|
|
|
My passion is wine and I’ll forever be a student of “the grape.” I love talking about it and sounding like an authority to my friends with descriptions such as “swirling amber or intense cinnamon color with sensual aromas and complex bouquets.” I’m half kidding, but in fact, whether poolside with a refreshing white wine or a steak dinner and a movie with a fun red wine, I delight in my favorites, and revel in any opportunity I get to pass on recommendations.
I consider the office a good setting for sharing conversations on wine, and throughout the course of my career that’s exactly what I learned to do. In fact, having an affection for something beyond spreadsheets and never-ending projects is absolutely essential to career development. Because you spend so many waking hours at work and with people, business settings become the perfect place to share your interests whether it’s wine, gourmet cooking, or travel. Sports, as you know, is more commonly known as a popular default topic to bond and socialize on.
Business cultures are complex systems. Sure, you can have the education, the experience, and the conversation skills to get the job. But maximizing the growth potential of your career can be frustrating and confusing if you are not sure of who you are and where you fit into the scheme of things. When I began my career in the accounting world, I got my first glimpse into how seasoned professionals climbed the ladder and what those with power (CEOs, department leaders, etc.) were genuinely interested in. What I observed in those early years were that sports, arts, global affairs, and literature were always the hot topics.
Although I see nothing wrong with waving the foam finger while watching the NBA playoffs or waiting all year for the football season to start, sports never resonated with me in any profound way. I relied heavily on my intelligence, work products, professionalism, and ability to make friends by tolerating sports talk, office bracket pools, and obligatory bar outings. It wasn’t always fun. It was a lot of work to put myself out there every day, trying to stay visible to my bosses. It was work to attend after-hour functions and regurgitate the Giants scores and the few players’ names I knew.
I was never naïve enough to think that my work alone would be enough to get me promoted or championed by my supervisors, however I felt unwelcomed by the culture because I didn’t have a lot of the same interests that my white and male colleagues did. I knew I had to figure out how to better connect with people in an authentic way, and to achieve that end I needed to discover what I was genuinely into.
Wine became an easy and enjoyable way for me to plant seeds of support and trust among my peers and supervisors. Oddly enough, I didn’t realize the sheer exposure to how people navigated the subject had been influencing me for years. I would later find myself researching wines or learning about grapes so that I could confidently describe them to people I met at casual business meetings. Some of these people had no idea how valuable of an employee I was, but after a few conversations on wine, I was no longer invisible. To impress potential clients, I would search for recommended wines before picking up a bottle for private dinners. I even used my wine education to spark conversation with older members of my firm. Their faces would light up from the wine questions I asked, and they were more than happy to answer them.
Developing My Palate
Many of my supervisors throughout my career had profound knowledge on the history and economics of the wine industry. They knew grape styles by heart and could describe what was in a bottle long before they opened it. In my early 20s, I was fascinated by this! Those in the higher ranks at the companies I was fortunate enough to work in at a young age maintained wine cellars, traveled to wine regions, and brought back tons of stories. Oddly enough, this encounter happened at every stage of my career at almost every firm I went to.
For example, a partner at one firm was obsessed with Barolos. A senior manager on an engagement in another office hosted a tasting party on Riesling styles at their home one weekend. At another firm, a friendly debate ensued at a team meeting over the secondary flavors of a Chianti someone brought in. Apparently, only a sophisticated palate could pick up the tobacco. My eyes were rolling, naturally! Who cares, I thought. Did it taste good? It wasn’t until I got to a law firm, that would later catapult my career into legal marketing, that wine became a vehicle to much of my future success.
Raising the Bar
It took some time to figure out where I stood in this business culture. As the child of immigrants, I still had family responsibilities and financial support to provide. The pressure, though self-inflicted, was stressful. However, I did well and managed to accomplish a lot by the age of 24, including having a well-paying job with growth opportunities, benefits, and a retirement plan.
I am a New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. My family immigrated here many moons ago from the pristine isle of Barbados. In the part of Brooklyn where I’m from, getting a Bachelor’s degree in just about anything was an accomplishment. Finishing high school was an accomplishment. Not getting pregnant before 21 was an accomplishment. With the bar set so low, it’s a wonder how some people stay motivated or discover a passion for progress and upward mobility.
First-generation Americans are a unique group of people, especially when they come from humble beginnings. You literally have one foot in a culture that is thousands of miles away and the other foot in a society that your parents struggle with navigating almost every day. That’s the environment I came from.
I was afforded many educational and employment opportunities, by the grace of God, early in my career. I began working at the age of 13 years old. I was younger than most when I got a taste of what it was like to interview, dress to make a good impression, and be judged by the color of my skin and background. I learned early, long before college, that I would need to develop a tougher personality if I was to ever make it out of entry-level positions.
