Reflecting on purple cork 8 months in—Part 1

Part 1: Wine Entrepreneurship

August 14, 2020. That was my last day as VP of Marketing at Revinate to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. Some people think my purple cork gig is just a whole lot of hanging out on Zoom drinking amazing wine with winemakers. Spoiler alert: you’re right!! But I do some other stuff too…

As CEO of a small, super fast growing company, you do it all: marketing, sales, customer love, biz dev, product, finance, even shipping & logistics in the world of wine. It’s hard work and so rewarding, especially when you get a great review from an event marketer or an attendee. That’s the fun part that makes it all worthwhile!

I’ve been meaning to write down my learnings from starting and running a business, and now I’m on a 6 hour flight back home to San Francisco from Miami, so here we go!

Pace yourself

Wine can be literally and figuratively intoxicating. You quickly learn in the wine biz that you don’t finish every bottle. I taste a ton of wines, but with the daily demands of running a business, staying healthy and fully energized means I’m often not polishing off bottles. Even better, I’ll give them to friends to enjoy (and get their tasting notes!).

Say “yes”

Say yes to almost everything—even if you’ve never done it before. They say ask for forgiveness not permission and I like this mantra for some decision making. Trust your instincts. Be scrappy and get creative. You’ll often surprise yourself with what’s possible!

“Can you ship wine to APAC and host a tasting at midnight PT?”

“Can you get Champagne to Macedonia?”

“Can you host a 200 person customer conference with 20 breakout rooms?”

“Can you fly a drone without crashing it into Blue Rock’s tasting barn?”

Yep! (Well, maybe not to flying a drone…)

Build the right infrastructure

Your tech stack is the bones of your business. And it’s really hard to rebuild it down the road. Build an integrated tech stack (website, marketing automation, CRM, invoicing, etc.), and automate wherever possible. These systems need to talk to each other, and if they don’t, use other systems. Your invoices should show up in your CRM, new subscribers on your website should get an automated welcome email—you get the idea. Get the basics right. I’m fortunate to have an amazing friend and contractor, Colin, who has helped me build a tech stack that I think is perfect for purple cork.

Also build templates and checklists to save you time and bring consistency (run of show, attendee communications, proposals, contracts, etc.). You’ll thank yourself!

Have a strong vision

One of my biggest learnings in the last 8 months is to set aside dedicated weekly time to get out of the details and think big. For me this visioning often happens on long weekend runs or Friday afternoons. I’m always asking, what will purple cork look like in 12 months? What will our customers need in 12 months? What is the hybrid event of the future? How do I scale fast? Like really fast. And cost efficiently. Are there entirely new channels and revenue streams to unlock? Agencies have been huge for purple cork, as one example.

Related to this, have a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). I learned this from my old CEO and mentor Marc Heyneker, and it’s such a focusing concept for a founder. I have a big one for purple cork. I’ll tell you when we achieve it!

Next week I’ll dive into one of my favorite topics, People (partners, team, etc.), because you are nothing without a great team.