862 Erica Small: Co-Founder of Yes Way Rosé

0:00Erica Small:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be.

0:09Kara Goldin:You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out.

0:14Erica Small:So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control.

0:18Kara Goldin:Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing.

1:10Kara Goldin:Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings.

1:55Kara Goldin:Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. One thing no one tells you about hiring globally is how unclear the costs can be.

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3:28Kara Goldin:The fastest-growing companies in the world use Pebble to stay organized, reduce risk, and scale faster. Pebble simplifies global people operations so you can focus on building the business. Special offer for podcast listeners of The Kara Golden Show. Pebble is normally$3.99 a month per employee, already a no-brainer for what you get. But right now, there's a limited time offer on their site that makes it even easier to get started. Go to highpebl.ai before it's gone. That's highpebl.ai. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Have you ever noticed that some of the strongest brands don't start with a product?

4:20Kara Goldin:They start with a point of view, a feeling, a community, an idea people want to be a part of before there's anything to buy. That's exactly what happened with my next guest and the next brand, Yes Way Rosé. So incredible. So that's exactly what happened with Yes Way Rosé. What began as a social media idea between two lifelong friends became one of the leading rosé brands in the U.S. with more than 13 million bottles sold and a clear modern voice in a category that has traditionally taken itself quite seriously. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about building community before product breaking into wine as outsiders, scaling into major retail.

5:13Kara Goldin:and I'm excited to be joined by Erica Small, the co-founder of Yes Way Rosé, to talk all about how Yes Way Rosé is leading and is unique and different and very, very excited. So Erica, welcome to The Kara Golden Show. Thank you so much for having me. This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing.

5:59Kara Goldin:Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI powered interviews for initial screenings.

6:45Kara Goldin:Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms. This time of year, I want more energy, not more steps. The days are longer, the calendar is filling up, and I want to feel as good as the weather, but summer routines only work if they're easy.

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8:21Kara Goldin:It's also HSA and FSA eligible for reimbursement. Plus, Grooms is designed for bioavailability with ingredients backed by over 35 ,000 research publications to support gut health, energy, immunity, beauty, recovery, and cognition. And here's the best part. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at Grooms.co. That's code golden at gruns.co. Very excited. So let's start with the obvious question. What is Yes Way Rosé?

9:01Erica Small:Yes Way Rosé is a modern rosé brand rooted in friendship, community, and culture. We make great tasting rosé from the south of France with a focus on balance and freshness and reflect how people drink today. Our leading skew is our still 750 milliliter bottle of French rosé. It's from the IGP Mediterranean Appalachian. And then we also have cans, we have sparkling, and then we have our new non-alcoholic French Rosé.

9:40Kara Goldin:I love it. Well, and that's very unique for doing a non-alcoholic wine. I know out there we've seen a huge explosion in beers, but that is not an easy thing, I understand, to actually accomplish.

9:55Erica Small:Yeah, it's actually something we had been, Nikki and I had been talking about for a couple of years, about how we could enter the non-alcoholic space. Did it make sense for us? What already existed in the market? What didn't? And it was an ongoing conversation. And then last year, it happened that we were both pregnant at the same time, and we realized what was missing was that crisp glass of French rosé just sans the alcohol. And so it was a good time for us to really dive into that, you know, exploration of what a great tasting rosé could be that delivered that experience. And we're really happy with what we came up with.

10:36Kara Goldin:This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Naturium. I think skincare gets complicated fast. So many products look great, sound great, and promise a lot. But if the routine is too expensive or too hard to keep up with, it's not something most people can stick with. And that's the thing I've learned. Consistency matters. The best routine is the one you can actually do every day. That's why I love Naturium. Their products make it so much easier to stay consistent because they feel luxurious, but they're actually affordable enough to use every day. I've been using their Glow Getter Bundle and I genuinely love it.

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12:05Kara Goldin:Give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow up it deserves. Go to naturium.com slash caragolden for 10 % off your first purchase today. That's naturium.com slash caragolden. This episode of the Caragolden Show is brought to you by Superhuman. You know, I've seen this happen so many times. A company gets excited about AI, makes the investment, rolls it into the team, and a few months later, only a small group of power users are really using it. Everyone else quietly goes back to the way they were working before. That's why Superhuman Go stood out to me. It's built for how teams actually work.

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13:31Kara Goldin:Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

14:24Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

15:04Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform powering some of the best run businesses. When you've built something from the ground up, you learn to recognize operational excellence. The businesses that feel seamless to customers are often the ones with the strongest systems working behind the scenes. Square brings those systems together, helping owners run their business with greater clarity, confidence, and control. And here's the thing. Square is way more than just a payment swipe or tap.

