He used to be a banker. Now he makes wine.
The second act of Lloyd Davis, who left the world of banking to open a winery and tasting room in Sonoma, CA.
This weekly newsletter is called Second Acts as a response or retort to the writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once said, "There are no second acts in American lives." There are second acts and even third and fourth. I retired from ABC News in 2018 and this is part of my second act. And while I write on a range of subjects, I like to return periodically to the theme of second acts -- people who have made unusual , even inspiring changes in their lives whether in retirement, mid-life or even early in their lives. This week's article is about one of them.
When Lloyd Davis was in high school in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of New York City, he wanted to be a pediatrician. But in college, at Adelphi University on Long Island, he had a change of heart, He switched to banking.
"The thought of becoming a doctor and killing a kid scared the whatever out of me," he said. "I figured in the financial world, if Ikilled someone, it was only financially?"
Over the next 30 years, it was Davis who made a killing as he rose from an auditor at Irving Trust Company to a succession of ever more powerful positions in investment banking, private equity and hedge fund management. Along the way, he became very wealthy.
One day, he attended a board meeting of a company that he was working with. The company was doing poorly. All kinds of things had gone wrong and it was foundering. At the meeting, a board member began to berate the company's president. The president became enraged and resigned on the spot, and the irate board member was installed as his successor.
After the meeting, Davis said to the now new head of the embattled company, "'You have no idea what you're doing. How can you run this company?' And his response was that anyone could run it better than the guy who was running it. And he actually did a phenomenal job of turning the company around."
Around the same time, the company Davis was working for had taken over a failing winery in Sonoma, California. Davis remembered what had happened at that board meeting and decided he would take over running the winery.
"Typically, when I take over a company, I hire an interim management team to step in and run the company and turn it around and then sell it," he recalled, "This time, I decided I was going to be the interim manager and run it and see what happened. The worst that could happen was that it failed. But the company was failing, so there really wasn't much to lose there and I started running the company."
The winery went from losing $3 million a year to making $3 million a year.
Several years later, Davis decided to step all the way into the wine business. He left the world of finance and banking and started his own winery in California, a tasting room in Sonoma called Corner103 and wine club.
Today, he is one of a handful of Black winemakers in the world. A February 2022 article in Oprah Daily reported that less than 1% of more than 11,000 wineries in the U.S. are Black.
I recently spoke to Lloyd, who is 64, about finding and making the transition to his "second act." What follows is our conversation, edited for conciseness. It begins with his success turning around Viansa winery, which he ran as president and board chair from 2008 to 2014.
LD: It was a phenomenal turnaround that just made me realize I liked Sonoma. I liked the wine business. I said, "I can do this." At the time, I knew nothing about the wine industry. I was clueless. (But) I had a lot of fun doing it.
RC: Did you know you were clueless? Or did you come to learn you were clueless?
LD: Both. Going into this was like, "What am I doing? I know nothing about running a winery. I know nothing about making wine." And once I got in the business, I further learned that I knew nothing about it.
RC: How did you learn it? Trial and error? Or did somebody teach you?
LD: The one thing I learned throughout my career is if you're going to be successful, you have to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you.
RC: A lot of people don't like to do that.
LD: Don't be afraid of people that are smarter than you. When I would take over a company in hiring the management team, I would hire people that knew what they were doing. So, taking over the winery, I hired someone to get me up to speed on winemaking and someone to get me up to speed on tasting room management and wine club management. Fortunately for me, my winemaker was phenomenal. He's still with me today. He helped me understand the making of wine. I helped him understand the costs associated with making wine. I worked with a person who helped me understand the best practices for operating a wine club, for operating a tasting room. Also, it was just drawing on my experiences with other companies. The biggest challenge was going from a financial life and world and team of business people to actually running a company and being responsible for every aspect of running that business.
RC: When would you say you completed the transition from being a banker to being a winemaker?
LD: I would say when I officially took over Viansa in 2008. (Afterward) I wanted to do something that was mine and the answer was opening up Corner.
RC: When did Corner 103 open?
LD: April 2015
RC: How do you like it?
LD: I'm enjoying it. I'm having a lot of fun with it. At Viansa, I had 150 people on the payroll [it included a food and catering business]. I wanted something smaller, more manageable. At Corner, I have four people on the payroll. I'm just making wines.[see www.corner103.com for a full list of their wines].
When I started, there wasn't a need for another winery in Sonoma. What there was a need for was an educational environment for people to learn about wine and that's how I opened up Corner, filling that void in the market.
RC: What was your introduction to wine as a wine drinker? In college?
LD: In college, I hardly ever drank.
RC: That's unusual.
LD: I just never had any interest in alcohol. When I started working, I was out a lot, client entertaining. There was wine, wine and more wine. So I started learning about it, so that when I would go out with customers and clients, I could have some intelligence in ordering wine for them. So, it happened because of work.
RC: Is this new enterprise more fun than the banking world? Or just different? Or less fun?
LD: I would say it's more fun. I enjoy the guests that come in. Because one of the biggest focus and driving factors in how I set up Corner was because more people are afraid of wine. They say, 'I don't know anything about wine. I'm not an expert.' They'll defer to their friends to tell them what's good and what's bad. What I tell people is everyone is an expert. You are an expert because you know what you like and what you don't like. Enjoying wine is like enjoying water. Some people prefer tap water. Some people prefer bottled water. Some prefer sparkling water. They have a preference. No one says: "I'm a water expert and sparkling water is better than tap water." That's just what they like and tell people wines are the same way.
RC: Do you consider this your second act? It's certainly different than you used to do.
LD: Oh, yeah. Because I never thought that I would be in the wine business. I never thought I would be living anywhere but Manhattan. My entire career was in the financial world and I thought that's where my career would end. That career ended as my new career in winemaking began, and I'm really happy that I made that choice.
RC: My own thought is that changing and doing something entirely different and certainly unexpected can be a blast, can be a lot of fun. I guess for some people it can be scary.
LD: When we're younger it's all about title and making as much money as you can. We all have worked for companies in a position that we didn't like. We do it because we can't leave. That was me at GE Capital. I didn't like it there. But I was making a bunch of money, so I couldn't leave. It's not till we get older that we realize money isn't that important. Enjoying what we're doing is more important. I tell people I'm making a fraction of what I used to make but I'm much happier with that fraction than I was with all the money I was making.
RC: The counter argument would be being in the banking world, the finance world provided you with the luxury of (later) doing something that you enjoy instead of scraping by from age 20 to age 8-0.
LD: That's very true.
RC: If you talk to people in their 20s and 30s and said to them that ultimately you'll find that enjoyment is more important than making money, a lot of them are going to look at you like you're crazy.
LD: Yes.
RC: You have to get to that point, I think.
LD: You do. But sometimes, if you want to have a happier life, enjoying what you like... most people can make a living at it, and a comfortable living at it.
RC: Is there going to be a third act for Lloyd Davis?
LD: My future right now is this is it. You never know what happens tomorrow but my plan is to keep doing this till I go to another part of the world.
RC: What does that mean? Literally?
LD: Till I go to heaven.
RC: Oh, another world altogether! If you had one bottle of wine before you move on to another part of the world, as you put it, what would you have?
LD: It would be my sparkling rose. Then shuffle off.
(All photos credited to Lloyd Davis and Corner 103)
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