0:00 i had to bet on myself everything was there to start a business i just didn't know how to make wine the most scarce 0:05 thing in the world is your time and  bitcoin's absolutely scarce i would say 50% of my sales this year have been in 0:11  bitcoin specifically but 100% to  bitcoiners the  bitcoin itself is not 0:16 what those companies that are just dipping their toe in are looking at they want more sales you have to view that as 0:23 boosting the system you have to view that as use it or lose it when it comes to  bitcoin's ability to scale i was out 0:30 there with a  bitcoin preferred sign for years and would get like you know maybe 0:35 one person a week medium of Exchange is sponsored by 0:42 Polaris Payments let's face it for now businesses still need to accept fiat and Starting a Winery Without Experience 0:47 credit cards polaris Payments helps with all your credit card processing needs using a consultative approach think of 0:54 Polaris like a performance coach helping take your business to the next level when it comes to accepting all forms of 1:01 money for more information about Polaris Payments visit polarispayments.com 1:06 now let's get back to the show hello and welcome to the Medium of Exchange podcast today Jack and I are excited to 1:12 welcome Ben Just ben is a wine maker and  bitcoiner and the founder of Peony Lane 1:18 a boutique winery that accepts  bitcoin ben welcome to the show hey thanks for having me excited to talk about how 1:25  bitcoin's changing the world as far as uh commerce goes for sure so Ben I'd 1:31 love to hear a little bit just about your story um you know what was the 1:37 exact moment that you realized you had to start Pony Lane i was in my uh I was 1:43 like 25 and kind of floundering as a geologist realizing that there wasn't a career path for me using my degree and 1:52 um knew kind of in my heart that like I needed to be an entrepreneur but had gone the geology route just to give it a 1:58 shot and really was just in a soul-searching phase of what do I want to 2:04 do with my life and I grew up on a farm where my dad grew all his own food and 2:10 had planted a few acres of pinot noir grapes and had been making wine from it 2:16 uh as a bit of a more of a hobby there was a couple years of him selling wine and I had never really considered that 2:23 as a business option and one day we were just on the phone 2:30 talking about life he knew what phase I was at and he's like maybe you should just start the the winery start making 2:36 wine and it was really just the perfect 2:41 layout of opportunity where I figured my dad could 2:47 teach me how to make wine he was a hobby wine maker but it had some small really like his wine he made low intervention 2:54 wine so that's a lower bar to entry as far as understanding what you're doing from the beginning I thought and um I 3:02 had the infrastructure to start as a hobby wine maker and scale up and then 3:08 he was loan me the money to get going so everything was there to start a business 3:14 i just didn't know how to make wine and I didn't know how to run a business but I knew I had to bet on myself so kind of 3:21 just went for it and had two years to figure out how to make wine before I had to figure out how to sell wine 3:28 so it was really just a I need to bet on myself and everything's here for this so 3:35 you know it may not be what I want to do my whole life but I got to I got to do this now was that hard like you know 3:42 with something like software you can iterate every day something like growing grapes you got one shot per season right 3:50 yeah so yeah wine making is like it's continuous and I guess the wine is truly 3:56 never done until you drink it but there's a a point like you have basically the whole year and to make the 4:03 wine get it where you want it but there's a intense you know two week period harvest to ferment to get it in 4:09 barrel most intense and about a week 4:15 man I would even just like a couple hours into making wine my first time after I had invested my entire life 4:21 savings into this um I kind of realized my dad didn't know what he was doing as a wine maker and that I was going to 4:27 have to teach myself so you know that's quite the kick in the pants when you 4:33 realize it's all on you and you've just bet everything you better figure it out and that first year I you know didn't 4:40 really know what I was doing but I made solid wine all the wine I made um well I 4:46 messed up some of the wine but the reason I messed it up was because I didn't know if it was good or not and I was moving towards the bottling phase 4:52 and I just kept opening the barrels and being like "Hey try this is it good is it good is it good?" And that extra air 4:57 exposure uh ruined a lot of my wine when it would have already been really good the wine that did survive um won some 5:04 awards in Colorado and so that you know gave me confidence but 5:10 like I didn't start selling that wine for another year um I didn't have enough to really make it at that time so I was 5:18 working over the winters I was doing uh restaurant jobs at ski towns and that 5:23 kind of gave me a slow intro was like yeah I still have a job but I also have the winery that does mean part of the year I'm working two jobs um but I don't 5:32 know over time it's like it's just kind of the way I do it is super hands-off my 5:38 goal in wine making is to let the grapes express themselves which means I get out of the way as much as possible and you 5:44 know I've refined my techniques over the years and and gotten better at the little bit I do to make better wine but 5:52 um yeah it is you kind of get one shot every year and right as I was about to I 5:59 made my second vintage and right after we harvested that before I'd ever sold any wine we had a hard frost and every 6:06 grape in Colorado got frozen out so I was banking on my estate pen noir kind Winemaking Challenges & Learning by Doing 6:11 of being my it wine and then I had an entire vintage where I couldn't make it so there there's kind of the smoothing 6:19 over of wine making is like you have years and years of stock eventually that 6:24 was me just getting started so I didn't and that you can kind of use that to smooth over bad years so like you make a 6:31 lot on good years you make a little bit less on bad years once you're fully stocked up and that papers over the 6:36 farming variability because there's so much variability in the in in farming 6:41 and um it's I think the the coolest part though is really just like becoming much more 6:48 attached to the the land I grew up in and um this business turning into a  bitcoin 6:54 business which was not the plan from the beginning what was the hardest day you had as a 6:59 wine maker or entrepreneur man I had some crazy panic attacks when I was 7:05 first um maybe my second vintage of wine- making because the first time I was doing it um it was really hard i was 7:13 commuting from Denver so I'd work 40 hours in uh 4 days and then drive 5 7:18 hours that night work uh 3 12-hour days and drive back and it was just continuous for a month of wine making 7:25 because that's when the grapes ripen um and I knew I wasn't going to have any wine to sell so it's not like I could 7:30 quit my job and that was hard but that was just get the work done but the 7:38 second year of wine making adds to the complexity because now not only do I have all this wine making from the first 7:45 year but now I have to as I was saying I was stressed about is this wine good i 7:51 just committed a year two years really because I've just started making all this second batch and I have to commit 7:58 to this wine being