We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Damion Barrientos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Damion below.

Hi Damion, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

My journey in becoming a mixologist began with someone else’s love of the bartending craft. A coworker of mine, at a restaurant I spent my late teens bussing and serving tables for, saw my interest and took it as an opportunity to educate me on the basics of bartending. After the fire of interest and curiosity was started in me, I dove head first into good ole fashioned trial and error along with some friendly competition.

The bartending community, being surrounded by like minded creatives who enjoy taking risks and bringing challenging ideas to life, was the best way to speed up my learning process. This lead to me pursuing my mixology certification, allowing me opportunities that developed essential problem solving, task management and training skills. The greatest obstacles, however, really only came from lacking humility–unwilling to fail, listen, learn and try again.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Despite having spent over half a decade enjoying my craft, it was not until I married the love of my life that I was made to see how capable I was of turning it into a full fledge career. We took a big risk and moved to downtown dallas, leaving my long-time job and all too familiar community behind. Shortly thereafter, I was given the opportunity to establish a menu and open a bar for a local business that flourished enough to have me convinced I could go further. From then on, I’ve competed in competitions, crafted cocktails for corporate businesses, opened second locations for established local restaurants and more.

What sets me apart is my genuine passion for bringing my client’s ideas to life. I enjoy establishing connections that compliment my need to create and educate others. Their success is what I am the most proud of.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Taking the time to explore the city of dallas, networking with others in my field of work as well as being open to making those same connections with creatives in other career fields is what helped me build my reputation; which does not come naturally to me. Although I am honest, genuine and more than enthusiastic about making cocktails I had to make myself a little uncomfortable to accomplish my goals and I’m grateful it worked out.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

While working at my former long-term job, prior to moving downtown, my then fiance had the fantastic idea that I should start posting my cocktails online for others to see. Being a creative herself, she showed me how to tell a story with my ingredients and visuals of bringing them all together. That was when I knew my soon to be partner in life would be my greatest partner in business.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sirseabreeze
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DzY7ZKnsiIsLkdqjytCqN?si=q79O_YlUTmqyj8-NOAavow