We recently connected with Pam Walden and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Pam, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

It’s a cliche, but for a reason… “Success is just the result of failing many times”. I think the biggest asset anyone can have, be it a small business owner, a creative, or whatever, is resilience, the ability to get back up and brush yourself off each time you’re knocked down. Facing adversity and challenges is a given. The variable is how you react to them. Do you turn challenges to your advantage? Do you learn from failures? Do you adapt and grow each time?

Pam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a small business owner, winemaker, and now, restauranteur. I started the winery in 2000 with my husband at the time. He was the winemaker and I did the sales and marketing and business administration. We divorced the year after we finally planted our estate vineyard. At that point I had helped out with harvest every year but was certainly not equipped to take over the winemaking but, it was either that, or go back to my old advertising career, which just didn’t seem viable as a mother of two small children, so I went back to school in the evenings and filled in what I didn’t know and took over as the winemaker and sole owner of the winery in 2011. I became a full time single parent when my ex-husband passed away unexpectedly in 2013. The debt for the vineyard was crushing and much as I loved it, it just wasn’t tenable to maintain it and be what I needed to be for my children so I sold it and we moved to Portland and I became an urban winemaker. I opened a wine bar & restaurant in Vancouver, WA in May 2023 and now run both businesses. The past 25 years have taught me to be adaptable, persistent, and compassionate.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My best advice for managing employees is to spend the time to find out what each of them are passionate about. Find out what they’re good at and what inspires them and them find the tasks within your organization to match with them. As a small business owner I don’t have many employees. I wish they were all multi-talented, flexible and able to pivot at a moments notice, but that’s just not the reality of most people. I used to get frustrated that employees couldn’t do what I wanted them to, and then I realized that while they may not be able to do every single task I would love to send to them, they can likely do many, and also, many other things that could be really useful. I can be very persistent and work insanely hard to finish a task. I have had to learn to be open minded and to accept that there may be other and better ways to achieve results.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I recently opened a wine bar/tasting room in a historic building in Vancouver WA. My primary objective was to provide an outlet for wine sales to consumers for the winery. However, the building had been home to various restaurants over the years and it quickly became clear that the community wanted a restaurant, and somewhere that could accommodate events in this beautiful space. So, we added a cocktail menu and increased our food menu to offer a variety of entrees as well as grazing options, and we now offer events of all sizes. It is not what I thought I’d be doing a year ago, but it makes sense for the space that I’m renting and it still works as a complimentary sales outlet for the winery.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.willfulwine.com
• Instagram: WillfulWine
• Facebook: WillfulWine

Image Credits

Credit Gary Nolton