LIFE IS A SERIES OF MOMENTS, SOME BIG, SOME SMALL …
… some happy, some sad.
Pause for a minute and think of some of the consequential moments in your life.
I have a few that stick out in my mind. Going to Disney World as a kid, summer vacations in Cape Cod and New Hampshire, breaking the league record for 3-pointers in high school, transferring colleges, arriving in Italy for a term abroad, my first day of law school, getting engaged, landing my first job in NYC, pouring my heart out to my girlfriend (now wife) before graduation, losing my job during the Great Recession, my grandparents’ passing, my kids being born, my mom’s cancer diagnosis and the day that I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease are certainly moments that I’ll never forget…
But seeing as this is an entrepreneurial blog first and foremost, I’ll tell you about the moment that I conceived of Votto Vines and how things unfolded.
In October 2006, Amanda and I went to Italy to celebrate our second wedding anniversary.
Our plan was to visit our friends and professor in Florence, travel through Tuscany and ultimately visit my grandmother’s family near Benevento, that I had reconnected with earlier that year.
The primary goal of the trip was to obtain a copy of my great grandfather’s original birth certificate, which I needed to complete my Italian dual citizenship application.
More on that at a later date.
We left Florence and traveled through the Chianti Classico region, staying at a wonderful agriturismo, Livernano, near Radda.
The owners were a husband and wife (Bob and Gudrun) that I had met through the National Italian American Foundation.
The estate was beautiful and the wine amazing.
Neither Amanda nor I knew much about wine, other than that we typically liked to drink dry Italian reds.
We became friendly with the winemaker at Livernano, Alberto, and on our last evening there we asked him where we could find his wines in the States and particularly the wines of Casalvento, Bob and Gudrun’s smaller estate.
He explained to us that they were not currently being imported to the States due to a series of unfortunate events, namely small US wine importers that did not pay their bills.
We talked for several hours about the international wine business, and his experience importing to the States.
Little did I realize that was a moment that would change my life, but that was my “aha moment”.
For the rest of our trip, I said to Amanda that I wanted to start importing wine from Italy.
Naturally, she thought I was crazy.
We were newly married, had great jobs and were saving for our first house, but I knew in my heart that I had hit on something.
When we got home, I immediately spoke with my cousins, brother and brother-in-law about the idea, and the wheels were in motion.
We started talking to anyone that would listen, and my brother Nicholas wrote a short paper at the University of Vermont beginning to flesh out the concept.
My cousin Stephen took that paper and turned it into his senior economics thesis at Union College (also mine and Amanda’s alma mater). Steve later won a college business plan competition and then we decided to turn Votto Vines from an idea on paper, into a reality.
Nearly everyone told us that Votto Vines was a terrible idea. The wine and spirits industry is notoriously competitive and extremely cash intensive (largely due to expensive inventory and cash flow challenges). We ignored this “advice” and pressed on forming our original LLC and filing for legal permits in late 2007. We officially launched Votto Vines with less than $10,000 before scrounging up another $40,000 from family and friends to order our first shipment of wine. Eighteen months later, in early 2009, we were in business. A tiny warehouse in Hamden, CT, Nick’s Subaru wagon doubling as a delivery vehicle and zero full-time employees, but the dream of building something special.
The rest, as they say, is history. It’s been a roller coaster and somewhat surreal. Thirteen years later, we have more than 30 employees, four warehouses and have sold more than 30 million bottles of wine since our inception. We’ve been featured in Forbes, Inc Magazine, Wine Enthusiast and named One of the Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America by Entrepreneur Magazine – twice. Most importantly, we have made friends for life around the world and built a unique organization. Some of our suppliers, customers, employees and partners are now my closest friends.
We’ve been truly blessed to build a special family business, and it all began with one fateful conversation.
One moment in time where the stars aligned, and inspiration hit. We can never prepare for these moments, but we can be ready.
Those are very different things.
It’s one thing to rack your brain for business ideas (which we literally do on seemingly daily basis) and it’s another to be open when inspiration hits. This is only possible if we are engaged in the present moment.
We never know when a consequential moment will happen but if we are engaged in life and open to inspiration then a seemingly innocuous moment may become something special.