Speaker 1: Tired of ads interrupting your gripping investigations. Good news AD
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Speaker 1: moms raise happy children and thrive in their careers without
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Speaker 1: of Modern Mama's Club App today. Welcome to she Pivots.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. I had left my
Speaker 1: decade long political career in DC after having my first
Speaker 1: two kids during the Trump presidency and felt burnt out
Speaker 1: after having my third child, spending a year in lockdown
Speaker 1: with my family, and another tough and exhausting election. I
Speaker 1: began to find solace in the stories of women who
Speaker 1: had made these big career decisions and then found success
Speaker 1: and happiness and their change. I began to realize that
Speaker 1: so many women had pivoted due to personal reasons, and
Speaker 1: they still found success through non traditional paths. This new
Speaker 1: show celebrates these stories and I'm so excited to bring
Speaker 1: them to you with she pivots, what is your name
Speaker 1: and what do you do? Oh, that's the simplest, hardest question.
Speaker 1: Robin McBride and I am the co founder of McBride's
Speaker 1: Sisters Wines. Robin McBride and her sister Andrea are incredibly
Speaker 1: successful wine makers and their journey into the wine business
Speaker 1: is like no other. They both share a father, but
Speaker 1: were raised by their respective mothers on different sides of
Speaker 1: the world, not knowing one another existed until Robin was
Speaker 1: twenty five. Now, together they have built the largest black
Speaker 1: women owned wine business in the world. But during the
Speaker 1: beginning stages of the business, Robin had to make a
Speaker 1: decision she was a young mom and had a growing
Speaker 1: career in corporate America. After taking a leap of faith
Speaker 1: to start the McBride's Sister's Wine collection, Robin and Andrea
Speaker 1: Bea had to find their groove as young women. You know,
Speaker 1: we were attracted to the wine business. Meet Andrea and
Speaker 1: Robin McBride. Two have sisters with a passion for wine
Speaker 1: hare and look at that. Their personal story is as
Speaker 1: unique as their professional ones. Two black women in a
Speaker 1: field dominated by white men. In twenty ten, they started
Speaker 1: the McBride's Sisters Wine Company. When we started, it was
Speaker 1: a bit of an old boys club, so pushback, you received,
Speaker 1: lack of recognition. I think, what did you think you
Speaker 1: were going to do? Growing up so many things as
Speaker 1: a kid, I just kind of spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time roaming around, like outside and being in nature and
Speaker 1: on the on. It was also back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: so in eighties, I guess, so you know, kids roamed
Speaker 1: around very freely back then, but investigating you know, tidepool
Speaker 1: and you know, going off of the beaten path and
Speaker 1: just sort of being in nature and just really really
Speaker 1: curious about, you know, everything in our world. And so
Speaker 1: that was that was very much a big, a big
Speaker 1: part of I guess later in life, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out from a career perspective what would make me happy
Speaker 1: and how it would be fulfilled. But when I was
Speaker 1: a child, I actually tried to make wine under my bed.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I had forgotten all about it, but
Speaker 1: taking like Welch's grape juice, and I was like putting
Speaker 1: it in bottles and my baby's my dolls and bottles
Speaker 1: and putting it under my bed because I must have
Speaker 1: known somehow that you store it in a cool, dry
Speaker 1: place and then waited and I somehow and I knew
Speaker 1: that it was made from grape to the juice of grapes, right,
Speaker 1: So and I would try to make wine and it
Speaker 1: did indeed ferment under there. It was pretty gross. That's
Speaker 1: an incredibly sophisticated game. Yeah, I told you. I always
Speaker 1: like science. Now, chemistry and biology like my thing. So
Speaker 1: I was down there experimenting and remember, open it up
Speaker 1: and be really funky. But I was like, smells like
Speaker 1: it's fermenting. So I did give a shot at wine
Speaker 1: making when I was a little kid as well. Robin
Speaker 1: grew up in Monterey, California, and at the time had
Speaker 1: no idea that she had a little sister on the
Speaker 1: other side of the Pacific Ocean who was also surrounded
Speaker 1: by wine and vineyards. I grew up in Monterey, in