like quote unquote done moving it into the bottle and make 8:03 all the wine the second time so bottling and uh finishing and everything is like a whole added other bit of complexity 8:10 with tons of just like rolling processes like I need barrels in two days to be 8:16 able to put the wine that's done fermenting into so I need to bottle right now which 8:21 means prepping and u there's there was just so many days where it's like these constant like "Oh I forgot to do 8:29 this thing i have to do this right now it's 9:00 p.m or I like can't or I just 8:34 like ruin all my wine." So there's just like constant thinking of things um I was taking some CBD at the time uh to 8:41 help with the stress and I guess I overdid it and had a just crazy a panic attack and that was kind of the nadier 8:47 of um intensity and every year it gets a little bit less but at the same time the 8:53 grapes do have a mind of their own and I can only plan so far out so during wine- 9:00 making season it's like once I pick grapes get them fermenting I know I generally have two weeks i know what I 9:06 generally have to do in those two weeks but I don't know exact days uh especially for getting labor having 9:12 specific things done and ready i'd never know exactly so like I can plan two days 9:17 out maybe one day but generally in wine- making season I have an entire month of rewriting my weekly schedule every 9:24 single day and everything changes for the entire week so there's maybe one to 9:29 two months a year where it's absolutely insane and then the rest of the year it's it's a lot more manageable 9:35 and I think the process that you're describing is so interesting because a lot of people enjoy drinking wine What Makes a Great, Natural Wine? 9:42 whether it's as a glass for dinner or you know a meeting with friends at a happy hour uh 9:48 but the actual like steps that go into getting a bottled you know pinot noir 9:56 that you're servicing to customers it to your point it's a it's a real difficult 10:02 process and you've basically just described all the proof of work that goes into selling what you would call a good bottle of wine but my question for 10:10 you then is what what else goes into besides just the taste of what makes a good bottle of wine and what are what 10:17 are you able to do to really add your own kind of uh you know unique brand to the P& lane wine and um be able to sell 10:25 it to people to the point where you're where you're winning rewards like you said like I said my biggest thing is kind of 10:31 getting out of the way so if you my philosophy is start with good grapes and as long as I'm a good steward I'm going 10:38 to end up with good wine um there's some little things I can do like uh within 10:43 the barrel aging but ultimately I'm kind of positioning Penny Lane as I 10:50 went through a health journey throughout this whole process of like if I'm going to be an entrepreneur if 10:57 I'm going to like bet on myself everything's on me and my health was not to the point where like I was able to 11:02 actually get things done um and in doing that I kind of realized how much different I felt in wine make a after 11:10 drinking my wine versus any other alcohol and started learning about how 11:15 um there's so many additives in wine that my philosophy initially was yeah I 11:20 want to make natural wine wild fermentation no additives but kind of was like I don't know how to do anything 11:27 different because that's what my dad did and then now that I'm um educated on the 11:32 health aspect that's a big portion of what I want to do so I want to create wines that leave people feeling good 11:38 afterwards it's a you know it's a nice buzz and then it's a clean comedown you don't feel gross the next day and I 11:46 think that that's I mean that's not unique for me but like that's is a a secret sauce of just like I'm not trying 11:52 to manipulate these wines i'm not trying to create anything that is different from what the grapes generally intended 11:58 um I'm a bit of a translator you know I hold its hand throughout the process but 12:04 um yeah my my goal is to get out of the way as much as possible and uh the wine 12:10 I'm making is from a pretty unique area i'm in the highest elevation wine region in North America and the only place in 12:18 Colorado you can grow pinot so for uh comparison's sake to give context for 12:24 that if you go out to California and you go wine tasting in a high elevation 12:30 region they're going to maybe be like 1500 feet above sea level i'm at 5,600 12:35 feet above sea level and um I also buy grapes from nearby in another AVA that's 12:43 uh 4,500 feet above sea level and so what I'm creating is just so unique in 12:48 the wine world i mean there are wines in in the Andes up to like you know 15,000 12:54 ft that's crazy but for North America what I'm doing is pretty unique and that 12:59 tends to show itself in the wine yeah and I love that you kind of talked about your your health journey and all 13:05 that type of you know additional education that went into both creating your wine as well as figuring out how 13:12 you're able to operate as an entrepreneur and I think one of the things that has started to bubble up in 13:18 the com in the social zeitgeist if that I think that's the right word there uh is a lot of what you were describing of Additives, Headaches & Hidden Ingredients 13:24 additives in just all of our food and that was something that I've never I 13:30 never even realized uh especially when thinking about different like you know whether it's alcohol or just processed 13:37 food really up until the last few years um and I think that that conversation has become very like uh very much a 13:45 selling point for people um and I just I remember when we were talking a few months back you were describing like the 13:52 the different types of wines that are on the market now and what goes into them and I would just love for you to kind of 13:58 run through like what are some of the things that are going into maybe the 14:03 average like uh bottle of wine that people are buying at the store that we're not that that we're not aware of 14:10 yeah so let me talk about wine specifically and then uh maybe alcohol in general with wine one of the things I 14:18 realized early on when I was getting my first labels is you don't really think about there being an ingredients list on 14:24 wine there isn't one that you're not required to have one in the United States and there's 72 improved 14:29 ingredients that you can add to your wine um to manipulate it and not have to say anything on the label so really it 14:38 just first I thought wine was not transparent because of like the classism and the jargon and just like elitism 14:46 that you kind of get when you enter the wine world um and then I realized that it's also there's so much hidden behind 14:52 the scenes in what's actually putting put in the wine and um as I've done my 14:57 research you know there's all these different people that are like "Oh yeah I get headaches because of the sulfites i get headaches because of the tannins i 15:03 get headaches for all these different reasons." And basically the conclusion I've come to is you don't know why 15:09 you're getting headaches there's no specific thing that's telling you I get headaches because of this um some people 15:15 are going to be sensitive to high sulfide some people sensitive to other things but ultimately it's something in 15:22 that wine that is giving you a headache and there's since there's no transparency there's really no way of knowing but if you drink a wine without 15:28 any of that stuff and low sulfites you're going to feel