Entrepreneur Tips and Simple Sips with Renée Sferrazza

Hey, Renee, thank you so much for joining on the podcast. How are you doing today?

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I love the podcast name. I'm so excited to chat with you. I love that you speak to other entrepreneurs. I'm here. Ready?

Yes. And I'm very excited because when your team reached out, I actually didn't realize I've been a follower of yours. I didn't realize you were a queer woman. So I'm very excited that we get to have this conversation because it's a really important one to have and, you know, like, let everybody know. So are you ready to jump in?

I am so ready to jump in.

Okay, cool. So first I want to kind of start off with, like, what led you from wine importing to then launching Wine by Renee? And what challenges did you face as a queer woman in and having that voice in the wine media sector?

Yeah. You know, it's so funny because I. I started getting into wine overall because I wasn't able to use my degree from. My degree is in environmental policy and urban development. But we all remember that Stephen Harper didn't like the environment all that much. Right. So I was essentially a useless person when I exited university. And when I started to get into importing, I literally started it by just asking for more shifts at a restaurant. Ended up being told to learn the wine list and then kind of falling in love with this, like, really unique agricultural resource, and then got into importing by going to a winery in Prosecco region in Italy and just working there. The job I got by just giving someone my resume and hoping it would work out. So I just started importing their wine. I'd say, like, in terms of transitioning from. From this business to the media business, that was actually easier and filled with less discrimination. It was more so on the importing side of things. And I always. I have a specific little story that always reminds me where the world is and what's happening within the world. You always think, as someone who kind of quote, unquote is very passing, I don't necessarily feel the intensity of things all the time, but I do feel that intensity whenever I'm very honest about my life, which I continually am. So when I was in importing, I had one of my suppliers come into town in Toronto, and none of my business partners were able to meet for dinner. And the supplier was supposed to come in like a day later, but they were early. Something happened with their flights, and I was like, oh, I'm. I'm out for dinner. With my partner this evening. At the time, I. I had just been dating someone that was different than my. My current life partner. And we were just like, out for dinner and I didn't want him to be alone. So I was like, you can come and join us. Don't worry. Like, come and join us. We're going to an Italian restaurant. It was an Italian supplier. I'm like, you'll love it. Your wine is there. I've already sold it to them. Just and join us for dinner. He gets there. We have this whole night together. Nothing seems wrong. It's me, my girlfriend and this guy. And then he goes to my other two business partners and tells them how appalled he was that I was there with my girlfriend and that this wasn't the values that they wanted within their. Within their importer to work with. And like, I am Italian. My parents are from Italy. They immigrated here. I know how Roman Catholic it is, and I. I get that that's the values that they're talking about. But I was just like, so appalled. And my business partners, who are no longer my business partners, I exited. This was like one of the things on many that was like, no, no, I can't work with you people anymore. They didn't even defend me.

Oh, you gone. You cut, girl. Get out of here.

It was nuts.

Yeah. No, I don't have any time for people who, if. If people I want to be that person that when I'm not in the room and my name is in their mouth, it's because they are saying good things about me. And if you are not that person and it gets back to me, you are cut. Ain't got no time. We are at that age where we ain't got no time for that.

The funny thing is, like, he wouldn't. We would have gone, like, a lot longer, and I'm sure it would have come up in the future, but he wouldn't have said anything. If everything remained exactly the same as it was and they were fine working with me up until then. And all the submissions through the LCP were going correctly and all the sales were going really great and they were very happy. If things didn't change, I probably would have been in that business longer. So maybe it's like a blessing in disguise sort of thing. But, yeah, it's kind of crazy.

I was just going to say that I'm always one of those. I believe that things happen for a reason and that you might not recognize it in the moment, but hindsight is 20 20, and looking back, you can Always go, you know, oh, I see why that happened. Or oh, I get why that happened. And those. That always helps me when we're in those moments of like, this sucks to be like, okay, but it might not suck later.

You're an eternal optimist like I am. I'm like, I'm always on the optimistic side of it. Maybe it's this thing, not this other awful thing that I could easily just

think about a hundred percent. So. Okay, so AI is obviously exploding all over the world like the new Talk the Town and it is, I, it is going to be revolutionary at some point. We're still in the early stages, but it's really already starting to change our lives with AI changing how people explore wine. How do you see wine communicators evolving with the tool?

