THE PROFILE: ALL ABOUT ADAM JAPKO the President of Esteem Media Inc., a Boston based company managing the acquisition and launch of media properties in luxury lifestyle sectors.
Adam has more than three decades of media expertise and even more time as a wine connoisseur. Combining these two passions has helped make Adam a happy and successful man.
Under Japko’s leadership, ESTEEM MEDIA manages the Boston based New England Home magazine. They also manage, Atlanta-based luxury design publication, Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles and media conferences: Design Bloggers Conference and Garden Bloggers Conference. These entities allow more in-person events that physically connect luxury-driven online communities with commercial and educational purposes. Both conferences begin March 6-8, 2016 in Atlanta. The popularity of his conferences substantiate Adam’s rock star persona- check out his interview . . .
Name
Adam Japko
Occupation
Officially I am the CEO of Esteem Media, Inc.
But actually, I am just some guy shifting traditional luxury
design media to new, wine-zagging amongst wine-ziggers,
focusing on wine and digital content as lubricants for
human connection.
Tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider significant in your career
Innovation always
feels amazingly natural and utterly important to me.
Respecting unique personal values people inside our
company bring to work with them feels equally important.
Launching Esteem Media, Inc. is a culmination of my 32-
year career in leadership roles for large media
organizations. While I loved almost all of it, I am fine
leaving the challenge of navigating large organizations
behind me. Now, I only move forward on projects that
feel important (i.e, launch of the Home Design Digital
Marketing Summit) or fun (i.e, Design & Wine Italy 2016).
If a new print, digital, or event based media project does
not create human connection towards advancing a luxury
community’s business agenda, we won’t do it. That’s our
number 1 business development filter. Some of the
projects I’ve led that your readers would recognize include
the launch of the Design Bloggers Conference,
DesignSherpa, and my wine blog WineZag.com. All three
of these projects leverage new technologies that allow
ordinary folks to advance business and personal
connection for measurable and durable positive outcomes.
In all three cases people, I proved that folks as ordinary as
me can build giant networks of valuable connections. In
my case, these new business ventures fed my passions and
moved me outside of my smaller regional networks onto a
more global playing field. They produced hundreds of new
important luxury design and fine wine friends and allowed
me to help hard working people build their personal and
business brands.
What are the rewards from your work
First and foremost…. always human connection.
I love people, and whatever we do online
always seems to produce offline connection,
and whatever we do offline results in deeper
social connection. Also, acknowledging and honoring the
broad cross section of personal values my teams bring to
work with them satisfies me that something other than
just making money is going on in the company. It always
confounds me how rank, power, and control pushes
otherwise smart leaders into disrespectful interactions
with the people that are mostly responsible for their
success.
If there was a movie produced about your life – who would play you
He’s unfortunately dead, but I would
want it to be the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia; the greatest
guitar talent to ever live. 
He stretched reality, twisted the
obvious, and always practiced hard and long so when he
got on a flow and musical expression just poured out,
there was a very skilled interpreter conveying that string
of thought. I like all that.
leader of the band, he never wanted it to be about him
and he always tried to make everyone around him feel
important and comfortable. That’s the guy I want to play
me.
Can you share your motto or mantra
What book are you currently reading
I just finished the latest in
Richard Auffrey’s Tipsey Sensei novels.
It is an amazing series of supernatural fantasy layered on top of
Japanese culture, sake, and Boston. Someone I know
writes them and the ability to see his personal intellect so
stretched out is deeply rewarding to me and, I am sure, to
anyone that would read these labors of love.
Who is your secret celebrity crush
Julia Roberts
What is your favorite time of day
I’m a morning guy.
Ever since I grew up in Brooklyn and experienced 4am on the
waterfront preceding a day out fishing on the ocean, I was
hooked on pre sunrise. I bounce out of bed like a running
back. But I have an on/off switch and too often it clicks off
earlier than I am prepared to deal with.
