“Go into business in a subject you love. Time flies when you’re having fun at work, and it makes for a happy life.” That’s what Marvin Shanken (BBA ’65), the 2009 UM Alumni Association Alumnus in Residence, told Dean Barbara E. Kahn’s Strategic Brand Management class on February 18. Shanken is the founder and chairman of M. Shanken Communications, Inc., publisher of Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado magazines, among others. He became successful, he said, by following his dreams and making them his reality, even when others thought he was making mistakes. “Nothing is out of reach,” the guest lecturer told the roomful of graduate students, “if you work hard enough and take risks to get what you want.”

Shanken didn’t start out wanting to be a publisher. Instead, he worked as a real estate appraiser in New York City, which led to a real estate finance job on Wall Street. His employer sent him on a business trip to Sonoma, Calif., to investigate a vineyard deal, and Shanken discovered two things — he loved wine, and there were very few resources available to learn more about it. He immediately decided that he wanted to be a wine writer, and he managed to buy a wine trade newsletter called Impact for $5,000. A few years later, he left Wall Street to focus on wine writing full time, and in 1979 he bought Wine Spectator from a friend to save it from going under.

Shanken launched Cigar Aficionado in 1992, against the advice of all of his friends. “I went to Cuba to interview Castro and do some research for an article about cigars that we were putting together for Wine Spectator, he said. “I decided on the plane trip home that I couldn’t die without having published a cigar magazine.”

“The first 10 years of business were a constant struggle,” he recalled. “We just barely made our costs. My initial goal was to build the business enough to take home a $15,000 salary.” Thirty years later, Shanken has well exceeded that target. His magazines have made him wealthy, and he stressed the importance of giving back — including speaking to students, as he was doing that morning. “I consider myself in the business of education,” he said. “If one of you walks out of here with some enlightenment, then my visit was successful!”

— Lauren Firtel