Wandering around the Rancho Sisquoc vineyard on a sunny Monday afternoon it occurred to me that if ever there was a dream job for me it would be getting paid buckets of money for sipping wine and telling wild stories. Amazingly enough, this job exists, but it doesn’t belong to me. It does belong to a man named Jon Rimmerman. A man who loves wine nearly as much as he loves a good story. Armed with nothing but an email list he makes lots of money telling stories that sell wine—about $30 million of wine a year.

He is the founder of Garagiste, the world’s largest email wine business. Recently, the New York Times ran a profile on him. This crazy genius man is not only crazy genius because he’s a successful entrepreneur but because he carved out an insanely successful business doing something people like me can only dream of, with nothing but an email list. Until recently, Rimmerman didn’t even have a website. He had an email list of 136,000 subscribers to his daily wine email list. And he didn’t really sell he simply told the tales of his wine-sampling travels, a little about the wine itself and the various things the tastes conjured up. There are a few things that are exceptional about his business model:

• You only heard about his email list by word of mouth and then had to request inclusion
• He had no website or storefront
• He didn’t start out trying to sell the wines, just informing people about them.

Yeah, can you imagine selling $30 million a year worth of a product without a website, without advertising, without actually selling?

Storytelling sells everything

The biggest takeaway from his business model however is that he does it all through storytelling. He travels, tastes wines and spins stories about his experiences.

People like stories. Incorporate storytelling into EVERYTHING. You need to discover your backstory and tell it. You have one, even if you don’t realize it yet.

Begin with a purpose

This wine guy started out with the pure passionate intent of telling people about the exotic wines he was discovering. When intrigued by his stories people began to ask where they too could get the same wines, the natural next step was to start selling the wines.

Discover your passion and let it burn, baby.

Create a sense of exclusivity

Because Rimmerman never sought subscribers his email became something special. It made people feel included if they were on the list. That exclusivity is a powerful marketing tool. Who doesn’t want to feel like they are part of the in crowd. In your business you can create a paid community that only allows a certain number of people in. Or by simply using certain references and “inside” stories in your blog that only loyal readers will get you can foster that sense of exclusivity.

Be Human

No one likes to be sold to. Talk to your customers like human beings first, not like customers. Rimmerman even directed his assistant to leave typos and grammatical errors in his email offers. He also doesn’t include photos, opting to instead tell the story and conjure up a picture with his words. His argument is that someone may decide they don’t like the way a wine looks and then not buy it based on that alone. The psychology of it is important but it comes down to being human and creating that connection.

Next time you think you can only make real money doing something tedious and boring, pour a glass of wine and remember you can make money pursuing your ultimate passion as long as you keep the passion burning.