Speaker 1: the central coast of California. We were both born to
Speaker 1: the same father, and I'm nine years older, but neither
Speaker 1: of us had a relationship with our dad, and so
Speaker 1: neither of us knew that the other existed, and both
Speaker 1: of our moms decided it was best that they split
Speaker 1: up from him and go on about their lives, and
Speaker 1: so my mom left La went up the coast of
Speaker 1: California to Monterey, which you've ever been as very small, quaint,
Speaker 1: beautiful coastal town, heavy in agriculture and fishing, and was
Speaker 1: becoming a really big wine region. Andrea's mom was originally
Speaker 1: from New Zealand, and her mom unfortunately had a terminal
Speaker 1: diagnosis of breast cancer and she decided to move back
Speaker 1: to her home country where her family was. She didn't
Speaker 1: have a big family, but where her mother and her
Speaker 1: she had one brother, were there, and so she moved
Speaker 1: back to New Zealand when my sister was like five
Speaker 1: or six years old, and she, unfortunately she passed away
Speaker 1: pretty quickly after they moved back, and so my sister
Speaker 1: was disconnected from our dad or any of her ties
Speaker 1: here back in the States. Sadly, after the death of
Speaker 1: her mother, Andrea lost both of her grandparents, further diminishing
Speaker 1: the support system her mom thought would be there for
Speaker 1: her in New Zealand. From there, Audrey would go on
Speaker 1: to live between her uncle's house and the foster system.
Speaker 1: It was really my sister and her uncle, who was
Speaker 1: a great farmer. He was one of the early grave
Speaker 1: growers in Marlborough and New Zealand and wasn't quite sure
Speaker 1: what to do with this little girl, and she stayed
Speaker 1: with him for a little bit and ended up what
Speaker 1: she called slave labor about working in the vineyards. I
Speaker 1: think we have child labor laws here. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they did there or not. But she did a
Speaker 1: lot of work in the vineyards for she would never
Speaker 1: do it again. But ultimately she spent her time during
Speaker 1: the year, the school year in Auckland with a foster family.
Speaker 1: But there's a unique twist to their story. They didn't
Speaker 1: grow up together or even know about each other until
Speaker 1: they were adults. This is wild. They were raised in
Speaker 1: different parts of the world, one in New Zealand and
Speaker 1: the other in California. They reunited in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: and the rest is wine history. So she was kind
Speaker 1: of back and forth between the big city in New
Speaker 1: Zealand of Auckland, the Foster family, and her uncle in
Speaker 1: Marlborough and Blenham and wine Grave country and ended up
Speaker 1: really growing up around wine. Did she think that she
Speaker 1: would go into I guess essentially the family business. No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. She swore she was not going to do
Speaker 1: that because of that little child labor situation that she had.
Speaker 1: She hated it. She thought it was the worst thing
Speaker 1: ever and didn't want anything to do with it. But
Speaker 1: she did grow up in the So she grew up
Speaker 1: with her uncle as a farmer, as a grape grower,
Speaker 1: and then neighboring grape growers and wine makers and those
Speaker 1: families and what ultimately became over time around that time
Speaker 1: actually became a pretty big business in New Zealand. So
Speaker 1: it was very much part of the culture where she
Speaker 1: grew up. But she personally didn't want to ever have
Speaker 1: to do that again. It was cold, hard work and
Speaker 1: she didn't care for that part of it very much.
Speaker 1: But she also didn't really as a child. I think
Speaker 1: understand obviously as you would come to later on a life,
Speaker 1: but understand, you know, where those grapes were going and
Speaker 1: what they were doing, and what the rest of the
Speaker 1: business was, and how this product went to market and
Speaker 1: how people enjoyed wine, which she would obviously learn later
Speaker 1: in life. For Robin's part, she was nine years older
Speaker 1: than Andrea and often wondered about her father. She was
Speaker 1: a racially mixed young girl being raised in a mostly
Speaker 1: white community by a single mother who wanted nothing to
Speaker 1: do with her father. There. Our mother was very much
Speaker 1: like still in a hiding when we were there when
Speaker 1: I was growing up, so she was always sort of
Speaker 1: not wanting to be found essentially, you know, by our dad.
