Is this a dream job? Or an unrealistic idea? 

On this week’s episode of Business Casual hosted by Poets & Quants, Maria (ApplicantLab Founder), John (Poets & Quants) and Caroline (Fortuna Admissions) discuss the idea with Schmid. 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.390] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Maria Wich Villa and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Caroline, as always, is the co founder of Fortune Admissions and a former director of admissions at INSEAD. And Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. We have a special guest and an interesting topic. We have Daniel Schmidt, who is a second year Harvard MBA. He came to Harvard via McKinsey, and he intends to return to McKinsey when he graduates later this year. But here’s what’s interesting about Daniel. He is dangling in front of young professionals the opportunity to be CEO for a year of his family’s winery business in Austria. The idea here is that he’s hoping to recruit an executive who will learn how to become a CEO and get that opportunity at his winery. And he feels that by offering this possibility to potential applicants, he can get a person of the caliber of a McKinsey type or someone who’s destined for any lead MBA. So the person could be even an undergraduate student right now or just out of undergrad person could be on their way to business school for a graduate degree or actually recently graduated.

[00:01:35.960] – John

So let me introduce Daniel first and let me have him tell you directly why he’s doing this. Daniel.

[00:01:44.220] – Daniel

Hey, thanks, John. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be on here. Yeah, it’s exactly like what you said. Right. So a little bit of the context of why we’re doing this is we have family winery. It’s our family business. That’s really how we pay the bills. It’s one of these businesses that we’ve always had in our family. So I actually spent last summer working on it and tried to trace back, well, when is this in our family or is it when did we start doing this and was really able to trace it back all the way to 1661 so many centuries ago. Right. That’s when the records end. So probably it’s arguably older than that even. And it’s always been a very small enterprise to say, like a one man or two man show, if you will. Right. So my grandfather in it, then my father in it, and one of my brothers are in it for a short while in the situation that we have now is that we have no one in the family who can run it at the moment, who can run all the business operations. I do have one of my brothers, Joseph.

[00:02:51.350] – Daniel

He’s always been involved with making the wine. He has 25 years of experience of winemaking. But he’s not the type that wants to run all the aspects of a business to fill out the taxes and to all the business he thinks that are not wine making itself. And so the question came up, well, if no one wants to run that, how do we continue? Right. And one option was, well, maybe can we even keep running the winery in the future, or is there some way to maintain it? And so the idea popped up. I talked to a lot of my friends, actually about it, and a lot of them were kind of interesting, interested.

[00:03:27.640] – John

Right.

[00:03:27.930] – Daniel

And said, this is a nice challenge you have, like, how do you sustain this winery? And I’d actually love to walk around the winery. And so this idea came up to recruit the CEO for a year and to recruit someone with no winery experience, but with a lot of business skill sets and to drive to take the winner really to the next level.

[00:03:47.120] – John

And I know that this is not an easy job. In fact, you said for people who think that they’re going to sit around all day sipping Pinos, they better realize this is a very tough job. You’re going to be driving tractors in the vineyard. You’re going to be managing people. You’re going to be dealing with the harvest. You’re going to be dealing with marketing issues and operation issues. In other words, you’re going to deal with the entire enterprise at a level that any CEO would deal with. Right?

[00:04:15.490] – Daniel

That is right. And if you think about it, like in any small business, really, a lot of times if you ask people how much of the job of a small business owner or small business CEO is, let’s say strategic kind of officer task and how much is really hands on problem solving and just doing and implementing a lot of the day to day things in the business, I think people would overestimate the strategic portion. Right. So I think really there’s definitely a ten or 20% of your time will be focused on these very strategic questions. But a lot of it will also be just running the winery and everything that that means. So making a wine with a lot of support and with a lot of the expertise that we already have in the family. But in the end, I think the hands on tasks of this program, they are making a wine sitting on a tractor, being out in the vineyards. The person who applies to the job should see that as a feature of the program. I think it’s one of the benefits of one year where you get to do all of these tasks, get your hands dirty and not just sit in an office all day.

