Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.

Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.

I didn't start with a lot. I have friends who started with a lot who have now built on top of it, and I'm impressed because I used to think that was a disadvantage. I think there are a million ways to do it.

We have brands spending ungodly amounts of money on print, television, outdoor radio, programmatic banner ads, website takeovers. Garbage. When I say garbage, they work-ish. They're just so overpriced. I don't know what else to say. I do not believe that it is worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars in distribution and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost to make one 30-second video to tell a 29-year-old woman that your soap is great, in a world where she is not going to consume that commercial.

Never ever waver. Be on record. Don't be on the wrong side of history.

It's still so rare for anyone to be personally acknowledged by a brand that the impact of such a simple, polite gesture on a customer's buying habits could be huge.

If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.