Jayson’s roots in wine began when his father literally dragged him round France and injected his passion into him. From the age of 8 his family took month long holidays in France travelling through all regions and sampling their wine. No wonder the idea for Wine Vault TV came naturally all those years later.
Business Interests
Owner of The Wine Vault and Wine Vault TV, Partner in nakedwines.co.nz wine auction website, Partner in Screwd.co.nz New Zealand wine review website
Who am I?
New Zealand's most passionate wine guy, star of Wine Vault TV. Video blogger and wine story teller.
24/7 - my obsessions
I live, breathe, drink, read, and talk wine but when not doing that I am answering emails from customers about New Zealand wine. Before running The Wine Vault I used to play hockey and have a normal life.
My biggest mistake
My biggest mistake has been neglecting the wine community around the shop and concentrating far too much energy on building an online presence when I should have taken a more balanced approach and built both.
How I used the learning’s
Through the mistakes made I now try and have a better work life balance and concentrate not solely on online but all aspects of business but the biggest thing I have learnt is that in order to be successful you need to have passion and be able to tell stories.
My source of pride
The part of my life that I take the biggest pride in, apart from family, is the Wine Vault TV online wine show where we have just had our 50,000th viewer and the audience is growing each week. I started it out of nothing, bought a camera and then started reviewing wine online. To this day I have remained completely independent.
Is balance possible?
No, certainly not. You can try but ultimately your life will be out of balance because no else cares about your business as much as you do. 18 hour days are standard and providing you have passion then it won’t feel like work.
I believe you turned your “downtime” at the shop into productive Community building time on Twitter? What have you learned from this?
Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social media sites have enabled me to engage directly with customers. Customer service is the single biggest important aspect to business. Answering questions all times of day and night are part of the job and people love being engaged with the owner and someone who cares about what they are doing, drinking, eating etc. Answer all feedback whether complimentary or not as people still like your views even though they have been mean to you.
Two Myths in business
1. That you have to have been hard and stern to run a successful business as I think you get the best out of staff if you are fair and nice.
2. That social media is for every business. I disagree, social media is not for everyone and nor should they be pressurised to invest in it either.
Three Rules I live by
1, Always treat people how you would like to be treated yourself.
2.The only relationships that are going to matter in the end are that of friends, and customers become friends then so much the better.
3, be true to yourself and love life with a passion.
Don’t Ever... (do this to me)
Don’t ever tell me I don’t care as much as you!
My first job
Selling fruit and vegetables but I sucked and really only wanted to eat the apples.
I knew I was onto something when ...
With Wine Vault TV I started to realise that I could use a business model that I had seen overseas and apply it here with much success. I started getting quite a few comments early on and an audience started watching on a regular basis, then wineries started sending me wine to review without me asking for it. People commented in-store and online about the honest reviews that I was giving them and really engaging with me and sales started to increase. I noticed a 4000% rise in online sales after one year of winevaulttv.com.
Business advice I wish I was given earlier on
Care more than you have ever cared before. Care about where you are spending your advertising budget as much as you care for your customers. Care for your online community as much as the locals that come to the store. Just care!
You have to reject certain wines that you don’t like? How do you personally handle rejection?
I am really very bad at rejection. I want to understand, and tend to over analyse, the situation why that person doesn’t like what I am doing. I then sulk about it for a few days and then start to rationalise the situation and if it means saying sorry then I do it.
The next big thing in my life will be...
Seeing my viewing audience on Wine Vault TV increase and really engage with me.
If I had my wish I would have unlimited....
Time for telling stories and answering questions about wine. Wine is a great social subject, it’s a social lubricant, a meeting place and guiding people to the best wine to suit their palate, because they are all unique, is the thrill for me.
I believe education is...
Very important but does not have to be in the form of degrees or BA, BSC or MA’s. Life skills are an important lesson for one to learn as much as economics. Not every job has to be certified.
People are often irritated when I
Talk about social media and spend time in the trenches on sites like Facebook and Twitter answering peoples questions and recommending wine and the amount of time I spend doing winevaulttv.com
People admire me for...
Having conviction and passion in what I do and to care about what people are drinking out there. There are far too many people selling wine that don’t care about what the customer is drinking. I want them to drink good wine at a good price.
My favourite charity
Animal charities are my charity of choice as animals are unable to speak for themselves and therefore should be protected.
When the recession ends I will...
Still be answering emails and caring about customers caring doesn’t stop when there is more money around.
Parting Shot
You’ve just got to be passionate about what you are doing, whether it’s making coffee, selling wine, or cutting hair.