Yeah. So, you know, I want to, I want to just back up a little bit when I started doing this. Wine and beverage media companies. That's what Wine by Renee is. It's wine, beverage and food media company. We create campaigns for clients that range from like the local to the national across Canada with like TV publications, new media, including like social media and video and all of that. So what when I started that, it was during the pandemic and it was already changing. There was already like a lot of change happening in terms of what does this new version of like wine conversation look like overall? Because the wine world is basically split now into two versions of communication. You have this very like old guard communication where it's stuffy and they're totally fine with writing a tear down article and just being very old white dude with a pen.

You could say it. We're safe here. You can say it.

And you know there, there are a lot of people on the other side that mainly women, mainly women, mainly people of color, mainly other queer professionals within the space that are kind of not finding their niche in that like orig sphere and was already changing during the pandemic to be a little bit more democratized now for me when it comes to AI, I think again I'm an internal optimist. I do see the benefit of it in so many ways. I think there is a lot of people get hyper about all the bad things of it. But I think about it from an entrepreneurial perspective. This thing can edit every single one of my emails. This thing can find SEO words for my articles. Now I don't need to do it. This thing can research the best hashtag for me. This thing can go through my article and reformat it so it's more readable. All of my content is still there, all of my work is still there. It's just, it's helping me take that extra bit of time off my plate so that I can actually accomplish more faster and get into other goals. So I think like, the people that are using it correctly and they're seeing the value of it, they're seeing how much it can like, open up their time and space and sphere. And as an entrepreneur, that's like the most important thing to me.

Yeah, I 100% agree. It's when using AI, it's a way to help amplify your voice and, you know, get rid of a lot of that tedious work that as solo entrepreneurs it can, it can be like a fire hose going off and you're just trying to drink all the water and you're like, okay, okay, how do I do all of this? And it sounds like AI really just helps you amplify that and helps you see, stay inspired instead of burning out.

Yeah. And I feel like I have a lot of conversations with people that are very much like on the good or the bad side of it. And I, the people that I see that are using it, correct, they're not necessarily afraid. I, I have to underscore with all of this. There is no original thought in AI whatsoever. There is no original thought. It cannot make an article that's good enough that a wine professional would be fooled. It's, it's not possible. There is just so much advantage to these things that you're able to do without having to pay a cent for it or also to be like, okay, listen, I can bring somebody on in this other capacity instead of in like multiple roles and spending so much time. So everybody that's leaning into it is leaning into it in this like really big understanding way. And I find that everyone that's leaning out of it is very fear mongery and just scared without knowing and also refusing to learn.

So you were talking a little bit about how during the pandemic it was opening up new spaces for, you know, different voices, which honestly, we need to get rid of the gatekeepers because that's what's been holding the world back. We would be so much more advanced if all the gatekeepers would just like chill out and everybody would have equal opportunity. So when you were doing that, what did building that personal brand in wine look like for you on your journey in this new era, in this new kind of, you know, different path than traditional path?

For me, like, you know, I didn't necessarily think about that right away, because before the pandemic happened, like a year before, in 2019, I exited my importing agency. And at the same time as running the importing agency, I was also not only like having this business with other people, I also had a business that was just for myself. It was a sommelier consulting service that was useful for restaurants who didn't necessarily need a sommelier. And I would come in, change their menu two to one, to two to three times a year, train their staff. I was also doing on floor work. And when the pandemic happened, that entire version of the business, which was also called Wine by Renee, I just shifted everything over, crashed. It just crashed because I was useless. My number one concern was, who's going to pay me, what am I going to do next? All this stuff like that. And I just. I was really trying to post more online. Right before the pandemic started, I had like 900 followers on Instagram. And now it's like at 27,000, some odd whatever. And during, I had nothing to do. And I was. And somebody at the time had sent me this how to build 10,000 followers on Instagram thing. And I was like, what else am I going to. I don't have money. I got served. My landlord's really nice. I have nothing else to do. I'm in my house with my phone, I have wine, and I can't talk to anyone. Like, I can't see anyone. So let me try and do this goal and see if it would work out. And that was the original thought. That's it. That's all. Maybe this is a pathway forward. And then from there, people would just ask for more stuff. I did virtual, virtual events online. I had a previous client who came to one of the restaurants that I was being sommelier at. They brought me on as the wine expert on CityLine. And then somebody who also knew me asked me to start writing articles in their magazine. And it kind of just like snowballed really easily from there. And then from that point, once I had these. These people asking me these questions, I was like, okay, there's clearly some value here in terms of how I talk wine and how I try to. With my words and how I talk. I try to democratize the space. Because at the end of the day, wine is alcohol. You can be really academic about it, but it also gets you drunk. So there's a humor in that. And for me, it was like, there, this is the way for me to brand it and to move forward. But that was never the first thought. Hilariously.

