Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success. I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger. And you know, on this podcast we hear from amazing humans who have done great things in the world, who not only have had success themselves, but have also done things that we know you want to hear about because their life has been an unstoppable success. And so today I get to bring to you Steve Doyle. And let me tell you a little bit about Steve. He is another remarkable human. Steve is a seasoned senior executive with over three decades of leadership in the wine and spirits industry. He has been recognized for driving transformational growth, building powerhouse brands and leading high performance sales and marketing teams across global markets, creating a world class culture. His expertise has led to an involvement in several mergers and acquisitions, including the successful sale of VinMotion Wine Company. He is also incredibly proud of his mentorship, his coaching and fellowship, which has developed over 400 people moving into leadership roles, many of who he continues to mentor. Still, today, there is so much I could tell you a lot about. Still, Steve, he's had a great career and he's also had challenges. So without further ado, I want to introduce you to Steve. So, Steve, welcome to Unstoppable Success.

Jaclyn, thank you so much for that intro. That was fantastic. So I, I, I'm blushing actually, so I appreciate that. But it has been an amazing career for me. I've been very, very fortunate and very lucky. And, and I think again, to your point, as you mentioned, I'm most proud of my fellowship and the, and the teams that continue to still call me today. And we have wonderful conversations. And I tell you a lot, a lot of times I learn more from them than I think they actually learned from me. But it's been really terrific. And how could it not be good in the wine and spirits industry?

I was going to say, well, first of all, you're starting off in an industry that is absolutely fantastic. But something you just said, Steve, I have to point out you just said something that again, listeners, it is so quintessential to being unstoppable and having unstoppable success. And that is you learn from those you lead.

Oh, totally. I think a lot of times Jaclyn and I read an article, it was a gentleman wrote it, about the Celtic folks coming from Ireland into this country in the 20s and 30s. And this article was really interesting. It was based on how did these people from essentially an island, 3.5 million of them, came through New York, Ellis island and Boston primarily. How did they come here? And come to maybe the toughest city in America and succeed. And so they have. This article had the Irish mindset and it was very interesting. I'm Irish and fourth generation and. And one of the things, the very first thing it talked about was always having an openness to learn and having a kind of an appetite, if you will, to listen to others as much as you want them to listen to you. And so many times I've had sales reps or region managers or division vice presidents that we would start down the road of a key topic and. And I just tried to listen as much as I could. And many times I got great feedback from them about that particular topic or strategy or tactic and I was able to turn around and actually share it again. So, you know, the listening part and having good conversational rapport with your team, both colleagues as well as people report to you is. Has been tremendous for me.

You know what you just said again, again, that whole listen to learn and be able to have that rapport with colleagues and be able to. And then also being able to take what you learned and whatever that story was that came from here, you know, from A, and you can then share it with B, is.

Yeah.

Is so incredibly powerful.

Yeah.

Well, I. Absolutely. I just the other day I had a gentleman call me and he was a regional manager for me when I was working at Jaylore, and we had a great conversation and he brought up working with his distributor partners and etc. And he mentioned that he's been working really hard and putting into their emotional bank account with him and he felt like you get what you give, so to speak. And again, it was a great statement from him to me about the emotional bank account and just again, engaging with people intently and as Stephen Covey says, with the intent to understand before you're understood, so to speak. So again, I have so many examples of that in my career and I like to think that I've used that in the right way.

For sure.

I'm sure you have. I love that emotional bank account. So remember, people, it is about the emotional intelligence as well.

Totally.

And being that success. So I want to go back because you've had great success. You rose up in the wine industry. So I want to go back to. Did you know you were going to go into the wine business? Did you even like wine?

No. No. Great question. I'll tell you, it was an interesting quick story, but I was on campus interviewing. I was 22 years old, looking for my first job, and I just interviewed and some of your listeners May remember this retail company, but it was called Kmart. And I interviewed with Kmart and with a couple of gentlemen who were, they were terrific to me. They, we had a wonderful conversation that I remember. They were probably my age now. And when I left there again, it was good, but it wasn't high energy. It wasn't. I remember leaving there a little disappointed, I guess, in the sense of, about that organization. And lo and behold, the organization obviously didn't make it essentially. But, but walking down the hallway, I know walking down the hallway, there was an office door open and in sitting in that office were two young guys, probably not much older than me. And so I just knocked on the door and I introduced myself and asked them who they were with. And they were with Gallo Wine Company. And so I told him.

