On New Chapters

Saying goodbye to the small business we built from a blog

My husband Shannon and me at the third “birthday party” of our original wine tasting location in Shelby Township, Michigan.

Note: This blog contains references to the COVID-19 pandemic. I fully acknowledge that my experience pales in comparison to people who died, who became ill, or who lost loved ones. It pales in comparison to all of the health care workers who put themselves in death’s way every day, all of the first responders, all of the teachers, etc. In short, I know I am very fortunate in so many ways. But every human on this planet was touched in some way, great or small, by the pandemic; for me, it was via the impact to the small business I tethered my heart to for many years. Thank you for reading.

When I left my longtime newspaper reporting job to launch a small business with my husband, Shannon, in 2012, we jokingly dubbed it “Life 2.0.” We went on to open two additional locations over the subsequent four years, calling those developments “Life 2.1” and “Life 2.2.” Each time, the changes carried both heart-soaring euphoria (I own a business! I’m my own boss! This thing I created is doing well!) and brain-crushing stress (I’m responsible for keeping my own job afloat—and forty other people’s! The AC broke again—how much is it going to cost this time? Why do people have to be so rude on Yelp?).

And now, I’m officially moving on to Life 3.0.

For the past year, we’ve been in talks to sell our business, Michigan By The Bottle Tasting Room, a trio of wine bars partnered with Michigan wineries to bring local wines closer to Metro Detroit. (Yes, Michigan makes wine—it’s actually one of the top wine grape-growing states in the country!) Because the sale involved an alcohol-serving business, it required the blessing of the state’s liquor commission, and let’s just say the MLCC isn’t known for its promptness. The sale that’s been pending for many months finally closed last week.

Because of the length of lead time involved, I’ve had a lot of time to process the impending onset of Life 3.0. I know it’s the best decision for my husband and me, and for the business itself. MBTB will have a new lease on life, thanks to new owners who have the enthusiasm I lost to the pandemic and the resources to invest, improve and expand.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of complicated emotions about it.

My husband holding the coming soon banner for our first location in Shelby Township in 2012.

I actually wrote another blog called “The Long Goodbye” a couple of months ago, when I thought the sale was imminent. It was a lot sadder. It went into great detail about how the COVID era broke my entrepreneurial spirit. How social media ground me down, because I vented my fears about losing everything I built and was shushed and slapped down by people who I considered friends. How when we were finally allowed to fully reopen in 2021, I expected to feel ecstatic, and instead felt nothing at all.

Over the course of that COVID year, I belatedly realized something I should have already learned long before: Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how hard you work. It doesn’t matter how much of yourself you sacrifice to achieve success. It doesn’t matter how much you tether your entire self-worth to a concept outside of yourself. Forces completely out of your control can snatch it away with no apologies. And there’s nothing you can do about it. So yeah, in short, life isn’t fair. Seems obvious, right? But until then, I sincerely believed if I just worked hard enough, tried hard enough, ran myself into the ground enough, flogged myself enough, I could rise above any external variables.

In the wake of that epiphany, trying to reconnect emotionally with the business that had dominated virtually every waking moment of my life for years seemed impossible.

Making the best of it during the first COVID shutdown in 2020.

But after some time and space, I realized I don’t need to belabor all of that complex grief in a public blog (any more than I just did). These days, I’m finding catharsis by funneling some of it into my next novel. Relying on my fictional characters as an outlet helped me shelve my “dear diary” blog for this more upbeat one.

So! Here we go. Smiles and jazz hands and brave faces!

More than a dozen years later, it’s still difficult for me to believe that my husband and I spun a just-for-fun Michigan wine blog (that had only a handful of advertisers and hemorrhaged money due to our extravagant wine purchasing habits) into a brick-and-mortar venture that positively thrived for many years. So many Michigan small businesses folded during the pandemic, so I’m especially grateful that the business we started from scratch will live on and hopefully flourish under the new owners, who are truly passionate about the Michigan wine industry.

I’m incredibly grateful to have helmed MBTB for all these years. To have made a living and been able to create (via marketing, events, etc.) on my own terms. To have the opportunity to make a significant and lasting impact on the Michigan wine industry, which continues to garner increasing national and international acclaim.

I’m grateful to our amazing team members who were the boots on the ground, especially after I moved more behind the scenes in 2021, capping off many years of slinging wine behind the bar. I’m grateful to our loyal customers—thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support. I’m grateful for all of the lovely people we met throughout the process: winemakers, winery owners, grape growers, fellow small business owners, musicians, trivia hosts, vendors, chefs, etc., etc. I’m grateful for the adjacent experiences: judging wine competitions, championing Michigan wine on TV, writing for wine magazines, becoming a certified sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers.

Our team just before the Auburn Hills location opened in 2016.

My favorite part about my job as MBTB’s owner was hospitality—specifically, organizing and hosting events. Creating the marketing materials, laying out the logistics, and then executing the plan. Seeing our guests’ happy faces and receiving their positive feedback afterward. It’s a high that will be hard to replicate. I was sincerely honored when our customers wanted to spend their limited leisure time with us. They trusted us not to waste that precious time, to deliver a quality product and experience.

We were proud to receive the Best Wine Bar designation from Hour Detroit magazine annually, 2014-2021.

One of the things I admire most about Millennials and Gen Z-ers is their ability to embrace new chapters with grace and gusto. The generation before me had a tendency to soldier through 30+ years at the same workplace, valuing consistency over novelty (and, let’s be real, the now mostly defunct concept of pensions). The generation after me seems more open to following their dreams, taking the leap, not letting themselves get bogged down in habitual routines. YOLO, and all that.

And me? As a tail-end Gen X-er/Xennial (or “geriatric millennial,” as one of my younger co-workers so kindly called me, ha), I’m somewhere in the middle. I yearn for both novelty and routine in equal measure. Sometimes I need a push from the universe to move on. Maybe the pandemic was the push I needed—even if it was unwanted, and more of a violent shove than a gentle nudge.

Shannon and me outside of our then-pending third location in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 2016.

So, what’s next in Life 3.0? As a sufferer of severe seasonal depression, I—like many—re-evaluated my life post-pandemic and knew I needed to make a major change. I became a Miami snowbird in 2022 (running MBTB remotely with Shannon during the winter, thanks to our fantastic onsite team) and have steadily increased my time here. The persistent sunshine is good for the soul, and I’m a sucker for year-round palm trees and bougainvillea. I’ve joined the leadership team at a well-known indie bookstore, Books & Books. I found a writing community, signed with a literary agent in January, and am preparing to go out on submission to publishers with my debut novel. I’m going to cherish the time to relax and slow down that I rarely had while owning a business. (OK, I’m going to try at least. I’m no good at sitting still.) Detaching my self-worth from this career will be challenging, but I’ve done it before (messily, when I left reporting), and I’ll do it again.

Miami is the next chapter, but I also acknowledge that this—like working as a newspaper reporter, like owning wine bars—is unlikely to be forever. Life 4.0 and 5.0 (and perhaps beyond) remain on the horizon for me still. I’ll be better prepared to embrace them when they arrive.

Lifting a glass today to MBTB—its past, and its future. I’ll always be proud of what we did, Shannon.

And now, it’s time to turn the page.

Cheers,
Cort

Shannon, me, and our dog, Brida, outside our Auburn Hills location in 2021. Photo by Sarah Gendich