After many books, articles, classes, and consultations about winery ownership and how to build your own winery, the one important topic I find missing, time and time again, is addressing the WHY.  By that I mean, WHY do you want to own a winery?  There are all sorts of businesses you could go into, so why do YOU want to own a winery specifically?

Most books tend to come from the perspective of DOING, i.e. if it’s marketing – Who is going to buy your wine? What do those people want? What kind of wine are you going to make?  You get answers like: Work with a winemaker.   How to create a process. How much wine are you going to make?  How many people will buy it?  Who knows?  At the beginning you have to make a lot of decisions. Knowing HOW to make these decisions  comes from WHY you are doing this in the first place.  For example, someone who is owning a vineyard to build wealth, will take different actions from someone who is retired and wants to own a vineyard as a hobby.

What is your vision?  What is your brand? All of this originates from WHY you are doing this in the first place.  So, why do you want to own a winery?  Why play this game rather than another?  Have you really looked deep and been honest with yourself?

Possible reasons you may want to start a winery:

1.  Retirement Dream.  You have a stately, but welcoming chateau in the country with a winery and vineyard.  Everyone comes to visit and have a good time at your place.  And of course, you’ll be the perfect host and hostess.  What you may not realize is how many long hours in the vineyard there will be and that having your winery open every weekend requires you to be there more than anticipated – not to mention this kind of winery can be expensive!

2.  Value-Add To Your Existing Vineyard.  You are a vineyard owner and are doing a great job at growing grapes, but you’re not capturing the margin you would like in sales.  You think, “I could have my own winery and make more money.”  But do you REALLY want to build and run a winery? There are other options.  You could have the wine made for you and just sell it to other wineries.

3.  Good Business Opportunity.  Perhaps you see a gap in the market that isn’t being filled.  As a business man or woman you see building a winery in this particular area as a good business option.  But have you evaluated the whether this time-consuming business is better than another business?  Creating a successful winery is not a quick process.

4.  You Are the Star of Your Own Show.  It’s cool to be a winery owner!  That’s alright.  But be careful about all the duties you will need to take on, i.e. winemaking, manager, and tasting room leader.  You can still be a winery owner and not have to do all of these jobs.  Hire them out.

5. Winemaker Turned Winery Owner.  You are a great winemaker.  All your friends and family say so.  After a few years of tweaking and honing in on some really good wines, you think you could actually sell this!  I could open my own winery and leave this desk job behind.  However, are you an entrepreneurial fit?  You know how to make wine, but do you know how to be a business owner, manager, marketer and sales guy?  Technicians know HOW to do something, but are not typically trained in management. Managers in turn, may not know how to actually do something, but know how to fulfill on the business obligations.  What you can do is build a business model that doesn’t require you to spend all your days pouring wine with customers.

6.  Small Winery Grows BIG.  Messina Hof Winery in Texas started with only 1300 gallons of wine produced the first year.  Now they are one of the top 3 largest wineries in Texas, producing 265,000 gallons.  The owner, Paul Bonnerigo, is a marketer/salesman.  He figured out how to get his wine served and sold.  They have over 60 wines for sale made from 18 varietals to ensure they are meeting the demand and desires of as many customers as possible.  His vision came from his customers.  Don’t sell what you make, make what you sell.

7.  Restaurant and Winery.  You’re a restraunteur and you want to make wines to sell in your restaurant. (States vary on the legality of this.)

8.  Farmer. Grapes. Winery.   Perhaps your expertise is in agriculture and farming grapes is a viable crop for your area.  You set your goals on a certain amount of income and from there you choose to grow grapes and open a winery.

9.  I LOVE Wine!   If that’s the reason you want to own a winery, you should reconsider! 😉  It’s a whole heck of a lot of work.  As the Neals, owners of Stable Ridge Vineyard and Winery, say, it’s a life, not just a life style.

These are just some of the reasons people may want to own a winery.  Yours could be a version of one of these or something completely different.  Either way, we get back to figuring out your WHY.  Academic business courses say you need to have a vision statement. How do you create this vision statement?  That is usually not addressed.  The vision statement has got to mean something specifically to YOU.  The problem is we are not taught to think about what we really want, much less WHY we want it.  You have a want that you don’t know how to define.  For 13+ years, we are taught HOW to do something, but typically we don’t stop to figure out the WHY.  Heck, many people get college degrees without figuring out the WHY.  How many of you got a degree and it took you 2-3 years to declare a major? Or how many changed majors?…sometimes more than once!  Or how many of us have degrees in fields we never worked in? Overall, we don’t have a great method to figure out what we want and why we are doing it.  Typically we don’t even look for WHY.

