Kallen: It’s black. Maybe sometimes some almond milk in there, but mostly black. 

Bill Wilson: Mostly black. So you like red. If somebody likes the, three cups of sugar into one glass, they’re going to the sweet stuff, that’s their palate. Their palate is attuned to that. Oh, and if you like it with a cream and sugar, you’re right in the middle zone. But if you like it, as I say, black is beautiful, baby. And that’s how you’re going to you’re going to a big red. That’s where your palate is. And it’s just an easy term for everybody that, that comes here. Or like they go, man, I don’t like coffee at all. It’s way too blah. And all right, here’s some muscat cannelli for you. Cause that’s what they’re going to like. They’re not going to like any red. 

Elliot Kallen: Petite Syrah is bigger, not as jammy. Can be very smooth, but different than Cabernet. 

Bill Wilson: Yeah. 

Elliot Kallen: Do you make Cabernet? Is that one of your items? Now billions of dollars a year promoting that Napa Cabernet are the best in the world, everywhere I Travel worldwide, they’ve created a really good marketing program for themselves. 

Bill Wilson: Correct. And they do have some of the best Cabernets in the world, but they charge you dearly for it. You’re into that, $150 on up to $350 to get some of the best Cabernets in the world. And we say dollar for dollar, the value that you get with our products down here are on par with what you can get up there. So for twice the dollars. So you know, we don’t have a $350 bottle of Cabernet, not at all. Our highest priced wine with anything is $75. And that’s the reserve that’s been aged out for four years. So it’s just a different market, a different breed, because they do spend millions and millions of dollars to get you to believe that the best Cabernet and the only thing comes out of is Napa. And we’re doing some regenerative block nine cab, we call it block nine cab, where we started a regenerative agriculture protocols out in the vineyard, and we’re bringing in sheep and we just bought worm caseins and we’re doing a fish stew basically that we put in into the vines and we allow the weeds to grow and the sheep to eat them and pee and poop and the whole thing to get the microbials in the soil to be the biosphere for the vines to enjoy and lap up all the natural nutrients and they express much better and grow much hardier and produce a better product. And it’s cheaper than to chemical farm, so to speak, or strip farm. And it’s we’re seeing some great results. So but we’re not there yet. We had a Cabernet tasting just the other week and with the same wine geek friends and, they all had they just got back from Napa and they all had their little wines from Napa and I brought my little block nine cab. It wasn’t, they were breaking out the $200 bottles because they’re so happy about it. And, my little $65 bottle didn’t stand up and I’m the first one to say it didn’t stand up. So that was our first shot at it. And this year’s release, hopefully, will be even better. So what is your best seller? That’s not a red at all. It’s actually the white Cabernet Sauvignon. We take a red grape and we make a white wine out of it. We press it. We treat it just like a Chardonnay grape. We allow very little and zero skin contact. We go to great lengths to keep the color out to make it actually a white. As soon as the press turns pink, we put that into another tank and we make a cabs in combination out of that. And that’s the one that we sell the most thereof. It’s sweet. It’s not a white Zinfandel, it’s actually white and it’s in a pretty blue bottle with a silver label and people go nuts for it. It’s crazy. 

Elliot Kallen: Mostly women buying it or no? 

Bill Wilson: What’s that? 

Elliot Kallen: Is it mostly women that buy it or no? 

Bill Wilson: Oh no. It’s all sorts of people. But, I’m going to be frank here that women buy most of the wine anyway. Again, not the one percenters per se, but they’re the ones that are pushing the wine drinking. 

Elliot Kallen: It’s funny you say that, Bill. I would I’m not going to mention a winery up in Sonoma County, but they were when I joined them, they had three Zinfandels and all of them were spicy. And then they have maybe eight of them and barely one of them is spicy. And then they have a cab and a Petit Sirah, two different Petit Sirahs and whites. And I had a talk with the winemaker. We had a very nice talk. It sounds like we had an argument, but we had a good discussion about it, about the lack of spiciness and the lack of tannins and anything strong in your Zins. And he said, look, Elliot, I could tell you scientifically that the greater the drought, the less chance of it being spicy and that the more rain there is, the more spice there is. It’s just how there is. But that’s not really the reason why this is happening. That’s the scientific reason. The real reason is because women buy most of our wine and they don’t want spice. That’s exactly what you’re talking about. 

Bill Wilson: Yeah, it’s true. The women drag their men wine tasting. I see, gobs of women, the ladies night out or the ladies day out or they’re celebrating birthdays or, bachelorette parties, whatever. You very rarely see a bachelor party or a group of guys saying, hey, let’s go wine tasting, dude. OK, cool. If they do that, they are smart because there’s a lot of beautiful women that come here and they’re out looking for women. They’re not looking for a beautiful gabardine. They’re looking for a beautiful blonde or a beautiful brunette. 

