I have four bottles of champagne in my refrigerator and two more on a shelf in my basement. From time to time, people will give me a bottle of champagne and I invariably save it for the appropriately special moment. Needless to say the motes of dust still shroud the bottles in the basement and a leftover spaghetti casserole balances on the top of champagne that has been chilling since the first Clinton administration.
The problem, of course, is how do I know when I should pop the cork? Have I accomplished anything so significant that merits opening a bottle of champagne? I haven’t taken my company public—or completed the acquisition of Cadbury. So the champagne continues to chill.
I can’t be alone in this respect. (This reluctance to open a bottle of champagne must be the scourge of the industry; somewhere on Madison Avenue the ad gurus have a Post-It on a whiteboard, “Champagne—it’s not just for weddings, anymore!”).
For me, champagne is reserved for the most celebratory times and my inner curmudgeon grumbles that I just haven’t done anything so special lately. This may be a worldview common to those who embark on a path less traveled. I recently came across the blog of an old college classmate, an enormously talented and creative individual. He wistfully noted that several classmates had authored acclaimed novels and he had yet to finish a first manuscript. So it is with me. It’s not that I won’t give myself credit for a job well done, it’s just that there’s an equanimity to my way of looking at the world. Things are good, but not champagne-popping good. And at the same time, things are never so bad as they seem at the time. It is this sense of equanimity that allows me to take the long view of things. And running a start-up company in an emerging economy, you absolutely have to take the long view.
On some level, the corking dilemma is but one manifestation of the ongoing wrestling match between passion and common sense. The passionista would pop the champagne at the first sign of good news. Those that listen to the voice of reason keep it chilled for something really worthwhile.
I’m bemused by accounts of the hyper-idiosyncratic entrepreneurs and the cult of personality that seems to surround them. In the food sector, it’s all about the passion. Passion for your great grandmother’s pasta sauce recipe. Passion for the backstory of how your pickles are brined in artesian spring water using organic dill, hand-picked and grown on the south-facing side of the Rhône River. As an industry, sometimes I feel the food business is too long on passion and perhaps lacking in the self-reflection and learning departments—perhaps this is why so many new food ventures ultimately fail.
The trick is to keep your passion but not let it get in the way of learning, because it is rare that passion alone results in success. You have to be able to temper passion (that self-centric view that you are on the right path) with the humility to realize that you don’t know everything. In fact, I’ve come to realize that an open and inquiring mind (the antithesis of single-minded passion) is the most valuable ingredient on the entrepreneurial journey. It is said that President Lincoln had an unusual willingness to reflect on his mistakes and learn from them far into adulthood (it was a practically a hallmark of his character), and this is one reason he is regarded as one of the most successful presidents, according to some biographers. Lincoln never stopped learning. And learning—with its inherent self-reflection—does not easily square with popular notions of passion.
I was not always so even-keeled. Passionate about business? Oh, yes. I used to get dance-in-front-of-the-mirror silly when we opened a new account. I also used to go into a funk when faced with some business setback or perceived slight. No longer. Maybe it’s age. I’m older, now. I’d like to think I’m also a bit wiser.
But maybe it’s because on a very fundamental level, I believe that the best is still ahead. Today is good but tomorrow will be better.
I’d like to think I’ll know when to open that first bottle of champagne. I’d like to tell you that I’ll do it tonight. But I won’t. It’s still on ice and might be for a long while to come.
Steve Wallace is founder of the Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company.