good more likely 15:33 than not so it could be any of those what is the purpose of adding them 15:39 so I have a relatively small winery and that means I can touch every barrel i 15:45 really can understand what's going on in each barrel because each barrel is different and in a large winery you're 15:52 producing so much that you have wine in these massive tanks um you really are 15:57 creating something to taste you want to taste you want to create if you're making a cabsav you want it to taste like a cabsav 16:04 should and like I reject that that is a thing that a cabsav should taste like 16:10 this um but if you're making large produced wine you want wine to taste a 16:16 specific way to get a specific score from a specific rating agency to be able 16:22 to sell better on the shelf to be able to say this is a 95 point cap and that is the difference of like hundreds of 16:28 thousands to millions of dollars depending on your scale so you get a wine maker that studied at UC Davis and 16:35 u makes a wine specifically to this taste there's some year-to-year variation but the 16:42 additives give more control to the wine maker and cut down that year-to-year variation um and like you're cutting off 16:50 the top in quality and you're raising the floor and for big businesses raising 16:55 the floor is what matters so that's a big reason i think a lot of people like 17:00 like I said sulfites are a big one and then the one that you see like the eye-popping one is this thing called mega 17:07 purple that's basically just this grape concentrate made from grape but it adds flavor it adds um color to wine so um 17:16 you're kind of getting it's it doesn't take much it's maybe not specifically bad for you but if someone's using that 17:24 they're probably using a bunch of other things and you don't know what they're using you don't know which of those 17:29 things is giving you problems so I think in the health sphere when it comes to 17:35 alcohol in general I hear a lot um especially from  bitcoiners that alcohol is a shitcoin and like there's no 17:44 denying that alcohol is alcohol in itself is not good for you and it's 17:49 addictive and so how can you say it's good well when you 17:55 realize that it's like a lot of the things in alcohol that are making you feel bad and not the alcohol itself you 18:01 can kind of trap like okay what is the alcohol doing that's making me feel bad and what are all these other additives do that make me feel bad and so um 18:09 alcohol inhibits your ability to regulate blood sugar so you're more likely to get blood sugar crashes so if 18:14 your blood sugar peaks and then drops super quick you're going to feel basically a hangover and people 18:20 associate that with alcohol because I was drinking now I feel bad 18:25 in all these other alcohol like you know in like manipulated red wine mixed 18:32 drinks beer's beer is going to increase your blood sugar um all those things also have a bunch of other additives to 18:38 them but they it's the blood sugar crash that's going to hurt you a lot and with red wine there is uh less sugar and um 18:48 I'm forgetting the exact chemical but something that helps kind of um regulate 18:53 that within your body a little bit um also just minutia because it's not like 18:59 the biggest thing but um I tend to say if you're on a date what you want to order is red like a good red wine that 19:06 doesn't have a ton of additives because it has this uh other chemical that we 19:12 can look up later the name um that reduces your body's ability to um remove 19:18 testosterone from your bloodstream so it doesn't boost your testosterone but it 19:23 stops your body from lowering it which in causes a elevated level while you're drinking but yeah it's it's really like 19:31 look if you can drink a nice bottle of wine with good friends over a good meal that's a pretty like life elevating 19:37 experience that you're not going to be able to quantify on the numbers but I think it's beneficial to life when used 19:44 appropriately and um if you can't hand like for some people's balance with 19:49 alcohol the right number is zero absolutely but if you can use alcohol in a positive way to kind of elevate 19:55 experiences and drink to enhance your life not to escape it I think you can have a positive health benefit from it 20:02 oh 100% and one of the reasons why I was super excited uh to talk to you as well 20:07 is I'm currently reading a book called Drunk by Edward Slingerland i'm hoping I pronounced that right uh and it talks 20:14 about the history of alcohol and like civilization basically getting to where we are today because of alcohol wine 20:22 beer there's a whole I learned uh throughout this book that like ancient civilizations they were growing wheat 20:30 and and corn for alcohol before even they were using it for bread and similar with wine like this is the whole bread 20:37 uh beer before bread theory and and all that type of stuff and to what you're saying is when you are using this you 20:44 know alcohol as a tool in a sense to either raise an experience and help establish trust between people and build 20:51 relationships it can lead to some really uh almost you know crazy experiences um 20:58 from in the realm of creativity and in the realm of of collaboration so I I think that what you're saying is is 21:05 totally valid and and I also hear the other side of of people who are very 21:10 anti-alcohol and and all that type of stuff which they have some valid 21:15 arguments as well cuz you're right for some people the tolerance should be zero um but I think the reason why I'm you Ben’s  bitcoin Origin Story 21:21 know kind of going on that tangent here is because I I do want to bring it back to your journey of discovering  bitcoin 21:27 and a  bitcoin business and how you've been able to weave this this you know 21:33 industry that has been seen as to to your point more of an elitist type of industry that's not for everyone in 21:40 terms of how we can understand different wines but then you're really taking a 21:45 grassroots approach to selling to  bitcoiners and selling to uh a community that is that is looking to build on 21:52 these experiences um so I guess the question here is can you talk us through 21:57 how one how you discovered  bitcoin and then two how you discovered selling  bitcoin or selling wine to  bitcoiners 22:03 yeah I feel like I got lucky discovering  bitcoin but I was also ready for it i 22:09 was helping all my friends with their personal finances like getting them the right bank account saying like you have use a credit card everything's 2% off if 22:17 you're like if just pay it off um teaching them to budget and everything um because I'd just been really into 22:23 that personally for years but was listening to NPR economics podcast and was deep in the Keynesian world and when 22:31 I started the winery I moved home and uh while I moved home to cuz I had a year 22:38 to kill and I my dad wanted to build a house so I was building a house with my dad and I moved in with a friend from 22:44 high school who I considered to be really smart and we would just talk geopolitics and he was a  bitcoiner so he 22:50 kind of just turned me on to it i started listening to podcasts and 22:57 I don't know got sucked in because I was already super super interested in it and then that same friend basically like I 23:03 was getting my news from Reddit and Cointelegraph and um he would know things like I I'd be like "Dude did you 23:10 see this?" Like "Yeah." And then list like a bunch of other things about it that I didn't know and I just got tired 23:15 of being late so he was getting his information on Twitter so I