What makes a person unique? I think it shows up in the details: what they notice, what they choose, what keeps them curious, and how they treat people.
What are they willing to spend time learning? How do they treat people when there’s nothing to gain? What do they return to, even after life pulls them in another direction?
For me, that picture includes personal style, cars, food, travel, music, and a tendency to research a dinner reservation far beyond what most people would consider reasonable. It also includes twenty-five years in the automotive business, changing priorities, and ambitions I’m still working toward.
Plenty of people share those interests. What becomes personal is the combination, along with the experiences and choices behind it. Looking at my own life, these are the ten things that help me understand how that happens.
1. What Makes a Person Unique? Start With Experience
After twenty-five years in automotive leadership, I naturally notice how businesses treat their customers. I pay attention to communication, follow-through, and the difference between someone completing a task and someone taking responsibility for an experience.
That perspective comes with me when I walk into a restaurant or check into a hotel. A beautiful space gets my attention. The people working in it often determine whether I want to return.
My automotive background also introduced me to Formula 1 through my work with Ferrari. An existing interest in cars opened the door to another interest, which eventually gave me more reasons to travel.
Experiences tend to build on one another like that. Something learned in one part of life turns out to matter somewhere completely different. Over time, those connections become part of how you see things, even when you aren’t consciously thinking about where they began.
2. Personal Style Is in the Details
I like nice things. Clothes, watches, cars. I notice the shoes someone is wearing, the bag they’re carrying, even the pen they’re using. Those small details catch my attention.
When I buy clothes, I look at the design and quality. I don’t choose something simply because of the brand name, and I try to avoid covering myself in logos. I want to enjoy the piece itself.
That said, I do like my Psycho Bunny polos. The little bunny gets a pass.
My preference is dark colors with bold accents. I like having something that adds personality without making every part of an outfit compete for attention. A strong accent against a darker background feels closer to my taste.
I consider myself very unique. I don’t try to fit neatly into a norm, but I don’t feel the need to go too far in the other direction either. I like finding my own balance.
Personal style gives me a way to express that. The choices matter because they feel right to me. Someone else can make completely different choices and have a style that’s just as distinctly theirs.
3. The Interests You Keep Making Time For
I regularly drive an hour or more into New York City for dinner. That probably tells you more about my interest in food than any description I could put in a biography.
The interest has been there for a long time. After high school, I took my high school girlfriend to a Daniel Boulud restaurant for her nineteenth birthday. Years before this website, I was already interested in making a meal into an experience worth planning around.
Cars hold my attention differently. Sound, feel, and the experience of driving matter to me. Food, wine, and cocktails create another kind of involvement, with different details to explore. Music has its place, too, from Dave Grohl and the Smashing Pumpkins to classic rock, alternative rock, and hip-hop.
These are the things I lose myself in. They reveal where my attention goes when I have a choice. Someone else’s interests might look completely different, but the time they willingly give them says something just as meaningful.
4. Curiosity Changes the Questions You Ask
Curiosity is probably the clearest connection between my interests. Once something catches my attention, I want to understand it better. A restaurant leads to questions about a chef. A cocktail introduces an unfamiliar ingredient. A race weekend becomes a reason to learn about the city surrounding the circuit.
My 2024 trip to São Paulo brought that habit back into focus. Formula 1 got me there, but researching restaurants, neighborhoods, hotels, and bars became a huge part of the experience.
The research continued afterward. The city gave me reasons to keep asking questions and eventually return.
I also enjoy the practical side of it. Looking at neighborhoods, comparing menus, and figuring out which places belong in the same day can be satisfying in its own right. By the time I book something, I’ve usually already spent a fair amount of time thinking about it. If dinner needs its own research project, I’m probably interested.
That’s one of the things I value about curiosity: it leaves room for an experience to become something I hadn’t anticipated. I can arrive with a plan and still discover that the part I want to explore further is somewhere else entirely.
5. Taste Develops Through Paying Attention
I don’t think taste arrives fully formed. Mine has developed through trying things, comparing experiences, and gradually understanding why certain places stay with me.
Barcelona in June 2026 was a good example. Mont Bar became one of my five best meals, while Disfrutar offered a very different experience. At Mont Bar, warmth and personality were part of what made the evening work so well for me.
