Think & Drink

How to pivot like a boss 🙌 Today we chat with Lloyd "Flow" Johnson about his move from owning and running an art gallery to launching a plant shop with curated experiences.

Flow is a designer and plant shop owner who values community building and using one's social equity to enrich and empower others. After he closed his gallery due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Flow took the added time and space to reflect on what brought him the most value from his business—and what he could leave behind. 

Flow found healing from plants, and realized that part of his talent was in curation, building community, and providing unique experiences that bring value to guests and vendors alike. He was able to take his knack for building community and pivot from the art world to the plant world.

In this episode, we cover:

• How to pivot gracefully
• Adding value to your community
• Transitioning your skillset
• Using your talents to bring more value to your work
• Maturing with your business
• Applying the MVP (minimum viable product) to a service business
• Using social media to grow your community

When he's not singing and dancing with my plants, he's usually out trying new food or cooking something great.

To find him:

Welcome2theungle.co

@welcome.2.thee.jungle

@your.plant.daddddy

What does it take to jump into entrepreneurship and embrace change? In this episode talk with Whitney Shea, high school teacher turned plant connoisseur about taking a leap of faith before you may feel ready. 

• Career pivot
• Entrepreneurship
• Starting small
• Market testing
• Building a support system
• Being a plant mama!

Hope you enjoy this episode that's packed with great tips for making and pivoting into entrepreneurship and how to get started!

Find Whitney & her company Green Space PlantCo online or in Charleston!

IG: @Green_Space_PlantCo

FB: @GreenSpacePlantCo

W: https://green-space-plant-co.square.site/

We often think of making sustainable choices as a sacrifice, but when it comes to reducing food waste, you can save money and diversify your meal planning.

Chef Alison Mountford makes it easy to create interesting meals with minimal waste (even for families) with her platform Ends+Stems. 

Today, you can listen in for tips about:

• Reducing food waste
• Getting creative in the kitchen
• Living more economically
• Leveraging your skillset to create a bigger impact

Alison Mountford is a chef and food waste educator. She is the founder of Ends+Stems, a meal planning platform that helps busy families reduce food waste. Alison is a speaker, teacher of classes and courses, and recipe and meal plan developer.

https://www.instagram.com/endsandstems/

http://www.endsandstems.com/

How to live sustainability without feeling like you're sacrificing 

Jeff McMahon has been an environmental reporter for most of four decades. He currently writes on environmental sustainability for Forbes. He also teaches at the University of Chicago. 

In this episode, He shares how individual choices make an impact and how sustainable choices can actually make your life better.

Surprising choices to live more sustainably

• An abundance mindset
• Making an impact through your choices
• Creating a better life for yourself sustainability 
• The hidden dangers of air conditioning 

Read more from Jeff : https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/

SEASON 2 IS HERE! For this Season, we are interviewing innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs in the green space. 

Ever feel like your job isn't fulfilling enough?

On our first episode, Rebecca Woolford shows us how she integrated her passion for protecting the environment into a seemingly unrelated workplace (no excuses not to live your cause!).  She finds a way to bring sustainability into everything she does, from marketing to travel.

On this episode, we cover:

• Sustainable Travel
• How to integrate your cause in the workplace
• Resources to learn more about sustainability
• Reducing your carbon footprint
• Being a digital nomad

Rebecca champions The World's Best Sustainable & Regenerative Hotels & Lodges around the world. She's working with 100's travel agents to Rewild our Planet and is also a Content Marketing freelancer specialising in eco-travel and digital nomad living

We learned a lot from Rebecca and can't wait for you to hear more!

https://kiwanohotels.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCffJmONMHsSLIVdNXYwS1Aw

How do your values play into your work? Most of us struggle to find time for the causes that matter to us, let alone bring them into the workplace.

In this week's episode, Icy Liu shares her thoughts on how commitment, asking for help, and taking small steps can integrate your vision into your daily life (including at the office).

