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How You Can Craft With Passion, Lead With Kindness, and Build With Vision.
Lessons I learned from a visionary wine maker.
A couple years ago I met a very interesting, inspiring, and visionary entrepreneur and winemaker with whom my husband and I had a lengthy conversation about life, work, and wine.
Right away we got along very well, enjoyed the exchange of thoughts and insights. We met again at his winery some months later and spontaneously had another three-hour conversation about work ethics, values, the perspectives of the next generation, entrepreneurship, and his passion for winemaking and pushing the boundaries in this field.
I took a lot from our conversations about following your ideas and ideals in business and life.
- You can be strong with your ideas and visions and at the same time be extremely kind and open to collaboration
- Think big and long-term but act small and with passion
- Being open and interested in many subjects, not only makes you friends it broadens your mind and helps connect the dots
- Honor traditions and values and have a vision for yourself and those you lead
- Help the next generation on their path, guide and lead them with respect and love
- Crafting quality and making things that last can go hand in hand with business and profit
Leaving footprints that last
Last year Franz suddenly passed away. He had a heart attack while skiing. He was “only” 69 and was still going strong with lots of ideas and projects on his hands.
Luckily, he not only left a legend with his wines, his family winery that exists since 1880, and his philosophy about winemaking. Many young wine-loving colleagues were trained by him and he passed on his love and enthusiasm for wine to them.
Knowing that he also passed on his knowledge and passion to his children, his life’s work will continue to exist.
Be a philosopher and out-of-the-box thinker
I love this description about him: When it came to wine, Franz was a visionary, a lateral thinker, and also a bit of a stubborn person in a…