Speaker 1: She wanted to raise me and do her own thing
Speaker 1: and not be bothered basically. But it kind of set
Speaker 1: for this strange dynamic and also the fact that when
Speaker 1: I was growing up, it was not racially diverse at all.
Speaker 1: And I was probably also one of the very few
Speaker 1: children with a single mother, you know, who was working,
Speaker 1: and I was very much a latch key kid and
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, cousins or you know, brothers or sisters,
Speaker 1: my mom was also a single child, so I didn't
Speaker 1: have answer, you know, this kind of extended family, and
Speaker 1: so it really did sort of feel like an outcast,
Speaker 1: or at least like I didn't fit in well right,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't necessarily belong where we were, which you know,
Speaker 1: it was weird and kind of rough when you're growing up.
Speaker 1: But in hindsight, I feel like it did. It did
Speaker 1: create that independence in me, and also that curiosity. Like
Speaker 1: when I talked about me roaming around, you know, and
Speaker 1: all of these places and exploring like you know, the
Speaker 1: earth and science and nature and the world around me.
Speaker 1: I mean that was really because I was kind of
Speaker 1: by myself, right, And so I think it did kind
Speaker 1: of like create this sort of alternative mindset about how
Speaker 1: to go about things, and particularly things that I'm interested in,
Speaker 1: of course, but how to accomplish stuff maybe without really
Speaker 1: traditional structures. When you were out there roaming around, did
Speaker 1: you wonder if there was a sibling out there somewhere?
Speaker 1: I did. I did. I figured that statistically or the
Speaker 1: chances were probably pretty good that he continued on in
Speaker 1: life somewhere and may have had more children. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that that was definitely a possibility, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of one of those things where I was like,
Speaker 1: when I grow up or later on life, or when
Speaker 1: I know, when I feel the time is right or
Speaker 1: I know it's time, I'll look for him and or
Speaker 1: his family and look to see if I have a
Speaker 1: brother or sister out there somewhere. But your mom had
Speaker 1: really tried to keep you away and separated. So how
Speaker 1: old were you when you did finally connect with him
Speaker 1: and how did it happen? Yeah, well I was. I
Speaker 1: was twenty five years old, and so as a little
Speaker 1: as a young kid, I was kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: since I turned eighteen, I'm going to go out here
Speaker 1: and you know, start the work. Well, it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: But I was twenty five, and I actually I had
Speaker 1: not yet started those efforts. It was actually him and
Speaker 1: his family that set out to find both me and Andrea.
Speaker 1: When her father's family started the search for both sisters,
Speaker 1: Robin was working at a corporate job in Atlanta and
Speaker 1: was a young mother. She began working for the company
Speaker 1: after high school, and her love of science and keen
Speaker 1: interest in what the engineers did helped her move up
Speaker 1: from the receptionist to managing international sales and distribution. And
Speaker 1: I stayed with that company for probably all together, probably
Speaker 1: eleven years, but worked my way from you know, receptionists
Speaker 1: to eventually I was running and managing international sales and
Speaker 1: distribution and went all through production and you know, customer service,
Speaker 1: just all sorts of parts of the business and really
Speaker 1: enjoyed my time there, but also really learned a lot unplanned,
Speaker 1: but I got a lot of experience in a global business,
Speaker 1: a small but global business that you know, ultimately helped
Speaker 1: us establish our own business. You had your daughter around
Speaker 1: the same time, which for many people that in itself
Speaker 1: would be the life changing event and the identity changing
Speaker 1: event to go from no parent to being a parent.
Speaker 1: Was that wrapped up, do you think in thinking differently
Speaker 1: about your suddenly growing family in all senses? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: so I had my daughter actually was she was about
Speaker 1: five at that time, So you were moving up this
Speaker 1: engineering track really aggressively with a young child. What was
Speaker 1: that like. I like that you said aggressively, because that's
Speaker 1: very accurate. That was how you did it aggressively. I
Speaker 1: did it that was very very forward and very aggressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was really just honestly fueled by my interests.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily career pathing per se. It was just
Speaker 1: that I wanted to learn more, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: know more, and I wanted to know how to do more.
