Winery Financial Literacy: Five Ways to Level Up Your Career with Mike Mathews, Partner at 2GO Advisory Group
Mike Mathews learned what he wanted from a career during a college internship. He was talking to a company controller and asked why he liked his job. The controller pulled him into his office, closed the door, and said: “They ask my opinion about everything. I’m involved in every conversation because of this job.” That was the moment Mike decided to build his career around accounting and finance, not because of the technical work, but because of the access it gave him to every part of a business.
He went on to work across large corporate companies, small family-owned wineries, and everything in between, eventually becoming a partner at 2GO Advisory Group, where he advises wine businesses and agricultural operations on the financial side of running a healthy organization. His work is not about generating reports. It is about building the kind of shared financial understanding across a company that allows everyone, not just the finance team, to make better decisions every day.
He sat down with Lauren Heindel to share five practical ways winery professionals at any level can build their financial literacy and make it a genuine career advantage.
Most winery employees become excellent at what they do and get promoted because of it. What they rarely receive along the way is any formal financial education. That gap is not their fault. It is just the reality of how careers in wine tend to develop. The people in production, hospitality, and sales are working incredibly hard at their craft, and at some point those roles start to require financial fluency that nobody ever taught them. The five strategies Mike lays out here are designed to close that gap without adding complexity or cost.
In this episode, we cover:
Why understanding your company's financial goals makes you more effective in any role, not just finance
How inviting a finance leader into your team meetings costs nothing and changes how the whole team thinks
The case for lunch-and-learn sessions as the lowest-pressure way to build financial knowledge across a winery
What self-directed financial education looks like in practice and how companies can support it
How to actually measure whether financial literacy is improving in your organization, without a formal test
Why the balance sheet and cash flow statement matter just as much as the P&L, even though most teams only ever look at the P&L
Why financial literacy matters at every level of a winery
The standard assumption at most wineries is that financial knowledge belongs to finance. The CFO, the controller, and the accountants handle the numbers. Everyone else handles the wine, the guests, and the operations. Mike’s argument is that this separation is one of the most common sources of poor decisions at wineries that otherwise have talented, motivated teams.
When employees do not understand the financial context around their work, they make decisions without knowing the downstream effects. A production manager who does not understand COGS cannot evaluate whether a new barrel program makes sense. A hospitality director who does not understand margin cannot assess whether a new tasting experience is actually profitable. These are not exotic finance questions. They are the everyday decisions that determine whether a winery moves forward or stays stuck.
If there's a common understanding around how things get done from an accounting perspective, and there's a philosophy of sharing information and creating visibility to what's going on in the company, those two things together are real game changers. They create a separation between companies that end up doing well and companies that struggle.
Mike Mathews , Partner
2GO Advisory Group
The other piece Mike is careful to address upfront is that the knowledge gap is not the employee’s fault. Everyone in a winery has been working hard to become excellent in their specific area. Financial literacy is rarely part of the job training. Acknowledging that directly creates the psychological safety that makes people willing to ask questions they might otherwise be embarrassed to raise.
Before launching any financial education initiative at your winery, Mike recommends a simple step: find out where your team actually is. Ask a few honest questions in a low-stakes setting. What do they already know about the P&L? Have they ever seen a balance sheet? Do they know what a cash flow statement is for? You cannot meet people where they are unless you know where that is.
Tip 1: Understand your company’s financial goals
The most basic form of financial literacy is knowing what your company is actually trying to accomplish financially, and whether that information has been communicated to you. Most employees at wineries know the brand story and the winemaking philosophy. Far fewer know whether the company is focused on improving gross margin, growing DTC revenue, reducing overhead, or paying down debt.
Mike’s point is that without that context, every decision in every department happens in a vacuum. Someone optimizing their department without knowing the company’s financial direction might be working hard toward a goal that contradicts what ownership is actually trying to do.
If I'm the owner and I tell a few directors we're trying to improve our gross margin by 3% over the next year, that's fine. But how is that information getting down to everyone, so that all the decisions can go into achieving that goal?
