The ‘Aha’ Moment

            ** enter casual small banter **

Q: Oh, so what do you do?

            A: Oh, I own a rum distillery that manufactures a brand called Owney’s.

            Q: Woah! Really?! How did you get into that?

            The above brief dialogue is a snippet of a cocktail party conversation I’ve had 1000000000000000+ times in the past 8 years.  Here’s the very distilled story (and the point of it) in my own (oh, so eloquent) words:

            I definitely didn’t say “I want to be a rum maker and marketer” when my kindergarten teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  And even though I always knew I would be in my own business, I also definitely didn’t start my career after business school saying “I’m gonna start a rum company.”  So how did it happen?

            After my MBA in finance, naturally *eye roll* I sought a good, lucrative job on the ‘buy’ side of Wall Street – put simply, at a hedge (or technically, mutual, VC, private equity) fund (not a bank, ‘sell’ side).  I landed at a nice, large (in terms of AUM – Assets Under Management) hedge fund with only a handful of analysts/investors supporting the fund’s manager which made for a really comprehensive experience in terms of exposure (extremely flat structure with a lot of opportunities to travel and get in front of global, big time CEOs).  << I was 23, the only woman, and half the average age of the group… for another post ;) >> After a couple of months on the job, I was tasked with working on the Consumer Goods sector – researching, analyzing, making investment decisions for the portfolio on these publicly traded companies.  After the market collapsed in 2008, I turned to booze (ha!) – no, but seriously, people tend to drink in good times and in bad, so I looked towards investing in these company’s for safety in the midst of a recession.  Long story short, we had a couple of good calls on beer companies and I would up carving a little niche out for myself in global alcoholic (beer, wine and spirits) beverage investing…

            Fast forward a few years, I had sort of ‘peaked’ where I was and wanted to get into private company investing//needed to ‘get out to go up’ so I started going through the motions of networking, interviewing, coffees, drinks, emails, classmates, headhunters, friends, yada yada … but I quickly realized that I may be going from the frying pan into the fire.  So, while I sat at my desk looking for new job opportunities, I really just started to deliberately open my mind to new thoughts and did some soul searching.  I thought about my entrepreneurial, no bullshit, hater-of-authority attitude… I thought about wanting to be in my own game and that I was always such a hard working, over-achiever… I probably thought about a lot of things I can’t recall or that were 100% subconscious.  I definitely thought about trends in alcohol since it was the business I had spent the past several years learning and analyzing (and I like booze ).  I just let all new thoughts come in over about 6 months (sorry old bosses!  I know I probably should have been doing more work for you).  Then one day about 6 months in, all the thoughts amalgamated into clarity and a true ‘aha moment’!

            It was June of 2011 and I was in my office watching a TED talk (again, should have probably been doing something else, oops) given by a professor at Stanford to MBA students wanting to get into Venture Capital.  His point was essentially… “what gives you (arrogant?) guys the right to appropriately evaluate start up investments when you have never started a business?  Get out there!  Start something!  Don’t be afraid to fail.  Then go to VC with a much better perspective – you will be more successful.”

            For whatever reason, it really hit me.  It seems silly to recount but I literally remember it as if “Aha I’m building a distillery in Brooklyn and starting a Rum Company!”  I was inspired.  I had a real vision semi out of no where – it was like the previous 6 months had converged into one moment.  I didn’t look back, I was driven like a horse with blinders on.  The feeling is hard to describe, but it manifested in passion, perseverance and iterating towards the evolving vision.  The rest is history.  (side Bar:  The prof was 1000000% correct - starting a business is the best learning experience you will ever get.  Cannot be bought.  Millions of times more real than simply applying financial theory to investment analysis.  *ALSO, if anyone out there in the internet ether knows of this TED talk I mention can you PLEASE reach out with a link?  I have been trying to re-find it again for years.  I would love to even know the professors name as this was a defining moment in my life*)

            So why this short story in a blog post?  Another topic that often comes up in my travels is “I want to be an entrepreneur” – this isn’t a novel observation as majoring in ‘Entrepreneurism’ is trending high in universities across the globe.  But, I think it’s hard “to be an entrepreneur” and start a company from nothing without having a solid vision.  It’s the vision (and UNABASHEDLY BELIEVING IN IT) that drives the passion and the hard work and the perseverance.  It’s recognizing that you may need to tweak the vision along the way as you execute.  Without a clear vision, you have nothing to create the necessary fire in your soul (which you will most definitely need to keep fueling your energy).  Please note this is different than buying an existing company and fixing it or just operating it for income purposes – talking straight building from scratch.

            Ok great, so you “want to be an entrepreneur”?  Here’s my advice – soul search and open up your mind to what immediately interests you and then to other things that you think might interest you.  (**you should definitely like what you are doing when you are starting a company, cause you will be married to it for an unforeseen amount of time**).  I’m personally in Round 2 of doing this.  Some actions : Read things (books, blogs, magazines, newspapers, trade rags), make observations about what’s happening in the world (where are the opportunities? ‘white spaces’? problems that need solutions?), talk to people, watch TED talks, attend trade shows (even if virtually these days), stare at the wall, make time to THINK, walk stores, walk streets, and be willing to entertain thoughts that fly around in your head.  It takes time, but you will likely cultivate clarity and vision.  Find your ‘aha’ moment. 

Afterword: Once I was all in on Owney’s, I also never said “This is FOREVER”.   There will probably be many ‘aha’ moments in life and business.  Keep finding them.  I plan to.

“Vision without Execution is Hallucination” -Einstein