Discovering your passion pulse in work and life

This week I coached one of my favourite clients. For the purpose of privacy let’s call her Claire. She operates a very successful SME with a focus on food but her life is overtaken by ‘To Do Lists’, deadlines, not enough sleep and living for tomorrow. So to try and get Claire out of all the detail that is consuming her life at present we went right back to basics. Identifying what her passion pulse was and, not surprisingly it was spending more time with family, not more work, that would ultimately just create more work rather than profit and freedom.Working with Claire I was able to share the story of Les Schirato from Australia’s No 1 pure coffee company Vittoria Coffee. Les is Managing Director of a hugely successful, privately owned family company, now in its third generation of family members. He joined the company as a young man and had a vision and passion for his product - coffee. To him it was special, like a precious gem. It was a luxury item and should not be just disregarded. Les' dream and determined passion was to bring to mainstream Australia espresso Italian style coffee. It was a big ask as Australia at that time was a nation of tea drinkers. Multiculturalism certainly wasn't in full swing.

When everyone doubted Les he simply put those doubts to better use and set about making coffee a category in supermarkets, by placing his precious brand in the big barrels’ of the fruit and veggie sections, not the shelves as no one would give him space.

Today Vittoria Coffee is an icon, an Australian success story and a super brand. When I first started working with Les in the late nineties he was on another mission, this time to teach people the difference between the Arabica Coffee Bean and the inferior Robusta Bean. Les was dismayed that some cafes and restaurants chose inferior products and he wanted consumers to know the difference. Often I would be with him at a cafe and he would walk behind the espresso machine and ‘show’ the barista how to make coffee using his product. My point is this: Les Schirato loves his product, his vision was huge and he could see along the way the roadmap of exactly what he wanted and had to achieve. He was determined that nothing would get in his way. Yes there were set backs, but that didn’t falter his passion and love of his product. He knew it was good and he was proud of it. It shows to anyone who meets him. Les surrounded himself with people who had a similar passion for his product although I would go so far as to say Les’ passion is and was contagious.

Just like Les Schirato’s story the same must be said of your product whatever it might be. Who said you had to be traditional with how you market your product. Dream big, much bigger than your industry or competition has ever dared to consider and find the single thing that could transform your business and possibly even give birth to a new industry. In Les’ case it was the birth of cafe culture in Australia. There are some that may say others contributed to this, true, but it was this man’s drive that eventually allowed others to benefit from his vision. So while you ponder what is your own passion pulse just observe next time you are at one of Australia’s finer dining establishments and take note of whose coffee is served, I bet you will be drinking Vittoria and it will probably be out of a ‘branded’ Vittoria Coffee cup, now that is vision!