[00:05:20.740] – Daniel

So we’re really looking for a person that is striving for that.

[00:05:24.880] – John

And it should be said that you’re not merely going to throw someone in the deep end of the pool who doesn’t know how to swim. You’re actually offering what you call a program, as you mentioned, just briefly talk about that program. There’s going to be 100 days of mentorship where you will shadow, I guess, your brother and yourself. There’ll be a lot of mentoring and coaching meetings with other CEOs who will help coach throughout the one year period but explain your thinking behind that.

[00:05:54.200] – Daniel

That is. Right. So what we thought is, well, given that we want to really attract someone who is from outside of the industry, someone who usually would never even think of making a career in the winery business, we really want someone that has the ambition to later on be a CEO, maybe of a major company and to go to some of the best companies and some of the best MBA programs in the world. Right. And so the thinking was, well, how do we make this opportunity attractive to someone like that? And so I think beyond just the responsibility and sort of the opportunity to implement your own ideas. One thing that we’ve created is a program around the CEO for a year. One aspect is that you mentioned the first 100 days, whereas in any big job that you would enter, you have 100 days where you do all the tasks that are part of the business, part of running it, a lot of shadowing, a lot of learning the ropes of the sand. That would be quite an intense period, because not only are you learning a new job of the day, that’s your job, but you’re also new to an industry.

[00:06:59.520] – Daniel

Right. So we think the learning curve in the first 100 days will be tremendous. And then at the end of the 100 days, you really set your agenda. I think by then you will have a good feeling for what needs to be done for the rest of the year. So you will set an agenda together with us, and we definitely have some ideas. But I think a lot of what will actually happen is up to the person that will be the CEO for a year. And throughout the rest of the year, there’s a structured learning program to help the CEO for you really grow into the role of a CEO. One aspect of that is reading it’s more academic literature or things that I’ve learned in studying business that can help you really fulfill the role of the CEO. And the second part that we are very excited about is you will have each month an interaction with a different very established business leaders. These will be people that are on the boards of big businesses. Some of them are startup CEOs or CEOs and different size of businesses. But we think this is going to be a great learning opportunity and a great network for people that go through the program.

[00:08:06.230] – John

So, Maria, are you seduced by this idea?

[00:08:09.710] – Maria

I’m sorry, Daniel, you seem like a great guy, but I don’t think it’s an appealing idea, but in part because my brother actually spent two years as an agent Baker in Northern California, and his wife is a certified Sommelier who works for a wine distribution company. So they actually know what’s beneath the veneer of what you’re promising. And it’s not really compelling, especially given that you’re only offering a cash stipend of maybe €300 a month. It’s not really clear what sort of person or someone with a financial background who would take this job would have to be either independently wealthy or maybe they made a lot of money in private equity or something and they’re taking a year off. But if you’re going to take a year off from private equity, you’re not going to want to work as hard as working at a vineyard demand and they know firsthand what that means. So I think once you start to dig into some of what it actually takes, I think it sounds very romantic. And when I first heard about this, you can ask John and Caroline, I was like, oh my God, my brother and his wife would have loved this a few years ago and maybe they’d be interested now.

[00:09:15.220] – Maria

And they wrote back, Lol basically like there’s no way. It’s interesting that you keep saying that you need someone from outside of the industry and you said you’re going to get mentorship from other CEOs. Are these other vineyard CEOs or CEOs from random businesses?

[00:09:33.880] – Daniel

No, CEOs from established businesses, but not necessarily winery CEOs. And I think your point is a good one.

[00:09:40.760] 

Right.

[00:09:40.900] – Daniel

So it’s definitely not a program for one and I recognize that. And definitely we couldn’t be paying PE salaries in the winter.

[00:09:50.100] – Maria

Yeah, but $3,000 a year is not a PE salary.

