Business Titans
Imagine growing up in a wealthy bubble, only to receive a cold email during college revealing your family is completely broke and you are entirely on your own. On this episode of Uncorked: Wine, Business, and Life, Bill Green sits down with Coastal CEO Greg Meerbaum to uncover how a sudden financial reality check forged an unstoppable, blue-collar work ethic. Listeners will discover how to cultivate the raw sales grit and high-stakes decision-making required to scale from a zero-dollar bank balance to managing billions in asset value.
Greg unpacks the behind-the-scenes chaos of his most daring entrepreneurial pivot, detailing the terrifying moment he chartered a $1.8 million cargo plane in flip-flops to deliver millions of face shields during the 2020 lockdowns. He explains how this massive windfall catalyzed his leap into the private equity and family office spaces, allowing him to democratize the complex tax mitigation strategies usually gatekept by the ultra-wealthy. Alongside a candid wine tasting, Greg shares a blunt critique of why traditional wealth management firms often operate like fast-food chains when it comes to alternative investments. To find out his proven framework for identifying massive market shares and the single non-negotiable skill every founder must master, you’ll have to tune in.
Pour yourself a glass and hit play to experience this unfiltered masterclass in institutional wealth and scrappy business building. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and check out the show notes for more information on Coastal and all the resources mentioned in this episode!
Episode Resources:
Introduction: From Scrappy Roots to Institutional Wealth
Bill Green:
Welcome back to Uncorked: Wine, Business, and Life, where we pour a glass and dive into the messy, high-stakes intersection of business and life. I'm your host, Bill Green, and today we're talking to an entrepreneur who embodies a brand of scrappy that you just can't teach.
He's a Chicago-born, Boca Raton-raised leader who learned the value of a dollar the hard way. When a family crisis hit during his college years, he didn't just look for a job, he looked for an opening. He quit college and cut his teeth in the high-volume world of automotive marketing, growing a company from 3 million to over 26 million in sales before he was even 25 years old.
But it was in 2020, when the world was locking down, that his genius for scrappy intuitiveness really took flight. While others were waiting for the storm to pass, he saw an opportunity to pivot.
He transformed his entire operation into a massive personal protection equipment provider, navigating global logistics and chartering a $1.8 million cargo plane to deliver millions of face shields to over 30 states. And that wasn't just a business win. It was his catalyst.
The success gave him the capital and the freedom to do what he truly loves, helping other folks navigate the world of institutional wealth. Today, he is the CEO of Coastal, a hybrid family office and private equity firm managing billions in asset value.
He's taken the strategies usually reserved for the multimillionaire class and opened the doors for the rest of us, all while maintaining that blue-collar culture that stayed true to his roots. He's a strategist, a soon-to-be father, and a guy who knows exactly how to turn a challenge into a legacy. Please welcome to Uncorked: Wine, Business, and Life, the CEO of Coastal, Greg Meerbaum. How are we doing?
Greg Meerbaum:
Thanks for having me. This is cool, and I’m excited to be here. I wish everybody introduced me that way every time I walked into a room.
Bill Green:
We have this conversation, and we're new friends. I have a feeling we're going to be pretty good friends going forward.
Greg Meerbaum:
I think you being right down the street from us at our Delray office might be a little trouble, but we're excited about it. We're probably going to drink a lot of wine. We’re good at that.
The "Boca Bubble" and a Reality Check
Bill Green:
Hey, Greg, let's talk about you growing up. You were born in Chicago, but spent most of your growing up years in Boca Raton.
You come from this wealthy family. You're a kid going to Spanish River Community High School, driving a nice car at 16 years old. You go away to college and think your path is set. Then you answer the phone one day, or rather, your dad says, "We're broke. Figure it out."
Greg Meerbaum:
It was an email. He wasn't a big emailer, so that’s how I knew it was tough news. It was cold.
I was your classic Boca kid. I moved here when I was 10 from Chicago. I went to Omni Middle School and Spanish River Community High School. When you live in Boca, it's a bubble. You don't know it's a bubble until you leave it. Then you come back many years later and realize nowhere else is really like this.
After I graduated, I went up to UCF in Orlando for college. In early 2006, I got an email saying, "Hey, we love you. We have no more money. You need to figure it out." For a kid that went to Spanish River Community High School and got a $50,000 first car, you just don't understand what's coming when you're the one responsible for figuring it all out.
