Empathy Wines: How The Operators of Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Brand Are Crushing It #TheOnePercent

Today, Ryan talks with Johnathan Troutman and Nathan Scherotter respectively the CEO, COO and Co-Founders of Empathy Wines — which was the logical interview to follow the Gary Vaynerchuk discussion!

 

Ever wonder how they launched and scaled their business so fast? Nate and John detail their history with Gary and the plan to take this venture to the next level.

 

Key takeaways

[4:34] Ryan introduces Nate and John from Empathy Wines and asks them about how the company started and how they decided to go all in with Gary Vaynerchuk.

 

[10:13] Sometimes that entrepreneurial itch gets lost — even in a company that has a huge entrepreneurial vibe — Nate explains that for him, it was when he realised he had been going through the motions.

 

[12:27] Ramping up Empathy Wines may have seemed like it came together over the course of one or two months, however they had been working full time for 9 months before launch.

 

Even though they seem like a big company, they are currently only a 4 person gig.

 

Some benefits translate from having Gary Vaynerchuk as the face of the company, namely shared office space at Vaynermedia as well as Gary’s network and resources.

 

[16:25] The brand is being built in parallel to Gary so as to let him do what he does best — marketing and sales — but also in such a way as to not be dependent on him: it should transcend him in the future.

 

Wine is a very experiential product and people want to try it before they commit. Gary’s audience and credibility was hugely important in the initial stages and provided great feedback and content.

 

[20:04] So if Gary was the spark, what is the plan for fueling the fire? Marketing remains the main aspect to work on, and acquiring new customers through Facebook and Instagram is the goal.

 

The past three months have been spent strategizing the who, what, when, where and how of the people and vendors they should work with to put this marketing plan into action.

 

because they had little cost-for-acquisition to launch, they are hoping to dump a whole tank of gasoline on the Empathy Wine marketing fire.

 

[23:47] Nate and John detail what the current hiring strategy is, and it all begins within Vaynermedia walls — these strategic hires will eventually add their own spin on what kind of marketing thesis rolls out for Empathy Wines. As it stands, they are investing in people.

 

[28:42] John explains the chain of command at Empathy Wines and

For the record, titles are more for paperwork

For the first time Gary has been hands off and trying to empower Johna and Nate to make all of the day to day decisionmaking i the business. That’s not to say they won’t be using Gary’s experience in the wine world and his venture capital investing in the company.

 

There was a recent meeting during which Nate, John and Gary details in which cases Gary would serve as a bottleneck.

1. Generating business opportunities

2. Sales

3. Software

4. Team structure

5. PR

Outside of that, John and Nate will be running the show.

[37:04] Having been friends for 10 years, how do you protect the friendship when entering a business venture together? John and Nate share their story.

But ultimately the cliché is true: communicate.

[39:20] The work Empathy Wines has done to differentiate from other wine companies is enormous and it began with John and Nate asking themselves: How do we overdeliver for the money the customer is paying?

[41:35] Time to market for wine is super long, John and Nate detail some of the hurdles they’ve jumped and how they. Prepare themselves for the coming ones.

Thanks for listening!

Mentioned in this episode

8 figure exits: Capitalism.com/8