[00:09:52.980] 

Yeah.

[00:09:53.520] – Daniel

I think it’s more comparable the way I see it to a startup gig. Right. So a lot of startups have internships or someone that has just graduated comes on. That is true does not have the financial remuneration that you would get in a finance role or in a consulting role, but in exchange also is not a small wheel in some big business where maybe the learning experience is a little bit different, but rather really has in their 20s, let’s say really the experience of running a real business. I think there is some value there. I think mentioning the side panels is a good point because it is a bit of a turnaround situation that we can only offer a small financial statement. That being said, we will provide accommodation and we’ll provide basically room and ports. So there will be a lot of startups. They offer sort of free cereals or free breakfast cereals or something like that. For us, it’s different. We’ll take that one step further. So we also run a farmers market, right. So the person that will work there certainly has free sort of farm to table food every day. Yeah, but the point still holds, right?

[00:11:09.530] – Daniel

It’s not a job for everyone.

[00:11:11.550] – Maria

I think when you join a startup, you trade that equity because you expect that the startup will eventually be worth a lot more than it is now. You join the startup because it’s a very fast growing thing. A vineyard is not a fast growing business. It’s not like someone can join the vineyard. If I launch a software products, I can maybe ten X it in a year and then sell that company to someone. But I can’t like ten X output of a vineyard in a year. And it doesn’t seem like you’re really selling any equity in the vineyard. But it sounds to me like the big goal is what are the actual functions that you need this person to run? It sounds like you need like bookkeeping and financial management. And also you said it says something about distribution like expanding distribution to the US or expanding distribution in general is that those are the two main things. So I think it sounds like it’s something where you don’t actually need a full time like you could hire say a part time bookkeeper or like a fractional CFO. And then also similarly distribution companies like my sister, she doesn’t do I’m not going to do wine from Austria, but that’s what distribution companies exist to do.

[00:12:22.040] – Maria

They take the wine from you and then they sell it into the supermarkets and the Whole Foods and the whatevers in the US. So it seems like maybe if you’re going to get someone to do this for you, it sounds like instead of saying we want someone with fresh ideas from outside the industry because it’s such a unique industry and because there’s so many regulations around it, for example, etcetera. Etcetera. It sounds like you’re actually better off getting like a CEO of an established vineyard to commit 10 hours a week to your vineyard.

[00:12:52.030] – Daniel

Maybe.

[00:12:52.320] – Maria

And then there are no profits now. So maybe you do like a profit share.

[00:12:56.970] – Daniel

Yeah, it’s good. By the way, I appreciate the pushback area. And it’s definitely good for people that are making up their mind to have a clear picture of what it is and what they’re in it for. Right. So let me just one time address the piece you mentioned around the equity in a startup. Right. So I think it’s true if you’re thinking about this role in this program in order to get financially well, remunerated, there is nothing really that we can operate. There is no equity that you will have in the winery after it. It’s not a SaaS business or it’s not something that will have a hockey stick type of growth. So I think it’s also not that we are not pitching it to VCs or anything like that in that sense, the appeal to it. And we’re also not saying that anywhere. Right. The appeal of it is not, hey, come on. Even though your monthly salary will not be high, you will get a big equity compensation. No, that’s not the deal. I think the motivation and I think some people will be motivated like that. Other people may not. And that is completely fine.

[00:13:59.240] – Daniel

It’s a niche program, but I’m confident that we’ll find someone to whom that following value proposition does sound good, which is you won’t get financially well remunerated, not because we’re stingy, but just because the business doesn’t allow it at the moment. But you will get an experience that you can get nowhere else in the world. I would be able to say if you look out there, there’s some programs to say, hey, take over business. If you Google there’s like a CEO per month or a CEO per week, very gimmicky type programs. This is not it. This is you are taking over an established business. We are handing you the keys to the business. Frankly speaking, it’s also a bit of a risk to us to hand over a business that has been in the family for 360 years and say run with it for a year. Right. So I think someone out there will say, well, even though I’m not getting rich during that year, that is still an attractive learning opportunity. Right. So I just want the framing of it to be. Right. That being said, it is a very tough job. Right. And so I think the notion of is it actually a part time job.