Speaker 1: During her time working in the corporate world, her father
Speaker 1: had sadly passed from a terminal illness, but tasked his
Speaker 1: family with finding both sisters. In the days before the
Speaker 1: internet are cell phones, her dad's family was doing everything
Speaker 1: they could to find the girls. After successfully locating Andrea
Speaker 1: a year prior, Robin got a letter while working in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: So I got the letter and I was in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: The stars aligned when Robin discovered that Andrea was in
Speaker 1: the US visiting their father's family at the exact time
Speaker 1: she received the letter. As it turned out, Andrea was
Speaker 1: only a few hours away in Alabai, so plans were
Speaker 1: made to meet the very next day. I kind of
Speaker 1: got the letter, called the number that was on there
Speaker 1: and planned to meet her the next day. The next day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were very very close. I know, no time to process.
Speaker 1: That must have been all I mean, what were you thinking.
Speaker 1: It was very much a whirl when of a lot
Speaker 1: of things, because first A I had to process that
Speaker 1: my dad had died already long before me getting that letter,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't gonna I wasn't going to meet him,
Speaker 1: and kind of all of the you know things that
Speaker 1: our minds can do, you know, growing up, if you
Speaker 1: have a missing parent or someone like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like one day, you know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to meet this person, and you know I'm going to
Speaker 1: see them, They're going to see me. You're gonna they're
Speaker 1: gonna see how, you know, I turned out great or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, whatever the fantasy is, right that kind
Speaker 1: of like you kind of have to process through that
Speaker 1: set of emotion right away. But you know, obviously finding
Speaker 1: out that I had to assist was pretty exciting. A
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Speaker 1: Amazon Music is included with your Prime membership. Ads shouldn't
Speaker 1: be the scariest thing about true crime. Just head to
Speaker 1: Amazon dot com slash ad free true Crime to catch
Speaker 1: up on the latest episodes without the ads, and two
Speaker 1: thousands of ks shows a free for punch describers. Some
Speaker 1: shows me how that Robin had experienced something that most
Speaker 1: of us will never experience in our lifetime. On top
Speaker 1: of an already busy, in full life that she had created,
Speaker 1: she had forged her own path, created a family, rose
Speaker 1: quickly in her career, and all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: very important person walks into her life. Walking down the Jetway,
Speaker 1: I saw myself in a reflection in a mirror at
Speaker 1: the end of the jetway as I'm walking. But then
Speaker 1: I realized that the reflection wasn't moving as I was walking,
Speaker 1: and that I was seeing my sister for the first
Speaker 1: time and definitely life changing. I mean, it's really interesting
Speaker 1: because it changes your identity. If you're somebody who's grown
Speaker 1: up without a parent, without that side of the family,
Speaker 1: and without any siblings, right, because it's like I identified
Speaker 1: as an only child, you know, I identified as you know,
Speaker 1: all of these things, and that kind of instantly changes
Speaker 1: when you have this this missing piece, you know, that
Speaker 1: that comes into your life. So your sister, Andrea was
Speaker 1: quite young when you met, and I assume had to
Speaker 1: go back to New Zealand but then ended up back
Speaker 1: in the States. How did that happen? Yeah, so we met.
Speaker 1: She was sixteen, mind you, she was already like six
Speaker 1: feet tall, maybe five to eleven. She was very tall already,
Speaker 1: but she was sixteen, and when she was in the States,
Speaker 1: you know, visiting our family, and when we met, I
Speaker 1: think maybe she was here for like two weeks and
Speaker 1: then had to go back to New Zealand. Now connected
Speaker 1: after sixteen years of not knowing each other, Andrea returned
Speaker 1: to New Zealand to finish high school. Luckily, Andrea was
Speaker 1: an amazing athlete and was being recruited by schools across
Speaker 1: the US, so she decided to look at schools in California,
Speaker 1: eventually settling on USC and LA. Now the two long
Speaker 1: lost sisters were finally just a short drive apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then we were finally in the same state. Although
Speaker 1: I was in northern California, she was in southern California. Yeah.
Speaker 1: How often were you two in touch at that point?