got on Twitter and then I'm kind of a loudmouth 23:22 so I started posting what I was doing and finding  bitcoiners went to the 23:27  bitcoin conference in Miami and was like "Wow look I know I'm crazy but like these people are also my people." And u Turning Peony Lane Into a  bitcoin Business 23:35 that was kind of eye opening that with  bitcoin Twitter community was just like these people are awesome i just want to 23:41 start connecting with them more and through that experience  bitcoiners just started asking me to buy wine with 23:47  bitcoin and you know I'm a  bitcoiner and obviously I want to sell wine so you say 23:53 yes and uh that just kind of continued growing 23:59 naturally for a while without like I didn't ever think it would become anything and now it's my entire business 24:05 so um it's really kind of just this perfect marriage of like  bitcoiners want high quality products they focus on 24:11 health and they understand the low time preference of wine and 24:16 are like wine's kind of the turned out to be a really perfect product for this 24:22 and  bitcoiners turned out to be a really perfect customer for me not to mention like I just want to spend more time with 24:28  bitcoiners and don't like that's my people why do business with anyone else 24:34 if that's enough to sustain myself so it's kind of grown from there and um 24:41 seeing the  bitcoin world kind of grow and like morph within the last four 24:48 years has been really cool because uh more and more businesses are popping up 24:53 that accept  bitcoin and like you know in bull markets there's always um little bits of it but it feels much more real 25:00 now um and uh I feel like  bitcoiners as a customer base is a much more real 25:06 thing now because it before it's like okay cool i accept  bitcoin but there's 25:11 not enough people in  bitcoin that care enough to do that but now I think that there's a large enough if there's enough 25:17 people for me to sustain my entire business on it there's enough people for larger businesses to want to speak to 25:23 that customer niche because it doesn't take anything if they're aligned generally it doesn't take much to um 25:30 align with  bitcoiners without alienating any of your other customers so it's just a it's an underserved niche of people 25:36 that are hungry for alignment ben are you saying that 25:43 by you know hanging your hat saying I accept  bitcoin that that has created so 25:50 much new business that at this point almost all of your revenue is coming in through  bitcoin i would say 50% of my 25:56 sales this year have been in  bitcoin specifically but 100% to  bitcoiners oh wow so your business has really grown a 26:04 lot to that  bitcoin community so I started out doing like farmers markets 26:10 and that was a summer thing it was you know it's good income i'm in Aspen Telluride like you know rich ski towns 26:16 there's a lot of money coming in but those customers are not really continuous they see you at the farmers 26:21 market they buy um and it's not my hometown so it's not like they're coming to see me afterwards um and that was 26:28 good money uh it was always a means to an end but I thought the means to the end was going to be a tasting room in my 26:34 hometown and um it just it started like  bitcoiners were 26:39 my first year 0 then 10% then 50% and then last year 75% um all basically you 26:47 know how do you know that they're  bitcoiners when someone makes an order well no one that's not on  bitcoin 26:53  bitcoin Twitter follows me so that's where all my orders are coming from 27:00 that's awesome that's a good way to So it's it's just been Yeah i mean I'm not I'm like loosely you know loosely 27:05 tracking it but I'm like who else is buying wine you know there's some people but like that's such a small percentage um just because I'm not talking to them 27:13 um and yeah so it's enough that it's like look this is a a great group of people that really appreciates my 27:19 product and I align with them so I just want to point towards them and you know if my business ever grows to the point 27:25 where I'm too big for that um I can make the decision either to scale back or grow beyond it but ultimately like I'm 27:32 building a business that um I want to do for foreseeably the rest of my life and  bitcoin Mindset: Healthier Business, Lower Stress 27:39 that's more of the target than getting super rich and I just think like if if I 27:46 get super rich it's because of  bitcoin it's not because of the business and the business goal is not to get super rich 27:52 and so I can build something that's a lot more sustainable for me specifically um than being forced to continuously 27:59 grow to keep up with uh money printing and costs going up and everything so I'm 28:04 kind of given this uh beautiful space to be a boutique winery make high quality wines and sell it to the specific people 28:11 who appreciate it the most as opposed to being forced to constantly find new customers 28:18 i feel like the values of  bitcoin have created a much healthier entrepreneur 28:23 uh that you are today having low time preference it sounds like having this 28:29 sort of stress-free low time preference mentality has created uh sort of a a 28:36 settled confident peace of mind-minded entrepreneur i almost feel like the definition of an entrepreneur is like 28:42 stressed out overwhelmed and and just trying to keep up and and you have such a beautiful presence to your 28:48 entrepreneurial journey uh with this long time horizon do you feel like 28:54 that's mostly come from  bitcoin having that perspective or from being wine a wine maker or growing up on a farm and 29:01 having a dad that was pretty low time preference studying geology learning about low like long-term time 29:06 preferences i think I was ready for it and I just like I was big into skiing and going fast and adrenaline and um I 29:15 think starting the winery one building a house and bit finding  bitcoin all kind of in the same one to twoear span just 29:22 really pushed me into the low time preference world um that has helped my health and my relationships everything 29:28 um but the I think going to your what is an entrepreneur point and like our 29:34 stereotype is all these other things um I think that that's more of a a fiat 29:40 system phenomenon where if you start a business 29:45 you have to grow and if you don't grow you die and  bitcoin is kind of like this 29:51 first mover advantage that you can just hold on to like you start stacking  bitcoin and  bitcoin is I mean  bitcoin 29:59 grows like a like a tech startup you know so if you can just build a 30:04 profitable business and um take your savings in SATS you're uh able to 30:13 survive in a way that you can't in the fiat system so um yeah it's it's kind of 30:18 a new paradigm for businesses like what I do is definitely not for everyone and if you're in like a tech software 30:23 business I think that still like if you're not growing you're dying to a degree um but for smaller businesses 30:32 it's definitely a lifeline to be able to succeed and I mean when you think about the fiat system it centralizes it you 30:38 need to get bigger um power centralizes and with  bitcoin power decentralizes to 30:44 a large degree so yeah smaller businesses are generally going to be able to better thrive in at least the 30:50  bitcoin future that I perceive ben where do you envision this movement of 30:55 business owners like yourself starting to accept this new form of of money um 31:01 where do you envision this movement going like as we you know over the next like one two three four five years 31:10 so it starts on the margins right it starts