Asa has been passionate about wine for a long time, but is currently working as a project manager in the financial services sector in London, a career he is not so passionate about!

He dreams of starting his own wine venture, potentially in Australia, and so met with Kiki to find out what it’s really like working in the wine trade. This is his story:

“I’m currently a project manager working in the financial services sector in London. I decided to do the job shadowing with Kiki because I’ve been passionate about wine for quite a long time now, and I’m not that passionate about financial services! So I thought it would be a nice opportunity to do something different and to find out what it’s like working in the wine trade, with a view to starting my own venture in 2 or 3 years’ time.

It’s been really interesting, Kiki’s taken me through how she started out in her journey into the wine trade and the business she’s created. We went through some of my ideas and the things I’ve been thinking about in terms of what I want to do as a future venture.  It certainly opened my eyes on a few things, like insurance, I hadn’t thought about before. I found it quite inspiring how much she’s achieved in such a short space of time and how far she’s taken this business in only a few years working at it.

It’s been really useful going through my ideas and concepts and what I want to do in the future as my plan would be to do something similar to this but in Australia, and Kiki’s given me some insight into the market over there, things I hadn’t thought about before. My utopian idea of what it might be like to run your own business have possibly been shattered, but then it’s been really encouraging to see how much she’s achieved here.

it’s really opened my eyes to things I hadn’t thought about before, confirmed my thinking in a few areas, but also made me think about challenges I hadn’t expected so certainly it’s been really useful. I’d really recommend ViewVo and job shadowing to anyone looking to change career in a slightly, or completely, different direction. it’s a great opportunity.”

Kiki’s Story

Kiki is a wine bar owner – having developed a pop-up into a successful, award-winning permanent wine business.

“I decided to become a ViewVo mentor because I think starting a new business can be quite a daunting thing. We learnt a lot from our peers and friends and people along our journey, so it was a really interesting experience for us to now share our experiences with someone else, especially to help people with a career change.

It’s been really interesting today to meet someone else that’s passionate about wine and has a different concept. It’s definitely bought to mind different ways in how to approach something similar to what we’re doing.

It’s definitely made me reflect on what we’re doing and to think more about what we’ve been doing, Sometimes things can be done that are quite reactionary and it actually gives us a minute to think about how we’ve developed our business over time.

I’d absolutely recommend being a ViewVo mentor, as a small business owner and entrepreneur sometimes we don’t necessarily give ourselves time to reflect on what we’ve actually achieved and all we’ve done. So I think it’s really interesting to be able to offer something back to someone else that’s just starting out on their journey.