It's easy when mom and dad are there to do it for you. I'm very grateful for the way it all played out looking back. I'll be 38 in April. One of my buddies just reminded me a couple weeks ago that in our high school senior video, there's a clip of me being interviewed about where I think I'll be in 20 years.
My answer was, "I don't know, I'll probably just be hanging out on my mom and dad's couch." At the time I was semi-joking, thinking I’d just come home to our beautiful home and club and life would be easy.
Then you go to Orlando. Orlando is an area where "scrappy" is a good word for it because you've got Disney, the school, and downtown. You see a big difference between certain parts of town and what it takes to maintain in one part versus others. It was an eyes-wide-open moment.
Lessons from the Gridiron: Grit and Discipline
Bill Green:
So now you're a freshman. Let's go back a little bit because I think our listeners really like to understand what was in your DNA before the success. Did you think business was in your path? Did you have a paper route?
Greg Meerbaum:
I come from a family of businessmen and entrepreneurs on both sides. I've been around business my whole life, so I knew what that world might look like.
But when you're 18 and have no entry into a business, it doesn't really matter what you think. Whether you're rich or poor, or come from a business background or not, you're all getting kicked in the teeth the same in sales. It's just as hard for the guy that went to Harvard as the guy that went to community college to pick up a phone, cold call, and learn sales.
Football is one of those sports I always played growing up, and I think you learn a lot about life playing football. It's hard and it’s hot in Florida when you're practicing and sweating your ass off. Everything in the locker room smells disgusting, but when you play football, it’s like the greatest place on earth.
You learn to love that smell. There are callus and habits you develop because of how tough it is. By the time you're a senior in high school and you've learned to lift weights and hit people, you finally realize the game is pretty fun. You're not just getting run over all the time.
Business is a lot like football in many ways. I was an athlete in high school; I played football, lacrosse, and I wrestled. I had the traits of someone who could be focused and disciplined enough to learn something and be good at it. I just hated school. I couldn't sit still for two minutes.
Bill Green:
I've always said when I interview people, I love those who were in team sports.
Greg Meerbaum:
I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Nothing against volleyball players, but you meet a guy that played defensive tackle for his high school against schools like Atlantic, and those are two very different people from a grit perspective. I want the nose tackle guy saddled up next to me.
Cutting Teeth in Automotive Advertising
Bill Green:
So you get the call and you quit school. That advertising job was the big pivot, the catalyst. Tell me about this.
Greg Meerbaum:
A buddy of mine, Jordan, who is in the studio today, is the one that convinced me to consider this. I was working at a nightclub at night while still going to school, and then working at Miller's Ale House as a server during the day.
There were many days I worked a double all day at Miller's Ale House and would only make 60 bucks. It was the absolute toughest job I've ever had in my life. When I go to a Miller's Ale House now, if you're my server, you're getting a hundred dollar tip because I’ve been there.
I’d pull up in the parking lot at seven o'clock to open the restaurant and I would just cry in my car. I’d think, "How am I here? How did we get here from where I thought I would be?"
Jordan and I were talking one day, and an old buddy of mine who played football with us had moved to Chicago and got a job in automotive advertising. He said, "Hey man, I know things have been tough, and I think you'd be killer at this job."
It was like the Wolf of Wall Street. I said, "If you show me that you're making a thousand dollars a week, I'll quit every job and school and everything I'm doing." It literally was like one of those moments.
I got into that space, and from a sales perspective, it was intense. Selling print advertising to car dealers over a phone when you’ve never met them is probably one of the hardest things on the planet to sell.
Bill Green:
Because they already have their guy?
Greg Meerbaum:
Not only do they have their guy, but you're an 18 or 19-year-old kid trying to talk to a hundred-million-dollar owner-operator of ten dealerships who knows everything about the car business.
And he's going to listen to you over the phone tell him how to run his business? It's absurd. But that business taught me about being first in and last out of the office. It taught me repetition. It took me tens of thousands of calls to get okay at it.
Then you get good and finally start to understand the business. I look back on those years and it's a blur. I just went in and was dialing for dollars every day. It was good for me because it slowed everything else down.
When you're that age, you want to go out and have fun because you're still a college kid. By the middle of what would have been my college years, I was dialed into wearing a suit and tie to work from eight in the morning until eight at night. It turned me from a boy into a man pretty quick.
Bill Green:
So the product is basically a nine by twelve postcard?