with um you know I don't want to 31:15 say it starts with me but like it starts with people like me that are um bit smaller businesses um think about 31:21 Mandric going back a decade selling baklava for  bitcoin uh it's pretty niche 31:26 you know there's not a ton of  bitcoiners to support you and um it slowly gets 31:33 bigger and bigger i mean now I know of like large cattle companies that accept  bitcoin and that's revolutionized their 31:39 business and um a lot of people in the health sphere accept  bitcoin i think that's that's great like so we're seeing 31:45 these like value aligned businesses accept  bitcoin and I think what they're 31:52 realizing is uh not only are  bitcoiners a bigger customer niche but they're also a wealthy customer niche and will spend 31:59 outsized that are also extremely loyal because why would I like why would I buy 32:05 from a company that makes the same product but doesn't accept  bitcoin versus one that helps the  bitcoin 32:10 mission that we're all so powerfully aligned with um so that's that's like 32:15 you know easy choice right um and then we're starting to like touch into bigger businesses so we have single 32:22 entrepreneurs and then um maybe smaller niche health brands and then now I think 32:28 shake and stake is like a a really big test into the new paradigm and it's 32:33 really just happening now so we'll see but like their switch to tallow instantly you know I and tons of other 32:41 health focused people are like "Oh well I'm going to eat steak and shake for sure if I'm going to get a burger." And 32:48 I think that now adding on to all the  bitcoiners that maybe don't quite understand um like the benefits of 32:56 tallow and seed oils because you know that's not like not every  bitcoiner has gone down a health rabbit hole um but I 33:04 I really think it's like this powerful customer base that like I said is extremely loyal and outsized wealthy and 33:12 like if they if  bitcoiners were powerful enough to have an influence on the 33:18 presidential election they're big enough to target as a customer niche and yes it 33:24 makes a bigger difference for smaller companies but I think we're seeing larger and larger companies see the opportunity and it takes a bit of I mean 33:31 I assume the founder of stake and shake is like at this point orange build i mean there's  bitcoin on the on the web 33:37 page but like I think that there will be an element of like just curious people that if you can get slightly exposed to 33:45 this customer demographic it's just I follow the money i lean in where these customers are and maybe they get orange 33:52 pill that way um maybe it's just the gains during a bull market felt like I 33:58 it's this kind of symbiotic relationship where it's the perfect customer for a 34:03 lot of businesses and these customers are dying to support businesses that support their movement The Future of  bitcoin Commerce & Merchants 34:09 um and spend  bitcoin because  bitcoin doesn't succeed unless it's also a medium of exchange so it's uh I don't 34:17 know it's a really cool time right now and I think it's it's really like this kind of paradigm shifting moment where 34:24 the scale of  bitcoiners is big enough to support lots more businesses than it h 34:30 was previously medium of Exchange is sponsored by the 34:35  bitcoin Payments Adviser if you own or run a business and you'd like to accept  bitcoin but don't know how the  bitcoin 34:42 payments adviser can help from specific software recommendations and accounting implications to training employees and 34:49 marketing so your customers know you accept this new form of payment the  bitcoin Payments Adviser can help 34:55 simplify your journey in accepting  bitcoin for your business check out bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com 35:02 again that's bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com now let's get back to the show yeah I 35:07 mean one of the things that I'm going to be following closely with that Steak and Shake release which I think it's in two 35:12 or three days um but probably past when when this podcast comes out is how that 35:17 implementation actually goes through i don't believe they've announced that yet uh but then the other piece of it that I 35:23 find really interesting to see because all of because all of what you just said 35:28 around the  bitcoiners wanting to support these types of businesses is Steak and Shake is mostly like self-s served kiosk 35:34 in terms of how you how you like uh order the food and and uh and check out 35:40 so that puts the way to pay back on the consumer so if I'm someone who is in and 35:45 you know I lived in Indiana for a little bit uh and went to stake and shake quite a few times um I can now pay in  bitcoin 35:52 and there's no additional training that goes into into all the employees at the at the uh registers that is required cuz 35:59 some of these invisible costs that go into adding a  bitcoin um standard into 36:04 into your business even if the gains will far outweigh those people don't want to take that short-term risk and I 36:10 think that's one of the uh that's one of the things that I'm really inspired about your story is how you were able to 36:16 see through kind of that that risk and and all that type of stuff of of you know you're taking you're taking 36:22 payments in  bitcoin isn't that volatile isn't that magic magic internet money what's going on there and just to bring 36:27 it just to ask further is like what is your thought on some of the short-term 36:33 kind of you know quote unquote volatility uh that comes with with adopting a  bitcoin standard and and what 36:39 would you advise to to more of those smaller businesses or medium-sized businesses that are thinking about um 36:45 taking  bitcoin as payments uh but just don't know how to get over that mental 36:50 that mental barrier so just I want to step back to something you said at the beginning of that is um I never was into 36:58 orange pilling or trying to get bit uh brickandmortar businesses to accept  bitcoin because I was out there with a 37:05  bitcoin preferred sign for years and would get like you know maybe one person a week that would see that and say 37:12 something that wasn't like derogatory or question like that new you know um so 37:18 it's I steak and shake is also a test in the fact that like it's a 37:25 brick-andmortar business it's not in this place where like all the  bitcoiners can come so we've been in this like it's 37:32 been easy if you're online selling to  bitcoiners like you can I can talk to 37:39 every  bitcoiner in the United States that's a large group of people but in each town there's probably a couple you 37:45 know and so we'll see if that makes a if if it makes a huge difference but specifically Yeah then you train the 37:52 employee and then no one spends  bitcoin and that employee forgets how to do it and you're like "Why did I waste this 37:58 time i'm not going to touch  bitcoin for another few years because that was stupid it was a waste of time last time I did." And so um additionally I think 38:05 that attracting  bitcoiners is not specifically about the number of  bitcoin payments you get because I totally 38:12 understand that like like there you know some people will go through the hoops of spin and replace on Strike awesome um 38:18 some people will just spend  bitcoin but there are a lot of people who you know credit cards are easy and it's you know 38:25 a 30day maybe 60-day depending on the time of your transaction um interest free loan 38:33 so totally and you get 2% back so like totally understand putting things on credit cards and it's more to