[00:15:11.100] – Daniel

Should you just bring on someone for 10 hours? I think the opposite is true. There’s so much to do. It’s not just a little bookkeeping and, you know, speaking to one distributor and letting them do everything. It is really transitioning a family business from being run in a very, in some senses unprofessionalized ways.

[00:15:32.580] 

Right.

[00:15:33.750] – Daniel

Like a lot of money and pop shops out there that are just run by family, transitioning that to really a professional business. And so what are some of the parts that that means? One of them is very tangible. Let’s say we have a retail shop. It’s called a flagship store that we open for one day a week in Vienna, where we sell a lot of the wines. We’ve opened that shop for five decades. Right. But we’ve always run it to the best of our ability and bred to the best of my family’s ability. But basically it’s winemakers, it’s farmers, if you will, running that storm, which is definitely not a bad way to do it. But it’s not a professional business lens that has ever applied to it. I think one of the very concrete projects will be and I’m hoping that is an attractive proposition to someone else will take one of these mountain pop shops and see what you can do with it. How should the store be? How should the layout be right? How should the products be placed? How should the processes in there? Should we accept credit cards? It’s very hands on things, really.

[00:16:43.030] – Daniel

How should the product assortment even look like? Right. Knowing that we sell wine, knowing that we also there sell a bit farmers, market type goods, vegetables, fruits. What kind of chasing products should there be? How do we even make decisions like that? How do we decide inventory and ordering quantities? I think it’s a lot of if you really look into the business. I think it’s right that two people might look at this same opportunity. One person might say, I hate this. I would never do it in the world because, one, I don’t get paid basically. Right. Two, I’m not in an office on Wall Street. Right. I’m not overlooking Central Park. I’m not working on the next and on the ideal that will land in the headlines. I will never do this in the world. Why would I sit on a tractor and be in the vineyard? Totally fair. And a lot of these people are my personal friends. Right. Who will never do that.

[00:17:50.390] – John

So let me ask Caroline just to finish it.

[00:17:53.670] – Daniel

Just one last thing to finish it. I think there will also be one other person that looks at this same opportunity and says, can you believe it? This is an actual business, and they’re willing to let me run it. And even though usually I always have office jobs, I will be able to do very hands on things for a year. Right. And I know that after that year, my whole career won’t be I’m becoming a farmer now, but I know that the rest of my life will be very different. But I want to have an interesting life until I’m willing to do an interesting role. So I think that’s the right framing. But I totally appreciate the pushback.

[00:18:26.780] – John

So let me ask Caroline, who for many years was the head of admissions at NCI. Many applicants through elite MBA programs have two jobs that they bring to their application. They may have been an analyst at a consulting firm for a while, and then they may switch to a financial job. I wonder if someone who is an undergraduate who has two to three years of work experience and is looking for that second job and takes Daniel up on his proposition and then applies to an elite business school, is that a plus or minus? Certainly you’re a more novel candidate that gets outside the traditional buckets.

[00:19:10.210] – Caroline

Yeah, for sure. You’re right, John. That more and more we’re seeing candidates getting to top schools who kind of already had more than one career.

[00:19:18.680] 

Right.

[00:19:18.880] – Caroline

Before they go to business school, they have worked at a firm like a McKinsey or Goldman or one of the private equity firms, and then they’ve gone on to do something else for a year or so before heading off to top school. This could be a great opportunity if that candidate can spin a good story about the impact that they’ve had during that year. Right. So if they are genuinely able to make a big difference, that could be a fantastic story to tell.

[00:19:45.570] 

Right.