Icy's commitment to diversity and sustainability keep her motivated while she works on projects like her Ungrafted Podcast and supporting Asian wine professionals.

Icy is a visionary herself and works with the inspired team at the Becky Wasserman group, where she was inspired by Becky's unwavering commitment to bring beautiful Burgundian wines from lesser known appellations and producers to the spotlights. 

In this episode, we cover:

• Creating an impact however you can
• Staying committed to your vision
• Making small changes for accumulative impact
• How vision can lead a company
• Asking for help to succeed with your mission

Season 1, Wine: Episode 10

https://www.instagram.com/ungraftedpodcast/

https://www.instagram.com/icy_liu_/

Being an industry leader is a responsibility. Even the most humble leaders are forced to accept that their actions and communications trickle down and create the culture of their sector.

In this episode, we interview Shayn Bjornholm, MS who is the Court of Master Sommeliers-America's Examination Director. The organization faced pressure for its lack of diversity and accessibility, as well as a provocative 2020 New York Times article that directly called out some of the leaders for sexual harassment. 

Shayn is candid about how the CMS is improving its company culture to be more inclusive and protect its students.

In this episode, we cover:

• Improving company culture
• Path to becoming a master; finding what you love 
• Gender gap
• Education and mentorship in smaller communities
• How an institution acts as a leader in a community  

And when you're done listening, check out Shayne's TedTalk

Season 1: Wine, Episode 9

If you're struggling to build community around your brand, you may be missing two important things: authenticity & strong values. LaRue Wines Founder Katy Wilson launched her Sonoma Pinot Noir brand at the age of 26 with a bootstrap budget and a clear vision. 

By engaging with her customers, following up, reaching out, and staying true to her vision of small production wines, she built a cult following for her wines.

Katy & her husband David Menesses now co-run the winery, navigating a non-stop small business with raising a newborn. They share their insight on how they work together as a family and keep their customers engaged, even through hardships like wildfires and COVID-19. 

In this episode, we cover:

• Parenting as entrepreneurs
• Working with a spouse
• Building community
• Using community to build your brand
• Choosing to stay small
• How to conquer and divide

For anyone wanting to build community or struggling to find balance with work and family, this is an episode for you.

https://www.instagram.com/laruewines/
https://www.instagram.com/charlie.larue.wines/

To pivot or persevere? Is it time to take your business digital?

This question is essential for any business, especially with the pace at which the market moves today. Today we interview Caroline Conner, wine educator and founder of Wine Dine Caroline who acted fast at the start of the pandemic, shifting from welcoming tourists to an online wine eduction platform and digital course.

Caroline talks about her decision to "go digital" and the steps that she took to reign in self-managed digital marketing as a small business. 

In this episode, we cover:

• How to move your business online
• When to pivot your business
• Managing a digital community
• Creating (a lot) of content

Tune in to hear more from Caroline Conner, featured in NYT & Huffpost for being one of the *first* to offer digital wine tastings in 2020!

Season 1: Wine, Episode 7

winedinecaroline.com

https://www.instagram.com/winedinecaroline/

Do you feel like you have to prove yourself before people take you seriously in your industry? Have you looked around and realized your peers don’t reflect your culture or the way you look? This is a feeling our guest this week is very familiar with and is actively working to change in the wine industry.

In the second episode of Think & Drink, hosts Aubrey Terrazas and Allison King talk to guest Martin Reyes MW about changing an industry by being a leader in your field and a conscious consumer in your community. We look at sustainability from a wholistic lens—people, environment, and economies, and finally, how to tell really great dad jokes.

Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and listen to the conversation of diversity, conscious consumption, and love of wine unfold. 

We cover:

Proving yourself
Pushing past expectations
Sustainability
Conscious consumption
Dad Jokes

Think & Drink was created to inspire change, impact, and innovation for professionals in niche industries. We interview thought leaders across a variety of industries to unpack their ideas—like friends deep in conversation over a great beverage.

www.wineunify.org
www.reyeswinegroup.com
www.peterpaulwines.com
www.thefourtop.org