Food & Beverage
Fine wine
How Bill Terlato knows where he is going
By Brian Horn
Smart Business | May 2009
Page 1 of 2
Bill Terlato
president and CEO
Terlato Wine Group Ltd.
Somebody once told Bill Terlato, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”
The president and CEO of Terlato Wine Group Ltd. still remembers that advice, which is one of the reasons why he finds creating a vision so important.
“If you want to lead, you have to determine where you’re going to go,” says the leader of the company, which is the $250 million parent company of several independent businesses specializing in the marketing and production of wines.
While you need your senior team to be involved with tactical and some strategic actions, you need to be the point person when it comes to vision.
“It’s very hard to have multiple people setting the vision,” he says. “I compare it to driving a car. It usually works best when one guy has got his hands on the wheel.”
Smart Business spoke with Terlato about how to get where you want to go.
Stay focused on the goal. We are just reminding ourselves constantly. If you know exactly where you want to get to, it seems like the road kind of just unfolds. The best way I can describe it — this is something I observed when I was young — in school, they do these aptitude tests. They give you these little mazes, and you are supposed to start at one end and work your way back to another. I was finishing these things a lot faster than everyone else in the class, and they didn’t understand how that was happening. They gave me one and watched how I did it. The way I did it was, instead of starting at the beginning, I started at the end and worked my way back to the beginning. I think it was just the way our mind works — start where you want to be and work your way back. All of a sudden, the road of how to get there will unfold before you.
Communicate and explain your passion. I have three children, 23, 20 and 17 years old. The first thing we always tell them is, ‘You should do what you love,’ because sometimes work can be tough, and it’s not always the most rewarding. If you don’t love getting up in the morning and attacking all of the obstacles and challenges, it makes it that much harder. Really, it has to be something that people have a passion about.
Then it’s always good to have some ability, as well. Maybe natural ability or maybe developed ability. I’m a passionate amateur golfer, but as much as I would want it, I probably wouldn’t be successful on the tour.
You have to match that desire for what you love with some ability to execute that. (Passion) is something that (employees) witness on a daily basis. It’s something that is consistent. It’s not something that you turn on and off. It’s something that you live every day. It’s setting high standards for our people of our expectations of them. But it’s also that those are no different than the standards that we set for ourselves. It’s a certain amount of leading by example.