me about 38:40 attracting that additional customer than specifically getting a ton of  bitcoin payments so if you measure your success 38:46 in adopting  bitcoin on number of payments I think you're missing the larger picture um when it comes to 38:51 volatility I think it really like volatility matters so much your first four years 38:59 into it and then you're so much more um protected from that going forward 39:05 because your cost basis is presumably lower and um you know I went all in at 39:13 both tops of the last cycle um and that killed me you know um I was just trying 39:20 to stack as many stats as possible it was going to go up forever and um felt like I was late so um made some bad 39:28 financial decisions but I got  bitcoin so it was a good financial decision in the long run but it's going to hurt in the 39:33 short term so really like you do need to really take a long-term 39:39 approach on it and adopting  bitcoin as a like if you want to call it a treasury 39:45 asset if you try and get rich quick from it you're going to get screwed so uh or 39:51 most people will at least and I think if you don't you're probably going to get a big head on your shoulders and get screwed down the line from not learning 39:57 your lesson early so it's not you know it's it's hard like it's hard to have 40:03 your money as volatile as  bitcoin even if the volatility is up um there's a a 40:10 western wear company that I've become friends with that we're um being a a partner of mine are trying to get on the 40:17  bitcoin standard introduce him to  bitcoiners because he produces a really high quality product that I think  bitcoiners would love and my my friend 40:25 paid him in  bitcoin and then it dropped down from 100 to 80K and he's like "I 40:31 need this money like I need to buy more shirts i need more inventory." And it 40:37 went down 20% like that sucks and so yeah there's an element of like that 40:43 first little bit you know does it go up does it go down because that's when they're really paying attention and it you know it's just kind of you want to 40:49 peique that interest you want it to be more sales not get rich on  bitcoin uh when you're talking to people like this 40:56 and ultimately it's a bit of a escaping the rat race we think of entrepreneurs 41:01 as escaping the rat race because they're not fiat like they're not getting paid a wage and so they have the power to 41:10 outpace fiat depreciation but ultimately like they're on a treadmill as well their treadmill is I buy product I sell 41:18 product to buy more product and my costs are always going up therefore my prices 41:23 are always going up and I'm always trying to find more consumers so if you can get them to kind of see it as like 41:29 hey you're on this wheel and prices are always going to go up your margins are always going to get squeezed 41:36 what you kind of need to do is start exiting that system and just putting like 1% of your sales or every sale that 41:43 comes in on  bitcoin when it's not a huge amount at the beginning just keep that in  bitcoin that's like you're taking a 41:48 step off the off the hamster wheel to slow it down and eventually when you get 41:54 four years in or you have enough  bitcoin or whatever you can kind of fully get off and just approach your business from 42:00 a more long-term perspective of like what do I want to build do I want to grow do I not want to grow and uh 42:07 without that you're still stuck in a fiat hamster wheel and there's volatility and  bitcoin's not going to 42:13 get you rich right away but it's a way to like just exit that system that is constantly debasing your work um in a 42:21 way that like you can still grow beyond it so it's I see it as like um small 42:27 steps for entrepreneurs you don't want to like you want to invest back into your business this is why you're doing it you have a business to do a business 42:34 but it's kind of unseen and like you know you could put numbers on it 42:40 projecting out but like it's a bit unquantifiable the the ability to step off that hamster wheel and start slowing 42:47 it down and it takes a lot of time so you said focus more on  bitcoiners more 42:53 than payments but you also said  bitcoin doesn't exist without medium of exchange tell me more 42:59 well I think as like 50% of my sales are in 43:06  bitcoin so I I say that with a bit of like a um focus on  bitcoiners because 43:12 you need the cash flow you need the in the more customers and the further you get into  bitcoin maybe maybe you start 43:18 discounting for  bitcoin you start charging that that fiat card fee um to push people towards  bitcoin like but 43:24 when you're first starting out you can't like you're trying to get more sales and 43:31 yes you want more  bitcoin but ultimately if I get paid in dollars I can convert that to  bitcoin just fine and I think 43:38 that there's a bit of like a when you spend  bitcoin as a  bitcoiner you have to view that as 43:46 boosting the system you have to view that as use it or lose it when it comes to  bitcoin's ability to scale and it's a 43:55 good practice like I teach people all the part of so much of what I do is like 44:01 teaching people how to make their first lightning payment giving people their first experience buying something with 44:06  bitcoin and you see that it is easier in a lot of ways i mean tapping a card is 44:11 super easy but if you're online and you don't want to keep your card saved on like the Google cards whatever scanning 44:16 a QR code is a hell of a lot easier than putting in the digits it's so much faster so yeah so there's elements where 44:23 like yeah  bitcoin is better there's elements where  bitcoin is more frustrating um at times for spending and 44:29 ultimately I think if you target  bitcoiners the customer like you're going to get more  bitcoin sales and part 44:35 of it is also that like if I'm at stake and shake I'm probably less likely to 44:41 spend  bitcoin than if I'm at a farmers market and someone accepts  bitcoin because I want to give  bitcoin to that 44:47 person i want them to succeed i want them to grow whereas with Steak and Shake like they probably have tons of 44:54 money on their balance sheet like they could just go buy  bitcoin um I want a burger and I want to support them but um 45:00 there's a trade-off with my value because I don't spend to replace i just spend  bitcoin and so if I'm going to 45:08 spend  bitcoin I want to spend it to someone that I am like you succeed in like the ultimate way it's my ultimate 45:15 vote of confidence for them for a bigger business like Steak and Shake it's I will support you anytime I go get a 45:21 burger and I have options I'm going to Steak and Shake but since I don't have the personal connection um I don't know 45:27 them i'm much less likely to actually spend  bitcoin at a Steak and Shake than in a personal perspective and so you 45:35 know I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth to a degree but I think that there's just a value prop as a  bitcoiner 45:40 what am I getting when I spend my  bitcoin versus dollars and um as a business like you just want to target 45:47 that customer that's super loyal and if they get to know you if over years like if I go to Steak and Shake for 5 years 45:52 and they continue to show that they're super into  bitcoin and like building on 45:58 that and giving me better options and healthy food like I'm more likely to spend  bitcoin but it's that personal 46:03 connection I think is super important as well so all right so going back  bitcoin 46:09 doesn't exist without medium of exchange and I think we can agree that  bitcoin matters we believe that  bitcoin matters 46:15 to the world how do we on board the next 1 million merchants man how do we get 46:20 more folks like Ben Jess in the world i mean it's it's hard because it's like like I said if you just tell someone to 46:27 start accepting  bitcoin um they're not going to see immediate returns and it 46:32 takes so much education to understand why  bitcoin matters like a huge part of it is exiting the hamster wheel and you 46:39 don't see a $10  bitcoin buy as a directionally helping you exit the 46:44 hamster wheel so it takes education it takes time but ultimately like if you 46:51 can if there's a way to like show instant positive results um for instance 46:57 a friend of mine worked with a cattle company that posted "We add on Twitter we added  bitcoin to our balance sheet." 