Mike Mathews , Partner
2GO Advisory Group
If you do not know what your company’s financial priorities are, the first step is to ask. That question alone signals that you are thinking beyond your immediate role, and the answer will change how you approach your work in ways that are hard to predict in advance.
If you are in a leadership or management role, do not assume that sharing financial goals creates confusion or distraction. In Mike's experience, transparency around financial direction almost always increases alignment and motivation. Employees who understand the why behind decisions are more likely to make choices that support the goal, even without being told to.
Tip 2: Invite a finance leader to your next team meeting
The most cost-effective financial education available to most winery teams is sitting in the same building and almost never invited to the conversation.
Mike’s recommendation is simple: ask your CFO, controller, or finance director to attend one of your regular team meetings. Not to give a presentation. Not to review the books. Just to talk through what they see from where they sit, and to answer questions from people who would not normally have access to that perspective.
Most finance leaders are genuinely interested in helping other departments understand the numbers better. They are often the ones most frustrated by decisions made without financial context. Inviting them into a team meeting is not adding work to their day. It is giving them an audience that actually wants to understand.
There are a lot of really smart accountants who add up good numbers and work really hard and issue fancy reports, but they haven't built any relationships with the people who use that information. And so you end up with two parallel tracks that never quite connect.
Mike Mathews , Partner
2GO Advisory Group
A single 20-minute conversation where the controller explains how tasting room revenue flows through the P&L and hits the balance sheet can shift how an entire hospitality team thinks about their work. That conversation costs nothing.
If you are the one inviting the finance leader, come with a specific question from your team rather than a blank invitation. "We'd love to understand how our department's costs show up in the P&L" gives the conversation structure and shows the finance team that the interest is genuine. Specific questions get better answers than open-ended invitations.
Tip 3: Run lunch-and-learn sessions on financial topics
The barrier to financial education at most wineries is not unwillingness. It is format. A formal training program with homework and assessments is not realistic for a production team in the middle of harvest or a hospitality team running seven-day weeks in peak season. Informal sessions that happen over lunch remove most of that friction.
Lunch-and-learns work because they create a low-stakes environment where people can ask basic questions without feeling judged. They can be led by someone internal, a finance team member who walks through how to read a P&L, or by an outside advisor who brings a broader perspective. They work best when they are specific and short, focused on one concept rather than trying to cover everything at once.
The goal is not to turn hospitality staff into accountants. It is to build enough shared language and context that conversations across departments become more productive, and decisions get made with the financial picture in view.
Keep the first session short and focused on the one financial document that affects your team's work most directly. For a production team, that might be COGS and how their decisions show up in it. For a tasting room team, it might be how ticket revenue and comps flow through the P&L. One concrete connection between their daily work and a financial statement is worth more than an overview of every financial concept.
Tip 4: Take personal ownership of your financial education
The three tips above require buy-in from leadership or colleagues. This one is entirely in your control.
Mike’s point here is straightforward: the resources for basic financial education are widely available, largely free, and require no formal program to access. Online courses covering accounting fundamentals, how to read financial statements, and basic business finance exist across platforms that any employee can use on their own time. Reading the three primary financial statements for your own winery, even without a formal explanation, builds familiarity over time.
The behavioral shift Mike looks for is employees who come to meetings and ask different questions. Not operational questions, but financial ones. What does this cost us? How does this show up in the P&L? What happens to cash flow if we do this? Those questions do not come from formal training programs. They come from individuals who decided to learn.
Mike recommends starting with the income statement (P&L) before anything else, specifically the section that covers your department. Look at where your department's costs appear and what they are called. Understanding your own numbers in context is the fastest way to build intuition about the rest of the financial picture.
Tip 5: Measure progress by watching what people talk about
Financial literacy is hard to test and easy to dismiss as a soft goal. Mike’s approach to measuring it is practical: watch how conversations in your organization change over time.
When teams start to internalize financial thinking, the topics that come up in meetings shift. People stop talking only about what happened last week and start asking about what it means for the month or the quarter. They reference margins and costs not as abstract concepts but as real constraints on decisions. They ask why before they act rather than after.
