The Exchanges

Q being transparent about what you don't know, because what you'll often find, Oni, is that a lot of people will want to help you. They will want to give you advice. Fawn, I remember when you started with the distillery, you went and talked to a lot of people, and, and sure, some people might have dismissed you, but there were people who really did want to help out, right?

A Right. Oh, absolutely. In the beginning, there were 20 different historians, archivists, archaeologists, genealogists, who all got together and none ever charged me. So you will find that there are people who genuinely want to simply help you. Guy and I are, are on here talking to you right now. We simply want to help you. So to Guy's point, if you are transparent about what you don't know, but you can do that and still have a level of confidence in who you are as a leader, That confidence of whatever my hands touches, I can make it succeed. I may have to learn it, because I knew nothing about whiskey coming into this, and I mean nothing. But you can learn that piece.

AI assessment note: “Right. Oh, absolutely. In the beginning, there were 20 different historians”

Q And what would you do? Would you, like, call newspapers and magazines and trade publications and try to place articles?

A I would do that, but I would also, um, integrate it in events. And so I remember, for instance, with Thomas Blackshear, there was a, a big Hollywood Bowl event that was going to be with a bunch of jazz artists. And remember, I knew all these people from growing up, right? The music world was very easy for me to touch. And so I'd pick up the phone and call them directly and say, Hey, this is, this is what I'm doing. What are you thinking? And again, People weren't getting paid for product placement, right? And that wasn't even a thing. So me going in and saying, hey, can I place these products? They're like, sure. Where do you want to put them?

AI assessment note: “I would do that, but I would also, um, integrate it in events.”

Q But still, Fawn, I mean, this all had to be challenging, right? I mean, I mean, I read a story that, uh, certainly in the early days, you actually had Keith, your husband, pretend like he was the CEO of the company. Is that in order to get, because you weren't getting callbacks, is that true?

A It wasn't just I wasn't getting callbacks. My entire team, my entire leadership team are women, and we were having a call one day, and I realized that every single One of us had the same problem, which is whatever it was we needed. This was before the brand came out. We were trying to get things in place, the distributor, the bottles, corks, things that we have to have, things that you were talking about earlier, all of these different things that we had to have to put this label out. No one was calling us back. Bottling partners, no one. And, and so I, I told Kate and Sherry, I said, let me test out a theory here. And then I called Keith, and I said, babe, can you call all of these people? And Keith called every single person on our collective list, and he got through either immediately when calling, or they called him back by the end of the day. He didn't have to wait 24 hours to get in touch with any of those people that we had been trying to reach for three and four weeks.

AI assessment note: “Keith called every single person on our collective list, and he got through either immediately”

Q kind of also pivoted once again in your career. Um, you'd worked as a manager in the hotel industry at some, some pretty top hotels, and then I think around twenty-ten, um, you started to write as a, as a freelance writer, and it really came out of a, I guess, a blog you started, maybe on a whim, uh, which is called Happy Wives Club. Yeah, what's the story?

A Yeah, I didn't even know it was a blog, but yes, I called it just a website because I wasn't actually blogging on it. I introduced who I was and said, I want to find a million women around the world who are just like me, who are not represented in the media, who are not represented, whose marriage, it doesn't look anything like Desperate Housewives, Real Housewives, or all of these books that are now popping up that are, you know, really berating men and And so I, I said, I know that there are other wives out there like me who have amazing husbands who support them, who love them, who are not caricatures. And I said, I'm going to start a club for women like me, and I'm going to call it and just like literally paused for a second. And I said, I know what I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it the happy wives club. And so I emailed it to one of my sisters and three of my girlfriends who I knew had similar marriages. And then they sent it out, and within four weeks, I had people who had signed up from 20 different countries.

AI assessment note: “I'm going to start a club for women like me... Happy wives club”

Q but, but it seems like you had a huge boost in sales in 2020, part of that because alcohol and beverage sales in general had a huge year because of the pandemic, and in part because there was a greater awareness around your brand and other black owned brands in the wake of, you know, massive social justice demonstrations around the country. Is that, is that true? Did that happen?

