Drawing Inspiration

I am a failed film student. I've always had an eye for "that thing" the power of the word, or the music, or the action, or even the choreography to inspire, and give emotion. I've never been able to create it though.

In deciding to begin this upstart luxury business, I was often struggling to justify the why. I felt like I was standing at the end of the diving board saying: "This is Crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy" (a la Clark Griswold). I was in need of inspiration and courage. I felt like I had the concept down cold, but it can be difficult to make that leap.I remember feeling sorry for myself, when I came across this:




Most of you have already seen this, I was late to the game. But it blew me away. It was perfect. I tend to get obsessive,and I became obsessed with this. I looked up Matt, and on his site I discovered "TED".

TED is Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, made up of 20 minute speeches by extraordinary individuals.

It was here that I began to watch these inspiring videos about people thinking differently, solving problems everyone says are unsolvable, and generally succeeding in the face of naysayers. People I already respected, like Malcolm Gladwell, and Tim Ferris, Nate Silver, and even Bill Gates, along with physicists, biologists, atheists, athletes, activists & authors. The theme was the same, we, as a society have a very myopic view of reality, and society tends to want to keep individuals at the baseline of success.

I also long ago discovered Vaynerchuk, and I'll mention him again here. His business blog, not his wine blog (although I subscribe to this one too), is the one that draws me in. He's not revolutionary, but he has vision, and he's sharp and adaptive. His comments are inspiring on a daily basis for me as well.

All of these factors made me want to put together a video that inspired wineries to take action to make their voices heard. My first few versions were enough to get my brother Brad involved (although, the correct term is probably intervened). Brad works for an amazing company called Bridge Worldwide. He is a project leader for teams that develop really amazing web content for a diverse array of companies. He took my crappy 20 min Powerpoint, interviewed me, helped me distill down my ideas, and publish a kick ass site and video. This in turn was my presentation to recruit each of the wineries I now represent (18 and counting).




This journey thus far has been amazing! I have already accomplished so many of the early critical factors for success that I drew up that I've needed to adopt a new strategy that uses my time in markets a little more efficiently. Building this portfolio has been far easier than I thought it would be. I need to give all the credit to my chain of inspiration. If you would have asked me 6 months ago what the road map would be, i didn't know. But I knew I wanted the outcome to look like this. At some point, all of these inspiring personalities, putting it out there on the net for free, got me to jump off the diving board. Thanks!