Full Transcript for Robin McBride: The Lost Sister and A Wine Empire

best that they split up from him and go on about their lives, and so my mom left La went up the coast of California to Monterey, which you've ever been as very small, quaint, beautiful coastal town, heavy in agriculture and fishing, and was becoming a really big wine region. Andrea's mom was originally from New Zealand, and her mom unfortunately had a terminal diagnosis of breast cancer and she decided to move back to her home country where her family was. She didn't have a big family, but where her mother and her she had one brother, were there, and so she moved back to New Zealand when my sister was like five or six years old, and she, unfortunately she passed away pretty quickly after they moved back, and so my sister was disconnected from our dad or any of her ties here back in the States. Sadly, after the death of her mother, Andrea lost both of her grandparents, further diminishing the support system her mom thought would be there for her in New Zealand. From there, Audrey would go on to live between her uncle's house and the foster system. It was really my sister and her uncle, who was a great farmer. He was one of the early grave growers in Marlborough and New Zealand and wasn't quite sure what to do with this little girl, and she stayed with him for a little bit and ended up what she called slave labor about working in the vineyards. I think we have child labor laws here. I don't know if they did there or not. But she did a lot of work in the vineyards for she would never do it again. But ultimately she spent her time during the year, the school year in Auckland with a foster family. But there's a unique twist to their story. They didn't grow up together or even know about each other until they were adults. This is wild. They were raised in different parts of the world, one in New Zealand and the other in California. They reunited in nineteen ninety nine and the rest is wine history. So she was kind of back and forth between the big city in New Zealand of Auckland, the Foster family, and her uncle in Marlborough and Blenham and wine Grave country and ended up really growing up around wine. Did she think that she would go into I guess essentially the family business. No, absolutely not. She swore she was not going to do that because of that little child labor situation that she had. She hated it. She thought it was the worst thing ever and didn't want anything to do with it. But she did grow up in the So she grew up with her uncle as a farmer, as a grape grower, and then neighboring grape growers and wine makers and those families and what ultimately became over time around that time actually became a pretty big business in New Zealand. So it was very much part of the culture where she grew up. But she personally didn't want to ever have to do that again. It was cold, hard work and she didn't care for that part of it very much. But she also didn't really as a child. I think understand obviously as you would come to later on a life, but understand, you know, where those grapes were going and what they were doing, and what the rest of the business was, and how this product went to market and how people enjoyed wine, which she would obviously learn later in life. For Robin's part, she was nine years older than Andrea and often wondered about her father. She was a racially mixed young girl being raised in a mostly white community by a single mother who wanted nothing to do with her father. There. Our mother was very much like still in a hiding when we were there when I was growing up, so she was always sort of not wanting to be found essentially, you know, by our dad. She wanted to raise me and do her own thing and not be bothered basically. But it kind of set for this strange dynamic and also the fact that when I was growing up, it was not racially diverse at all. And I was probably also one of the very few children with a single mother, you know, who was working, and I was very much a latch key kid and didn't have you know, cousins or you know, brothers or sisters, my mom was also a single child, so I didn't have answer, you know, this kind of extended family, and so it really did sort of feel like an outcast, or at least like I didn't fit in well right, Like I didn't necessarily belong where we were, which you know, it was weird and kind of rough when you're growing up. But in hindsight, I feel like it did. It did create that independence in me, and also that curiosity. Like when I talked about me roaming around, you know, and all of these places and exploring like you know, the earth and science and nature and the world around me. I mean that was really because I was kind of by myself, right, And so I think it did kind of like create this sort of alternative mindset about how to go about things, and particularly things that I'm interested in, of course, but how to accomplish stuff maybe without really traditional structures. When you were out there roaming around, did you wonder if there was a sibling out there somewhere? I did. I did. I figured that statistically or the chances were probably pretty good that he continued on in life somewhere and may have had more children. And so yeah, I thought that that was definitely a possibility, and it was kind of one of those things where I was like, when I grow up or later on life, or when I know, when I feel the time is right or I know it's time, I'll look for him and or his family and look to see if I have a brother or sister out there somewhere. But your mom had really tried to keep you away and separated. So how old were you when you did finally connect with him and how did it happen? Yeah, well I was. I was twenty five years old, and so as a little as a young kid, I was kind of like, you know, since I turned eighteen, I'm going to go out here and you know, start the work. Well, it didn't happen. But I was twenty five, and I actually I had not yet started those efforts. It was actually him and his family that set out to find both