Do you know your heritage
Yup. But very rarely can anyone guess.
If we were to peek in your closet, what is the dominant color
My closet is as schizophrenic as my Instagram feed.
Design, wine, travel, technology, dining,
fishing, family, Grateful Dead, New York Rangers, people
that are pretty to me inside or out….I am consumed by a
broad spectrum. It’s totally schizophrenic and I have
always wondered if being a generalist vs. a specialist is a
good or bad thing. So there is a spectrum of color.
What is your present state of mind
My mind is never restful;
always trying to stretch reality beyond the obvious.
Seriously. I always believe that the current reality we deal
with, be it business, health, social, or anything you can
think of…is purely temporary and ready to be undone. As
a result, I embrace change naturally, but within a
passionately curious and pragmatic framework. Maybe I
just get bored easily, or more likely I am now old enough
to know that things never stay the same. My default is to
look at business conditions and trends in twisted ways.
Where could this go? What if I just landed from Mars,
what would I think? What is the question nobody else is
asking? What is obvious but overlooked? Are we getting
too cute or smart for our own good thinking that we know
more than someone else? It’s exhausting, I irritate our
teams sometimes, get ahead of our clients occasionally,
but I don’t know another way. In the end, it usually works
out.
What do you like most about your work
Now we work with people, not companies.
Interior designers, wine makers, architects, and retailers. Mostly people driven by
creativity. When your clients are large organizations, you
can’t really look into the eyeballs of the person you are
trying to help. It feels so much more important dealing
with human beings that your service directly benefits. The
discussions are more grounded and real while the
outcomes are entirely more satisfying.
It’s 6pm at your favorite bar or restaurant, what drink do you order
I drink wine 95% of the time. First of the
night is always sparkling or white. I’m big on the sparkling
Chenin Blancs from the Loire Valley.
If its just me and my
wife, it is more often champagne….grower champagne.
It’s made by the farmers that grow the fruit, not by some
big house that homogenizes individuality. But when it’s
not wine, I have a new go to drink. Negroni my way, which
keeps only the red vermouth and orange peel, but
replaces the gin with mezcal, and forgets the Campari
replacing with Amaro.
The smoke from the mezcal and
the touch of sweetness and depth of texture supplied by
the Amaro is very settling to me.
Do you awake with or without an alarm
Of course.
Do you have a favorite social media outlet
I do but I will never tell. Follow me on all of them.
What is the last photo you took with your cell phone
Two bottles of wine at dinner last night. Both favorite
producers culled from the list at Café ArtScience in
Cambridge, MA. 
It’s a very trippy place, and I strongly
recommend it. The wines were from two of my favorite
producers Vajra in Barolo and Avanthia in Valdeorras. The
food is very strange, very experimental, but very good. I
needed some of my fave wine producers as a comforting
anchor to all the wonderful culinary madness at Café
ArtScience
One of the best lessons my parents taught me is to
Love, work, and provide
What is your favorite work of art
The etchings of William Blake will never let go of me.
I spent sleepless nights staring at Blake’s etchings and drawings since I was 17 years old. His work demands you see beyond the
obvious. I dig that.
What is your favorite building in Manhattan
I love 11 Madison Avenue. Not just because it holds Daniel
Humm’s venerable and amazing Eleven Madison Park
restaurant.
It is mostly because it started out to be
something very, very grand. Empire State Building grand.
So obviously, the first few floors were built to hold a very
massive structure, with all the architectural touches that
speak to the beginning of something very huge and very
grand.
But the project failed mid construction, yet the building adapted
itself to its stunted growth, and made the best of the strong
foundation and design that was established. I love this story of
adaptation and compromise without giving up uniquely signature
qualities.
He became committed to wine accessibility and sharing knowledge that perpetuates wine as a natural lifestyle component for two reasons: facilitating pleasure and connection for those that are open to it. Adam uses his company WineZag as a tool for friends and wine lovers who want to connect around the sensual pleasures of wine.
