ABOUT THIS EPISODE
“Young people are drinking, but they’re being very particular about what they’re drinking.” ~ Eric Bach
A Note About The Terroirist
Before we get into this week’s episode, a big thank you to everyone who showed up for the Santa Cruz Film Festival and the Green Film Festival of San Francisco for the world premiere of our documentary, The Terroirist. We were absolutely honored to take home the Morton Marcus Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Santa Cruz Film Festival and are looking forward to taking the movie on the road to Austin, New York, LA, Minneapolis, and Fairhope, Alabama over the next few weeks. And if you can’t make it to any of the screenings, it will be available on streaming platforms on November 13th.
What makes someone buy into a world instead of just buying a product? This week, I sit down with Eric Bach, co-founder of Good Boy Wine, to talk about his Five Rules for How to Build a World, Not Just a Product. Through their wines and annual Good Boy and Friends festival, Eric and his partners bring together food, music, art, and a community that shares their curiosity. We get into trusting your taste before everyone else agrees, knowing what to leave out, and creating experiences that give people a reason to show up. It’s a great conversation for anyone trying to turn their interests into something bigger—and figure out how to keep the magic intact as it grows.
I’ve always been drawn to world-building. From making television to throwing events to putting together this show, I love finding ways to bring the people, food, music, and ideas I care about into the same space. That’s what I love about what Eric and his partners have built at Good Boy. You can feel their taste running through everything, and spending a day at Good Boy and Friends, I got to experience how all those pieces come together. There’s great wine in your glass, something you want to eat, music you want to hear, and people you’re happy to spend the afternoon with. It’s a world they clearly want to live in, and they’ve made it easy for the rest of us to want to join them.
Introduction
Now on to this week’s episode. Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.
Today, I sit down with Eric Bach, the co-founder of Good Boy Wine, whose annual festival, Good Boy and Friends, is LA’s preeminent wine, music, and food gathering. He’s here to share his five rules for how to build a world, not just a product. He talks about the importance of trusting your taste for mainstream consensus, how to make curation a part of your daily routine, and that by creating participation, not just consumption, will lead to a larger world.
It is a great conversation for anyone who’s ever wanted to build anything and for those who want people to buy in to what they’ve built. Please take a moment to subscribe and rate this podcast wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN.
Young People, Wine, and Finding Community
Eric, so good to see you. Thanks again for sorting me at the festival. I had an absolute blast. Five years, congratulations. Welcome to the show.
Thank you. It’s good to be here. I hope you had a good time at the fest.
There are endless articles about how young people are not drinking, but anyone who attended the latest iteration of your festival, Good Boy and Friends, saw that this is not the full story. What do you think the media is missing about young people in wine?
That’s our whole mission, get young people drinking again. Someone needed to do it.
Yeah.
Young people are drinking, but they’re being very particular about what they’re drinking. They are wanting to do it in social settings. COVID really amplified, obviously, everyone working from home.
People are looking for ways to participate and feel connected, feel part of the community. At the same time, they care about what they’re putting in their body. We take that into account as we’re putting this little festival together.
Wine as a Vehicle for Culture
That social aspect really came through. What I enjoyed about the event was how it blended all these different aspects of art, music, and food. Where do you see wine sitting within culture at large?
I can’t really separate my passions from my work. They’re seamlessly integrated. I view wine, especially naturally produced wine, as part of everything you’re doing. Whether you’re going to an art show, you’re going to a concert, you have a glass in your hand.
Wine is a vehicle for the things that we like to experience. For me, it’s an excuse to create more of this world around it.
I love the fact that Good Boy is driven by great wine design and also community that seems to be at the center of everything you do. Why is that focus such an important North Star for you?
It’s honestly building this world that I want to exist in. Take this in Los Angeles in little pockets. There’s these micro communities.
I wanted to be able to create it at a larger scale and bring all of these things together. I’m an art collector, wine, food, music, dogs, all these things. I look at it as a direct expression of my interests.
I feel like if it’s something that I’m interested in, there are other people out there that would also like to experience that.