Greg Meerbaum:
It's all kinds. It's the crap you get in the mailbox that says, "Bill, come down to Joe Blow Kia and see if you won a free Toyota Camry." It has a scratch-off with a plastic key on the back. It’s just print mail advertising. People refer to it as garbage mail.
Bill Green:
If you get a two percent hit rate, you're probably doing great.
Greg Meerbaum:
If you get a two percent hit rate, you're doing very well. We used to talk about a four percent response rate with dealers. If they didn't get that, they wouldn't even talk to you.
Refining the Business Model and Scaling Up
Bill Green:
Bring me to the business when it was at the top. What happened with that business?
Greg Meerbaum:
I was working for a guy who is still a close friend of mine today. He was an ex-car guy who got into that space and had done extremely well for himself starting from nothing.
He was a successful car dealer who realized he could be in the advertising business with less work and less overhead. I learned a ton from him. Sometimes the best stuff you learn from people in business isn't the good stuff; it's the mistakes they make so you don't have to.
As I started understanding his business, I noticed a lot of older guys being paid a lot of money who didn't understand technology. These guys could barely send an email. They were expensive to have around and were probably a little lazy because they were in their late 50s.
It’s a different level of piss and vinegar that you get out of an 18-year-old kid in the middle of a recession. I looked at him and said, "Why don't we get rid of all these old guys you're overpaying? I'll go hire every fraternity brother I have that wants to work, and we'll come up with our own program."
This was 2006 or 2007. There weren't a ton of jobs out there. Some of the smartest kids I knew getting MBAs weren't getting jobs. I figured if they weren't getting jobs, I definitely wasn't because my grades sucked. I had a horrible SAT score and never cared about school.
He was willing to take some advice. I started hiring a couple buddies and training them. I was like their drill sergeant. We were up early getting coffee and getting shit right. After six months, he had fired the other guys and I had 25 buddies working for me in a phone room. We just kept growing it.
Bill Green:
How did the business evolve?
Greg Meerbaum:
That business still exists today. It’s print, and they add some digital to it. I just helped him refine his process and costs. There's a lot of waste in a small business if you start growing too fast.
I got paid on the net profit, so I cared about every dime he spent. That could be money that eventually got me back into a BMW. I took it with psychotic seriousness.
That was the setup to teach me two things: A, I could sell anything if I learned the business, and B, I could probably structure a lot of different companies for success if I understood the mechanism of the industry. That was what we called Chapter One.
The Pandemic Pivot: Entering the PPE Space
Bill Green:
Okay, and Chapter Two?
Greg Meerbaum:
Fast forward about 12 or 13 years. At this point, I had eventually left that company and started my own with my longtime business partner. He was a Boca kid who went to Saint John Paul II Academy.
I used to make fun of him for being the private school kid while I was the public school kid. We were both just rich, spoiled brats at the time, but by this point, we were already having some real success and making real money. We’d been around business, investing, and structuring deals.
At the end of 2019, my phone starts ringing from buddies in the medical space. They were asking if I’d heard about this China thing, this COVID thing. I was at Mardi Gras and told them I didn’t care and I’d deal with it when it got here.
I went to Mardi Gras because our print shop was based out of Louisiana. I came home and my dad told me I better watch this COVID thing because my business was the event business. Our job was to have people walk into dealerships to buy cars. COVID kills that. He told me it was going to mess my business up, and I hadn’t even thought of that.
I started paying attention. A buddy of mine mentioned he was trying to order face shields. I asked what a face shield was, and he described the plastic thing doctors wear. I started to see our weekly orders getting canceled or dropping in February 2020. I knew something was coming.
I asked my buddy how many face shields he needed. He said he’d take 10,000. A big product we printed was a nine by twelve laminated plastic postcard. It was a see-through piece of plastic. I figured if we could run the press to be two inches longer and wider, that would look a lot like a face shield.
It wasn't medical grade, but it had the same mechanism. The only problem was we didn't have the equipment to put the straps on. But at this point, every hospital and state government agency was going crazy because there was no equipment anywhere. Everyone was fighting for it.
I figured we could make them by hand. We had about 80 employees at the facility who could sit there and strap them on one by one. We got to a point where we could produce about 8,000 a week. We did a couple small orders, and to us, it was great because it was better than zero. In the print business, if the machines aren't making noise, things are bad. We wanted to keep them busy.
Bill Green:
And who was the customer?
Greg Meerbaum:
Just a private guy who had an account with someone that would buy them. Then one day, I got an email from a huge state agency asking if I had face shields. They asked if they could get 25 million of them by tomorrow. I told them I’d get back to them, but I thought I could help.