At the age of 17, I was employed by a black-owned gourmet supermarket. While there, I made enough money to take care of the things I needed to go to prom and attend other senior outings. However, in the same period, I wasn’t given any wiggle-room when I needed time off for school work. My bosses gave me early lessons in what it meant to get preferential treatment. I was astonished at the kind of treatment that was reserved for the other cashier going to Harvard the following year or for a stock clerk who could take four breaks without anyone caring.
I was told good luck with my studies on my last day and given a $100 gift card on the way out. However, the other young employees who left a month before me went to dinner with the boss and their parents who happened to have businesses of their own. At that age, I became frustrated with being ostracized; and began to understand how valuable relationships were when it came to getting ahead.
Fast-forward to my second year of college; I was busy researching jobs and the credentials that people held in the roles that I wanted. I knew most of the top-tier jobs that paid handsomely were predominately held by white professionals. LinkedIn was a great resource even back then and I was determined to make sure my major was something that would get me a job upon graduation.
Another common trait in first-generation Americans is the relentless drive to work hard. To us, it is more important to put in the long, arduous hours before finding the time for the luxuries of fine art appreciation or involvement in politics. I was hell-bent on making sure I was not a burden to my family and that my financial freedom was secured and extended to them.
Accounting and specifically working for the Big 4 was my trajectory. I wanted to be a CPA, work through the ranks, become a partner, and retire feeling accomplished that I could achieve the American dream on behalf of my little Barbados family. Well, I eventually went on to work for not one but two of the Big 4 and, after four years of navigating that corporate arena, I realized that I wasn’t passionate about it at all. I realized that working myself to the point of dangerous exhaustion was only sustainable if I truly loved what I did.
––––––––
WINE ON WISDOM
And what I love, is the art of wine. Once I realized my passion, many doors opened up for me in the business world. You see, what would take me years to do, by way of relationship building, turned into months once I got a little wine knowledge under my belt.
How did you build relationships faster? I’m glad you asked. Around the same time I left accounting and joined a law firm, I started taking wine classes and going to wine shops for free tastings. One evening, just a few weeks after I started at the law firm, the managing partner sent a note around asking anyone who was still in the office to swing by. I, of course, jumped at the chance considering I didn’t anticipate many opportunities to interact with the head of the organization.
The most fascinating thing happened. First, I have to say, I was a little nervous as I walked in, followed by a few attorneys, the office manager, the mail clerk, and the facilities assistant. I thought to myself, albeit with guilt, that this was an interesting mix of employees getting together. I wondered how a facilities guy would ever get this kind of opportunity with someone so senior – just like that? As I was surveying the room the managing partner opened a box of a very expensive wine that his client never received. He poured the wine for all of us into some glasses he got from the kitchen and began to describe it.
His description included why it was such a great wine, where it came from, the flavors we should expect to taste, and much more. The whole experience lasted 45 minutes and in that time, I noticed how the art of wine brought together people from all levels of the company. That connection created powerful relationships beyond the typical meet-and-greet experiences. The mail clerk, who normally wouldn’t have these kinds of opportunities, had a chance to describe a cool volunteer program he was a part of. The managing partner was so impressed that the firm later donated to that same organization and even sent some of our attorneys to volunteer at future events.
At that gathering, I learned that the office manager, the mail clerk, and the facilities assistant knew more about wine than I did. And the same gentleman who collected the trash at night could talk with as much confidence about Napa Cabs as the office manager could about payroll. It didn’t matter who you were; if you knew wine, you were in!
Up until that “ah ha” moment, I assumed that fostering important relationships and making a mark at your place of employment was all about calculated long-term strategy. I figured the most important thing, at that point, was putting my “foot in my work” so people would respect my contributions. I wasn’t wrong about that, but I did wrongly assume that making a mark was an opportunity I could only afford with permission. I didn’t understand that all it took for two people to see eye-to-eye was to have a genuine interest for the same thing regardless of where they came from or what their title was. In my travels I’ve seen sports do that, but disproportionately to the benefit of men.
Since those early days of my career, my lens has evolved. I’ve spent a decade in legal marketing, teaching people how to make connections and be received as trusted advisors. This was a good career fit because building connection was already a skill I developed naturally. Attorneys who market understand that connection building is the life blood of their business. It’s how they acquire work. So, here I am with a few ideas that are two-fold.
On one side, I teach the transferable skills of attorney marketing which for non-attorneys is translated into personal brand development, communication skills, networking strategy, and navigating across cultures and industries. On the other side, I teach wine education as a tool to enhance professional development and upward mobility.
By coupling these two together I help people and organizations level the playing field. I am a product leveling my own playing field and by extension I want to use the rest of this conversation, to help you break barriers to your own success.