I met Tom Noble at Waterloo station last Thursday.

We looked like we were about to do some sort of odd exchange.

Which we were. But it wasn't dodgy, and we didn't exchange on the platform.

I’d bought a crate of his Chateaunoble wine and offered to collect it. Mission complete!

Tom thought I lived in Kingston upon Hull, so he came to London as a midpoint. Then he found out it was Kingston upon Thames. Oups!

We had a good laugh about that.

We ended up sitting outside Gail’s with a glass of wine and a coffee. Obvs.

A questionable combination, but I can confirm:

The white wine is great. Really great!

And I now have another 11 bottles to drink at home!

It was a real pleasure to sit and chat with Tom.

We talked about building a following and building a business. Both equally difficult, for different reasons.

We also talked about where Tom wants to take the business, and I offered my thoughts on what he needs to do.

The next step? We’re going to model what it will take to get him there.

One thing we definitely agreed on: to get a business to work, you need the inside-the-box stuff to work as well as the outside-the-box stuff.

That wasn’t supposed to be a wine pun. But it works, so I’m going with it.

What would it take to get you to buy wine from a brand you’d never tasted?