Speaker 1: You know, Well, we talked all the time on the phone,
Speaker 1: but we were trying to get together in person, I
Speaker 1: mean as often as we could, but probably every few
Speaker 1: weeks and for a while, and depending on what was
Speaker 1: going on, she would drive down to or I'd drive
Speaker 1: down to La or she'd come up to Monterey, And
Speaker 1: then we eventually kind of agreed to meet in the middle,
Speaker 1: which is you know, there's not a whole lot. It's beautiful,
Speaker 1: but there's not a whole lot going on, but there
Speaker 1: is a lot of wineries in agriculture and a lot
Speaker 1: of tasting rooms, which is eventually where we ended up
Speaker 1: making our meeting places a lot of times, and catching
Speaker 1: up on where we were at and talking to each
Speaker 1: other about stories from our past that we just didn't
Speaker 1: know because we weren't there, and then also thinking about
Speaker 1: the future and you know what plans we had coming up,
Speaker 1: And it all kind of happened in this backdrop of
Speaker 1: the central coast of California, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: with a glass of wine. Was it at that point
Speaker 1: that you started thinking, like we should really do this
Speaker 1: because her path, what she thought her path was going
Speaker 1: to be, was quite different, right, right, Yeah, she had
Speaker 1: aspirations of really being in for professional athlete, so she
Speaker 1: was in school, she played volleyball, and then she was
Speaker 1: also on track and field. For as long as she
Speaker 1: could remember. Andrea's dream was to make it to the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Then in her junior year of college, she suffered an
Speaker 1: injury that would force her to put away that dream.
Speaker 1: But when you're really really, really driven and really focused
Speaker 1: like she was, there wasn't all that much of a
Speaker 1: plan B. And she was, you know, sort of having
Speaker 1: a little crisis to think about if she needed to
Speaker 1: change anything for our last year of school and what
Speaker 1: our plans were going to be and for me at
Speaker 1: the same time, I had just I'd gotten married and
Speaker 1: just had twin boys and was having my own crisis,
Speaker 1: so to speak. But it was because you know, I
Speaker 1: had been so I had worked so hard and been
Speaker 1: a mom at an early age, but couldn't see how
Speaker 1: now with three kids, two of them being babies, how
Speaker 1: I was going to go back to really being passionate
Speaker 1: in the way that I had been and doing what
Speaker 1: I was doing, you know, for a corporation. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't reconcile what it was going to take for me
Speaker 1: to do that and be a good you know, mom
Speaker 1: and wife, and I knew I had to think about
Speaker 1: things a little bit differently and figure something out, figure
Speaker 1: something else out. At the same time that Andrea was
Speaker 1: realizing that she was also going to have to think
Speaker 1: about things a little bit differently and figure something else out.
Speaker 1: And you know, we were kind of sitting there sharing
Speaker 1: these thoughts one day, and I think that we really
Speaker 1: sort of had that moment was that which was like,
Speaker 1: you know, is that too crazy for us to think
Speaker 1: about doing something together and wine, because you know, again,
Speaker 1: over the through almost three years, at that point, we
Speaker 1: had really gotten to know each other. You know, in
Speaker 1: this environment of the Central Coast and California's coast and
Speaker 1: in wineries and tasting rooms these wineries, they often felt unwelcome,
Speaker 1: but instead of shying away or being intimidated by the experience,
Speaker 1: they leaned into it and thought about what they might
Speaker 1: do differently. We would kind of like joke around and
Speaker 1: be creative and like, what would it be like? Could
Speaker 1: you imagine if the winery and our tasting room was
Speaker 1: owned by black people? What would it be like? Or
Speaker 1: what if it was the hip hop themed and you know,
Speaker 1: all of this type of stuff just kind of because
Speaker 1: it was so at that point, it was so traditional
Speaker 1: and nothing really changed, but we still sort of just
Speaker 1: like bombarded our way in and made it our spot
Speaker 1: in our environment. So when we're as we're we thinking things,
Speaker 1: we're kind of looking at just how other like ha
Speaker 1: ha ha, you know that's crazy. We wouldn't even know
Speaker 1: what to do. And then it was kind of like,
Speaker 1: I mean, is that crazy? You know, we're both pretty
Speaker 1: we're both pretty smart. You know, we can figure things out,
Speaker 1: and we started putting our mind to it. So it
Speaker 1: was always wine for you guys, if you went into
Speaker 1: business together, it was wine from the beginning. You know,
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about any other business. We really didn't.
