We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jamie Cegelski-Gaebe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jamie below.

Jamie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

I have two answers as it involves both companies. Priority Wine Pass came into mind while I was volunteering at the Twitter booth at the inaugural Napa Valley Film Festival in November of 2011. I came across several people who worked at wineries or who owned wineries and all of them were struggling as it was the financial crisis. At the time I was working with a company who helped small businesses get in front of corporate employees and I thought, why couldn’t I help a bunch of wineries get exposure to people who had jobs and money to spend on wine, while at the same time helping people find wineries they otherwise wouldn’t necessarily go to. The next week, I was with my second cousin and he offered to help build a website for me, then I found a card manufacturer to print the wine pass cards. My first cousin Nolan (and now business partner), during the holidays was visiting and he created the logo and the design of the wine pass.

After that, it was nonstop. from January to April I visited over 350 wineries in California and would invite them to be apart of the program.

When we had our first 30 wineries up we launched the program through the Bay Marketing group in the San Francisco Bay area and we turned a profit for the company and helped our winery partners in the first year.

As time went on, we continued to grow and expand and find business partners and affiliates to help promote the wine pass. With expansion and continued awareness of the pass and brand we grew every year up until 2020. In March 2020, it was the first month we had a loss.

However, in 2019, we had been discussing offering Virtual Wine Tasting experiences for members who didn’t live near wine country. So when Covid happened we were first to the internet with the term Virtual Wine Tasting. Low and behold, that became one of the top searches in 2020 and 2021 and the birth of Priority Experiences began.

Instead of consumers we ended up attracting corporations. With that we have expanded into all types of experiences ranging from wine to chocolate to beer, cocktails, and so much more. We also have third party partners that are able to help send packages globally and are based in Australia, Spain, Italy, and the UK.

Besides using virtual experiences for team building, something unique that came out of it that has been a huge success is using virtual experiences to prospect. We have worked with several companies since the start of covid and we have figured out the recipe to have the most success. Especially for those in the tech field.

We have done little if no marketing and have had people refer our services or find us organically. We recently started attending tradeshows inviting our prospects (mainly marketing and field marketers) to attend our internal events. This way they get to experience first hand what we do.

At the end of the day, any company who is selling anything could potential use what we do to better help them sell and convert.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Having always been a problem solver, sales/marketer, and out of the box thinker, our goal at Priority Experiences is to be that for our clients. We are constantly coming up with new experiences, gifts, and strategies that companies can use to lure their prospects into learning more about their product. We also customize all our gifts and hand craft gifts that our clients are hoping to send. We make each gift unique to the end user for our clients so they are getting something they cannot purchase or experience on their own.

In addition, Priorityexperiences.com has opened up the doors for global opportunities and enables us help small businesses thrive as well as help large conglomerates expand their horizons domestically or internationally at the same time. I’d say I’m the most proud of the fact that dozens of small companies have come to us and have said we saved them during covid. Large companies have continued to work with us and have also said we saved them during covid and opened up an entire new door on how to market their products and services and do business more effectively and efficiently.

We are some of the original pioneers and experts in the virtual space of marketing, experiences, and gifting and we look forward to sharing the success of our current customers with others.

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

My family grew up very close and one of my best friends was my cousin Nolan Plant. When I first started Priority Wine Pass he jumped in to help without question, managing our e-commerce site and our whole software development process. Three years after starting Priority Wine Pass he joined me full time and was an integral part to its growth. He has been the businesses swiss army knife if I may and so much of what we have done wouldn’t be possible without him. When covid hit our business went to zero overnight. Fortunately, we pivoted and his help with creating a new website within a matter of days and assisting with SEO while I reached out to publications to spread the word about virtual wine tasting is what lead us to create Priority Experiences. Since we started Priority Experiences it has continued to flourish and we are excited to see where it goes. I feel working with my cousin and having him as my business partner has been one of the most fortunate and feel good parts of what I do.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

To stay relevant in the eyes of our customers we have recently launched an enterprise membership program. Through this program we work with our customers to make them VIP’s in our business and go above and beyond to help them with their virtual experiences, corporate gifting, and in some cases in person experiences. We also help with their budgeting dilemmas and they can pay us out in ways that work best for them and making the best use of timing and budgets.

We also bring to them no ideas and experiences and go above and beyond to treat their clients and prospects as if they were ours.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.priorityexperiences.com and prioritywinepass.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/priorityexperiences and https://www.instagram.com/prioritywinepass
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2681118/admin/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Prioritywinepass

Image Credits
Priority Experiences