An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Budget as accurately as possible. Vague estimates can do more harm than good.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Arthur Revechkis.
Born in Moscow, Arthur Revechkis immigrated to the United States when he was seven years old and moved to Washington Heights in NYC then northern New Jersey where he lived until he left for college. He has fond childhood memories associated with the Russian style of drinking — his parents would host frequent dinners and parties with tons of toasts. People would write funny things to say and sometimes, depending on the occasion, they would be heartfelt and emotional. But it was always with a shot glass in hand. The night would often end with someone sitting at the piano and everyone singing some old Russian song. Now as an adult, he continues to make similar memories — times spent catching up with friends over a drink and holiday parties that bring the whole family together.
Since Revechkis was so young when he and his family left Russia, most of his memories of Russian culture come from his father, mother, and friends. Through their memories and the way they kept traditions alive once in the United States, he is now able to share the same culture and traditions with his friends.
Having sold his business the year before COVID-19 shut much of the world down, during the lockdown, Revechkis found himself with plenty of free time. He had wanted to be part of creating something that had meaning to him so he began toying with the idea of creating a shooting vodka. He was able to explore his interests in various kinds of alcohol and how they’re made, and little by little he was able to speak with people willing to share their expertise to slowly get to a point where it became achievable. Loving the challenge of developing a new brand with a unique application to this country, the various aspects of marketing, design, distribution, and growing the brand, all of those things, present fascinating puzzles to solve and successfully execute.
When he’s not kicking back and sipping his chilled vodka with his friends and family, you can find Revechkis writing and recording music and playing live shows.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
First, I really appreciate you asking me to do this. I immigrated to the United States with my family in 1988 from Russia. My parents had been trying to come to the United States for a while, but at that time, it was very difficult to leave. Both of my parents were in the arts; my mother was a classically-trained pianist and my dad was involved in theater and played music. They both lost their jobs and were viewed as deserters; it was a tough time for them. We left when I was seven and my brother was one year old. We immigrated through Austria and Italy and finally ended up living in NYC in an apartment that my mother’s parents got for us. A couple of years later we moved to northern New Jersey and we lived there until I went to college. My parents have always loved entertaining, so my childhood was filled with many people at the dinner table telling jokes, having drinks, playing piano, and singing old songs.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’ve always been partial to Oscar Wilde’s, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” It’s nice to remember that while even-keeled approaches to things are valuable, on occasion, it’s nice to indulge.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
One of my favorite movies is Adaptation. In that movie there are twin brothers; Charlie is very introverted, isolated, and lacking in confidence, while Donald is outgoing and popular, essentially the opposite. At some point, Charlie asks Donald how he can be so confident and happy and Donald says something to the effect of, “We are who we love, not who loves us.” I’ve always loved that line, it’s so empowering. I’m not sure there’s a particular moment that stands out for me, but in general, it’s a line I think about often. In all sorts of situations, it helps to keep in mind that my value and my emotions come from inside and can’t be superimposed on me. Whether it’s someone’s road rage, unrequited love, a job I didn’t get, or dropping a delicious slice of cake on the floor by accident, it helps me frame these moments from the inside out and really helps keep perspective.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
There’s a great Paul Simon lyric, “You want to be a writer? Don’t know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” If I’m starting from scratch, I think step one is to learn all you can and be humble. I started this business without any experience in this industry. I’ve never been a waiter or a bartender or worked as a distributor or retailer, my only experience has been as an enthusiastic consumer. So I went out and spent about a year just talking to anyone and everyone I could and learning as much as I could. People have been unbelievably kind with sharing their knowledge and experience, even complete strangers.
One person I spoke to had started his own spirit business, and his piece of advice was, “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t.” It’s not always going to be good news and positive reinforcement. If your resolve isn’t tested, something is very wrong I think. Even if you’re in an industry in which you have experience, be open and approach every conversation as a valuable learning opportunity.
