The Dry Cleaning Job That Changed My Life

Robin McBride is a powerhouse in the wine industry. She serves as the Board Chair and President of McBride Sisters Wine Company, a multinational organization founded by Robin and her sister Andréa. It is in the top 1% of volume, largest Black-owned, and the second largest women-owned wine company in the United States. Robin also serves as a Board Chair for the McBride Sisters SHE-CAN Professional Development Fund that has awarded over $3M in scholarships, grants and technical training to 3,000 professional women in wine & spirits, hospitality and finance. Robin and Andréa were the first Black women winery owners on the cover of Wine Enthusiast magazine and have been nominated for the Wine Star Award U.S. Winery of the Year 2021. 

But there’s a chance that none of that success would have happened without some very tough lessons learned during one of her earliest jobs working at her local dry cleaners in Monterey, California back when she was 16 years old. When customers would come in to pick up the clothes they had dropped off, there were a ton of mistakes. Items were missing. Orders had gotten combined. Tags that should have helped keep everything on track were all out of place.

“And I started getting super frustrated. My boss was getting very frustrated as well. Customers were getting frustrated. And I couldn't figure out what it was. I was like, ‘I know I'm not dumb. I don't get what the problem is.’”

So she went to figure it out and it was then that she learned about the special wiring in her brain, including a form of number dyslexia that had gone previously undetected throughout her entire elementary, middle, and high school years. But in true powerhouse fashion, Robin didn’t let that stop her, and there’s a lot we can learn from her experiences: 

• Big insights can come from anywhere. The myth surrounding transformation—along with other things like creativity, inspiration, change—is that it requires big action, mind-opening exercises, or some kind of grand gestures. But you don’t have to go too far to have an aha moment, as long as you know how to recognize them. For Robin, a life-changing lesson came straight from these mistakes she kept making.  “If I hadn't had that one little dry cleaning job, I probably would have had a lot of problems and challenges going forward still at that point. And I wouldn't have learned maybe ever, but at least until later, that I had to find a different way to read and absorb and retain information.”

• Adapt to your vulnerabilities. Work to your strengths. If all of us had the same learning style, working style, or leadership style, the workplace would be an incredibly imbalanced place. I’ve had colleagues and team members who are amazing strategists, but not-so-hot in client relations; ones that see the big picture and others that live in the details. And while it’s important to continue to hone the skills that need sharpening, vulnerabilities can also bring about superpowers. When I asked Robin about the monotony of a day in the life of a dry cleaning employee, she said, “There was no monotony for me, because I've learned I have special brain wiring, and I can do a repeat task for longer than almost anybody… And I also did Quality Control, so when things came out, I made sure that there were no double creases, not lint or fuzz balls—which is also good for the way my mind works.”

• Learn first. Change later. Even though Robin’s primary responsibility was for servicing the customers, her self-proclaimed “obsession” for how things worked—and how to make them better—started here. In fact, this one job was the first time where she got to be involved in something and better understand how everybody and every step played a role in delivering the final product.  “I'd be back there bothering the person who was responsible for [pressing] the arms of everything, how that worked, what they did… I've always been so curious about how things get done and how things get made and what are the processes, procedures, equipment—whatever that service or product is—and improving it.” There are many lessons here: about the value of curiosity or the importance of empowering team members to understand where their specific responsibility fits into the grander scheme. But more subtle, and perhaps more salient, is the time that Robin takes to talk to everyone, to learn about the different aspects of production, to understand how it all works together before thinking of how to improve it. 

Learning from everyday experiences, leaning into our strengths, and always understanding before we act—the lessons that Robin McBride took away from working at a dry cleaners are ones we can all take with us into our professional lives.

Listen to the full episode below: