[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, but Birbrennerl talk has to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to hear about it, stick around.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that I was particularly interested in making as hope in this day would never come.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I've gone back and forth on how to say this and you know what exactly the right thing to do is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you've been a part of the bourbon rule talk, podcast and the community for a long time,
[SPEAKER_01]: you deserve my honesty.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I want to just put the truth out there about what's going on, what changes are coming, why they're coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish they hadn't, but bourbon real talk does have to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: So first off, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been a supporter for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many of you have contributed on Patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've purchased merch.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've gone to events.
[SPEAKER_01]: and bourbon-girl talk would not exist without you, and we're super grateful, and I don't want you to think that these changes are meant to manipulate you or to make you feel guilty for less engagement or anything like that, but there is a reality that we're facing, and
[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is that our Patreon at its peak was around $6,300 a month in monthly support and we're down to $2,100 a month.
[SPEAKER_01]: merchandise sales have also declined.
[SPEAKER_01]: We used to attract sponsorships.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've had sponsorships from a number of whiskey brands.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've partnered with different organizations where we had a relationship with an agency, a marketing agency that partner us with companies who wanted to pay to sponsor our show.
[SPEAKER_01]: and virtually all of those opportunities have evaporated.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have no sponsorship income.
[SPEAKER_01]: We haven't for, I don't think the last couple of years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you know, I did start the Pride Fulcote Whiskey brand and there was a time that the Pride Fulcote
[SPEAKER_01]: was mailbox money for me because Christopher Hart had done such a good job launching the brand in the state of Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had great relationships with retailers and money was just flowing in and I thought that that was going to be an area that I could invest a lot of my time and it was going to grow.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I had thought that at some point it would even replace my real estate income, but unfortunately that turned out not to be true there's been a downturn in the bourbon industry and if you've watched my other videos you know that I've sold my interest in the prideful go back to the spillory and at the same time you have seen how interest rates have gone up the real estate market is declined so for those of you who don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way that I supported myself and quite honestly subsidized what I was doing in the bourbon world of hot community financially was because I was a very successful real estate agent, but as the market is shifted, interest rates went up, my income potential in that space also went down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the reality is that times are just tighter, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've seen our living expenses go up at least 33% over the last few years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of that had to do with the decisions that I made.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of it had to do with me trying to pay for past mistakes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, there's not a lot of businesses that can lose two-thirds of their income and it not have some sort of impact on them, and there have been real consequences.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what that has meant for me is that I have had to start supplementing my income through business consulting.
[SPEAKER_01]: and so I don't talk about my business history a lot on the channel, you know, I mentioned that I'm a real estate agent, but I have operated in a space almost as a business consultant from most of my professional career after the first few years that I operated in an an account capacity where I was a controller or a CFO for small business, you know, they would always end up ultimately putting me in charge of operations for the
[SPEAKER_01]: the numbers and I always say that the most dangerous business person is an accountant that also knows how to sell and that was me and so I was able to figure out what we needed to do by analyzing the numbers but I was able to go to the people who needed to do it and I was pretty good at explaining to them why it was a good idea for them to get on board so adoption was high and I was a very effective leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I've been able to translate those skills into a new chapter of life for myself where I am doing business consulting and I absolutely love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get to go into organizations, I am a co-CEO, but unfortunately that has some real consequences, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I have to go where the client is and I'm traveling an awful lot and I don't have as much time as I once did to pour into
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I've had to make some changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I do want to be clear that being a business consultant has not 100% replaced my income.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is how I'm supplementing my income.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am still a residential real estate agent and I'm still available to help in the areas of Dallas, and Houston, and now Austin.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how is all this impacting bourbon rule talk?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, first off, there's definitely fewer in-person events.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just do the workload.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, traveling this amount can be difficult to manage in 28-year marriage like I'm in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have to be very selective of how I spend my time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't spend as much time going to in-person events as I used to because I need to reserve that time for my wife and my kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, my kids aren't college now, so when they are available, I have to take advantage of it because they're not here all the time, like they once were.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want to make sure that we're not over-committing ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the last thing that I want to do is say yes to everything and then under-deliver.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, that's been a transition.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another huge transition.
[SPEAKER_01]: that you may have seen if you're in the Facebook group is that Lindsey's sister, my sister-in-law, Chrissy Lynn, who has worked for us full-time, I think, for four or five years, has transitioned away from working for the podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: The financial reality is we just couldn't afford to support her at the level that we had in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't that she wasn't doing a good job, but we didn't have the same volume work because as I mentioned, sales had gone down and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we were able to help her find another job that had a need for the skills that she had developed while she worked here.
[SPEAKER_01]: She worked there for part-time and then they fell in love with her and they offered her the manager position.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so she transitioned full-time over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are still babysitting or dog sitting, if you will, her dog who you've met on the podcast before still us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she's still here on a daily basis during the week when she's working.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that meant that Lindsay was going to have to take on 100% of the role that she had been handling.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also 100% of the responsibilities that Chrissy had been handling.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that has been a huge transition and it's placed a burden on her.
[SPEAKER_01]: So even though Chrissy's work level has gone down as volume a sales have gone down and all that stuff, it was still a lot to keep on to Lindsay's plate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I've been trying to find ways to lessen the stress that's for, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: And Lindsay is a very creative individual and she needs time to explore her creativity and she can't work, you know, 75 hours a week and still feel like a whole person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she loves the lasers and all other cool things that she can do with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I've been trying to find ways to lessen her workload so that she has more free time to, you know, explore different art projects and things like that so that she still feels like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, she's not an automaton and that she's appreciated and all of that and that has transitioned us to a place where unfortunately we're going to have to get rid of having a free giveaway on every episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to pretentious whiskey reviews.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, we're evaluating the 1982 Happy Van Winkle.
[SPEAKER_02]: Who?
[SPEAKER_02]: Detecting a hint of Bolivian virgin tears and East Indian, no West Indian races.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also getting into you nutmeg.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that I love doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, I have too much whiskey here to reduce the number of in-person events I get.
[SPEAKER_01]: Simultaneous to actually getting rid of the free giveaways because it was the only way I was ever going to work my way through all of this whiskey.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, it is a huge burden.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you've ever poured large quantities of sample packs.
[SPEAKER_01]: and had to reach out to individuals to get their shipping addresses and to package all that stuff up and ship it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is a huge burden.
[SPEAKER_01]: We looked at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was costing us at least two hours per week of actual labor time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes more if there was something missing or I gave away a sample of a bottle that was too low to fulfill the samples We had to go buy stuff and blah blah blah But you know, you don't realize it But we had to pay for the little cartridges to print the stickers and we have to pay for bottles and we have to pay for lids And we have to pay for you know peanuts and boxes and tape and we were paying for shipping and obviously we're giving up the liquid that we're putting into the sample bottles
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we were spending $150 to $200 a week, given away samples, and, well, when you considered labor, it was probably more than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably closer to somewhere in the vicinity of $190 to $240 a week is what we were spending hard cash of real money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, whenever your
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to the point where I was going to have to subsidize that process with income that I was bringing in from my consulting activities and between that and the reality that Lindsey just simply doesn't have time, we've made the difficult decision to cut out changes to the giveaways.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the other large change that's happening is that we are going to be shutting down our 501C3 suicide prevention non-profit livestayproject.org.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that we don't believe in the vision, obviously we do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not that we're going to stop focusing on fundraiser efforts in the community.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that I created Libsday Project to honor my brother's name, Sean Sullivan, who passed away in 2014.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've shown ourselves to be extraordinarily successful at raising money, but we've never quite found a way to invest that money effectively in changing people's lives that are struggling with suicidal ideology.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what we've done that has been productive is to partner with other organizations who have a program or a system that has been shown to work and we have been giving them 501c3, 2, 501c3, grant money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the mission has not changed, we will never personally benefit from the 501c3.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do have funds that are still in the account.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are as quickly as possible finding other suicide prevention focused organizations who have a program that they can demonstrate is useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: and we are distributing those funds out and once we've gotten rid of all of the money, we will likely shut down Livestay Project until such a time that I have enough time to actually get back focused on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we are still going to do fundraisers and support other worthy causes inside the community.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just won't, the funds won't be flowing into Livestay Project.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's not going to change though is our mission remains the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Whiskey is a conduit for community and connection.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not going to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: The podcast is going to continue.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're still here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're still creating content.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're still committed to the community.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a business model shift where I don't really need to make money off of the podcast anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And getting back sometimes so that Lindsey's life is manageable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, to be quite honest, it's been nice to not have that burden on me of what do I have to name this episode so that it gets enough attention so that it drives enough sales so that, you know, now we're back to a place where if I want to do it, I do it and if I don't want to do it, I don't have to do it and that's been nice to get back to those roots so that we're really truly focused on the core.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and so, you know, that's kind of where we're at, you know, I had hoped that my whiskey focus endeavors would grow to be my main income and I'd be able to support my family and I'd be able to focus my kitchen on a hundred percent, um, but, you know, we, we had to implement these aid adaptations to go along with where we're actually at today.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully you can understand all that if you still love us and you still want to support us you can do so through supporting the channel by subscribing and ringing the bell that will help get the channel more attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you want to support us financially you could join Patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are membership levels for all budgets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's name tour on the screen right now are contributing at the top three levels.
[SPEAKER_01]: and to be honest, the podcast would not exist today without those individuals.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you, thank you, thank you to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we do have other support levels that you can involved in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, we do have our merchandise business at bourbonwilltalk.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only can you get some great whisky merch, designed for whisky people, buy whisky people, what you can also partner with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have what we call a pop-up site.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can create a custom site for you with your logo on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can advertise it.
[SPEAKER_01]: to your following whether it be a Facebook group or your content creator, or even if it's your business.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we can create a custom site that's just for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've had some pretty exciting experiments with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then last but not least, I am a residential real estate agent and I operate in the Dallas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Houston and now Austin metro areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you need residential real estate services and any of those markets There are links for all three ways to support the channel in the video description below and if this year first time tuning in This is a weird from we're willing for you to tune in for the first time, but we are about community connection
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, Whiskey's delicious and we love to drink it and we love to share it But it's really about meeting other people and informing those deeper connections And that became a mission of mine when I lost my brother to suicide in 2014 And I saw how Whiskey was a great conduit to create those connections And so I thought maybe if I got you connected to Whiskey Whiskey to the rest of the job and get you connected to others
[SPEAKER_01]: We did start bourbon real-talk community, which is a troll-free whiskey-based enthusiast community.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can go join right now to absolutely for free.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great things going on in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason why we needed to start it was because there was some negativity out there online that was contrary to our mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we saw people showing hate to strangers online.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we wanted to create a space that didn't have that, but those people taught us another valuable lesson and that was If they can hate strangers online, there's nothing that keeps us from loving a stranger online And that's why we end every episode the same way and that's this.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you woke up this morning, you're unsure whether or not anyone loved you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just know that I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll see you next time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be real talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cheers.