Wait, so you didn't, so you're interviewing, but you didn't have an interview scheduled with.

I did not, No, I did not. And I just saw that as an opportunity. It was literally and figuratively an open door. An open door, yeah.

So, okay, I just had a picture.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing too that I have always told my team is confidence is so important. You know, if you don't know, if you don't look like you know what the hell you're doing, people aren't going to necessarily trust you and they may not follow you in that sense. So I walked in with complete confidence, felt good about myself for sure and what I accomplished from school. And they said, well, why don't you sit down right now? And so we did and we had a great conversation. And I got back, called back for a second interview and the next thing I know, I'm in Indianapolis, Indiana and I, I have a grocery route and I'm calling on Kroger stores and Marsh, and I'm getting up at 4:30 in the morning and moving pallets of tomatoes so I can get to my wine to build displays and that kind of thing. So, so again, it really was happenstance, you know, maybe fate if you choose to go that way, but from my standpoint, I, it couldn't have been better opportunity for me. And, and the reason is because Gallo is an organization. I have so much respect for them. They are still a family owned organization today. They're, I believe they're the largest wine company in the business. They're, they're out of Modesto, California and a marketing juggernaut and they have high standards, they have sales process, they have mentoring, they have curbside coaching. All those things that I got a chance to experience as a young sales rep got embedded in me. And so that became, again, a catalyst for me as I went forward to who I was going to be as a. As a manager or a leader or ultimately, hopefully, an executive. So, again, that's. Most people in the wine and spirits business, you find they almost fall into it accidentally. No one. No one goes to college and says, man, you know what? I am going to be maybe at UC Davis. Perhaps you want to be a winemaker.

Maybe.

But nobody really walks into it thinking.

This is a career.

But. So I have a question. So you're at university and you're looking at the list of people that are coming in to who you'd want to interview with.

Yeah.

Had you seen that gala was coming and you just said, I wouldn't want to work for a wine company, or was it.

No, I had not.

Yeah.

You know, to be honest with you, I had not seen them. And I don't think I probably knew who really Gallo was, to be honest with you, at 22 years old, I was probably drinking beer more so than anything else.

So.

Yeah. So I probably really didn't know them, to be honest with you. But I think, again, what attracted me was this young talent that was interviewing me. And the comparison, it's not an age thing, per se, it's more of an energy thing. And the comparison of that energy level. And when I walked in, they were so accepting.

Absolutely.

We got an hour sit down, and it was fantastic. So, you know, again, I think I got a little lucky, and at the same time, I feel like I made my luck as well.

Yeah, that's. Actually, I absolutely love that, you know, so I think it's just so great, actually. I just think that's so, so cool if you kind of like walked into an open door and people are sitting there. But. But again, listeners, this is something that is really quintessential. Yeah, goes back to it. Goes back to. It starts at values. You know, as a company, when you are bringing people in.

Yes.

Your fold, you have to know your value. The values that you. That. That you want to instill in your. Your people. And.

That's right.

And if you don't know those values, those core values, then you really need to define those because you will attract the right people if you know the right values. And yeah, the energy that you have really does matter. You know, I will say, you know, hundreds of times, you know, you can walk into a room and you can either be radiating great energy, or you could not be. Right.

That's right.

That's right.

And whatever baggage you've had for that day, leave it. Leave it.

That's right.

Yeah.

But that energy that you're manifesting really does matter. And obviously you. You saw that. I mean, you know, Kmart kind of old and exactly right. Versus Gallo, who has always evolved and changed. And with the times, as I look.

At them, no question. No question. I think that's one of the things about that organization and a couple others I've worked for is that the willingness, again, for an organization to learn and the willingness for an organization to, you know, not hold the proverbial sacred cow and be okay when your organization brings to you new ideas and being okay to take a look at those. And I always felt that way from a Gallo aspect if, if I came back in from the field for a meeting on Friday, and Dan Heller, it was a district manager at the time, he always listened. So I think that's really important for an organization to understand that being able to have good communication with your team is important. And I also think Simon Sinek talks about this, Jaclyn.

