Stay in your lane. Focus on you. Focus on your strengths. Focus on the right people and things. Focus on the positive. Focus on your path and your journey.

Focus on being the best version of you and working harder than the haters because…

Winning is the ultimate fuck you.

So let the haters waste their time talking shit while you’re busy winning.

Be brave. Be positive. Hustle like a maniac. Learn. Win. Repeat.

Too many people are looking for the quick win.

Sorry to burst your bubble but it just ain’t going to happen and even if it does, it’ll probably be temporary.

It’s the little things done consistently that have the biggest impact so you are going to need to learn some patience.

Time flies. What seems like forever comes so much faster than you can ever expect.

So, slow down but work like a maniac, appreciate the ride and learn some patience.

Slow cook, not frypan.

It’s deeper, more real, tastes better and lasts a whole lot longer because it’s built on good foundations and you know you deserve it.

Most lotto winners end up broke. They don’t know how to be ‘rich’. Instant fame usually disappears just as quickly because there’s no foundation.

Rare are the overnight successes. It might seem like there are lots at first glance but not once you dig a little deeper…

Gary Vaynerchuk was doing wine videos in 2006, every single day. Nobody watched for years.

Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar from Atlassian started the business at uni in 2002. Australians hadn’t heard of them until the late 2000s. Most only heard of them when they listed on the NASDAQ in December 2015.

I was building my first online wine business in 2006. It wasn’t Vinomofo. That emerged in 2011 after years of struggle, loss, hardship, faith and… patience.

If you want to do cool shit, you are going to need some patience.

It ain’t a 9–5 job so work at it like a maniac but realise that it’s not the quick or easy path so you’re in it for the long haul.

When everyone else has bailed out or given up, you’ll still be standing, and you’ll win.

I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were discussing the role social plays in destroying people’s lives and reputations.

Blaming the platforms, not the actions.

Believing that the moment was final, rather than temporary.

So many people are crippled by a fear of what people will think of them because of this perceived finality.

And it stops them from acting.

But guess what? Even if you are perfect, your idea is perfect, your content is perfect… you’ll have haters. More in fact.

So you have to deal with the core issue — worrying about what others think of you.

Through my business and personal experiences, I’ve had to learn how to deal with not being liked or loved. Sometimes I’ve even been hated. It hurts a lot, if you let it.

I’ve been built up and torn down.

I’ve been overly loved by the media and then not loved at all.

I can tell you now, tall poppy syndrome is alive and well.

But if you are going to put yourself out there, you should expect that, and be ok with it. Unfortunately it’s just what happens as you become better known in the world.

There’s more people who look up to you, yes. But there are also more who want to tear you down. The reasons are different, but it very rarely comes from a good place.

I’ve given up trying to rationalise the irrational. I accept that it just is, and it doesn’t matter.

It’s often not even about me — so I forgive the haters and move on.

People will always try and bring you down and that’s ok, because being a critic is easy. Taking risks, facing fears and standing out? Not easy. But it’s where the good stuff comes from.

After all, it’s not what the world says or does to you that matters most, but how you respond. And understanding this helps.

It reminds me of this Jack Canfield quote:

“You have control over only three things in your life — the thoughts you think, the images you visualize, and the actions you take.”

So let the negative thoughts slide on by without attaching your self-worth to them, keep your eyes on the prize, and step the fuck into the arena.

It’s time, there’s room, and you’ll be ok, I promise.

Fear and self-doubt are going to strike every time you get out of your comfort zone and take big risks. But if you are going to do anything interesting in life, you’re going to have to get comfortable with discomfort, with imperfection, with taking risks.

There will always be parts of you that question yourself, your ability, your product, your idea, your vision.

What if it isn’t good enough?

What if it isn’t perfect?

What if it fails?

The question that gets me through…

Yeah, but what if it works?

I let the possibility become more powerful than the fear. The excitement about what could be, overwhelm the doubts.

And that’s enough for me.

The need for perfection and the fear of being judged, stops so many people from achieving success, it kills me.

Progress needs to come before perfection. Get it out and adapt.

Vinomofo wouldn’t exist without the three failed attempts before it. We shipped in 2007 (Qwoff), in 2009 (Road to Vino), and in 2010 (Great Australian Wine Adventure), before finally launching Vinomofo in 2011.

Each one became an integral part of Vinomofo’s success.

We built an audience with Qwoff, a network with RTV, and then GWA brought them together and took it to the next level.

Vinomofo was the right business model at the right time. And with the past ‘failings’ as building blocks, it kind of exploded (in a good way).

It all makes sense in hindsight, but at the time we thought each one of those businesses was the ‘one’.

Did we wait for any of them to be perfect? No.

Was Vinomofo ready to ship on April 12th 2011? No.

Did we launch them anyway? Yep.

Done is better than perfect and there is a time for ideas and this was it.

As was its predecessors… Vinomofo was buggy, a little ugly and definitely unfinished but we put it out in the world anyway.