Going back to Chapter One, a lot of the items we put on mail are made in China. We had relationships there because we’d been printing hundreds of millions of pieces of mail for a long time. I called our folks in China and asked if they knew anyone making face shields. They said they were all made there. I asked if I could get 25 million immediately.
High-Stakes Logistics and Global Sourcing
The problem is when you deal with the government, you had to buy the product, ship it, get it to them, and have them inspect it before you got paid. You had to come up with the money for 25 million face shields first.
Within three days, we started raising a ton of capital from people who trusted us. I was calling guys saying, "I need a million dollars tomorrow. It's a government contract, here’s a copy."
Many of those buddies are still business partners and investors of mine today. They thought it sounded nuts, but I told them if this worked, we were all about to make so much money we wouldn't be able to count it.
Simultaneously, I was terrified. If this went bad, we were toast. Everything we worked for could be gone.
Bill Green:
You were doing well, but you couldn't fund this yourself?
Greg Meerbaum:
No. You start talking about $25 or $30 million single POs, and we did hundreds of them. It adds up quick.
Raising the money and finding the product wasn't the hard part. Getting it out of China was the hard part. All the airlines were shut down, and there were 30-mile-long truck lines at the cargo ports.
My business partner's brother was a yacht captain for a family that owned a small cargo airline. It’s funny how it works out—that’s the Boca connection. You're around people with resources.
He had a plane sitting there. Normally, chartering a cargo plane to China is under $300,000. I told him I didn't care what it cost; I needed that plane tomorrow. We paid $1.8 million.
The plane goes, and we’re just waiting. We didn't even know if the face shields were actually there. It was terrifying.
I have a picture of us standing on the runway as our plane landed. The pilot told me he’d been flying for 45 years and had never seen anyone get on their own cargo plane in flip-flops. You’re not supposed to wear flip-flops around all that moving metal.
I looked at my business partner and said, "This is either going to be the best or the worst day of our lives." We didn't know if the boxes were all there.
Bill Green:
And then you have to go through customs.
Greg Meerbaum:
The laundry list of things that could go wrong was long, but the list of good things was even longer. The plane rolls up and we start unpacking. It takes dozens of people to unload.
I recorded it all because I wanted to send the content to every government agency in the country to show them this was real. They were simultaneously buying fake stuff and not getting deliveries. It was screwing up the hospitals and the government.
We sent out a video format mailer to every agency. I said, "This is a real order, just delivered to this state, here it is, call them." Within three days, almost everyone in the country called us looking for products.
Bill Green:
How long did that last?
Greg Meerbaum:
It lasted a little over four years. We wound that down in mid-2024. It went from medical supplies to anything they needed. They knew they could trust us and we could self-fund everything.
We were like the private equity guys filling government contracts. When a hurricane would hit and a state needed 3 million sandbags, I’d say, "No problem." It turned into hundreds of different products.
Then we started getting calls asking if we could get ammunition. That sounded too much like the movie "War Dogs." I knew how that movie ended, so we were out. That was the end of it. It was an amazing run.
Bill Green:
And did you stop the printing business?
Greg Meerbaum:
We were under contract to sell 50 percent of that company while I was in New Orleans for that trip. That deal fell apart because the world started melting. We paused it, and the deal never got finalized.
We kept the mail business open for a few years, but after we started the private equity firm, it was an afterthought. You go from little money to real big-boy money, and it's hard to go back.
A Moment for Wine: Quality vs. Status
Bill Green:
Let's take a pause here and try this first wine. It's 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, though my winemaker puts about five percent Petit Verdot in there as a little trick. It's the first wine we made at Saddlehill. Give it a try.
Greg Meerbaum:
Smells good. You might not have brought enough. It’s great.
Bill Green:
I bought the land but didn't start planting grapes until 2021. I knew it would take a bunch of years.
Greg Meerbaum:
Did you just watch too much "Yellowstone" and have to go get a farm?
Bill Green:
It was kind of crazy. I liked horses as a kid, and I liked wine, so it was the perfect storm. We leased a vineyard in Vineland, New Jersey, owned by a Princeton professor named Orley Ashenfelter. He’s a leading economist on wine. He told me New Jersey and Bordeaux have the same weather, just not the same soil.
Greg Meerbaum:
Are we done with this one now?