me and Andrea. When her father's family started the search for both sisters, Robin was working at a corporate job in Atlanta and was a young mother. She began working for the company after high school, and her love of science and keen interest in what the engineers did helped her move up from the receptionist to managing international sales and distribution. And I stayed with that company for probably all together, probably eleven years, but worked my way from you know, receptionists to eventually I was running and managing international sales and distribution and went all through production and you know, customer service, just all sorts of parts of the business and really enjoyed my time there, but also really learned a lot unplanned, but I got a lot of experience in a global business, a small but global business that you know, ultimately helped us establish our own business. You had your daughter around the same time, which for many people that in itself would be the life changing event and the identity changing event to go from no parent to being a parent. Was that wrapped up, do you think in thinking differently about your suddenly growing family in all senses? Yeah, Well, so I had my daughter actually was she was about five at that time, So you were moving up this engineering track really aggressively with a young child. What was that like. I like that you said aggressively, because that's very accurate. That was how you did it aggressively. I did it that was very very forward and very aggressive. Yeah, I mean it was really just honestly fueled by my interests. It wasn't necessarily career pathing per se. It was just that I wanted to learn more, and I wanted to know more, and I wanted to know how to do more. During her time working in the corporate world, her father had sadly passed from a terminal illness, but tasked his family with finding both sisters. In the days before the internet are cell phones, her dad's family was doing everything they could to find the girls. After successfully locating Andrea a year prior, Robin got a letter while working in Atlanta. So I got the letter and I was in Atlanta. The stars aligned when Robin discovered that Andrea was in the US visiting their father's family at the exact time she received the letter. As it turned out, Andrea was only a few hours away in Alabai, so plans were made to meet the very next day. I kind of got the letter, called the number that was on there and planned to meet her the next day. The next day. Yeah, yeah, we were very very close. I know, no time to process. That must have been all I mean, what were you thinking. It was very much a whirl when of a lot of things, because first A I had to process that my dad had died already long before me getting that letter, so I wasn't gonna I wasn't going to meet him, and kind of all of the you know things that our minds can do, you know, growing up, if you have a missing parent or someone like that. You know, it's kind of like one day, you know, I'm going to meet this person, and you know I'm going to see them, They're going to see me. You're gonna they're gonna see how, you know, I turned out great or whatever it is, whatever the fantasy is, right that kind of like you kind of have to process through that set of emotion right away. But you know, obviously finding out that I had to assist was pretty exciting. A lot can happen in the next three years, like a chatbot maybe your new best friend. But what won't change Meeting Health Insurance United Healthcare Try term medical plans are available for these changing times. 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On top of an already busy, in full life that she had created, she had forged her own path, created a family, rose quickly in her career, and all of a sudden, this very important person walks into her life. Walking down the Jetway, I saw myself in a reflection in a mirror at the end of the jetway as I'm walking. But then I realized that the reflection wasn't moving as I was walking, and that I was seeing my sister for the first time and definitely life changing. I mean, it's really interesting because it changes your identity. If you're somebody who's grown up without a parent, without that side of the family, and without any siblings, right, because it's like I identified as an only child, you know, I identified as you know, all of these things, and that kind of instantly changes when you have this this missing piece, you know, that that comes into your life. So your sister, Andrea was quite young when you met, and I assume had to go back to New Zealand but then ended up back in the States. How did that happen? Yeah, so we met. She was sixteen, mind you, she was already like six feet tall, maybe five to eleven. She was very tall already, but she was sixteen, and when she was in the States, you know, visiting our family, and when we met, I think maybe she was here for like two weeks and then had to go back to New Zealand. Now connected after sixteen years of not knowing each other, Andrea returned to New Zealand to finish high school. Luckily, Andrea was an amazing athlete and was being recruited by schools across the US, so she