And it took off.

Then we peddled a million miles an hour to back solve the issues and improve the product fast enough so it wouldn’t slow us down.

Is Vinomofo perfect now? No. Nothing ever is, everything is an evolution. But that’s the beauty of it, nothing is static, nothing is forever, everything can be improved, moved, created, iterated.

Progress before perfection.

So step up, stand out, take risks, lead from the front, let the world see you and love the fuck out of yourself because, what if it works?

I had a good friend come in to see me for some advice the other day. She was facing a few pretty serious challenges in business, her relationship and life generally.

I let her pour it out first and as I heard it all, I recognised so many of the feelings and challenges she was facing, because I’d been there before…

The stress of running out of money, running a business that’s not working, and trying to manage a partner and relationship that’s struggling under the pressure.

It made me realise just how much I learnt through the many ups and downs I lived before and during the early days of Vinomofo. Both the tools I’ve acquired to get my mental state in the right place, and also what to do and how to a structure a business that’s struggling. I’ve gained insight into the things you really shouldn’t do, and have realised the things you can do to minimise pain.

I’ve learnt that it’s best to be real about where you are and where you need to be. To know when it’s time to fight and when it is time to let something go. I’ve learnt how to work out the available options, and how to choose a path and move forward.

I’ve learnt not to not bury my head in the sand. To face the failure, feel it and then rise above it.

I’ve learnt not to let a failure attach to my sense of self-worth. To learn the lesson but not let it destroy me. To understand that we all make mistakes and doing cool shit is hard. That you have to step out of your comfort zone, face your fears and potentially fail publicly.

I’ve learnt that that there will always be critics. People that tell you it can’t be done, and actually feel better about themselves if you do fail.

But I’ve also learnt that it doesn’t matter. You’ll soon realise that the more you do and achieve, the more critics you’ll have trying to tear you down and that’s ok. You have the choice to level up and move past caring about the opinions of others.

Which reminds me of this quote…

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

- Aristotle

I learnt this and so much more through my journey. I’ve been up and I’ve been down.

I’ve learned from real life experience.

My inner circle and those who have listened to me touch on my journey often reach out for advice and always seem so grateful for anything I offer. So I thought I might explore this and share it with you.

I’d like to give more of you an inside view of what it’s like to try things, big things, what it’s like to fail, to succeed, and what I’ve learned along the way.

From success to failure to success again, unhappy to happy, bad relationship to great and unhealthy to incredibly fit… ok well, the last one is the next goal ☺

Let me know if that sounds cool and what you’d like to hear about, and I’ll do my best to answer you over the next little while.

I’ve been in New Zealand for the past few days and if Instagram is anything to go by, it’s been all about drinking interesting wine, eating amazing food (including deep fried locusts and lemongrass ants), in between adventures such as jumping off the Sky Tower to do a blind wine tasting at the bottom.

Yes, it’s been fun. And this is how we business.

At a recent Q&A session after a screening of The New Hustle — a documentary in which the startup story of Vinomofo is told, a question was asked, “Why are you here in Christchurch talking to us?” It was a room of 15 people, each at various stages of their startup journey as well as a few that weren’t quite sure what they’d walked into.

The answer to the question is simple — we’re not just building a business, we’re building a tribe of people, connecting through a shared experience. No matter how big we grow, no matter how successful or otherwise, these are and always will be the foundations upon which this company is built.

And more than that, it’s these relationships that matter to me most.

It’s how we created Vinomofo. It was key to our early success and it’s how we’ll do our overseas markets. While culture will vary from one country to another, the one thing that remains constant is that relationships are built over time, from the ground up and ideally, over good food and wine.

So while I’ll analyse data for global expansion and go deep on this, I’ll be trusting my gut. I’ll trust that when you bring good people together to support each other in our various quests to make the world a better place through the businesses we create, good things will happen. It’s a compound effect — one becomes two, two becomes four, and over time a tribe is built upon shared values and this is powerful.

If I had to summarise it as a strategy, it’d look like this:

1. Focus on founders. This is my tribe, these are my people and they’re influential as early adopters of cool shit.

2. Connect with with food and wine people who are pushing the envelope. Again, these are people who are changing and challenging what we eat and drink — chefs, producers, restaurateurs, winemakers etc.

3. Build relationships with people who are communicating well in this space. You’ve got to get your message out, so I work with people who are keen to share our story.

4. Love your mofos! Look after the tribe. Referrals have always been our best source of new customers and so leverage that.

5. Finally — be real, be vulnerable, be human. Connect. Share stories, share experiences and lessons learned, we’re in this together and we need each other.

And so to answer that question, ‘Why are you here?’ It’s because business is built by people, with people, for people and there is no amount of money that can buy the kind of connection that results from truly caring enough to spend time with your tribe.

Whether that group be 5 or 500, it’s not the number of people that matters, it’s that people matter. That’s why we’re here.