Turning the Dials

I took the weekend off from work (more or less - aside from a few crackberry email messages to a few retailers) to head out to Washington wine country for a long weekend of wine tasting and a little race. Before I jump into the entrepreneurship end of this post let me first get on my soapbox and just say that anyone who loves wine should take some time to try out some of what Washington has to offer. Or perhaps you're looking for a unique vacation but are worried that the dollar is worth pittance overseas...come visit Washington's wine region. Specifically I was in Walla Walla, WA and it really is what Napa/Sonoma was 15-20 years ago - a very quant town that has a few good restaurants and some great wineries but a very down to earth population and the majority of the town is still agriculturially based. It's great fun and I highly recommend it.

So now onto the entrepreneurship end. Believe it or not, this stems from a wine tasting we went to. It was actually a private wine tasting with one of the vitners who just started up a year or two ago and he was telling us that a lot of what he's currently doing is "turning the dial" on a variety of factors to see what makes the best wine on any given year. This idea stuck with me and today while in the car back home my husband and I were talking about how this stage of my business is very much about "turning the dial." Specifically we have the product mix dialed in but I'm trying to find the perfect recipe of trade advertisements, direct to retailer via direct mail/tradeshows, outside sales reps, and wholesale website.

Originally I thought that the way to get into the most retail outlets was to go the outside sales rep routte but I've been vastly underwhelmed with this crowd (note: I'm talking specifically about those reps I've met in my specific industry and not all reps in general. I actually believe that sales reps can do a fantastic job but they can make much more money working in the medical or technology field then working for little ol' me and as such I can't afford to hire the really good ones). In a sense I turned that dial up to a 7 or 8 (out of 10) and didn't get the results I was looking for so I'm now dialing that back down to a 2 or 3 and turning up the direct to retailer via direct mail/tradeshows while also simultaniously adding in the wholesale website in another month or two. So those two are getting cranked up towards the 7 mark and I'm turning up the trade advertising to perhaps a 5 but am thinking that in 2009 perhaps that will have to be turned up even further.

I could go on forever here about tweaking this one thing just so and adding in a dash of that thing but you get my point, right? So much of entrepreneurship I'm finding is not just straight trial and error in that if something doesn't pan out the way you imagined then it's just a no-go. Instead, it seems to be a matter of turning the dials on a multitude of moving pieces until you hit just the right match. Course my fear is that entrepreneurship may be just like fine Walla Walla wine and that as soon as you have this year figured out you have to go back to the beginning and start all over to figure out the right mix based on a variety of new factors for the next year.