47:02 Post went viral um tons of  bitcoiners started buying from them that's instant results and then it backed up with data 47:08 that those customers were more loyal and spent more so those it's like you need this like instant peak marketing phrase 47:16 to to get them going and then you need the  bitcoiners to actually put up or shut up because if like if if I'm 47:22 standing on the world of like we need  bitcoin as a medium of exchange to be we need  bitcoin to be a medium of exchange 47:28 for it to really exist um then  bitcoiners are the only people in the world driving that medium of exchange 47:35 and um as I said like the  bitcoin itself 47:40 is not what those companies that are just dipping their toe in are looking at they want more sales and if you can 47:46 convince them to keep a little bit of  bitcoin keep the  bitcoin that they get paid in like that's great and if they 47:52 just keep getting more touch points from all these  bitcoiners they'll start getting like curious about  bitcoin and 47:58 even more so want to accept it become  bitcoiners themselves but it's really not about  bitcoin the asset it's about 48:03  bitcoiners the customers if you want to onboard businesses you need loyal customers you need turnout and  bitcoin 48:09 the asset is secondary well and I think I think to even just 48:16 kind of extend on that Ben because because of what you were saying where  bitcoiners don't really want to separate 48:21 with their  bitcoin and and they're you know they want to give their  bitcoin to people that they want to support that's 48:27 a really good feedback loop too because when you're selling to people and they're paying you in  bitcoin you can 48:34 understand like oh this customer must really like my product because he's he or she is willing to separate with 48:40 something that we think is going to be extremely valuable in the future like some people buy their  bitcoin and say I 48:46 am holding this for my grandchildren or for my grandchildren's grandchildren um and that's another thing that it's hard 48:52 to get that type of uh I guess honest feedback in the market like if it's one 48:58 thing if you if you you're in a subscriptionbased model and and things are growing or or not but it's another 49:05 to see it as an asset that's also growing right it's not just fiat it's not just I'm subscribing to this service 49:11 because like I need you know I need uh my my Netflix subscription but the 49:17 quality of shows on Netflix has gotten substantially worse wow the prices have gone up mind you but it's more so 49:23 they're continuing to pay me in this thing that I understand that there was a 49:30 a real decision that needed to be made of do I want to separate from my  bitcoin for this product or service and I think 49:36 that's really powerful too um from just getting an understanding of like what is 49:43 good and what is working and then what is not as well um but Jason I know you had a question so I just I just wanted 49:48 to add that in there let me just respond to that really quick um I I wear two hats i wear the the bit the 49:56 Ben the the wine maker business runner and then I wear the Ben the the  bitcoiner hat and um you know I'm in the 50:02 thick of it in both so yes I totally understand when someone spends  bitcoin even if they're spending and replacing 50:08 they're making a choice to pay me in the thing that I value the most and that means a lot to me and so as a  bitcoiner 50:15 if I'm going to a business having kind of understood that and they accept 50:20  bitcoin but they don't appreciate it the way I do I'm less likely to give that to them because if you don't appreciate my 50:27  bitcoin why am I giving it to you because it's going to be worth so much one day so yeah that's like I'm just 50:33 kind of pushing on the point of like it's it's  bitcoiners the customers that are going to get people not  bitcoin the 50:38 asset because  bitcoin the asset takes so much time to understand 50:43 i was just going to summarize i love Ben your push down the marketing 50:49 path so many business owners are just trying to grow their business and 50:57 the TLDDR from what I heard is start accepting  bitcoin means more customers 51:02 more customers means more sales more sales means you can save more money and assuming you do that in  bitcoin you can 51:09 start exiting the fiat the broken fiat system which means you will thrive and flourish did I get that right it means 51:17 it also means more touch points to  bitcoiners and more touch points to  bitcoin which ultimately pushes you down 51:23 the education rabbit hole because that's what matters the education is what matters you have to understand what you're holding if you want to if you 51:30 want to get  bitcoin i was at a breakout session at a 51:35 faith-driven investor conference with Jimmy Song and this is one of the nodes 51:41 like the multiple you know dots for me for like starting to go down the  bitcoin rabbit hole and it was like me Jimmy and 51:48 eight other people and basically I was like so I just buy  bitcoin that's the 51:54 the the takeaway from this like and he was like yeah but education like you 52:00 need to you need to get yourself educated because and and I didn't know necessarily how to do that 52:05 in the beginning uh boy has my world changed since I I did that um but yeah 52:11 it's a pretty fun journey if you can start getting yourself educated and it's it's exciting to see more and more 52:17 business owners like yourself go down that journey and uh begin to accept 52:22  bitcoin and see people paying in  bitcoin and and how lives can radically change 52:28 through that process absolutely and as you highlighted like all of what I'm 52:33 saying is recognizing that education is going to what's going to be what makes the difference between a bit a company 52:40 accepting  bitcoin today and a company accepting  bitcoin or focusing on  bitcoin tomorrow and 52:47 there's just got to be positive incentives to bring that customer or bring that business more and more touch 52:54 points to get them to educate about  bitcoin because if you're running a business you have a million different 52:59 things going on why would I want to learn about this other thing but if it gets me more sales I'm more interested 53:05 in it so I'll keep learning and that just takes time i mean and also like 53:12 I'm not very bullish on tons of brickandmortar businesses all of 53:18 a sudden accepting  bitcoin and feeling that um Steak and Shakes huge it's awesome that they don't always have um 53:25 cashiers so you can just do it easily and not have to worry about it um but 53:30 it's still it's obvious for smaller 53:35 online oriented businesses to start accepting  bitcoin and start marketing to  bitcoiners but taking that next step is 53:42 a bigger step and u the shaking stake example is something that I'll be watching closely