And I also think that not to.

Be so, not to be cliches about it, but you have to treat your people well. And that's not about salary. That's not about insurance. It's about treating them with respect, treating them with 100% attention. If you're out on a work with and you've got a young sales rep or a young manager with you, don't put your phone on the table because you're sending a message to them already that if this phone rings, we are interrupting our conversation. And instead keep the phone in your briefcase or keep the phone in your pocket and be engaged with them when you have that opportunity. And you'll get again back what you.

Give relative to that, for sure.

And that that's been proven to me over and over again with the folks that I've been fortunate enough to touch as well.

You know, that there's a lot, there's a lot that you just said that.

I think a lot of stuff in there. I know.

Sorry.

No, but there's so many good little nuggets. But one of the things that I think that is really like to encompass the whole thing that. And that as you're talking, that was just coming out in my brain. And you said treat people with respect. And what I the as you're saying that and as you're speaking, the things that are coming up in my, my emotions are we are, as a leader, you are not better than anybody in your Team. And just because you have evp, svp, coo, CEO, I don't give a rat's ass what letters you have before or after your name. Do not think that you are better than anybody else.

Yeah.

I will be honest and tell you, when I became my first role as a manager. I hate the word manager.

Yeah.

I was. I was like. I had the snobby nose. I was like, I'm so much better. I'm a manager.

Right, Right. Yeah. Look at this business.

That's right. Yeah.

Hell, no. Does not work.

Yeah, that's right.

And I wish I had somebody that had said, hey, Jaclyn. Right. I learned. Right. Because you saw and. But. But it's so great for you to be able to say that and also to be able to have that experience from the get go.

Yeah.

Understand that.

That's right.

Heard and listened to and that ideas could flow. And it doesn't seem like you ever had anybody sort of put a book over you, like to keep you down.

Yeah. I mean, certainly you would run into some managers in that regards. Not everyone was maybe in that same mode, but again, you. You touch on a really important thing. Early on in my career, I got opportunities at 24 and 25 years old to lead a sales organization of 50 people. And they were coming out of college and so forth, so they were young in themselves. But because I left Galo and went to a company called Diageo, and they were another leader in the spirits business. Primarily they have brands like Johnnie Walker and Bailey's, Irish Cream and Smirnoff and Jose Cuervo at the time. And they had an excellent training program. And what happened for me is I met some tremendous mentors, and some of them were executives. Fred Ledreux, for example, some of them senior DVP's, Don Reichstorf, Henry Weaver, those.

People I still talk to today.

And you mentioned I had some challenges. I have a chance to touch on that in a few minutes. But in these challenges I had this past year and a half, some of those folks I hadn't talked to for a while, they called me out of the blue. And one gentleman, Marty Malinsky, said to me, hey, when one of my guys is down, I want to know what's going on. And it was tremendous. And so for me, Hugh Blind. Excuse me. Diageo was another opportunity early in my career to see what true mentorship was.

To see what true leadership was from these gentlemen and. And learn from that. And. And one of them said to me.

Once you're mentored, you have the Responsibility to return the favor. And so that happened when I was 26, when I was 27, and, and so again when I got in my 30s and I suddenly found myself in a national role, sales and marketing or working on a merger, working on the sale of a company, those things framed again who I became. So the mentoring part of that is so key.

For sure it is, it's really important. And I think if I could instill something in any of the listeners, you know, for you to have that unstoppable success and for you to actually rise up, you know, be a mentor and be a mentee.

That's right.

Out. Look for those people. Don't be afraid to reach out to somebody, whether it's on LinkedIn or, you know, go to your local library and look up different. That's right, that might be.

That's right.

And reach out and connect.

That's right.

That's right.

No question. The power of networking. I know, you know, John Scott from the wonderful place that I live right.

Now, he's a general manager here at the club here.

