My business partner, Dean Castelli, and I have partnered with The American Dream TV and, as seen on television earlier this year, we chat with various local business owners who we believe you should also get to know (and, of course, frequent their establishments) along with providing some great information around real estate in and around Napa Valley.
Below you will find the transcript to this month's video. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.
Ted: Hello and welcome to the amazing Napa Valley! Thanks for joining us today.
Dean: it's a rainy day here in Napa, so we thought before we get into the visit of our house, we thought we’d stop in and get some lattes at one of our favorite spots, Barnhouse Napa Brews, a coffeehouse pub. We’re here with the partner, Eric Barnes, to tell us a little bit about it.
Eric: When we sat down and started planning out what we wanted to do with Barnhouse we wanted it focused around the coffee. Coffee is how we wanted people to think of Barnhouse and then on top of that we wanted to increase the culture by adding beer and wine, so that the coffee kind of smoothly went into a happy hour - kind of like what you'll see in London or pubs in Europe, you know where people come after work, and they socialize, they talk about their day, they unwind and that was the idea behind creating this culture,
Ted: Fantastic! Thank you, Eric, very much. Thanks for being our favorite go to here in Napa! So, we're going to pop over to an amazing property not too far from here and check out that property itself and learn a little bit more about one of our favorite topics here in Napa and that is philanthropy.
We're here with a good friend of ours, Sonia Tolbert, and she's going to introduce to us one of the benchmarks of Napa and one of the backbones of Napa, which is philanthropy. Thanks for being here, Sonia.
Sonia: Thank you for having me.
Dean: Can you tell us, why is philanthropy such an important part of the Napa Valley lifestyle?
Sonia: That's a really good question, Dean. You know, I like to think that philanthropy is almost the third leg of the stool - we have amazing wine, hospitality, and philanthropy and when those three things all come together, what we're able to do here in Napa that I think is really special and unique is create not only a great destination for people but it’s really an amazing place for people to live and work - to make sure that it's a really good place with a high quality of life for people.
Ted: In many different ways. recently we've been through some unfortunate times of, you know, fires, earthquakes in California and the community has to bounce back from that. I think you know especially in that manner, philanthropy is important to be able to bounce back from that.
Sonia: Yeah, I think you have to call it an infrastructure when our business owners work really closely with our nonprofit organizations, many people serve on boards lots of generous donations clearly are made and all of that is with the goal of making sure that everybody here has food on their table, roof over their head and to have what they need to live a really high quality of life.
Ted: I’d love to know some of the fun things you've done and some particulars of the beneficiaries of these efforts.
Sonia: Right now, you could literally fill a social calendar with all of the really great fundraising events that there are to go to here in Napa Valley. One of those right now is OLE Health, Vida OLE! auction which raises money for our community health centers and help support our farm workers and our workforce to make sure everybody has healthcare. Those events raise I would say upwards of $20 million plus a year to support the causes that that they help fund.
Ted: Sonia, thank you so much again for your time - always wonderful chatting with you and learning a little bit more. Thank you for sharing with our audience yet another aspect of what is amazing about living, working and being in the Napa Valley.
Dean: Well, Ted, what a great way to spend the afternoon in this beautiful home, talking about philanthropy with Sonia.
Ted: Absolutely! We love sharing with you what it is about Napa that makes it so special living here, working here, whatever it may be that draws you here. We're all about it! Thank you again for joining us. We appreciate you. We appreciate sharing with you more and more about what makes Napa so special to us and makes us want to live and work here.
Ted draws energy and joy from building synergetic relationships with his Clients. Ted's nature is graciously gregarious and persevering; he's honest; and he's been dedicated to a substantial list of clientele throughout his 25 years in the hospitality business and almost two years as a REALTOR. His passion is creating a sincere, successful relationship with people.
Ted grew up in a family of Realtors in central Indiana, earned a degree in economics and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, and jumped into all aspects of the restaurant business. His ensuing hospitality career path eventually led him into the Event Management Sales & Service role in hotels and quickly guided him to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and finally to a luxury resort in the Napa Valley, where he, his husband, and their dog have resided for almost a decade now.
The irony is not lost on Ted that his ‘growth’ journey has culminated in“living happily ever after” in an agricultural area with a small-town feel and sense of community strikingly reminiscent of his youth…and as a REALTOR nonetheless!