After starting two iconic music venues and surviving the dot-com bust, Michael Dorf offers gripping stories and hard-earned business lessons with a contrarian twist. As technology becomes more deeply woven into our lives, the key to success can be found in satisfying people’s yearning for live human interaction. “Simply put, Michael Dorf is a true hustler. When the internet upended the music business, he wasn’t romantic to the way things were done and like any...
great entrepreneur, focused on what’s happening today. It has been fun for me to watch Michael operate in this ever-changing world.
There is a lot that can be learned from this man.” (Gary Vaynerchuk, Founder and CEO, VaynerMedia; and author, Crushing It) As founder of the iconic Knitting Factory music venue in New York, Michael Dorf became one of the earliest pioneers of digital music in the 1990s and found himself addicted to the seductive promise of the Internet.
But losing everything in the dot-com bust led to a renewed appreciation for the sensory pleasures of life and inspired him to gamble big with his latest crazy idea: Launching a wine-making facility in the middle of Manhattan for patrons who could also have dinner in a cozy three-hundred-seat venue while watching concerts by artists such as Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Suzanne Vega, and Esperanza Spalding.
After surviving another economic cataclysm - the Great Recession of 2008 - Dorf found that his City Winery concept worked beautifully and he expanded it into a national network of clubs that continues to grow rapidly. Along the way, he realized why his venues are sold out nearly every night, from Boston to Nashville: Trapped in a digital bubble, increasingly separate from the real world, people are eager for the visceral, sensory experiences he offers.
In Indulge Your Senses: Scaling Intimacy in a Digital World, Dorf tells riveting tales from his wild ride through three decades of business escapades and dispenses invaluable wisdom for listeners - entrepreneurs, executives, students, professionals, lovers of music and wine - who are struggling to balance the virtual and the real in a world awash in technology.
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