15:44Kara Goldin:It's a system that keeps an entire business humming, taking payments, managing inventory, running payroll, tracking sales, all in one connected platform. And it grows with you, whether you're running a one-person pop-up or opening your next location. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee. And they use Square, and you can feel the difference as a consumer. Fast checkout, receipts sent instantly, even loyalty rewards, it just feels polished. So if you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down.

16:25Kara Goldin:Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden. Run your business smarter, Square. Get started today. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best. So you started in 2013. Yes. You didn't start with vineyards or a winery. You don't live in the wine country, kind of in the area sort of where I am, or with wine industry background. But you started with this point of view, an idea. And what did you think was just missing in the industry? Obviously, there's been rosé out there for a while, but yours is obviously so unique.

17:22Kara Goldin:And why do you think it took off the way it did?

17:25Erica Small:Well, in 2013 is when Nikki, my best friend and co-founder, started. We had been living in New York, working in media and fashion. My background was as a writer and editor, and Nikki, a graphic designer and art director. We grew up together. We were living in New York, going out all the time, never had a go-to drink. I would order the house red, she would order the house white. We didn't want to be around a wine list. And then when we discovered French Rosé, it changed everything for us. And it was the taste, but it was also, we thought the color was so beautiful. We thought it was so fun. And we loved that we could, you know, drink this French wine.

18:06Erica Small:And it felt chic and everything. But we didn't really connect to any of the brands that existed. It was a little more old school feeling. It didn't reflect our style or how we felt about Rosé, which is really social and fun. And we started the Instagram account at Yes for Rosé in 2013, just to sort of do something with all of this, all of this fun and humor between us. And then Nikki designed our first product, which was a tote bag, which we called a tote. And it featured our logo, the logo that's now on the wine bottle. And that's how we started the brand by selling, growing the lifestyle business and building the community.

18:52Erica Small:We each started putting$100 in and that was our capital to start and grew from there. So it was a very organic roots that started with just me and my bestie and our shared passion for rosé and that we knew that there would be other people who felt about the wine that we the way that we did. And that really helped us build a community.

19:17Kara Goldin:So you spent years identifying trends and emerging brands as an editor. So, you know, you definitely had experience building communities and content. What was the point when you got to, okay, we're going to launch this product?

19:37Erica Small:Well, we had grown the brand, the lifestyle brand for a while. And this was in around a few years after we had grown this brand. And we decided to really look inward and say, you know, where are we taking this? How do we want to grow? We didn't come from wine backgrounds. So once we started the brand, we became experts. We became friends with sommeliers and meeting everyone we could in the industry, you know, traveling to different vineyards and places to learn everything we could. And so around 2016, we decided we wanted to go all in and make rosé, that we were ready to put this product in the market.

20:26Erica Small:and we had felt confident in what we wanted the product to be. And we want it to be from the south of France. We want it to be very classic and refreshing. We want it to be approachable in price and availability. And then how, you know, we started meeting with everyone that we could. And it just so happened that we were also had sent a lifestyle collaboration deck to Target for like a design partnership. and it got in the hands of their adult beverage buyer who said if he had this wine, he would sell it. And so that really kicked things into high gear for us. And we had because there had been built in demand from our community, which had grown to a great size and the brand, which was recognizable, even though it didn't yet exist as a wine.

21:16Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. So you just launched with one SKU then?

21:22Erica Small:We just launched with the Still Rosé, and then later that first year, we introduced the Sparkling, and then the following year, the Cans. So it was, you know, one core skew to start, and then we focused on other products, other French rosé products that we've introduced, the most recent being the non-alcoholic.

21:46Kara Goldin:Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform powering some of the best run businesses. When you've built something from the ground up, you learn to recognize operational excellence. The businesses that feel seamless to customers are often the ones with the strongest systems working behind the scenes. Square brings those systems together, helping owners run their business with greater clarity, confidence, and control. And here's the thing. Square is way more than just a payment swipe or tap. It's a system that keeps an entire business humming, taking payments, managing inventory, running payroll, tracking sales, all in one connected platform.

22:29Kara Goldin:And it grows with you, whether you're running a one-person pop-up or opening your next location. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee. And they use Square, and you can feel the difference as a consumer. Fast checkout, receipts sent instantly, even loyalty rewards. It just feels polished. So if you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down. Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden.

23:18Kara Goldin:Run your business smarter, Square. Get started today. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring pro. Hi, Kara here. First of all businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast.

24:03Kara Goldin:That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed.

24:49Kara Goldin:Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. So building an audience, a company of any sort is challenging, But getting into physical goods is super challenging. And then getting into the alcohol industry is even more challenging. And then direct-to-consumer obviously came later, but you're dealing with distributors.