Stef Holt: A day in the life of a market manager
Stef Holt, UK market manager for Waterford Whisky and Renegade Rum, talks to Millie Milliken about making whisky training fun, mastering her public-speaking patter and breaking bad habits.
“I wake up at about 8am. I have a cat and she loves jumping near and yelling in my face, so that’s my wakeup call. In the morning I try and stay in bed for as long as possible. I’ve worked from home since 2010, way before the pandemic, so I’m good at making sure I wriggle around regularly. I like a gentle scroll through the news, have a quick look at my emails, drink some water and will smash out a lot of work. It’s my most active brain time of the day (8am to midday-ish). Sometimes a meeting will come in, but it’s all about being comfy and letting your brain not have distractions.
“I can get a huge range of emails, that’s one of the fun things about this job. We have lots of internal emails talking about new products, timings of activities, and as I do a combined role of ambassador and market manager there is a lot of work with our distributor Speciality Brands, so I liaise with their team to sort all of the activities we’re planning: like following the brand plan throughout the year, supporting the team, and organising samples and tastings for our customers. Then there are the people at the distilleries – both Waterford and Renegade – so I could be talking to them about what’s coming up or if I need some geekier details from them.
“Once I start getting hungry around 12pm, I’ll get up and make some food. My other half works from home too, so he’s got up and gone through to the lounge (we live in a tiny one-bedroom flat in Hackney, London so there isn’t much space). I like cooking big batches of food at the weekend and having lots of delicious parcels in the freezer so usually it’s homemade soup, and if I can have a bit of bread and Boursin with it then I’m in heaven. Quite often we will watch something during lunch: we have a list of programmes that are 30- or 45-minutes long – we’re loving Rizzoli & Isles at the moment. I think it’s good to take a break, plus the cat is a princess so she needs a thorough brushing. I also usually do a virtual PT session twice a week.
“The afternoon is a real jumble. I was guilty in the old days of overworking, but something that has helped me to rationalise my working day is looking at it as there being three halves to the day (morning, afternoon and evening) – and you can only do a maximum of two to make up a full day of work. If I have nothing in the evening, I carry on working after lunch, head into the trade with the local sales team, and do trainings in retail and bars. If I have an evening event though then I’ll do a little less in the afternoon, tidy up, do some planning on our currently uninhabitable house on Islay, or head out early and check out some museums or art galleries. In the old days if I had spare time I spent it working, but it’s not sustainable. It’s a habit I’m still trying to break.
“Trainings are really different. With Waterford you never know what’s going to hook them or interest them, so we could end up talking about soil, farming, biodynamics, all kinds of different things. When I’m doing a tasting, packing a bag at lunch with samples to take with me can be quite strategic: if you’re going to visit three different accounts in the afternoon they’ll all need something different. I have a map of all my accounts so I’ll always see if there is anywhere else that I can pop in amid my planned trainings. Having conversations over email is amazing and means you have everything in writing, but the nuggets of information you get when you’re talking to a person in real life is invaluable, especially when it comes to working out ways of helping them explain your product to consumers. I’d say 75% of my time is spent in London.
“I’d say my training style is quite relaxed and not too serious. I want to be approachable so people don’t feel awkward about asking questions. I’d maybe describe it as ‘old Scottish granny’ – I try to make it as amusing as possible, so halfway between education and stand up. It’s supposed to be fun, right? I was not a public speaker at school and in my first year as an ambassador I’d mainly do small trade tastings, so once I got my patter down it got easier to roll it out to a bigger crowd of 150 people. I still get the nerves, especially in that awkward time when people start arriving. I always want my sessions to flow properly, so I now have the confidence to say ‘we’ll talk about that later’ if people ask questions – it’s a nice feeling. I do often get that geeky arsehole (there’s always one) but it’s amazing how you can drop them down a peg or two while smiling. I also believe a picture tells 1,000 words, so I will usually have a presentation with photos – I try to take people to the places I’m talking about.
“If I’m doing an evening tasting I’ll usually eat something at 5pm – I call it a granny tea – and arrive at the tasting an hour early or so to make sure everything is ready. I also do quite a few food and whisky pairings which is something we’re focusing on at the moment. Most recently we were at the Duke of Cambridge which was doing an organic seminar followed by a dinner with Tillingham Wines and I poured some Waterford. It’s great how many diverse formats I can work in – we also still do virtual tastings. My events can take a lot of planning, as sometimes I’m booking dates six months in advance so it can feel a bit like time travelling.
“If I’m not doing evening tastings, evenings consist of lots of cooking and food. We have our list of TV shows and we also like to do virtual events – we just did one with The Academy of Cheese and I was amazed at how similar it is to evaluating spirits – like the WSET of cheese. We do try to have one TV-free night a week and one screen-free evening every two weeks, so we will do boardgames or look over architect plans for our Islay house. I also love planning trips – I call it elaborate laziness, as the planning now means I can be lazy on our trip.
“If we are watching TV though we usually put something funny on at 11pm for 30 minutes (we just downloaded all of Never Mind the Buzzcocks), play Wordle and are usually in bed by midnight. The cat comes for a cuddle and I read until my eyes get tired.”
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