The next thing I did was to try and think of reasons why I couldn’t do this. I thought about all the hurdles, the funding, the licensing; the list goes on and on. But little by little, with more and more research, the hurdles became shorter until I didn’t have any excuses left. Then, I would say the most important and hardest step is doing the first thing. For me, it was starting the LLC. It made everything real for me. I had documents, a tax ID number, and a legal entity with the name I wanted, not to mention I had to spend some money. Small achievable goals really helped. Open an LLC, call five distilleries, and get samples, for example. Things that can move the narrative forward.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
The vast majority of products that are on the market were not the first. Products have all sorts of unique aspects like their story, specific uses, price points, accessibility, ease of use, general improvements on existing products, and so on. I wouldn’t get bogged down about being the first. For me, that falls into the category of an easy excuse to stop.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands?
In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Specifically in the world of spirits, it’s been a lengthy process to get the product to consumers. I haven’t had to file any patents, but I did have to do a trademark. Sourcing a distillery was just a lot of legwork. I made a list of 50 or so distilleries across the United States then reached out to all of them and requested samples of their vodka. Then spent the better half of quarantine blind taste-testing all those vodkas. I settled on one that had a great product, locally sourced wheat, and great people running it. Distribution was more complicated because of all the legal restrictions on alcohol, but I ended up going with a company called Libdib which was recommended by several people in the industry.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
- Everything takes longer than you think it will.
There will be days when you question why you’re doing what you’re doing. Imposter syndrome is very real. Figure out ways for you to deal with it in your own way. I tend to try and concentrate on an aspect of my project that I’m excited about to bring me out of the funk. Sometimes you have to let yourself be down for a day, then dust yourself off the next day and get back to work.
2. Budget as accurately as possible. Vague estimates can do more harm than good.
Spend more time than you think on understanding your brand and being able to tell your story in 30 seconds, 5 mins, 30 mins. When you start to do promotions, interviews, and podcasts, various mediums have different lengths. You need to be able to tell your story in print, orally, and visually, and it needs to be consistent.
3. Spending money is easy, you can always pay someone to do something. But make sure it’s necessary for your business. I had a tendency early on to find someone more seasoned in a field and pay them for their time, before allowing myself to really understand what I needed. Now I make sure I can give clear goals and direction and have metrics that can measure the value added.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Make a list of people you know in and around the industry that’s relevant to your idea. Call those people and ask them a bunch of questions. Some of them will be helpful and some won’t. Some will be encouraging, some won’t. Some might even refer you to other people. Use social media to follow a bunch of people in that world. Reach out to some and ask if they do any sort of consulting work. All of them will have useful information. Once you’ve done that, the first steps should be much more apparent to you. Also, speak to a couple of lawyers that specialize in your area to get a sense of what legal hurdles you need to jump. Then, figure out how you’ll fund this project and try and get a sense of how much it will cost. That will help chart your next steps.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I think there’s value in striking out on your own first. Understand your industry a bit, make some mistakes, and gain some perspective. Then when you speak to a consultant, you can at least have a frame of reference. It’s very easy to spend money and think you’re moving the needle and there’s no shortage of people who are trying to convince you of that.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
For me, venture capital is great when you’ve brought your business and idea as far as it can go. If you have the bootstrap option, I would always take that route first. Once you’ve reached that inflection point where your idea goes from small business to medium business, that’s when venture capital could be very useful. For me, it is/was important to run my business long enough to understand what I would even do with venture capital.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I responded to every question before returning to this one. I have no idea if I’ve made the world a better place. I hope I’ve made my household a better place. I hope I’ve shared the success I’ve had with the people who’ve helped me achieve it. I hope I show kindness to the strangers I meet in the course of my days.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
To me, nothing brings more good than freedom of education. Access to learning about the world, science, language, etc. Jump-starting children’s imaginations, motivating them to pursue being poets, walking on distant planets, teaching literature, building cars, or whatever their interest may be.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I just watched The Rehearsal on HBO and would love to talk to Nathan Fielder about it. It was one of the most interesting and unique things I’ve seen on TV in a long time.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Arthur Revechkis Of Zakuska Vodka On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