Speaker 1: It was it was always wine. But it was what
Speaker 1: part of wine? Right, because it's like, we don't know
Speaker 1: how to make wine. Nobody inherited any vineyards or a
Speaker 1: winery or we didn't have any like you know, pals
Speaker 1: who we could you know, get into the business with
Speaker 1: so we had to be pretty creative, but we did,
Speaker 1: like some research talks with some folks try to figure
Speaker 1: out what the bit the structure is, the industry is like,
Speaker 1: and figured out like a sneaky little way for us
Speaker 1: to get into what would be to get licensed as
Speaker 1: an importer, because I had picked up those skills in
Speaker 1: my previous career, you know, moving products in and out
Speaker 1: of countries all over the world. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I can do that in my sleep. So that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: That feels like something that probably felt like kind of
Speaker 1: a drum skill and maybe not that transferable of knowing
Speaker 1: how export was suddenly yes, we can apply our dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knew being so fluent and customers paperwork would come
Speaker 1: in handy, you know, and so and so that's exactly
Speaker 1: what we did. And so Andrea went and we talked
Speaker 1: with our uncle and went to some of these family
Speaker 1: owned wineries that she had grown up around. So there
Speaker 1: was a lot of interest. And at that time New
Speaker 1: Zealand wine was becoming really familiar in the United States,
Speaker 1: becoming more and more popular, and so we thought, well,
Speaker 1: let's just see how this works. Let's get licensed. So
Speaker 1: we have the ability to bring it in. We'll bring
Speaker 1: in some wines and we'll find out, you know, if
Speaker 1: we got the chops, if there's an appetite for it
Speaker 1: in California specifically, and we'll just see if we can
Speaker 1: pick some good wines, make some good partnerships and see
Speaker 1: if we can sell in LA. Because she was so
Speaker 1: in school and up here in northern California and we
Speaker 1: did that and it worked. That is truly amazing. And
Speaker 1: Andrea was still in college at the time, which is
Speaker 1: really unbelievable. No, we were very much in different life
Speaker 1: stages obviously, but I think we're both very driven in
Speaker 1: the same way. And when we started our business, we
Speaker 1: bootstrapped right, and so we actually didn't look for partners
Speaker 1: or investors or anything. We were just both really just
Speaker 1: driven and fueled really by our own excitement about building
Speaker 1: something together and this again that thirst for knowledge, but
Speaker 1: figuring out the business of this business was really really
Speaker 1: exciting to us. Was there something that you have I mean,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the ups and the downs of
Speaker 1: building the business, but was there something that at the
Speaker 1: time it happened, you thought, oh, this is a negative,
Speaker 1: like this is like a real bad, but then in
Speaker 1: hindsight ended up feeling like a positive yes, because again
Speaker 1: we didn't have investors. We also didn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: any commercial financing or anything, so we really did bootstrap
Speaker 1: for thirteen fourteen years. Our business was built off of
Speaker 1: the next iteration of our business was built off of
Speaker 1: whatever cases we just sold, like period, that's all there was.
Speaker 1: In a previous interview, Robin confessed that her and Andrea
Speaker 1: could have benefited from learning and being mentored by other women,
Speaker 1: something they didn't have access to during the beginning of
Speaker 1: their wine journey in an industry that is so male
Speaker 1: dominated that early on, we really could have benefited from
Speaker 1: the power of these women's organizations and other women within
Speaker 1: our industry. You know, a lot of closed doors. So
Speaker 1: we just kind of depended on ourselves. But in hindsight,
Speaker 1: it's like there are amusing women despite not having the
Speaker 1: mentorship or camaraderie. They didn't let it slow the success
Speaker 1: of McBride's sister's wine. I don't think that we really
Speaker 1: internalize things as a negative or positive per se, but
Speaker 1: as events happen, either to plan or not, or or
Speaker 1: achieved desired results or not. I always kind of see
Speaker 1: it as data honestly, right, it's all just stepping stones,
Speaker 1: it's all learning and helps us to get, you know,
Speaker 1: wherever it is we're ultimately trying to get and to
Speaker 1: move the business forward. So, but there was a lot
Speaker 1: of those data points along the way, very frequent, somewhere
Speaker 1: more drastic than others, and pretty continuously for quite a
Speaker 1: long time, I would say, So needless to say, we
Speaker 1: learned a lot. Do you see yourself pivoting again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's inevitable, It really is. It really is, because I
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like probably our business we've gone
Speaker 1: through so many like iterations and versions of our business,
Speaker 1: probably five six seven, I don't know if I was counting.