Personal taste becomes more useful when you can explain it. Was it the food? The atmosphere? The pacing? The way the staff made the evening feel? Sometimes it’s difficult to separate those elements because the whole experience works together.
That is the perspective I bring to my food and drink writing. I want to understand my own reaction before turning it into a recommendation.
Another meal, trip, or conversation can give me context I didn’t have before.
That willingness to reconsider matters. Once I decide that my taste is finished developing, I give myself fewer reasons to explore. I’d rather keep finding something that surprises me, even if it makes me rethink an opinion I was perfectly comfortable with yesterday.
6. Values Show Up in Ordinary Decisions
Honesty and service matter to me. Those are easy words to put on a website. Their meaning becomes clearer in everyday decisions.
If I recommend somewhere, I want to explain why it deserves someone’s time. If an experience disappoints me, I want to be able to say that clearly and fairly. Praise becomes more useful when a reader can trust that it reflects what actually happened.
The same applies to my working life. People remember whether you listened, explained something properly, and followed through. A confident introduction only gets you so far.
When I think about what makes a person unique, values belong in the answer because they influence behavior across different situations. Interests can introduce us to one another. The way we act helps determine whether a connection lasts. For me, being enthusiastic about an experience comes with a responsibility to describe it honestly.
7. How You Make Other People Feel
Some of the most memorable parts of São Paulo involved the people. The hospitality, the conversations, and the willingness to share knowledge helped turn a city I was visiting into somewhere I wanted to understand more deeply.
That has stayed with me as I’ve continued traveling. A restaurant can put tremendous effort into its food and design. The welcome still matters. So does the sense that someone genuinely wants you to enjoy being there.
I think about this beyond hospitality, too. We all contribute something to the atmosphere around us. Listening, showing interest, or taking time to answer a question can change an interaction.
The people I remember most clearly often made it easier to ask questions and feel comfortable. There is something very personal about the way someone does that. It can stay with you long after the details of the setting begin to fade.
8. Different Chapters Bring Different Priorities
I attended the New York City Wine & Food Festival in 2009 and returned over the following years. Around the early 2010s, I also attended the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, coming to it from outside the industry because I was interested in the experience.
Then I bought a farm in 2013, and my focus shifted. Life had other demands, and the time available for those interests changed.
The curiosity was still part of me. São Paulo helped bring it forward again in a way that eventually led to this website.
Looking back, that progression makes sense. At the time, I was simply living through it. Different responsibilities take up different amounts of space as life changes. An interest can remain meaningful through a quieter period, then return with new energy. I find that reassuring. The person I am today includes those earlier chapters, even when my daily life looks different.
9. Your Perspective Is What You Can Contribute
Two people can visit the same destination and come away wanting to talk about completely different things. One may remember the architecture. Another may remember a meal, a conversation, or how a place made them feel.
My own travels have included Machu Picchu and Maido in Peru, restaurant experiences in Barcelona, and the food and hospitality that keep drawing me back to Brazil. Those places offer very different ways of experiencing a destination.
Writing helps me work out what deserves attention and why. My São Paulo travel guide grew from that process of researching, visiting, remembering, and trying to make the information useful to someone else.
I can contribute the perspective I’ve developed while being clear about its limits. Readers have their own tastes, priorities, and budgets. Giving them enough context to make their own decision feels more useful than assuming everyone should want the same experience I do.
10. Leave Room for the Person You’re Becoming
I’m still a Finance Director. I still plan around a job, a budget, and limited vacation time. Building this website happens within that reality.
I’d like travel and content creation to become my full-time work. There is a gap between wanting that and making it happen, and I’m in the middle of working through it.
That unfinished part belongs in the picture, too. It’s easy to describe yourself using things you’ve already done. Your next decisions reveal something as well: what you’re prepared to learn, where you’re willing to put effort, and which interests you want to take more seriously.
My answer to what makes a person unique will probably keep changing as I do. For now, it comes down to the experiences I carry, the things that keep me curious, the values I try to live by, and the personal choices that make me feel like myself.
There will be more places to explore, meals to plan around, and questions worth following. I like having something ahead of me that I haven’t figured out yet.
Completely Unnecessary. Absolutely Worth It.