Bill Green:
Let's go to the second one. This next one is also my wine. It has five different grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot. It’s a classic Bordeaux blend, so it's a bit heavier.
Greg Meerbaum:
It looks a little darker. We should have had our COO at Coastal here, Keith Ahrens. He’s our in-house sommelier. This is right up his alley.
Bill Green:
The next one you're going to try is a very expensive bottle. It’s also a Bordeaux blend. This is a 2012 Colgin IX Estate. It’s an amazing wine, Parker rated 97 or 98. What do you think?
Greg Meerbaum:
I think I'm going to pour all three in one glass.
Bill Green:
You're a business guy and a value guy. Would you pay $800 for that Colgin IX Estate, or would you pay $50 for the Saddlehill?
Greg Meerbaum:
I’d pay for either of these two. That’s the value.
Bill Green:
What I love about my business at Saddlehill is that I get to create wines that aren't that far off from the high-end market but are much more accessible.
Greg Meerbaum:
I thought yours were better.
Bill Green:
Well, the first one was younger, only four years old compared to thirteen.
Greg Meerbaum:
I liked the first one. I like medium. I have this thing with wine. You know you’ve made pretty good money in life when your advisors and board members start telling you to collect wine or art.
I’ve got friends with massive collections worth tens of millions. Sometimes you’ll have a glass of something like Screaming Eagle that costs ten thousand dollars, and it doesn't even taste that great. I just feel like an asshole drinking it.
The first sip tells me if it's a wine I could drink all the time. I love this first one. It’s really good. Trust me, I’m not just saying that because you’re hosting me.
The Shift to Private Equity and Wealth Management
Bill Green:
So now let's go to Chapter Three. At the time, you were 34 or 35?
Greg Meerbaum:
I’ve been a full-time private equity guy for almost six years now.
Bill Green:
So you were doing that during COVID?
Greg Meerbaum:
I had my own problems to solve. I didn't get into private equity to be an investment guru; I got into it because I had big tax bills and I didn't want to pay "big-boy" tax.
Big-boy tax means $10 million plus tax bills. I needed to learn the space because a dollar saved is a dollar earned. I got into private equity through the tax mitigation tools that wealthy people use.
Bill Green:
Explain what you mean. You have all this money and you aren't just putting it in the S&P 500.
Greg Meerbaum:
You have a choice. You make ordinary income or have a gain, and you owe tax to Uncle Sam. There are tools and strategies that exist—the same ones people like Trump use. They are legal, efficient, and work for people with certain fact patterns.
When you make $3 million a year, you typically don't get access to the stuff the guy making $300 million uses because you have very different problems. In 2020, I dove in and became an expert with a team around us.
Today we have an advisory board of guys from the biggest tax firms in the world. We had been investing in various private businesses for over a decade at that point.
Coastal’s Philosophy: Direct Access and Institutional Strategy
Bill Green:
Were these operating companies or private investments?
Greg Meerbaum:
It was a combination. I wanted to learn that space because I was tired of retail investing. When you make money, two things happen. Every friend and family member calls you about a deal, and you’ll lose on 95 percent of those investments.
The second thing is you get an advisor at a big fancy firm. To me, those firms feel like McDonald's. They have a great name and brand, but it doesn't mean it's good for you.
Many of those big wealth managers are just selling off a menu of products. If you're a real estate guy and go to them, they don't have real real estate; they have a chopped-up version of a REIT. It's a version of retail.
I was too much of a psychopath to trust anyone with that much money. I wanted to be hands-on, directly dealing with the guys manufacturing apartments, storage facilities, or car washes. I wanted pre-IPO investments and big roll-ups. I wanted to get direct to the guy doing the thing with zero middle-men.
Bill Green:
That was the business. At what point did you realize it wasn't just a side project?
Greg Meerbaum:
After our first outside fund. We raised close to $15 million in a two-week period. I had people beating down my door to get involved.
I realized we could do another fund in a few weeks. I called my two business partners into the office. At that point, we were still making money in our print business and the government contract business.
I looked at them and said, "We're done with all this other shit. This is what we're going to do now." You can't be really good at two things, definitely not three.
I told them that if we had the balls to put all our chips in again, this might be the biggest thing we ever do. So far, I haven't been wrong.
Motivation and the Drive to Win
Bill Green:
So Coastal now oversees assets worth how much?
Greg Meerbaum:
In terms of asset value, we've invested in stuff worth over $5 billion at this point. That includes equity investments in various asset classes and a lot of tax strategies.
