Ignorance is bliss.

It’s a handy strategy for those with kids away at college.  For those with parents who are still sexually active.  And for entrepreneurs, it’s especially useful, if not absolutely indispensable.  If would be entrepreneurs really understood the odds, they would most likely show up very early to their job the next morning with a box of doughnuts, a smile on their face, and a song in their heart.

Paula Angerstein illustrates the principle perfectly.  

A few years ago, Paula decided to indulge her love of food and drink--especially Italian food and drink—by concocting her own version of the well-loved Italian liqueur, limoncello.  A little sugar here, some lemon zest there, mix with a little vodka, bottle as a gift for friends, yum.  

If you had asked her then, Paula would have been the last person to tell you that in a few years she’d be commercially distilling her version of limoncello, Paula’s Texas Lemon…and then, its sister drink, Paula’s Texas Orange.  That would have required mastering the Byzantine labyrinth that is the Texas liquor industry to acquire only the second distiller’s license issued in the state.  And, being the only woman in Texas with a distiller’s license to boot!  

Nope, no reason to think that would happen.

Fast forward to 2008 and Paula is in fact, producing two of Texas’ favorite locally produced spirits.  The path from making Christmas gifts for friends to producing and marketing spirits makes for a very cool mid-life woman’s story.

Several years ago, Paula retired early after a successful career in high tech.  She benefited not only from her timing of being a woman in technology during the 80s and 90s, but also her astuteness in focusing her efforts in rather underserved fields where she could get more exposure.  Her wisdom paid off handsomely by giving her a solid financial foundation for which she is grateful.  But it also came with a darker side.  

Paula acknowledges that the financial security of having ‘absolute freedom to do what you want is great’.  But the other side of the coin, she says, is, ‘it also gives you a stomachache from time to time ‘cause you’re sitting there thinking, “What am I going to do now?”  You seriously start to crave something useful in your life.”

Paula and her husband, Paul, enjoyed traveling to Italy.  They are natural ‘foodies’ who frequented food and wine festivals to find ideas they could try at home.  The original idea for making limoncello on a bigger scale sprang from their sunny, innocent notion that it would be a fun hobby to have a little Farmer’s market stand, sell a little limoncello, and have a blast rubbing elbows with top chefs and other foodophiles.  

That should be easy enough, right?

Paula has to be one of only a few people on the planet who looks back to her younger days and laments that she was never a waitress.  She shakes her head and grins as she says, “Every waiter, waitress, bartender, restaurant manager, there’s hundreds of thousands of people affected by this stuff who would have known more about it than I did.”  She’s referring to the notorious tangle of state regulatory trip wires and pitfalls, good ole boy network, and sheer competitiveness that makes up the alcoholic beverage industry in Texas.  

Farmer’s market stand with a product involving alcohol?  No way the powers that be would allow that.

But, ignorance is bliss, remember?

Being the high tech person she is, Paula developed a business plan, then began slogging her way through the maze of city, state, and federal permitting.  Although completely befuddled at times by the logic of that process, nevertheless Paula successfully negotiated it and even found it somewhat enjoyable.  

About the same time, a friend who managed a popular liquor store encouraged her to focus on her orange liqueur as an alternative to the much higher priced Cointreau and Grand Marnier.  Texas IS margarita country after all.  He felt there was a real mid-price gap Paula could exploit with a good product.  Think:  top-shelf margaritas!

Paula remembers hearing over and over, “you know this business is all about relationships, don’t you?”   Today, she would characterize them as ‘ominous warnings’ but at the time she just thought “yeah, yeah, relationships, of course”.  Now, she sees just how profound those warnings were.