And he asked me what I wanted to do in my retirement. And I told him, I said, John, you know, one of the things I love doing was teaching, so to speak, not from an academic perspective, but teaching, you know, my teams and so forth. And he said, well, let me introduce you to Brian Sandoval, the president of University of Nevada, and perhaps there's something you can do there. And so he did. I had a wonderful conversation. I met the dean of the business school, Greg, and the next thing I.

Know, I'm involved with UNR from a.

Speaking perspective and sitting in MBA classes and, and being able to share and I'm doing it all for a hamburger, basically, you know, but for me it was so energizing in that sense. So it goes back to the why.

Yeah.

Often overused because of Simon's book. But it's true.

If you really understand what your why.

Is, you can, you can search that.

Out and find it for sure. And I've found that in that sense that's truly great.

And I love that. And it's true. Like the word why is, I think, overused. And I, I almost like to say it's, it's, it's not really the, the why. It's, it's, it's the reason.

Right, right, that's right.

It's the reason.

Yeah.

You know, and what's, what do you feel in your heart and where, you know, you know, the long, the long term passion, goal. Like yourself. Yeah, like how am I going to get there? This is the reason I am here.

That's right. That's right.

Yeah, exactly. No question. And I think that's really important because I, I do think certainly in my entire career, there were times I wasn't.

Sure what my why was, to be honest with you.

So I think it's not an easy.

Question to answer, to be honest with you.

So searching that out and thinking about.

That, I think is as important as communicating and engaging. For sure.

Yeah.

To touch on that as, as we shared, you know, you, you've had some recent challenges, but you're, you're not stopping.

No, I, I, again, for your listeners.

I, I just had a major health.

Issue where I, I had a brain tumor, actually. And, and I second.

Oh, yeah, of course.

No, Sorry. My dog. Guys. Listeners, I have a dog who's a Portuguese. She started to go after something. So I'm sorry that I had to stop there.

I've always been upstaged.

I was like, what is going on in here? I'm hearing something. Sorry. So anyway, no, all good.

All good. And I.

No, it's good.

It's good, actually. A little humor, when in a serious note is always good. Listen, I had a brain tumor.

And, and the wonderful people at Renown and terrific doctors.

Dr. Strominger, I don't embarrass you, but.

I'm a huge fan.

Dr. Moore, who was my neurosurgeon, Dr. Patel, my radiologist.

You know, I, I realized that I.

Was not going to let this, this define who I was.

And I did lose about 60 of my eyesight, but I'm, it sounds crazy, but I'm playing golf and I'm going.

Fly fishing and I'm still hiking and.

I'm concentrating on the things I can do. And you know, Jaclyn, I said to.

Myself, I wrote this down about two.

Months after I got out of the hospital. What are the five things that I.

Feel like have really helped me?

And those five things, number one, first.

Of all, was mindset. And, and you, you are what you believe. And I just refuse to believe that my life is going to be that altered. And number two is your tribe. And again, sometimes often over word used, but, you know, you're part of my tribe now. My yoga instructor, Lisa is part of my tribe. My, in my strength training, my family, of course. So your tribe is really critical vulnerability. And I mentioned to you when we first met, you know, vulnerability, I think allows authenticity. And when you're authentic, people lean in and will trust you. And I've had strangers in an airport help me find my luggage out of the blue, a wonderful 80 year old woman named Pearl and Chicago O'. Hare. And then the last two pieces of gratitude. And the gratitude piece and being able to think about the things to be thankful for is incredibly powerful. And then the last one is have some faith, especially in yourself. And so I've leaned on those five things and I've shared those things with other friends and mentorees that have had some challenges in their life. And hopefully it helps, but it certainly helped me. And I miss the industry. I miss all the guys and gals that I worked with and had arguments with, the debates, but they've been tremendous in reaching back out to me when they found that I had some issues. So I really appreciate it.

You know, I mean, first of all, you'd never know, right? Like, you don't, you don't.

That's right.

You would never know. Right. And so the mindfulness and the mindset is so important and I think, you know, the, I would say. And I would love the tip on this.

Sorry, right.

The, the tip is like the mindset of being able to, to control how you think each day.

Yeah.

