'Entrepreneurs have to recognise that no one better understands what you want than yourself'

WHEN YOU’RE SETTING up a business, one of the hardest parts can be communicating your vision to make sure everyone around you is on the same page.

That is one of the main issues I came up against when I decided to revive the Teeling family whiskey trademark four years ago and open a distillery in the heart of Dublin.

My family has been in the whiskey trade since 1782 and, after a few generations out of the industry, my father set up the Cooley Distillery in 1987. That’s where I first started working back in 2001. Over the years I was promoted, eventually becoming managing director, and I was there when it sold in 2012.

Bumpy road

Working at Cooley Distillery gave me unique insight into the industry and when it was sold, it gave me a blank slate to go off and create a new business to reflect my own vision of what a modern Irish whiskey could be.

In the same year my father sold his distillery, I found a site at Newmarket in The Liberties area of Dublin where I wanted to set up shop. Unfortunately, there were a few bumps along the way before we eventually opened our doors in June 2015.

Since I come from a manufacturing and sales background I was used to making and selling things, but I did not have much of a construction background. A big challenge for me was how to navigate building a new distillery from scratch that visually and also spiritually represented our brand.

I was out of my comfort zone, so I needed to get a team together to get the distillery constructed. There were construction partners, project managers and of course, an architect.

I received several recommendations on architects and I ran with one of them without too much thought, given how anxious I was to move things forward. Unfortunately, it didn’t all go to plan.

Lost time

I spent many months talking with the architects, explaining what I wanted, and they brought in a team of consultants with expertise in designing visitor centres to translate what they thought I wanted into reality. I had a clear vision of what I wanted and I thought everyone would understand what I was ranting and raving about. That wasn’t necessarily the case.

After several months, the architects came back with their interpretation of my vision. To my surprise, what came back was a contemporary modern design involving large, glass-box elements that to me looked like a car showroom off the M50.

The whiskey industry is one based on heritage and authenticity. Our whole company ethos is to be respectful to our and Dublin’s whiskey past but also confident to represent the future for the category. Unfortunately, their design stepped too far outside industry norms to be workable.

I remember they presented the plans to me and I was shocked that after all the discussions we had they could misinterpret what I wanted. I didn’t do enough research on the design team to figure out that a contemporary architect would not be able to conceptualise the hybrid-type design we were looking for.

As such, I had to make a decision there and then to go right back to the drawing board with the current team or to start from scratch with a new design team. To me it was an easy decision: get a new team. The main issue was not the cost, the real valuable thing we lost was time.

Since it takes three years and a day for new distilled spirit to become Irish whiskey, we needed to get back into production. Also, given we were the first distillery to ever go through a Dublin city planning process, we needed to have designs to figure out if we could actually get the project approved. So any delays just led to more risk and uncertainty about whether our plans were even viable.

We lost six months and it all came down to me trying to do things too quickly.

Learning curve

The key learning for me out of all of this was I need to always carry out proper due diligence on any partners I bring into the company and, in particular, take time making decisions in areas in which I don’t have specific experience.

This setback also taught me to get every plan down on paper in a clear and concise way and, if possible, find some way to visually represent what I’m looking for. You need a detailed brief and to always define the parameters.

I could bombard people with ideas in a meeting and go away thinking I have imparted all this great information on them, but in reality I have probably just totally confused them on what I really want or need.

I find it very difficult when you work with new designers because it takes them a while to get up to your speed. So we try and work with the people that we have a relationship with and now we are very precise with anyone new we deal with.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you must recognise that no one better understands what you want than yourself. Sometimes you hire an agency with a big reputation so you expect they will bring some amazing new insight – they normally don’t in my experience.

The reality is we know our space better than anyone else and it’s on us to provide them with the direction that we want.

Jack Teeling is the ‎founder and managing director of the Teeling Whiskey Company. This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods as part of a series on business mistakes and what can be learned from them.

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