Investors Reject Female Entrepreneur for Sarcasm and Humor

Did you know I actually have a business? It's true. I'm not a full-time blogger, mostly because I like to eat and pay my cable bill. It's actually doing well...so well, in fact, that I decided not to sleep in order to do marketing, compliance, sales and accounting all by myself. It's really the only thing I could cut from my schedule. This lasted a week until I lost my mind and decided maybe I should hire someone. I now make enough to pay my cable bill, but not quite enough to pay someone else's so I decided to look into investors. It's not easy but apparently a friend knew a guy who knew someone else who had thousands, and other friends who also had thousands that wanted to risk money on my business. So I put a plan together, had an accountant and a multi-million dollar money manager look at it and scheduled a meeting with said investor.
I was so nervous. I brought samples to give as a gift and show my palate, wore a professional dress, showered...you know, all the stuff you're supposed to do. The investor was wearing khakis and a zipper-down fleece vest. Maybe I over-shot it, but success! I passed round one of Shark Tank with Golfers! After a month or so, we set up another meeting at his office to go over more numbers. He wanted to work on valuation and tweak my plan. Sounds good! He said we should look at my company stock being valued at $X dollars per share and I told him I wanted to sell no more than 10 shares. I wanted to be in charge since the company was my brand and baby. Round two passed! He looked in my eyes and once again said he was in! To my face he said that this was his promise, his word. I felt honored to work with such a stand-up guy.
Round three...Golfer Guy set up a meeting with all of his investor colleagues. I printed copies of the business plan, wore a dress with nice shoes and once again showered. GG told me to leave the plan in my bag and simply speak to the proposal and business itself. For the next six hours, other golfers of various degrees of drunkenness and tardiness sauntered in, commenting on my attire and looks. But hey! I'm supposed to be one of the guys right?!?! It wouldn't be the first time I was the only egg at a sausage fest so I sucked it up. As the night went on and the guys drank hundreds of dollars of wine that I brought to show how good my selection was, the comments got worse and my feet started to hurt in those stupid shoes. Plus I was the only sober one at the table, trying to uphold my professional side of the bargain. Then one guy, I'll call Big-Swinging Dick (BSD), tells his friends that this risky venture might be- wait for it- risky. He wanted to warn them that they might not get their investments back, which is of course what investors are there to evaluate. He owned two whole stores and had seen brands come and go, after all. He knew a guy that had a struggling vodka line, who was spending millions that he inherited from his family's grocery chain, on a new wine line-up that was having trouble. First, selling a new vodka right now is like trying to develop a new kind of apple. There's too many choices already and the market is pretty well established. Also, just because you sell vodka does not make you qualified to sell and develop wineries. Lastly, if this guy was such a good business-man, why was he throwing millions at anything that wasn't working? We went back and forth about this and how I had grown brands on a national scale versus his two stores that were a few miles apart, and he came to see my point. He kept pointing out the things I didn't have in terms of PR and press, which I had detailed in the plan, was what I was asking for in terms of their investment. See, I had been doing this in every market in the US for years and knew where this business had been and where it was headed. Not my first rodeo.
Moving on... I stand and start slowly packing things up to head back to my hotel that had duct-tape holding up the toilet dispenser and stains that I could only guess were tears of former guests wondering where their life had gone wrong, or blood. They all get up, still drinking, and proceed to tell me jokes about dildos they placed in their friends bag so the TSA would see. Hilarious! But hey, the future of social media and marketing is all about humor and gearing things towards millennials so this should all be ok.
The next day, I get a call from GG that they loved me and my plan. They were in he said! I have no real idea why because they seemed to know so very little about the wine business and didn't actually get to see my business plan, but Snarky and Spirited was going to go to the next step! I thanked GG profusely. Thank God because I had spent hundreds on wine, that I didn't have and time which was even more precious. Now maybe I could get a few hours of that sleep everyone was talking about.
I owed GG everything for putting this together and on his solid, promised word that this was going forward. He once again assured me he was in, also that he was going to Florence and could I put together a private tasting for him and his daughter. For my new savior? Of course! I called one of the small families I represented and asked them to set aside a day for a VIP and taste him on the good stuff. They could bill me back for anything they incurred. 

GG got back from his trip and said it was magical. The time, money and effort we spent was apparently worth it! Not only that but GG owned a few restaurants so maybe he could get my wines in there. Seemed kind of natural to assume but ok! Nice to hear. He also wanted to discuss monthly meetings and that he needed to be on the board of trustees. Not generally necessary for a manager-owned company run by a team of one, but I was kind of stuck now. He had told me he would be hands off so maybe this would only be out of curiosity.  Meanwhile, I started interviewing people and putting feelers out for employees. I was finally going to get help in at least one of the three states I was running! Yay!

A couple of weeks go by and my calls aren't being returned and my emails are going unanswered. He's busy and had done this before so I wasn't worried. Another week goes by and I finally get ahold of him. GG tells me that despite his word and those of his drinking crew, they're out. I'm pretty sure I threw up before passing out from shear panic. He said that something financial came up at his company and that maybe he could get involved later. He said in good faith he also couldn't ask his millionaire golfer friends to invest thousands into something he wasn't going to invest in, but that he felt really bad about it. 

Fast forward another couple of months...I hire some very qualified brokers that take a commission from actual sales rather than a full salary, another state is under way and things are looking up. I didn't really need these investors muddying my vision and after all, the direction I was taking was really working.

Come to find out that the real reason they didn't want to invest was that they had read my blog, they wanted to know more about me as a person, and that it was off-putting to them. Apparently, despite their unprofessionalism, severe drinking problem and sexist remarks, my joking about pumpkin-pie making was to racy. Over a decade in the business, being a member of Mensa, two highly-regarded wine degrees and an MBA just weren't going to cut it for these guys. They needed my qualifications, my successful business plan and experience, just without the humor and personality. I'm not sure what they expected with a company name like Snarky and Spirited but I'm glad they bowed out. Whether this succeeds or fails, I'm doing this my way. It's working for Amy Schumer, I mean, despite her being a woman and all.