Because we can wake up in the morning and you can, and you can think, oh my God, this is going to be an amazing day. Or you can think, oh my God, like that's right. Or like I was. Oh shit. Right. Whatever that is. Like that feeling of like. Or the pit in your stomach. So what tip would you give to the listeners to say, here's what you could do each day to help with your mindset?

Yeah, I'll tell you exactly. I had a good friend of mine, he's a CEO of a pharmaceutical company and they are working on trying to find a prostate cancer cure. And he's a tremendous, tremendous man.

He could do that faster.

He's so humble and I love him. And when this happened, we had a great conversation. And he said, Steve, he said, what I do every day is I decide how this day is going to go. And he said, I wake up and I have a cup of coffee and I'll see he has a place in Capitola that they live now. And he said, I sit out and I look at the ocean and I just determine. And he said, I don't mean your agenda. I don't mean you got to go to the doctor, you got whatever. I mean, how are you going to treat people today? How are you going to treat your wife, how you can treat your spouse? And how are you going to choose to treat other people. And again, what I found is that when you treat folks as your equal, they want to help and it makes it for a much better day than if you're miserating about luck of the job, you know, kind of thing. And so every morning, that is what it looks like to me. And I've been doing that now for 80 weeks and I'll continue to do it. And I certainly don't mean to minimize anyone else's challenges, whether it be health or otherwise. And I don't. It's not as simple as I'm maybe making it sound because believe me, there are days that I get up and I really have to work hard at and talk about how I'm going to make this a positive day, so to speak. But. But again, it's how you start the day yourself alone that's going to make a difference. And so that. That's what I would suggest for folks in that sense. And again, there's five things I talked about, really. You know, your family, your tribe. It's so, so very important to lean on the people that love you and they're around you.

Yeah, I, I really like that. I like being able to start your day that way and then with the mindset and actually one thing that I would. What I, what I like is. And in a little tip that, that I, I haven't done it more recently, but it's something that is. Is part of that tribe is having those few people that you could have on a group text that might say in the morning, hey, good morning. Let's start our day strong or whatever.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, you're all setting the intention and, you know, if you wake up in the morning and you're having a shit day or you just don't feel that power in you, you just. Where's the power going to come from?

That's right.

And somebody sends you like somebody in the message, you know, maybe it's. Maybe you're not the one that's starting it that day or somebody starts it and all of a sudden it can start to radiate something within you that brings out, you know, like, hey, you know what? Like, hey, remember, we're all badass or yeah, whatever. Whatever that is. Right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The energy level is so important, you know, and, and again, I'm, I'm really proud of this. Not from an ego perspective, but my J Lore sales team, I've been gone now, as I mentioned, 80 weeks. They still reach out to me to see how I'm doing. And, and I would say, number one, they're just, they're just good humans.

Yeah.

Number one. I would say number two, though I try not to be grouchy when they call me. I'm like, I try to have as good of energy as I possibly can have because they're going to want to call you again. And getting those phone calls has been so good for me that you want to stimulate that as positively as you possibly can. I. I used to tell my team this, Jaclyn. We would be in a meeting. It's a tough, maybe a tough month or a tough quarter, maybe financial. We're not trying to, we're not quite making the targets. And the one rule I always have for them is do not be an energy vampire. Don't do it. If you're going to be an energy vampire in this meeting today, then go ahead, you're excused. Take a hike. Go, go outside, get some pressure, whatever, but please don't be an energy vampire and drag the rest of us down with you. And I think it's, whether it's business or life, not to get too deep, but I think it's, it's really critical. And when I walk in, whether it's, you know, meetings with buying a house or a car or whatever, let's have some good energy with the Starbucks guy, because they got there at five o' clock in the morning. So to speak. So to speak. Yeah. So it's.

And that's, and I would say, I think that is so important because again, you know, we started on the topic, you know, we, you know, part of your success really does to be unstoppable. It takes energy, but you have to. It starts, it starts here, and it goes to your heart.

That's right.

Be able to walk in.

That's right.

And with the right energy. And I love what you just said. You know, if you, if you see somebody whose energy has waned.

Yeah.