[00:19:45.870] – Caroline

And a really fascinating story that will leap off the page to the file reader. And also, will it link to their future goals? If it looks like a rather random choice and doesn’t necessarily link to the logic of what they want to do post MBA and longer term in their career, then it might look a bit odd in their path. My concern with this, Daniel, is that you and your brother sound like a dream team, right. Your brother is a winemaker. You are a McKinsey guy at HBS. It doesn’t get much better than that, right. You have the best credentials for turning a business around, and you’ve grown up with this business. It’s your family business. So it’s something that you’ve lived and breathed from a young age. So if you guys haven’t been able to figure out how to make this work, I’m very concerned about someone who knows nothing about winemaking and doesn’t have the brilliance that you and your brother have, or perhaps they do, but they don’t have the background, the relevant background that you have. So how are they going to make such a big difference, right. If you haven’t been able to figure it out?

[00:21:06.470] – Daniel

I think such a fairly fair characterization, I think also from the NBA admissions perspective and I think a very fair question and maybe a little bit what is also you didn’t ask us directly, but a little bit of the question might also be, well, if we’re looking for one person to fill a role, role of an NBA type role, why don’t I do it myself? You kind of mentioned it’s a dream team. I know my brother. I know kind of the situation on the ground. I could be doing this actually. Right. And I thought about it. My personal answer to that was for me, the choice wouldn’t really be do I run this for a year and then go on to other jobs? For me, the choice would actually be more do I make this my life? Do I choose the sort of linery career path, or do I want to have a different career that’s a little bit more out there in the world, more international? And so for me, just maybe touching on that the private motivation for myself, why don’t I fully do this is because I have also different career or other additional career objectives or ambitions.

[00:22:21.680] – Daniel

So that’s maybe to clarify and I think it’s a different kind of value proposition to do it as a career than to have a one year experience and sort of take a lot of the learnings and go on. So that’s a little bit of a personal story. Perhaps if you will do that, then the second part or the actual question that you ask, the way I understood it was like, why do I think they would succeed? Is that it?

[00:22:46.610] – Caroline

Yeah. Well, I think that I totally understand that you don’t necessarily want to dedicate yourself full time to this.

[00:22:52.470] 

Right.

[00:22:52.620] – Caroline

You have other ambitions. That’s perfectly fine. But given your background and your experience, I would have thought that if there was a way of making this as success without having to dedicate yourself full time to this, you would have figured out some of the levers to make that happen. And you don’t necessarily have to do it yourself. Right. You can bring people in, as Maria said, maybe you can hire some people to make those things happen. It sounds like you need to figure out the strategy of the company and I think that you have the ability to do that. So I don’t know why you need to bring in somebody and what are they going to magically come up with in terms of ideas that you and your brother haven’t been able to come up with?

[00:23:35.190] – Daniel

Yeah, that’s very fair point.

[00:23:37.910] – John

Daniel does not have a real interest in this. I don’t think he’s applied himself to it.

[00:23:43.000] – Daniel

Have you? Yeah. So that’s a little bit what I was getting. So I think it’s a fair point. Personally, the first time I worked on it was last summer. So before that, I always had different careers. I was at McKinsey the last two years before that. Always looked at a very different career path, actually. Right. Was a Tesla, Google in Las R, sort of investment banking. It never really worked, even in Vienna, actually, where I could kind of be very involved with the winery, close to it. Right. So I think for me and a little bit of the family background is also I’m born in 1992. Right. I’m 30 years old now. My siblings are all born between 19. 70, 19. 75, much older. And so it was always much more in their hands. I personally was actually never really involved from that perspective beyond on a Friday selling wine in the stores and a lot of defense on things. But from what you were mentioning about transitioning the business, professionalizing, it, I’ve never had an extended period of time where I did that until last summer. Last summer, we really for the first time created a bit of a branding created sort of an online presence, rather website which people can check out and is linked in the 40 Quantum article.