Elliot Kallen: I guess I’ve got my beautiful blonde. So I’m looking for a beautiful cab. 

Bill Wilson: Exactly. Exactly. 

Elliot Kallen: That’s pretty funny. I know what we’re talking to Bill Wilson. We’re going to wrap this up in a moment or two, but we’re talking of Wilson Creek winery. I can’t tell you how much I would recommend it if talking with Bill about passion and fortitude and creativity and tenacity. If you want to meet a business owner, we’ll get to his information in a moment. I would go out to Wilson Creek. I can’t wait to go meet you in person now because we’re done here. Don’t hang up. I’m going to get wide from you through sight unseen because I think you’ve got a great passion that I want to share in that a little bit. But just a couple of final questions before we finish up here, and that is that when somebody is trying to expand their palate, but they know what they like, and you and I talked about this, and I had an interesting argument with a friend and they said, what’s your favorite steak Elliot? And it is the filet mignon for me. And so I know that’s not a real meat eater steak or ribeye is a more meat eater steak. And maybe it’s a softer, gooier melt on your tongue steak, even though I like Cabernet’s. 

Bill Wilson: But Elliot, it doesn’t overwhelm your wine. 

Elliot Kallen: Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s subtle. Now. So when I think of wine and I think I love these two or three, let’s call them three wines, Cabernet, Zinfandel, Petit Sirois in a red world. And I like those a lot. Why do I have to, because some people argue with me, say you need to drink more blended Mouvedre, blended Palo Paso Robles blends down there to really, because you’re not broad enough. And I think in a steak, you’re right. I’m not broad enough in my steak, like steak and I’ll eat it. If you serve me a ribeye, I’ll like it and I’ll enjoy it. But I’d prefer filet. Why do I have to be broad in my wine selection if I’m narrow in my meat selection? 

Bill Wilson: No reason. Don’t you should unapologetically like what you like and unapologetically, you don’t have to apologize to anybody. However, to me, the cut of steak between in New York, you ribeye filet, that’s one thing. Have you tried buffalo meat, deer meat, alligator, all these other ones that are completely out of the red meat cow syndrome. Does that float your boat? Do you like fish, do you know, or are you a meat and potatoes only guy? And so that’s all you order whenever you go anywhere and you’re upset if they don’t, I’m sure like you and, we go to these charity functions, we go to dinners to host it or breakfast or whatever. And are you upset if they don’t have red meat that comes to the table? 

Elliot Kallen: No, I actually have very broad on the other side. I eat fish all day. I eat way more fish than I do meat on that. But I can’t say that I’ve had Buffalo steaks. I’ve had plenty of Buffalo burgers. Elk, elk I’ve had. That’s a petite sirah product. And that’s why you, because when gaming is, you want petite sirah because you want balance and fullness in your mouth. Yeah. 

Bill Wilson: I, again, it’s that is, is, one steak, the other Wagyu versus this or whatever. But when you really want to go out and get outside your comfort zone, go to Montana and see all these wild game and different meats. But again, you’re spending 50 bucks for a dinner who wants to risk whether you like it or not. And you almost want to go to, Hey, can I taste a little bit and see which one I want and then buy it? That’s like what wine taste is. Let me taste a little different ones. And then I’m going to buy a bottle or two of that. And you don’t get that opportunity in a restaurant. So you stay with what you like because it’s an investment that, if it’s not good, I don’t send anything back. It’s cause I ordered it, it’s my bad, and I just won’t order it again or I won’t go to that restaurant again. Same with wine. If you don’t like it, you’re not going to buy that wine again. 

Elliot Kallen: Those are good points right now. So if you love wine, for those listening to this, if you love wine and you like the passion of business ownership and maybe the winemaking business and want to learn more and you’re interested in why there are barrels behind him and are they French or the American or the Hungarian or the Virgin Oak or the secondary Oak, then you’ve got somebody to talk to. And that’s Bill Wilson. Bill, how does everybody reach you? 

Bill Wilson: Simple info at Wilson Creek, winery.com. Go check our webpages. You can order anything you want online or our website. It’s actually pretty cool. It shows you all the different events we have signed up to receive our newsletter, join our wine club come out and see us out in Temecula. Any number of ways we’re, we are go buy us on the store shelf. We have a product out there that’s our, actually our number one seller. It’s almond sparkling wine peach sparkling wine, along with our white Cabernet out there in the markets in the South land, there’s some in the North or across 30 States, but we don’t do a lot of business out there. Get on our product locator. You can find it near you. We make it very easy to do business with us and try to just be as open to anybody that wants to come out here and learn more. And that’s really what we specialize in. We take you from, Hey, you’ve never tasted wine before. That’s okay. I got something from you to somebody like you that has a thousand bottles in their cellar and comparing you to the world-class elite wines. We want to be judged accordingly and we’re not afraid to go toe to toe. So we try to bring you along and we try to educate you. We have wine Academy classes. We educate, we entertain, right? We educate and we do everything we can to make fun to make wine fun and enjoyable. We’re trying to take it off the stop shelf. When people come up to you, they’re scared of you. They don’t want to get into a conversation of wine with you because you know your wine so well that you’re scary to a lot of people. And 

Elliot Kallen: Bill, we could do a zoom. You and I could do a zoom wine tasting for clients and guests of prosperity financial group. 