The real kicker is that even though WHY is undeclared, it’s still there!  The struggle begins because now the HOW is affected.  What we don’t realize is that the real problem originates when the WHY doesn’t match the WHAT or HOW.  As a society, we don’t often stop and look at this gap for ourselves. A solid well-thought out vision statement gives you clarity and shows you where you are going. When making a business decision, it is something that can be pulled up and will guide you in a clear direction.  Even your employees should be able to read this and match it up to where the winery is going.  Are you moving or fulfilling on that vision?  If not, now is always a good time to stop and evaluate.

So, why are you a winery owner or why do you want to be a winery owner?  There may be unacknowledged or undeclared drives and motivations that often we don’t even realize exist or perhaps we don’t want to admit.  These desires could be what allow it to work, but they could also be what get in your way.  There could be some buried thoughts or expectations that will eventually prevent you from being successful.  Here’s an example:

Two partners built a vineyard and were very successful at this.  Now they are looking at building a winery as the next step.  One partner has a vision of a winery in the country – your classic boutique winery where people come out and visit, sit on the patio, have a glass of wine, etc.  However, the other partner envisions more of an urban winery on a major highway.  He wants to run a large volume of people through, host large events, produce and sell a large quantity of wine.  These two visions do not mesh.  One is more urban and the other is more agriculture (farm).  These wineries would attract different people and there by affect the styles of wine that would be produced.  These are different markets.  If you stop the conversation at “we want to build a winery”, compromise on location and start marketing, what you may not realize is combined intention determines the wine you make, the kinds of people you draw, the daily operations, your employees, etc.  When the underlying intention is undeclared there is a struggle, whether with your partner or internally, because your vision isn’t being met and wasn’t agreed upon prior to launching your business.

I spent years trying to figure out how to build my own winery and vineyard. I designed 8 wineries, all different kinds -custom crush facilities, small wineries, large wineries and went through all kinds of steps in the process of creating and building this thing I wanted. For years I was stuck and not moving forward.  Why was I stuck?  I finally took the time to take a two day program, Accelerate Success Workshop, which allowed me to get clear on what it was that I really wanted. Once I did that, I figured out that I actually did not want to run an operation facility.  That was not important to me.  What I discovered that was and is important to me is working with winemakers, creating something unique and making a difference for those in the business of making wine.   From there, I was able to create this business, Premier Wine Blends, which is completely different from what I thought would fulfill on what is important to me.

Steps in Discovering Your WHY:

1.  Look at this as an inquiry.  This is not an answer to a word problem where there is a right answer.  It could change or grow over the years.  Is this a passing thing or is this something you are really dedicated to?  Building a winery is not an over-night success kind of business.

2.  Be honest with yourself about what comes up for you. You may need to work with someone else, as I did, who will really dig in there with you and ask you the hard questions and get to the real WHYS.  This may be hidden from your own view.  Often we make assumptions that we don’t even realize we are making and having an outsider question our assumptions is needed.

3. Declare it.  By saying it to yourself and others you will immediately see where actions are not in alignment with what you want.

Rinse.  Repeat.  When the actions are clean and the plan is easy to create, then you have your answer.

In Summary:

Take the time to figure out what you really want. What is your vision for the business?  What do you want out of the business and WHY do you want that?  Get clear about what your assumptions are about how it has to look.  Everyone has assumptions that they forget are assumptions.  Everyone has things that they are afraid to say that they want or are embarrassed to admit they don’t want.  Don’t build your business the way you think you are supposed to or the right way, but rather build it based on what you want out of the business and how to support that.  Two-Buck Chuck was built on a vision that had nothing to do with quality or prestige.  It was built for cash flow and profit.  Better quality came later after he had cash flow and not at the expense of price point. He built the business based on what matched his own vision, not others.

The reason people struggle with any big decision is because they aren’t clear. Once clear, it becomes very apparent what actions need to be taken to get what you want.  As Napoleon Hill said, “your acts will count for more than your words, and woe unto you if the two fail to harmonize.”

Cheers and success to you in finding, declaring and following your dreams!  And as always, I welcome the opportunity to visit with you.