The measurement often comes in how you're spending your time and what things you and your department are talking about. When you start talking about things more holistically, or a little bit more long term, that indicates you've graduated from thinking in terms of your department only.
Mike Mathews , Partner
2GO Advisory Group
This is not a precise metric. But it is a real one. The conversations that happen inside a financially literate team are qualitatively different from those that happen when every department is operating in its own financial silo, and that difference shows up in the decisions those teams make.
If you manage a team, notice what questions come up after your next department meeting. Are people asking about budget, margin, or the financial impact of a decision? Or are all the questions operational and tactical? That ratio is a reasonable proxy for how financially aware your team currently is, and it gives you a baseline to compare against six months from now.
The three financial statements every winery professional should know
One theme that runs through Mike’s advice is that most winery teams have a partial picture of their financial situation. They look at the P&L and feel like they understand the business. The balance sheet and cash flow statement are generated somewhere, but almost nobody looks at them.
Mike is direct about this: the cash flow statement may be the most important financial document a winery produces, and most management teams never see one. Understanding cash flow tells you whether the business can actually sustain its operations, regardless of what the P&L shows about profitability. A winery can be profitable on paper and cash-poor in practice, and the P&L alone will not tell you that.
The balance sheet shows what the company owns, what it owes, and what is left over for the owners. For a winery with significant inventory, equipment, and land, the balance sheet captures a dimension of the business that the P&L simply cannot.
If your winery produces a balance sheet and cash flow statement but does not regularly share them with department heads, that is worth raising with your finance team. You do not need line-by-line detail. A simple summary of cash position and key balance sheet items gives every leader in the organization a more complete picture of where the business actually stands.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Financial Literacy in the Wine Industry
Why does financial literacy matter for winery employees who are not in finance? +
Winery employees at every level make decisions that have financial consequences, whether they are aware of it or not. A production team deciding on a barrel program affects COGS. A hospitality team designing a new tasting experience affects margin. When employees understand how their decisions show up in financial statements, they make better choices, ask better questions, and contribute more effectively to the company's financial goals. Financial literacy is not about turning everyone into an accountant. It is about giving people enough context to connect their daily work to the financial health of the business.
What financial statements should winery professionals understand? +
The three primary financial statements relevant to any winery are the income statement (P&L), the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement. The P&L shows revenue, costs, and profitability over a period of time and is where most winery teams spend their attention. The balance sheet shows what the winery owns, owes, and is worth at a point in time. The cash flow statement shows actual cash moving in and out of the business. Mike Mathews notes that most winery management teams focus almost exclusively on the P&L, but the cash flow statement in particular is often more relevant to day-to-day operational decisions.
How can a winery start building financial literacy across its team? +
The most accessible starting points require no budget. Inviting a finance leader to a regular team meeting introduces financial perspective to employees who do not normally have access to it. Hosting short lunch-and-learn sessions on specific financial topics removes the formality barrier that makes financial education feel intimidating. Making it clear to employees what the company's financial goals are gives everyone context for the decisions they make in their own roles. These steps are low-cost, repeatable, and create cumulative progress over time.
How do you know if financial literacy is improving at your winery? +
The clearest indicator is behavioral, not a test score. When teams become more financially aware, the conversations in meetings change. People start asking about margin, cash flow, and the financial impact of decisions rather than only operational questions. They think in longer time horizons. They make connections between their department's work and the company's financial results. Mike Mathews describes this shift as people "graduating from thinking in terms of their department only" to thinking about the business more holistically.
What is the difference between a P&L and a cash flow statement for a winery? +
A P&L (profit and loss statement) shows revenue minus expenses over a period of time, resulting in a net profit or loss figure. It reflects accounting profitability. A cash flow statement shows the actual cash moving into and out of the business during the same period. A winery can show a profit on the P&L while experiencing cash shortfalls, particularly when significant cash is tied up in inventory, barrel purchases, or other assets that generate future but not immediate revenue. The cash flow statement captures that gap, which is why it is critical for operational planning even when the P&L looks healthy.