Speaker 1: We're really is almost a completely different business, same people,
Speaker 1: but a different business model, you know than where it
Speaker 1: had been, you know a year before something. And that
Speaker 1: means going from being an importer and then we went
Speaker 1: to an importer and a distributor. Then we went to
Speaker 1: a wine producer in New Zealand, and then we went
Speaker 1: to a wine producer in California, you know, an international
Speaker 1: wine producer, and then a national distributor, and all of
Speaker 1: those things are different business models, and we've actually had
Speaker 1: different entities as well along the way, because we're all
Speaker 1: licensed differently, and so I don't see why it would
Speaker 1: be any different going forward. You know, like the current
Speaker 1: iteration of our business has probably been the way it
Speaker 1: is now since like twenty eighteen maybe, But if we're
Speaker 1: going to continue to grow and change, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: we will, we will pivot in some some way. And
Speaker 1: like the last couple of years have showed us that
Speaker 1: you got to stay ready exactly. Yeah, what point did
Speaker 1: you feel like, hey, you know what, we did it?
Speaker 1: Like we're successful. So that's really funny. We get asked
Speaker 1: that like quite a bit, and I don't think that
Speaker 1: happened to be honest. I mean, I'm here to tell
Speaker 1: the truth, right, So I feel like we're still pursuing
Speaker 1: sort of the next level. I don't really think that
Speaker 1: we were ever like you know, we made it like
Speaker 1: we've arrived or we've achieved, you know, something that we
Speaker 1: came out to achieve. We've kind of got these like
Speaker 1: you know, forever moving goalposts of stuff that we want
Speaker 1: to do. The humanness of business, which I feel like
Speaker 1: is you know, sometimes overlooked and that you and I
Speaker 1: talked about before you know, we make these decisions. We're
Speaker 1: doing what we're doing, and we've made decisions that we've
Speaker 1: made not purely for business. There's family, there's kids, there's locations,
Speaker 1: there's all of these things, and particularly, i'll say it
Speaker 1: as women that you know, we have to make decisions
Speaker 1: about and figure out how we're going to prioritize and
Speaker 1: encompass all the things that are to us. And we
Speaker 1: can't just drop our lives and the people in it
Speaker 1: to start and run a business. We have to find
Speaker 1: really creative ways to do it all or as much
Speaker 1: of it as we can, and that calls for us
Speaker 1: to be very flexible oftentimes and to pivot a lot. Robin,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. McBride's.
Speaker 1: Sister's Wine is the number one black owned winery in
Speaker 1: the United States. Not only have Robin and Andrea built
Speaker 1: an incredibly successful business, they're passionate about paying their success forward.
Speaker 1: As part of their efforts to close the gender and
Speaker 1: race gap and leadership positions in male dominated fields. They
Speaker 1: started she Can, a wine whose proceeds go towards there
Speaker 1: she Can fund that gives grants to emerging women leaders.
Speaker 1: They saw the disproportionate impacts the pandemic had on black
Speaker 1: women owned businesses, so they pledge to help, and so
Speaker 1: far have awarded thirty grants totaling three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Robin and Andrea turned their incredible story and shared love
Speaker 1: for wine into a pivot that would not only change
Speaker 1: their lives, but many other women looking to find the
Speaker 1: same success they found. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of she Pivots. To learn more about our guests, follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at she Pivots the pod. Leave a
Speaker 1: rating in comment if you enjoyed this episode to help
Speaker 1: others learn about it. A special thank you to our
Speaker 1: partner Marie Claire and the team that made this episode possible.
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