as kind of a benchmark 53:48 of where are we like if we zoom out we're all  bitcoiners we all wanted to win but like where are we are we big 53:56 enough  bitcoiners big enough to make a difference for this 450 location 54:01 brickandmortar burger joint and if that's the case I mean then we're going 54:07 crazy but I still got to see that first yeah i mean I have one last question and 54:13 I think that this kind of you know is the on-ramp to hopefully what you were just describing uh once once you know we 54:21 once we get to that point of of all huge brick and mortars just accepting  bitcoin but one of the things that I love 54:28 following along uh on your socials um both across Twitter and Nostr and and you you know you mentioned before that 54:34 you're uh you got introduced to  bitcoin Twitter um and have grown you know a 54:40 following there in the  bitcoin community uh is just your your running kind of thread of or two running threads 54:46 actually of one of all the uh bottles that you have remaining for your last um or I don't know if it's your last but Scarcity, Wine Culture & “Just Do Things” 54:53 the the amount of bottles for pie lane that you have remaining in in uh that um harvest and then also your just do 55:00 things kind of theme that you've been that you've been running on uh can you just kind of riff on on those and like 55:06 what what has been the thought process there and how has that marketing really played out both with  bitcoiners and I'm 55:11 sure there's been a little bit of crossover too with non-  bitcoiners uh getting some conversation going but um I I just love when people have fun with 55:18 marketing and it's something that you know seems pretty simple on the surface but like there's actually there's probably a little bit of a backstory 55:24 that goes into it as well yeah i mean my Twitter presence was not built to um at 55:31 least initially with the mindset of trying to sell wine it was just learn and have fun and so that being kind of 55:39 the baseline of where I started out using Twitter because I just never used Twitter before  bitcoin um it's 55:46 definitely like I'm just myself on Twitter and there's some you know I post educational things i post um about wine 55:53 and um my what I'm doing is really just you can just do things because I never 55:59 would have guessed I was where I'm at like even a couple years ago I never would have guessed it would have been 56:05 all  bitcoin and um started a winery without any experience built a house without any experience so um yeah I 56:12 think my story is a bit of you can just do things and I I think that that just resonates with people but um the 56:18 scarcity part of wine is something that  bitcoiners really can relate to um the 56:24 most scarce thing in the world is your time and um and  bitcoin's absolutely 56:30 scarce but the thing that makes wine special is each vintage is different and so if you like a specific bottle 56:38 that bottle will just disappear one day and you can never recreate it so um 56:43 that's really the only marketing post I've figured out actually works outside of like the long-term hey I want to educate people about wine when you think 56:50 about wine you think about me you buy wine but um the scarcity posts have definitely been working for sales 56:55 because um you know when it's gone it's gone and there's nothing you can do and to speak further into wine scarcity like 57:03 yeah when a bottle's gone when a vintage is gone it's gone there's nothing you can do you do replace it with the next vintage but it's never going to be 57:09 exactly the same and also there's the temporal aspect of wine where um you 57:15 know if you open a bottle a month from now it's going to taste slightly different than it does today and if you 57:20 have that first glass and then you leave the bottle open for an hour that second glass is going to taste different so and 57:26 like we all experience things different based off the environment that we're in the bite of food we took before so wine 57:32 is like this both um we think of it as like it gets better with time but ultimately it just changes and um you're 57:40 always kind of trying to capture that last moment and it's so fleeting with each sip being slightly different that 57:47 um it's kind of a just a magical way to to think about like aging and time preference and really enjoying those 57:54 specific high quality moments with the people you love or or great food i love 57:59 it i got to get you some I got to get some of your wine Ben uh when I was in 58:05 Tuscany I was like I feel so much better because to your point from earlier they 58:12 don't have all the additives i'm pumped to get some delicious wine made by an incredible person and  bitcoiner that 58:19 doesn't have all the additives um where uh where can we send folks to learn more 58:25 about you and what you're up to Ben yeah I mean I'm primarily on Twitter 58:30 Benjustman and then um on Nostr Benjustmanprimal.net 58:37 and um that's where most of my stuff is i also post on LinkedIn um but and 58:42 primarily on those other two i do I have a wine club and I ship wine all over the 58:49 United States off my website piewine.com um 58:55 yeah and I wanted to give an 8020 on how to find good wine how to find wine that 59:03 doesn't make you feel bad and the first thing like if the hardcore 8020 like the 59:08 the lowest hanging fruit is just buy French or Italian wine there's a couple other countries but those are super 59:14 prevalent and generally have a better wine- making practice than the average wine in the United States if you go to 59:20 the store and you buy wine from California and you don't know the producer you're just buying the wine off the shelf especially like basically any 59:26 wine at a grocery store it's probably heav he heavily manipulated it's mass-produced um if you go to a every 59:33 state's different in Colorado we have liquor stores where everyone buys wine and um there you can ask people about 59:40 the producer you kind of just want to ask if they're low intervention or um 59:45 biodnamic and organic are a good sign but they're these kind of gameable 59:51 certifications and organic only really refers to the grape growing and not 59:57 necessarily the wine- making which is where a lot of the additives come in so 1:00:02 the best thing you can do is if you live near wine makers go meet them and ask them and boutique wineries even if 1:00:09 they're not labeling themselves as low intervention they're going to be using a lot less additives than anything bigger 1:00:15 that you would just find at the store so French or Italian ask the wine guy at 1:00:20 the store and then buy locally and ask questions um I think people ask then 1:00:26 what questions should I ask if you ask the wine maker like "Hey I think I might 1:00:31 get headaches with sulfites like what's your opinion on the use of those?" Um that's probably going to tell you a 1:00:37 little bit um there is a bit of defensiveness in wine makers with sulfides specifically just because um 1:00:44 they're not technically bad for you um but I think people do have actions and 1:00:49 if you're using a bunch of them you are um more likely to be using other stuff so bit of an 8020 um ultimately I'm here 1:00:58 to educate and if anyone listening to this has further questions uh just shoot me a message and I'm happy to help or 1:01:04 make it easy on yourself and go to pennylane.com pennylanewine.com 1:01:11 pennylanewine.com That's amazing ben thank you for joining 1:01:16 us my friend yeah thanks for having me guys good to see you and uh hope this 1:01:21 continues to go well for you guys thank you