Meet Laura Huston

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Huston.

Hi Laura, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in Kansas and knew I wanted to move away from home to attend school. As I was looking for colleges I fell in love with Vanderbilt University and once at school in Nashville. With a love of math and the environment, I was encouraged to apply for engineering. My first job was more on the technical side but quickly turned to corporate sales and marketing with lots of travel. After I had my first son, I decided to stay home to be with him and quit corporate life. I knew I needed something for myself during these years so I began a photography business out of my home. I focused on family and child portraiture and got my first taste of being an entrepreneur. After moving to Seattle in 2009 one of my photography jobs led to my first marketing and branding contract. This turned into five years as Marketing and Operations Director for a Seattle-area restaurant group. Here I was able to combine my technical and marketing background to rapidly grow the company by creating a successful event marketing program and using technology to revamp the customer experience.

A large part of this success was a collaboration with the local wine industry. As it turns out, this exposure to the wine community hit a passion that continues today. This work earned awards from Washington Wine Commission as Independent Restaurant of the Year and a Grand Award. With this newfound love for wine, and meeting so many wonderful people who were using art and science to craft boutique wines, I once again decided to take a leap and return to entrepreneurship. In 2016 I created Belle & Bottle, The great thing about this industry is that most people are here because they love it. There are many wineries that are small entrepreneurs just like me, there to make a stamp on the industry in their own way. By focusing on these boutique producers and using my voice/reach to share these wines with a bigger audience, I am able to turn this experience into learning, connecting with people, and supporting small business owners. We use a combination of our online store, wine clubs, and an array of wine events, always with importance placed on hospitality and attention to detail, which I think is lacking in many businesses today.

After the pandemic, the need to be closer to family was more important than ever, and with my love for this area, we took the leap to move back to the Nashville area. I look at this as a great opportunity to bring what we are doing in Washington state to this growing market and am very excited for what lies ahead. After offers on several properties fell thru during the bidding wars of the last few years, we are currently looking near the Franklin area for a business site for Belle & Bottle. In the meantime, we are already working on some events and still working through our wine clubs and other offerings.

A big addition for 2022 is the creation of our Foundation which will focus on female entrepreneurs. This allows us to better focus our goals for Belle & Bottle so proceeds from our wines and events can now be channeled to this cause. We featured a Belle & Bottle Wine Awards with an all-female panel of judges to kick off our wine events dedicated to elevating female voices in wine. This event will be moving to Nashville, and the judges couldn’t be more excited to visit!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I don’t know many entrepreneurs who had a smooth road, but that is probably for the best. The bumps are the character-building exercises (although it usually feels more like doom and gloom at the time) and this is really what shapes the company. I think the biggest obstacle for me is funding, as it is for most women. Last year women received less than 2% of VC funding, down 25% which is absurd given the low number that it already was. Without funding, growth and scaling are next to impossible.

I took a risk to self-fund and have good growth numbers but nothing near what I had hoped. One of the things we will be focused on with the Belle & Bottle Foundation is working with women on funding and growth. I look forward to taking these personal experiences I have had and making them a little easier for others.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
What I love most about wine is the way it blends things together. Nature and (Wo)man work in concert together to bring out the best. The community of owners, winemakers, and business people working as a collective to raise up the profile of a region. When you learn about wine, removing pretenses and just enjoying bringing people together to sip and enjoy. I love that bottles are big enough to be shared and think this is an important element.

We are launching our new campaign ‘wine on a mission’ to focus on all of these things. Wine is part of bringing together family and friends, celebrating a special moment, and enjoying life. These moments will help us make an impact in the world through our charity and also our voices and impact from our events. I am most proud of the work I have begun to champion women in the wine industry and know there is so much more to come. I am also proud to set an example for my sons, to show them with perseverance you can accomplish your dreams.

When Covid hit and an end to in-person everything, I basically lost 80-90% of my business and had to flush an entire program that had taken a year to build. But out of some work and networking I had done in the past, I was featured in Food & Wine’s ‘Top Wine Clubs to Join Now’ article online and was able to pivot and double my business during the pandemic through an entirely different avenue.

I think during this time, the lesson was each day making yourself get back on the saddle, but also occasionally just realizing that mentally every now and then it was ok to acknowledge that you just couldn’t today, and vow to be back there tomorrow. That grace was something that I think is important for women and moms.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
I have just signed up for Self-made which is an organization started by Brit Moran of Brit +Co who is also on a mission to empower female entrepreneurs. She has a new podcast that is called First in Line and I’m loving listening to her interviews with top entrepreneurs. I’m currently listening to anything I can find about NFTs and learning about how web3 will be shaping our lives. And there are lots of wine blogs and podcasts so I try to dabble in lots of those to stay current on my industry.

I have recently participated in several online seminars for entrepreneurs and I can’t tell you how helpful it has been to have people providing resources and reminding you of why you are doing this. Being an entrepreneur can feel isolating. Even though you have plenty of family and friends around, it is nice to have people you can turn to for business help or inspiration.

Pricing:

• Wine Clubs start at $55/monthly
• or $99/quarter

Contact Info:

• Website: belleandbottle.com
• Instagram: @belleandbottle
• Facebook: facebook.com/belleandbottle
• Other: belleandbottleawards.com

Image Credits
Richard Duval Images