decided to look at schools in California, eventually settling on USC and LA. Now the two long lost sisters were finally just a short drive apart. Yeah, so then we were finally in the same state. Although I was in northern California, she was in southern California. Yeah. How often were you two in touch at that point? You know, Well, we talked all the time on the phone, but we were trying to get together in person, I mean as often as we could, but probably every few weeks and for a while, and depending on what was going on, she would drive down to or I'd drive down to La or she'd come up to Monterey, And then we eventually kind of agreed to meet in the middle, which is you know, there's not a whole lot. It's beautiful, but there's not a whole lot going on, but there is a lot of wineries in agriculture and a lot of tasting rooms, which is eventually where we ended up making our meeting places a lot of times, and catching up on where we were at and talking to each other about stories from our past that we just didn't know because we weren't there, and then also thinking about the future and you know what plans we had coming up, And it all kind of happened in this backdrop of the central coast of California, and a lot of times with a glass of wine. Was it at that point that you started thinking, like we should really do this because her path, what she thought her path was going to be, was quite different, right, right, Yeah, she had aspirations of really being in for professional athlete, so she was in school, she played volleyball, and then she was also on track and field. For as long as she could remember. Andrea's dream was to make it to the Olympics. Then in her junior year of college, she suffered an injury that would force her to put away that dream. But when you're really really, really driven and really focused like she was, there wasn't all that much of a plan B. And she was, you know, sort of having a little crisis to think about if she needed to change anything for our last year of school and what our plans were going to be and for me at the same time, I had just I'd gotten married and just had twin boys and was having my own crisis, so to speak. But it was because you know, I had been so I had worked so hard and been a mom at an early age, but couldn't see how now with three kids, two of them being babies, how I was going to go back to really being passionate in the way that I had been and doing what I was doing, you know, for a corporation. I just couldn't reconcile what it was going to take for me to do that and be a good you know, mom and wife, and I knew I had to think about things a little bit differently and figure something out, figure something else out. At the same time that Andrea was realizing that she was also going to have to think about things a little bit differently and figure something else out. And you know, we were kind of sitting there sharing these thoughts one day, and I think that we really sort of had that moment was that which was like, you know, is that too crazy for us to think about doing something together and wine, because you know, again, over the through almost three years, at that point, we had really gotten to know each other. You know, in this environment of the Central Coast and California's coast and in wineries and tasting rooms these wineries, they often felt unwelcome, but instead of shying away or being intimidated by the experience, they leaned into it and thought about what they might do differently. We would kind of like joke around and be creative and like, what would it be like? Could you imagine if the winery and our tasting room was owned by black people? What would it be like? Or what if it was the hip hop themed and you know, all of this type of stuff just kind of because it was so at that point, it was so traditional and nothing really changed, but we still sort of just like bombarded our way in and made it our spot in our environment. So when we're as we're we thinking things, we're kind of looking at just how other like ha ha ha, you know that's crazy. We wouldn't even know what to do. And then it was kind of like, I mean, is that crazy? You know, we're both pretty we're both pretty smart. You know, we can figure things out, and we started putting our mind to it. So it was always wine for you guys, if you went into business together, it was wine from the beginning. You know, we didn't talk about any other business. We really didn't. It was it was always wine. But it was what part of wine? Right, because it's like, we don't know how to make wine. Nobody inherited any vineyards or a winery or we didn't have any like you know, pals who we could you know, get into the business with so we had to be pretty creative, but we did, like some research talks with some folks try to figure out what the bit the structure is, the industry is like, and figured out like a sneaky little way for us to get into what would be to get licensed as an importer, because I had picked up those skills in my previous career, you know, moving products in and out of countries all over the world. So I was like, I can do that in my sleep. So that's so interesting. That feels like something that probably felt like kind of a drum skill and maybe not that transferable of knowing how export was suddenly yes, we can apply our dream. Yeah, who knew being so fluent and customers paperwork would come in handy, you know, and so and so that's exactly what we did. And so Andrea went and we talked with our uncle and went to some of these family owned wineries that she had grown up around. So there was a lot of interest. And at that time New Zealand wine was becoming really familiar in the United States, becoming more and more popular, and so we thought, well, let's just see how this works. Let's get licensed. So we have the ability to bring it in. We'll bring in some wines and we'll find out, you know, if we got the chops, if there's an appetite for it in California