Bill Wilson: Yeah. So when we did that during, I just got chills during COVID we started the online zoom and we brought our wine maker and our vineyard manager and our real wine expert tasting room expert and sat down and did a zoom tasting with questions and answers from people and people really enjoyed it. And then when we got, we opened backed up, we stopped doing that. And I’m like, maybe we should get back to that because it’s enjoyable. It’s fun. 

Elliot Kallen: Yeah. Like he, we did it with a number of wineries that I’ve never, I’m a little bit of a club jockey. I belong to eight different clubs or so. We did it and people were thrilled to do it, but you’re right. We’ve gotten lazy. And you know what it was? We have so many clients around the country that are just not here in Napa and Sonoma or close or not really interested in getting in their car and going up there. They just like the wine experience. Maybe let’s set that up for early part of next year, the first quarter when you’re starting and everybody’s bored, get out of your house and we’re going to do a wine tasting together. How’s that? 

Bill Wilson: Yeah, I love it. Or just sit on the comfy couch in front of that fire and enjoy the last wine and talk about what you’re tasting and why you’re tasting it. And we, I always do this, buy this, these six wines or these four wines or these three wines that we go through and say, get some dark chocolate, get some of this, get some of that. And then we go through it together and see how it changes in your palate over the different styles and how you taste it and how you drink it, how you approach it, whether it’s cold, whether it’s warm, whether it’s sat and decanted versus non-decanted. It’s a lot of fun. And we educate people all the time and we host anywhere from, we maxed it at 60, 60 people every month we do a wine academy and there are certain people that are there every single time. And they just want to, they just want to know more and they’re hungry to know more. And they, and we do it in a way that’s easy for people to to educate their palate and to learn more. The more, the scarier you become. 

Elliot Kallen: We have had a great conversation, Bill. We have been talking with Bill Wilson. He’s the owner of Wilson Creek Winery, wilsoncreekwinery.com is the website address. I can’t thank you enough, Bill, for being part of the show. It’s been fun and it’s a passion of mine and it is obviously a tremendous passion of yours. 

Bill Wilson: I appreciate what you do. I know what you do and for all your clients out there, he has that same passion that I have for wine that he says he has for it. He has that same passion for all of you and your clients because you don’t get to where he is with not caring and that’s hats off to you. Congratulations to you and prosperity. You guys are awesome. So keep up the good work. Keep those clients making that money. 

Elliot Kallen: We’ve got 75 plus episodes available on the website of prosperityfinancialgroup.com. You can reach me at Elliot 2L1T at prosperityfinancialgroup.com 925-314-8503 there’s a best selling book you can buy podcasts. I love this and I talk to business owners because 60% of our clients are entrepreneurs just like you, Bill. And they’ve got tenacity, they’ve got fortitude and you know something, they’ve got stories about trials and tribulations and ups and downs and sometimes being broke and maybe even coming out of a former bankruptcy or just because there aren’t many Mark Zuckerbergers that started a business when they’re young and five years later, they’re a billionaire. Most of us have a lot of ups and downs and sidewards and backwards and that’s what makes us stronger and better at what we do. 

Bill Wilson: That’s what I’d like out of my politicians. I want, I, getting political here for a minute. I would like every politician to have to make a P and L every month and pay people before they get paid and better to have to come out of their pocket to pay people before they get paid. That’s who I want guiding my, that’s who I want, because it’s a whole new experience when you have to come out of your pocket to pay somebody that worked for you because you guys didn’t make enough money that month, too much month at the end of the money, that old saying, and it’s hard. It’s brutal. And you you think differently. And it’s that entrepreneurial mindset of let’s go, let’s get it, let’s do it. So again, you’re that guy. So I appreciate you and and appreciate understanding what the business owners go through. 

Elliot Kallen: Great. If you’re interested in this, the next time you go down to Wilson Creek winery in Temecula outside of Ontario airport, outside of San Diego camp Elverton, you heard that early in the show, go over and ask for bill and make sure you say, I heard your podcast 

Bill Wilson: tell them Elliot sent you, tell them Elliot sent you, there’ll be a little surprise in there for you. 

Elliot Kallen: There you go. Have a great day, everybody. Bill. Thanks so much for being part of this.

 
Bill Wilson: Thank you, Elliot. Have a great day. Bye.