Okay, so then how, going down that journey of like building the business side, but then also needing to create partnerships, how did you juggle that creativity side and that storytelling side with the business side of content and partnerships to make sure that it was like cohesive on all sides?

Yeah, this is something that I still do today in the company. It's just I find that a lot of people are simply just doing their jobs. They have to tell me the thing that all of the other people in this winery business, in this agency, in this wines of region care about, because they've all spent time, effort and energy into thinking about all this. And they need to tell me that it's not that all information isn't unuseful. A lot of it actually is useful. But sometimes a lot of it is actually just really packaged in a very, very salesy perspective. So from my perspective with anyone that I work with, it's. I'm always happy to listen to what they want to talk about. Do I think that they are delivering that message in the way that I will deliver that message? No. But at least 80% of what they tell me is useful.

Yes. It's about the context and the information. And then you become like, it's almost like speaking another language, especially in media, to be able to like convey that story in a way that's warm, that people like. Instead of a dry wine, you have more of a warm, you know, like you. But you're the one who brings a little bit of a zhuzh to it.

It's true. And that's actually how I see like the role of a sommelier, even when I was in a restaurant is I am a translator of what you like and what is made. And through that we can figure out a great evening for you. And now I am this translator again. But I also apply a lot of context to things in my work. I don't write take down pieces of wines. I don't write bad reviews. I just, I don't believe in putting that out in the world. But at the same time, I believe that some wines that academics in the industry don't think are good people are buying and they're multi million dollar companies and these people are paying attention to it because they like them. So it's not necessarily that. This is an award winning, amazing, change your life. Oh my God. Keep it in your cellar. Aha. Wine you. This is a wine that people like. And there's a context to that 100%.

There's like, there's those times where you're Just, like, I just need a good 15 bottle, $15 bottle of wine because it's cheap, and I want to go drink wine, and I don't want to spend a million dollars.

No, it's. It's true. And especially since we're in Pride Month, like, one of the biggest kind of controversial points is that Barefoot has a pride wine that is out. I think that there is a time and place for Barefoot Barefoot. Would I be giving it, like, a top score for representing the region that it comes from? Not necessarily. However, I do think that it is a valid, useful, fun, party wine that can go into a spritz or have a bunch of orange juice thrown into it. Exactly.

Hunter. I'm, like, nodding my head to those listening 100% because, like, that was one of my good default wines that I always knew I was gonna, like, had a good flavor. And I was like, this is going to be perfect. I could spritz it up. I could dress it down like it does all the things. Okay, so we're coming close to wrapping things up here, so I kind of have one larger kind of last question. So for all the listeners out there, if someone wants to turn their obsession into a brand, and that is the world we are living in right now, so many kids are like, I want to be a YouTube star TikToker, or this or that. What's one rule that you swear by and what's one that you think they should break

when? This was always a rule of mine forever. Because when I exited university, there was this whole thing of doing free internships, and I. This is kind of moved into the rest of my life. You should get paid for the work that you do. However, you should create 20% of your life that has charity in it, and you should choose specifically what you want to do, because you should have moments where you're like, I want to be able to comment about this. It doesn't matter if somebody pays me. I will still do the level of work that I would do for a paying customer for this. The other thing, too, is if you have a paying customer that keeps coming back over and over and over again and they ask you for a favor, just do it. They keep coming back. They keep being kind to you. You would not have that money without them. Make sure that if they forget something or ask you to pick something up, just. Just say yes. If you can do it, just. Just say yes and just do it for them and never make them feel bad, and they will continue to come back and be a customer. The last thing I'd say is do not get stuck on your original ideas. If they're not working and they're not selling, there is a reason for that. It's not going to get better just because you figure out a different way to market it. No one's buying it because no one's buying it. So let it go. Do the things that are working and down the path you'll have more options available to your clients because you took that pathway 100%.

Couldn't agree more. As an entrepreneur, you need to learn how to pivot because if you get stuck somewhere, you could be going down that path for a long time and spend a lot of money and get nothing from it. So those are all really great tips. Renee, this has been a fantastic conversation. I love you. I love talking to you. You're a great person. Where can folks find out more, connect with you, all that jazz so people

can connect with me at Ymyrenae on Instagram that is like the hub for everything. You'll find my website, all other socials and everything like that will be on there. And send me a dm, drop me a line, comment on a post. Always happy to chat.

Perfect. Amazing. I'll make sure to have all that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Renee. You have a happy, happy pride this season.

Thank you. You too.