specifically, and we'll just see if we can pick some good wines, make some good partnerships and see if we can sell in LA. Because she was so in school and up here in northern California and we did that and it worked. That is truly amazing. And Andrea was still in college at the time, which is really unbelievable. No, we were very much in different life stages obviously, but I think we're both very driven in the same way. And when we started our business, we bootstrapped right, and so we actually didn't look for partners or investors or anything. We were just both really just driven and fueled really by our own excitement about building something together and this again that thirst for knowledge, but figuring out the business of this business was really really exciting to us. Was there something that you have I mean, I can only imagine the ups and the downs of building the business, but was there something that at the time it happened, you thought, oh, this is a negative, like this is like a real bad, but then in hindsight ended up feeling like a positive yes, because again we didn't have investors. We also didn't have, you know, any commercial financing or anything, so we really did bootstrap for thirteen fourteen years. Our business was built off of the next iteration of our business was built off of whatever cases we just sold, like period, that's all there was. In a previous interview, Robin confessed that her and Andrea could have benefited from learning and being mentored by other women, something they didn't have access to during the beginning of their wine journey in an industry that is so male dominated that early on, we really could have benefited from the power of these women's organizations and other women within our industry. You know, a lot of closed doors. So we just kind of depended on ourselves. But in hindsight, it's like there are amusing women despite not having the mentorship or camaraderie. They didn't let it slow the success of McBride's sister's wine. I don't think that we really internalize things as a negative or positive per se, but as events happen, either to plan or not, or or achieved desired results or not. I always kind of see it as data honestly, right, it's all just stepping stones, it's all learning and helps us to get, you know, wherever it is we're ultimately trying to get and to move the business forward. So, but there was a lot of those data points along the way, very frequent, somewhere more drastic than others, and pretty continuously for quite a long time, I would say, So needless to say, we learned a lot. Do you see yourself pivoting again? Yeah, it's inevitable, It really is. It really is, because I feel like I feel like probably our business we've gone through so many like iterations and versions of our business, probably five six seven, I don't know if I was counting. We're really is almost a completely different business, same people, but a different business model, you know than where it had been, you know a year before something. And that means going from being an importer and then we went to an importer and a distributor. Then we went to a wine producer in New Zealand, and then we went to a wine producer in California, you know, an international wine producer, and then a national distributor, and all of those things are different business models, and we've actually had different entities as well along the way, because we're all licensed differently, and so I don't see why it would be any different going forward. You know, like the current iteration of our business has probably been the way it is now since like twenty eighteen maybe, But if we're going to continue to grow and change, I'm sure that we will, we will pivot in some some way. And like the last couple of years have showed us that you got to stay ready exactly. Yeah, what point did you feel like, hey, you know what, we did it? Like we're successful. So that's really funny. We get asked that like quite a bit, and I don't think that happened to be honest. I mean, I'm here to tell the truth, right, So I feel like we're still pursuing sort of the next level. I don't really think that we were ever like you know, we made it like we've arrived or we've achieved, you know, something that we came out to achieve. We've kind of got these like you know, forever moving goalposts of stuff that we want to do. The humanness of business, which I feel like is you know, sometimes overlooked and that you and I talked about before you know, we make these decisions. We're doing what we're doing, and we've made decisions that we've made not purely for business. There's family, there's kids, there's locations, there's all of these things, and particularly, i'll say it as women that you know, we have to make decisions about and figure out how we're going to prioritize and encompass all the things that are to us. And we can't just drop our lives and the people in it to start and run a business. We have to find really creative ways to do it all or as much of it as we can, and that calls for us to be very flexible oftentimes and to pivot a lot. Robin, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. McBride's. Sister's Wine is the number one black owned winery in the United States. Not only have Robin and Andrea built an incredibly successful business, they're passionate about paying their success forward. As part of their efforts to close the gender and race gap and leadership positions in male dominated fields. They started she Can, a wine whose proceeds go towards there she Can fund that gives grants to emerging women leaders. They saw the disproportionate impacts the pandemic had on black women owned businesses, so they pledge to help, and so far have awarded thirty grants totaling three hundred thousand dollars. Robin and Andrea turned their incredible story and shared love for wine into a pivot that would not only change their lives, but many other women looking to find the same success they found. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she Pivots the pod. Leave a rating in comment if you enjoyed this episode to help others learn about it. A special thank you to our partner Marie Claire and the team that made this episode possible. Talk to you next week. 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