“You cannot describe passion, you can only live it.”

That quote by Enzo Ferrari was up on a wall at a new Ferrari showroom.

It got me to thinking, because in a lot of ways what we have been doing for the last two decades or so of Calibre was describing passion.

Were we wrong?

So I asked people.

I asked what it was that drew people to us. Were we real? Were we authentic? Or were we just talking about stuff?

The response was rather educational. And overwhelming.

They spoke to us of how geeky we all would get when talking about a particular piece.

Or how we pull out our phones to take photos and show people detail.

Or how we went deep into stuff about a brand that they didn’t know even if it was on their wrist.

Or how about how we would bring our level of educational thirst to other things like, of course, cars, but also other things.

How we realized that there were whole groups of people that wanted to learn more about all that, but weren’t comfortable joining established watch groups or attending get-together.

They threw back at us stuff we used to say, such as when brands and people wanted us to be exclusive we would say no we need to be inclusive. We need to welcome, not deter.

How we would point out someone buying an inexpensive watch from a mall stall the same way we would point out the big name boutiques, because we were talking about passion not price.

We didn’t always get it right. Sometimes we would agree to what people or brands wanted, but that generally didn’t work out all that well. We realized that if we just pushed for what we thought was right, whether a story or a brand or a look or a way to communicate, it generally brought more people into our world.

That was what people said.

That we were just being ourselves.

That we weren’t just telling stories.

That we did live it. That we do live it.

I just really like bringing people along for the ride.