Bill Green:
Scaling that—did you ever feel like you hit a wall?
Greg Meerbaum:
Everyone tells you that after the friends and family stage, you'll be standing out in the cold looking for your next kill. I am busier today not trying than I've ever been in my life.
You asked about my hobbies, and I said I need more hobbies because all I do is work. I work more now than I've ever worked in any job combined. It's psychotic, but exciting.
Bill Green:
Explain why it's really not "work."
Greg Meerbaum:
It's about winning. I want to win, and I want my investors and partners to win. It’s like a big strategy game.
I love making sure all the pieces of the puzzle fit—from finding the right sponsors to due diligence, deal structuring, and investor relations. That’s what I wake up jacked up about every day.
I’m not a big legacy thinker. I’d love to get the Spanish River Community High School football field named after me, but my buddies played a prank on me saying I could do it for a hundred grand. I was ready to do it right then.
Legacies have become less important because you hear stories of money disappearing after the second or third generation. I just want the people who have been with me for 20 years to have success. I want to build our own legacy as people and as a company.
I want to prove we can run with the best of them. We aren't going to be Blackstone tomorrow, but it wouldn't be out of the question one day. I still have a lot of piss and vinegar left. I can't just play golf and tennis every day.
Advice for the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs
Bill Green:
What advice would you give a young entrepreneur who is running without a strategy?
Greg Meerbaum:
One: learn to sell. I don't care what anybody tells you. Get a sales job.
Two: learn to sell a product valuable enough to make real money. It's just as hard to sell kitchen knives door-to-door for a thousand dollars as it is to sell a sixty-thousand-dollar Rolex. But the commission on the Rolex is nine times higher.
If you're going to get into sales, don't sell a dog-shit product. Sell something that will make you real money if you get good. That’s how you get to the next place. Nobody starts owning a winery; it doesn't start that way.
Bill Green:
I've always thought people have ideas but don't think about market size. I was mentoring someone who had an interesting idea. I asked him how big the market was. He took a stab at it and said getting ten percent market share would be amazing. I pointed out that ten percent of his estimate meant he’d have a hundred-thousand-dollar company.
People don't think about market size. In everything you've done, you're in big markets. If you get a fraction of a big market by being a great salesman and working harder than anyone else, you win.
Greg Meerbaum:
That was luck, by the way. I didn't choose big markets because I was smart enough to think of it that way. But you're right. I saw that piece of plastic as a face mask. There was something really there.
Balancing Ambition and Life
Bill Green:
We call this show Uncorked: Wine, Business, and Life because we love that intersection. When you finally step away from the monitor and the deals, what helps you recharge?
Greg Meerbaum:
Politically, I’ve got to say spending time with my wife. It will be our one-year anniversary this Saturday after ten years of dating. I love you.
Beyond that, hanging out and vegging out on the couch with movies is awesome. I like being outside—playing tennis, golfing, smoking a cigar, or hanging out at the beach house.
Anytime I can get away from the phone and put music on helps me recharge. When I go on vacation, it takes me a day or two to decompress enough for my mind to realize I'm actually on vacation.
When you run a big business, you're constantly needed. In a perfect world, for the next twenty years, I hope other people in our company can take the ball and run with it more. Friends and family time—what else is there?
Bill Green:
But you're still a young guy. When I was running my first business, I left when I was 43. I had plenty of money and young kids. I was finished with that business, but I was just getting warmed up. That's the problem with our DNA; there is no "off."
Greg Meerbaum:
I learned from watching my dad that I don't have an off switch. I don't think it's healthy to turn the brain off.
The mentality has changed for successful entrepreneurs in their 60s. Before, the goal was to retire, move to Boca, and play tennis. I don't think that's the deal anymore because long-term, it hurts you more than it helps.
What I love about my business is that today at lunch, we talked about 50 different industries—pawn shops, banking, car washes, multifamily, AI. I'm always getting re-excited because something new falls in my lap.
I love understanding different businesses and asset classes. We have a great team of smart people, and as I watch them learn and then dumb it down for me to comprehend, I get jazzed up. There is always something new to move the target to. I don't think I'll be turning it off anytime soon.
Bill Green:
You are awesome. Thank you so much for being on Uncorked: Wine, Business, and Life. Greg and I have become fast friends. I think we're going to be talking about many more chapters to come in Greg Meerbaum's world. Thank you, everybody, and see you next time.
Greg Meerbaum:
Thanks, guys. You're the man.
