Why I started Sacramento Wine and Nightlife Tours

The Story behind why I started Sacramento Wine & Nightlife Tours


Thousands of people start a business every year in this country and I'm always curious, why? What was the spark that ignited the flame to make that person say it's now or never? The spark that ignited my flame was my ex-employer and the sense of impending doom. The one constant in my life has been my desire to control my own destiny. However when I moved to California in 2000, I quickly learned that controlling my destiny in California was going to be a challenge. It took me 8 years but on leap day of leap year (2008) I collected my last pay check and recaptured my spirit of personal manifest destiny. I started Sacramento Wine and Nightlife Tours and eventually started a division of SWNLT called Sacramento Day Trippers.



Every business has a beginning and an end. Some dot.com companies had a relatively short life, while Lehman Brothers death came after over a century in business. I had the good fortune of owning and operating G.O. Shuttle Service in Fairbanks, Alaska for seven years. (R.I.P. 1992-1999). The company was under capitalized from day one, however I was able to gross approximately $250K in Alaska's short 4 month tourists season. I go into my new venture with bruises and lumps of past entrepreneurial mistakes and successes. More importantly, I go with the knowledge of not wanting this business to end. My often used saying" I can always get a job" is no longer applicable in 2009. Plus being free from employers driven by greed has it's place when you are in your mid 40's.





Welcome to the first posting of my blog, I'm including a press release that should help you understand why I started Sacramento Wine and Nightlife Tours. My next posting will catch you up to the present. I also invite you to join Sacramento Day Trippers.Sit back and join me on my entrepreneurial journey,



Grady and Gina O’Bryant saw the recession and job cuts looming in late 2006 and decided to be proactive. Even though we both had good paying jobs –Grady was a route salesman for a local uniform company and Gina worked for the County of Sacramento, combined they earned approximately 85K per year-we could never get seem to get ahead. We had no credit card debt or monthly car payment. Since the couple recently moved to California they decided to rent instead of purchase a home. Gina quit her job first to counter balance the cost of daycare for two young children and theexorbitant amount of money they were paying in state and federal taxes. Grady took on a part time job as a host at an upscalet nightclub. Most of the nightclub’s clients were in the mortgage business, from 2004 to 2006 they were spending thousands of dollars nightly on high end vodka, private vip booths and limousines. Almost every weekend Grady had a mortgage broker try to sell him a house. They all said don’t worry about your credit situation. Then one night in early 2007 a mortgage broker abruptly changed his tune and told me to wait until homes go into foreclosure.. Right about the same time, business at the upscale club was starting to wane and Grady was eventually let go. Armed with the foreclosure information and the demise of the nightclub, Grady and Gina took 10k of their savings and started Sacramento Wine and Nightife Tours. They hired a graphic artist,website designer, purchased the domain name Sacramentwinetours.com and started marketing the company to the public in 2007 We were pleasantly surprised to book our first wine tour before our website was fully operational. Gina handled the day to day operation while Grady worked his full-time job .In late 2007, Grady’s manager called a meeting informing him they were cutting his route by a $1,000 a month. By this time,Sacramento Wine and Nightlife Tours was providing wine tours to corporate clients aswell as private individuals. We landed the contract to provide the American WineSociety with wine tours for their 700 members during their annual convention inSacramento.. We also secured a contract worth over 35k to host another convention in 2009. On leap day of leap year, February 29, 2008, Grady terminated his position with the uniform company and became a full time business owner. It’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding times of our life states Grady and Gina. We know that we are building a future where we will control our own destiny. Quitting a job in a recession is not for the faint hearted, however we find that more opportunities are available and doors open that would never have open when the high end vodka was flowing and the limousines were rolling.