You might want to either say, hey, are you okay? Right.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. And. And change the environment up that you're in. Yeah, for sure. And you can do that. You just have to be self aware, you know. And that again, a mentor of mine told me at one time, I said, we were, I was interviewing him actually, to come into the organization. And I said, how do you handle tough conversations with the people that you're managing and when they're not quite working out on the objectives or whatever that you've got them aligned for? And he said, you know, the first thing I think about is what's going on at home, what's going on outside of work that might be affecting work. And, and I, again, that was one of those learning moments for me and never sometimes I never really quite thought about it that way. And not to get too personal in a work environment, but certainly you need to be aware that if somebody's going through, you know, their father sick or whatever, you need to be aware of that and put that in your, in your back of your mind as you're dealing with them to have some empathy sometimes when they need it. And of course, at the same time, you know, at the end of the day, you got to make the objectives as well. So you got to really balance that for sure.

Right, but it's true, but that's also where that emotional intelligence comes in.

That's right. That's exactly. Again, you said that before. It's, it's so important. You know, several books written on that. I've read a couple. And the emotional intelligence side of that is the part that you don't get quite taught in school. You can be an engineer or an economist and, you know, in high powered school, but if you don't know how to relate to people, you don't understand, you know, again, how to, how to have good conversational rapport with them, how to, how to probe them and then align with them and then hopefully raise them, you know.

Right.

And.

Right.

That's, that's an ongoing conversational process. For sure.

It is, it's something, it is something that. It's an ongoing thing. And it's, and I, and I, I truly believe that, that our success comes from. And it's, and it goes back to your very first conversation you had, I would bet, with the people at Gallo when you walked into that open door, which is basically they were, they, they got to know and what were probably asking questions about you.

Yeah.

And to see if you're the right fit and knowing. And then when you go into that organization, people don't just look at you as, as a number, as in, oh, Steve's number. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. He's Steve. And we need to, we need to know what Steve likes, what he wants, his values. How can we help Steve get to where he wants to go?

That's right.

Yeah. They want to cultivate you for sure. And g. Like I said, Gallo was like that. And so was Diageo, Very much so. And, and, and again, it was a wonderful thing that happened that early on in my career. And sometimes that doesn't happen for folks until much later. So, no, you're. You're spot on. You're spot on.

You know, that's. That is what. So, Steve, I could talk to you for hours about this.

Yeah, me too. I love talking. You know that.

Yeah. Well, how can people connect with you, learn more about you, learn more about the things that you're doing? Where can they find you?

Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn. Just that I took all my filters off, so it's wide open and you can go, it's Stephen S T E P H E N Doyle D O I L E and just jump in there and send me a note. And I've connected with a lot of people here recently, and I've actually connected you with some folks as well from the Kellogg School and School of Business and Northwestern and so forth. So LinkedIn has been a really great tool that I never probably maximize, to be honest with you. You're always so busy, and now I have an opportunity to do that and pull it up on my big screen and actually see it. And so, so that's, that's probably the best way, the easiest way. And, and I can circle back around on any kind of message and I'll get back to folks within the day for sure. So I'd love to hear from people. And again, as we talked about already, I'm still learning as well. So folks have something to share that might be good. I have in my iPhone, and I've been doing this since probably about 1993. And you know, you have your notes app and your iPhone and I, I hear things and, and it just resonates with me and, and I put it in there. And so even preparing for this conversation, I just reflected back on some of my notes of five years ago, 10, 12 years ago. Kind of like talking about the Irish mindset. And so I have lots of things to share, but also I'm more than willing to steal an idea or two from you as well. So. But thank you.

No, you're welcome. So, listeners, I want you to do me the favor. I want you to go onto LinkedIn and I want you to connect with Steve and learn more about him, learn what he's doing, and then do me the other favor besides hitting subscribe. Please share this episode with your friends and your colleagues because our goal is to help everybody have unstoppable success. I'm Jaclyn Strominger, your host. Thank you, Steve, for being an amazing guest.

Thank you, Jaclyn. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Love having you on. So many great bits of wisdom and tips and insights and listeners. Thank you so much for listening without you. We just so appreciate it for everybody who listens and share the episode. So again, I'm Jaclyn Schoenbringer, your host unstoppable success. Thank you so much.