[00:24:54.680] – Daniel

So we are in the process of doing that as well, I think. Which ideas should they magically come up with that we haven’t had yet? I think honestly, it’s a bit less about that. We have a lot of the ideas that could put the business to the next stage. I think there will be some new ideas coming in. But even if someone says, hey, actually, even after 100 days, if someone would say, actually, I don’t really know what to do with this, then I think we can come up with a lot of things that need to be done. One of them I mentioned is sort of very tangible about retail locations. One of them is around exporting, which we’ve never done before. But it might sound easy. My reinforcement is finding a distributor, but I think there’s maybe more to it. And so I think it’s a combination of having the right talent and really having Hoops on the ground and a lot of drives to also implement these things.

[00:25:48.800] – John

So it’s a unique perspective and novel opportunity. For sure. Someone who’s going to do this is not going to do it for the money. They’re going to do it for the experience. It’s going to involve hard work. It’s not a simple thing. I’m assuming beyond the stipend for living expenses in the room and board, they’ll get to drink a lot of wine, I would hope.

[00:26:10.490] – Daniel

Yeah.

[00:26:12.170] – Caroline

At the end of a long day.

[00:26:18.390] – Daniel

If you run a winery for a year, I would expect you to be a wine expert at the end of it or an alcoholic.

[00:26:29.170] – John

One thing Daniel said, there is a side benefit to this. If you go get your MBA later on or if you already had your MBA and you’re sitting at that partners meeting or with a client at dinner and you get to order the wine, you have one hell of an anecdote to tell.

[00:26:48.430] 

Daniel,

[00:26:48.860] – Caroline

Can you tell us a bit about the wine itself? How good is the wine and what sort of wine is it?

[00:26:53.990] – Daniel

Yeah, sure. For the wine lovers out there, the grape that we are most well known for is Bruno Martino. Right. It’s a white wine grape. It’s Austria’s main wine grape. And actually, since I came to the US one and a half years ago to start, maybe I was positively surprised by how on Vogue it is, at least here in the Boston area and East Coast, I’ve actually seen it quite a lot. And for the ones who maybe have never tried, it’s a sort of dry white one, typically a bit comparable to the souvenir Brown. Right. So I think one angle that people picture as is, if you love souvenir Brown, you will really love glitter Athena. And that’s where we have always done best in and specialized in. Right. So actually, since 20 years ago, the slogan, if you will, for our winery was always home of Kuna Reglina. Right. So it was centered around that one grade. That’s where we’ve won our biggest awards. And that’s I think we’re really the quality that we have and the potential that we have, I would say, is world class in this grape. Right. We also grow a lot of other grapes, like a lot of small wineries.

[00:28:02.190] – Daniel

We actually have 20 different grapes that are planted in our vineyard. And you can imagine that a little bit if it grows throughout the generations. Winemakers inherently are creative people. Right. And they always want to try the next new thing. And so we also make red wine and a lot of different variations. But I think the focus and also for the next year, clearly where a lot of our energy will go to is the.

[00:28:29.710] 

Well.

[00:28:30.020] – Caroline

That will certainly help you if it’s becoming fashionable as a trendy thing in Boston. So you can continue to spread the word. When I’m in minutes yet, I did an elective on marketing. And my topic that I chose for my project was champagne pricing, which was a lot of fun. And we did a blind tasting. And if you remember, the French students were devastated to discover that they actually prefers the New Zealand sparkling wine, some of the finest French champagne sacrifice.

[00:29:01.570] – John

Oh, my.

[00:29:04.870] – Caroline

Branding is so important, isn’t it, in wine. And I think that has a huge impact on how people even perceive the taste. Right. No, it wasn’t. It was Marcus Christensen.

[00:29:24.500] – Daniel

Oh, wow. She’s an expert at in Salesforce of wine marketing pricing.

[00:29:29.130] – Caroline

Yeah. I would imagine that the whole branding aspect is a big challenge, and it’s very difficult as a small business. But if there’s a larger movement around the kind of growth that you’re growing and building that reputation, that’s something that you may be up to to leverage, hopefully.

