Kenny Chapman visited neighbors with a vineyard in Palisade and watched them pick grapes. He compares winemaking to business: choosing the right varietals, blending them, timing fermentation, adjusting for each year's differences. Effort comes before reward.
Good morning, my friend. I just want to touch base and with a quick Friday message here, I've had of kind of working an entrepreneur schedule here this morning as early in the office this morning, because I'm going to be leaving the office early as the lovely Christy and I have this great opportunity. We've got neighbors across the street that owned a vineyard out in Palisade, which is our wine country. And the new owners of that vineyard and winery have invited us out to pick some grapes and make our own wine today. So we're going to begin the process. And through that, our neighbor came over and she was educating us. We know nothing about wine other than we enjoy it. So. So she came over and she brought some tools and how you measure the grape with alcohol content based on the sugar and different things like that. So we were kind of getting schooled on this, and I started thinking, you know, we're out there. There's different varietals of grapes that we're going to look at. And I started thinking, maybe that's why I like wine, because it's a lot like business. And when we think about it, there's all different types of grapes. And based on those different types of grapes, we can blend, we can mix, we can ferment at different times. We can leave the wine on the skin at different times for different color, different acidity, different legs, if you will, whatever. And the grapes change year by year. Therefore, the wine changes a little bit year by year. Now, think about our businesses. It's the same thing depending on what row we decide to go down, depending on how the crop has harvested, depending on how well we've planted the seeds and weeded our garden and taken care and made sure that, you know, we keep the bugs away. And even if we're trying to run an organic business, we still have to find a way to keep the bugs away. Right? And so, you know, when you look at that, there's so many different ways to make a good wine. Well, there's only really a few ways to make a really good business. But based on those few ways you can, your authenticity has to come through as a leader. You've got to be the one. We've talked about that recently on calls and trainings. Authenticity is critical for you. You've got the tools, you've got the path, you know what to do. Execute, execute, execute. And maybe you need to shift which row of the. Of the vineyard you're walking down. Maybe you need to look at some different grapes. If. What if the wine you're making, quote, unquote, isn't tasting really, really good. Then let's look recipe. Let's look at the grapes. What's your bottling process look like? What type of energy are you putting into this process? Because this is your business and this is your life, and you have complete control of making this work. So I want you to have a better than fantastic day. This isn't about just going out and start drinking wine. See, the wine won't be ready for weeks, so we won't be drinking wine today. We got to put in the work. You think about your business. You got to put in the work. Then you get to reap the rewards. So have a better than fantastic weekend. Stay in touch. We'll talk soon.
