JUNE 2008: BIZ LIFE, CEO STRATEGIES
Values, vision and verve
SUSAN SOKOL BLOSSER spent decades building her winery, battling
the naysayers, forging a sustainable ethic and helping birth
Oregon’s wine industry. When she retired this past year,
handing over the operation to her children, she set about
capturing what she learned since she first planted vines in
1971 and launched Sokol Blosser Winery in Dundee.
Sokol Blosser has distilled what she’s learned into a
self-published book, titled Gracious & Ruthless: Surprising
Strategies for Business Success, that’s aimed at
helping small business owners by giving them the benefit of her
hard fought, and hard won, wisdom.
“It’s small business people that create the most
jobs,” she says. “We are the heroes of the
economy.”
She wants all the thousands of harried, overworked,
overwhelmed owners to know that they can realize their dream,
follow their values and achieve success. “I want readers
to feel relief,” she says. “That they can be who
they are and run their business, and it’s OK.”
Getting to that place took years for Sokol Blosser, and
learning how to be both gracious and ruthless — how to
say no compassionately — was key, along with staying
focused on your vision and making profitability your vehicle,
not your destination.
“You don’t have to be the classic cutthroat
businessperson to be successful. You need just a bit of
that,” she says. It needs to be leavened with
graciousness to create balance — and to be effective. She
wanted Gracious &
Ruthless to be a different kind of business book:
personal, short, values-oriented, and not focused on how to
make money. “A lot of books tell you how to make a
million. That’s not what it is about to me.”
She’s out of the day-to-day business, but not retired.
She’s on the lecture circuit and is ready to start her
next book. It, too, is on a topic that is personal, but one she
feels will be very relevant to family businesses and baby
boomers. The title? Letting Go.
ROBIN DOUSSARD
(Gracious &
Ruthless is available at Sokol Blosser Winery or by
emailing susan@sokolblosser.com.
)
