Website

We've got a first draft, and expect to have a BETA VERSION of the website up within 8 weeks' time.  For the moment, if you go HERE you will see the screening page -- the page behind which the website is being built.  That page will go away once the site is ready to be viewed, though it does give a hint of what's to come.

OK, look, I'm squirming in my chair with excitement like a little kid -- go!  click the link!  I can't wait!!

Edited to Add:  it only is a bit special on a computer, not a phone.  If you are clicking from a phone you will think I lost my mind as *that* is nothing special.

Life Lesson: Everything takes longer than you think!

I'm finding this to be true.  We are working on distribution, social media marketing plans, our website,  our first event AND, most importantly, the actual production of our vodka.  ONE piece is now holding up the process -- the ceramic printing on the bottle.  Once we get that sorted, we can throw the switch for all the little pieces (and there are more than you'd think!) to start production.

Another bit of evidence for Starting Small

Bottom line:  it lets you prove the product -- prove people will buy it, without spending a fortune on the launch.

From Guy Kawasaki:


How To Launch and Why Scaling Doesn't Matter

How to Launch (And Why Scaling Doesn’t Matter)

In the early days of starting up, the ability to scale is overrated. “Scale,” in case you haven’t heard the term, refers to the concept that there are processes in place that are fast, cheap, and repeatable because there will soon be millions of customers who generate billions of dollars of revenue.

For example, if Pierre Omidyar had to test every used printer offered for sale, eBay couldn’t scale. If Marc Benioff had to make every sales call, Salesforce.com couldn’t scale. If James Hong’s parents had to check every picture to see if it was porn, Hot or Not couldn’t scale.

Holding yourself to a mass-scaling test in the early days is a mistake—putting the proverbial horse before the cart. This is akin to wondering if you should start a restaurant because it may be impossible to scale the perfectionism of an executive chef for multiple locations.

How about first ensuring that people within in a twenty-mile radius like the food before working about scaling the restaurant? That is, see if the business will work at all. For example, a company that I advise called Tutor Universe provides tutoring service via smartphones. Think of it as “Uber for tutoring.”

The long-term plan was that students could ask questions about any topic and receive help in under fifteen minutes. However, in the beginning, a critical mass of tutors for every subject didn’t yet exist. Many startups face just such a chicken-or-egg challenge: if you had enough tutors, you’d attract enough students. If you had enough students, you’d attract enough tutors.

What do you do when you’re faced with this kind of challenge? The answer is simple: you cheat! You use your own employees to answer questions and hire tutors in the Philippines (highly educated, English speaking, and cheap) until you can reach a critical mass of a marketplace. Skeptics and inexperienced entrepreneurs might object: you can’t scale if you have to use employees or hire tutors because they are too expensive.

This might be true, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you establish three key points:

• You can get the word out
• Students are willing to install an app
• They will pay for help.

Your priority, in short, is proving that people will use your product at all. If they won’t, then it won’t matter if you can’t scale. If they will, then you will figure out a way to scale. I’ve never seen a startup die because it couldn’t scale fast enough. I’ve seen hundreds of startups die because people refused to embrace their product.

This post is a tiny part of Guy Kawasaki’s latest book, The Art of the Start 2.0. Read it and reap…

Starting Small

A few weeks ago I wrote that we sent mock ups of our bottles to the largest distributor in the country for their feedback.  The bad news is that we learned it would cost us $100,000 to launch in one state with them.  (Not happening).  The good news was that this executive gave us a lot of specific feedback.  He loved our bottle though thought it could "pop" more. (We've enlarged some of the type -- which we think does the trick).  Most crucially he said we should start small.  And by small, I mean 10 accounts.  He said do that, and concentrate on those accounts and once we've built them up to a certain level, to go out and add more.

This same advice was given to us by our insurance broker, who is one of the few people in the country to have his finger on the pulse of small liquor brands.  He said he's seen people start big and they tend not to work out, whereas the clients he's seen start small seem happy -- in other words, it is a winning strategy.

And so it is ours.