[00:29:52.750] – Daniel

Yeah. And I think for me also, why I mentioned the sort of branding effort last summer is the way I viewed it is our wine and our family was always focused on the wine quality itself, which I think even when people talk about their wine, branding is important. I think the quality just needs to be there. Right. It’s one of these things. You can’t fake it necessarily. You need to have a good product itself. But it is true that I think that’s true for us. And frankly, it’s true for a lot of small businesses, especially small wineries. There’s not any focus, actually on branding. It’s the first time that we’ve really worked on any label. And the reason for that was if you sell the wine at your own store, like we’ve always done. And basically to people that know me, they know one of my siblings that know one of my parents, the wine never had to speak for itself in the shelf of a wine store or a restaurant in a restaurant. And so you can get around to it as long as you stay at that level. I think if you’re ambitious and want to maybe go to the next level, maybe you want to change something to communicate your story.

[00:30:59.710] – Daniel

Right.

[00:31:01.710] – John

So there is an application process that you’ve devised where people are being asked to write a cover letter, a motivational letter on why they would want to do this. And then you will basically narrow down the finalists and begin interviews with them on Zoom. Right.

[00:31:22.060] – Daniel

That is right. Yeah. And I should actually say a word of things also to you, John. Since the article came out just a few days ago, we have had more than 200 people reach out to us about this job, which smashed all my expectations. I think by the time we wrote or you wrote the article, we talked about a couple of dozen maybe, which was already a lofty goal, I thought. But by now we have actually 80 people that signed up for our Q and A in a couple of days and 50 people that already applied, which is amazing to see for me. And that is before we’ve even started to really a lot of these applications will end up being for the English speaking role, which is the chief of staff role, English speaking. And we are now also starting to a little bit advertise the program or try to interest some people in the German speaking in Germany, Austria, Switzerland for it until we expect more applications to come in from there as well. But the actual application process will be definitely an interview with myself, with my brother and then for the people who are cheaper stuff, they’ll also have a touch point with the actual person that is chosen as the CEO for a year as part of the interview process.

[00:32:41.980] – John

So if you want to actually pursue this, you can go to a website that Daniel has created. I believe it’s called CEO for a year.com.

[00:32:51.300] – Daniel

That’s it.

[00:32:52.490] – John

There it is. Want to look at the wine and the winery. Schmidt Family Winery is the name of the winery, and they have a website as well. There are links for both those places in the ports and quad storey on Daniel and his idea. Caroline and Maria, last words.

[00:33:11.970] – Caroline

Well, I was just going to say that, Daniel, I think the articles had about 40,000 views and I’m sure John would be delighted to receive a case of your fine wine.

[00:33:25.270] – John

Well, if I do, I will share it with my co host for sure. And I want you to know that only a few months ago I went to a wine dinner that featured Austrian wines. And I had the pleasure of tasting this variety. And I have to say it was splendid.

[00:33:42.670] – Daniel

Happy to hear that we’ll make this case work. I just want to also say thanks for my time to join you. And also, Caroline and Maria, thanks for asking also tough questions. I would encourage everyone that is interested in the program to check out the website that John mentioned at the CEO for a year.com. And there is a link to sign up for a Q and A. Our next Q and A is on the 28 February. And I would encourage everyone to show up there and ask the tough questions, especially because before it is a novel program, there’s no sort of other people to ask that have already gone through it. So I would encourage you to just ask questions there. And I’m looking forward to hearing from you and hopefully talking to you in the interviews.

[00:34:28.100] – John

Well, good luck with that. And when you finally choose someone who is going to actually be CEO for a Year, let us know. We’d love to do a story on what this person intends to do and what their motivations are. It could be a lot of fun.

[00:34:43.180] – Daniel

Yeah, we’ll do it.

[00:34:44.640] – John

Caroline, Maria, as always. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants you’re listening to Business casual our weekly podcast.