Sales and Marketing Manager
Glengoyne Distillery

Sarah B

00:02 My name is Sarah B and I’m the sales and marketing manager at Glengoyne distillery.

00:06 My job involves basically promoting Glengoyne as a world-class visitor attraction and encouraging as many visitors to come and learn about whisky. Oh it’s a really enjoyable job and you get to work with people from all over the world.

00:18 When I was at school there were subjects that I really enjoyed and there were subjects that I just didn’t particularly enjoy or didn’t do particularly well at so I kind of focussed on the things that I could do well and so I did my highers and then went on to the sixth year studies. I found that I liked languages and I was good at it so I kind of stuck to the subjects I enjoyed doing.

00:37 I think the one area I think is with maths, that I felt that I maybe could, I didn’t, I didn’t do higher maths, I chose to do Italian instead of maths and because I enjoyed languages, I felt it was fine for me just to focus on the language side of things and other subjects that I enjoyed, whereas because I didn’t particularly like maths, I felt that I could get away with not having to do that because I wanted to do languages. Whereas now I wish that I had maybe had done higher maths, just so I could have done it and really improved a little bit.

01:06 I went to Strathclyde University and studied international business and modern languages and it was a five year course, which involved spending one year in France, which was fantastic and so I spent one year, my fourth year, at a university, a business school in France and then came back to do my final honours year.

01:25 My dad is a sales manager for a car company and my mum is a teacher, a head teacher. So they were, they never pushed me into going into university, but as I say, it was just that seemed to be a natural kind of course of what I was to do but I didn’t feel there was any pressure from my parents to have to go to university.

01:42 I think university was always in my plans, probably from high school onwards, you know, it was clear I was kind of, I think most of the people that I went to school with were encouraged to go to university or, or college or that’s what you’re taking, working towards. I don’t think when I was at school there was much talk of not going to college and university, it was all kind of about following on from school into another course of future education.

02:05 Well I worked at Glengoyne as a tour guide, when I was a student, when I was at university and then, when I graduated, a position became available for a full-time position in marketing and that’s how I got the job, having worked as a tour guide before that.

02:20 I mean university education’s been a huge help, in the fact that getting you to do presentations, working to deadlines, having to do, having to write, you know, dissertations and essays, things like that, have helped. At the time you don’t really see how this is ever going to be applicable in your career, but it’s only now that I can see that, you know, having had that background, it’s been really helpful to work to deadlines, as I say, and you know, just even working with other people as well, cos you have to work in a lot of groups at university and it does help you to work in a team, when you come in to, when you work here as well.

02:52 Going to university is not the be all and everything. I think that it’s gaining experience throughout life that is really important. Quite a few of my friends at school, who weren’t particularly academic or just didn’t enjoy studying, felt that they had to go on to college or university and then they ended up, you know, not finishing that course and they felt they’d maybe wasted some time, where they could have been, you know, if they’d gone into a job and worked their way up or got some experience in other areas, that that would have been more useful for them.

03:20 What’s really nice about working for Ian Macleod Distillers, the owners of Glengoyne is that they’re quite a small company but they are forward-thinking and, and they give you lots of opportunities to work on various different projects, so you’re not just kind of stuck to doing the one job every day.

03:34 I don’t think I can point kind of pick out one particular turning point in my life, I think that my, I feel that going to school and then going to university and then working here and then getting through to a job here, all just kind of worked, was quite a natural progression, I don’t think there’s any point that there was one decision I made or anything that suddenly kind of turned my life around. I think that it was all just quite a natural, natural progression, ending up here.

03:57 END