Rule Number One: Build a World That You Want to Exist In
Having that vision, being able to stick to what you like as a guiding principle, while keeping in mind that you are creating something for a group of people at large is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for how to build a world, not just a product.
Today, it’s so easy just to say, I’m selling you something. I just need you to buy it. But very little time do you get people to buy in to the larger idea of what you’re trying to create, which ties directly into your rule number one.
The number one rule is build a world that you want to exist in.
The things that I’m really obsessed with, wine, food, art, music, etc. It’s the things that make my work interesting. I can’t help but integrate them into what I do.
I think a lot of people separate their work from their passion. It happens a lot. I can’t do that. It all is one thing. We only have one life to live. So why wouldn’t you express what you’re passionate about through what you’re working on?
Rule Number Two: Trust Your Taste Before Consensus
Being passionate about not just what you’re working on, but what you like, I think has gotten harder over the years. There’s so many different inputs of what people are into and what trends are going in which direction. It’s easy to get distracted from what you feel in your core is something that you really believe in.
Your rule number two talks about following your own path before many others. What’s your second rule?
The second rule is trust your taste for consensus.
I love that.
Everyone knows the general consensus out there. But I think if you’ve spent years really developing your taste and paying attention, you have to learn how to trust your own read before there’s proof that everyone else agrees.
That comes with time. It comes with age. It comes with making mistakes. A lot of mistakes. Doing all of these things that eventually, hopefully you’ve had enough successes, even if they’re small, to where you’re like, okay, I can trust myself a little bit.
Rule Number Three: Curate Relentlessly
Being able to trust yourself really does mean not resting on your laurels. That can apply to business and growth. But I also think it applies to inspiration, getting out in the world and finding more stuff that you like, especially as what you like evolves with age.
Your third rule talks about the idea of taking those inspirations and making them work for your world. What’s your rule number three?
Rule number three is to curate relentlessly. I think it’s important to not only know what you like, but what you don’t like and what to say no to.
I’ve had to do that my whole career through my agency at Space and Time. We know our values and if it doesn’t feel core to our values, then we say no to it. The same goes when we’re curating a festival, whether it’s a musician, a food vendor, wine vendor, et cetera.
Your taste isn’t just what you like, but it’s also what you’re willing to leave out.
Rule Number Four: Create Participation, Not Just Consumption
Being able to say no to things is such a lost art. And in a world where people want you to always agree with them, where you feel the pressure to, it can be isolating at times.
If you are pushing this idea that you want people to be a part of what you built, it creates a flow both ways, which makes up your rule number four.
Create participation, not just consumption. I build a much stronger relationships when I am experiencing things and participating in things rather than simply buying.
Thinking about, Good Boy, what you’re doing as far as an experience goes, when you have a glass of wine. What’s in the glass is important, but what you’re doing is equally as important. And I wanted to build a brand and a world around that, not just the wine.
Rule Number Five: Protect the Magic With Structure
Building the framework for this world is extremely important. That doesn’t mean that you’re being conservative or everything’s this binary choice. Once you know the boundaries of what you want to make, what you put inside of it becomes really freeing.
Your fifth and final rule talks about protecting what’s inside this box. What’s your rule number five?
Rule number five, and this can often be the hardest one for creatives, is protect the magic with structure. A lot of chaos, creative chaos can work when it’s really tiny, it’s small, it’s just getting going.
Once it grows, if you still have a lack of systems, it can really start destroying the creativity. That’s something we’ve had to learn the hard way on many occasions.
Always.
Whether it’s making wine or whether it’s building a festival, there’s definitely a lot of growing pains and you’re constantly learning and evolving. You have to build a team, you have to create structure that allows you to support your creativity.
Finding Eric and Good Boy Wine
I love it, and I love the wine, and I love the festival. Congratulations on everything, Eric. If people want to buy Good Boy Wine, or if they want to come to next year’s festival, where can they go? How can they see what you’re up to?
Check out goodboywine.com, or follow us on Instagram at goodboywine. Thank you so much.
Awesome. Thank you, and can’t wait to see you out in the city with a glass of wine and at next year’s festival.
All right, cheers.
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