A I don't think so. I actually don't think that either one had to do with the propelling of our company. And the reason why I can say that is because we're craft spirits. We're independent. No independent saw big years last year because the big guys, once the pandemic happened, they've got to keep those shares up. Right. And so they took over the shelf space. There was very little shelf space that remained for craft distillers. And I think that we did something very different during the pandemic, which is what propelled us and continued to propel us through the summer, which is we had 13 open sales positions. And once we got shut down and were quarantined, I told the team, we are not changing our strategy. We are staying pedal to the metal. Our 13 positions were We are going to pick up people that have been furloughed and laid off rock stars all over this country, and what I want for all of us to do during this period of time when we are in quarantine and we can't get out in the field is everyone write a marketing plan for your specific market. I told my team, do not pay attention to what's going on in the world. We are going to hunker down and be ready for the moment of Markets begin to open up. So one of the ideas, for instance, was from my team member in Ohio, Ronica, and she had this idea of to-go cocktails. Now, to-go cocktails were not legal anywhere at the time she had the…

AI assessment note: “I actually don't think that either one had to do with the propelling”

Q So, after leaving home, I, I guess you started living independently and even spent a few years in, um, in, in shelters, in homeless shelters, right?

A I did. I went to a place called Covenant House. It's, uh, a homeless shelter for adults in Hollywood, and it was probably one of the most important moments of my life because I'd always been independent, uh, And at Covenant House, the way that they have it set up, it's absolutely brilliant. I think it's one of the most amazing transition places that has ever been created. You go out, you get a job, you come back, you bring the paychecks, they save all of your money for you. So you're not having to do any of that. You literally just turn over the checks. They save it for you. And then once you get to a certain amount and you can go out and get your own apartment, that's what you do.

AI assessment note: “I did. I went to a place called Covenant House.”

Q pace, um, since, since your founding. Um, do you have, I mean, I have to imagine it's so cash intensive, you know, and this is a business show, so we obviously talk about, you know, the challenges of, Of running, uh, running a business and the cash involved. I mean, is it, is there a clear horizon when, when, if, if you haven't yet reached profitability? Is that, is that

A So yes, we're, we have achieved profitability, but at the same time, we're building out a fifty million dollar distillery that we've already put more than 25 into. And, and so our distillery, even though it's open to the public and phase one and phase two are open and, and it's sold out every weekend and, and thank God for all of the people who literally pilgrimage to, to nearest green distillery because they come and they get shirts and hats and we've got I hired the former president of Disney store worldwide to merchandise. And, but no, it's incredibly, incredibly expensive. I've raised over sixty million dollars. That's not enough. We've had to structure debt in such a way to be able to make sure that we're continuing to, to build out this legacy. And that distillery is not cheap. So yes, we are in the black, but at the same time, Everything that we earn, all profitability goes into building of, of the distillery.

AI assessment note: “So yes, we're, we have achieved profitability”

Q So, after leaving home, I, I guess you started living independently and even spent a few years in, um, in, in shelters, in homeless shelters, right?

A I did. I went to a place called Covenant House. It's, uh, a homeless shelter for adults in Hollywood, and it was probably one of the most important moments of my life because, uh, I'd always been independent. And at Covenant House, the way that they have it set up, it's absolutely brilliant. I think it's one of the most amazing transition places that has ever been created for, for people that were in situations like mine. And they have counselors that are set up that basically you go out, you get a job, you come back, you bring the paychecks, they save all of your money for you. So you're not having to do any of that. You literally just turn over the checks and They save it for you, and then once you get to a certain amount, and you can go out and get your own apartment, that's what you do.

AI assessment note: “I did. I went to a place called Covenant House.”

Q but it seems like you had a huge boost in sales in 2020, part of that because alcohol and, and beverage sales in general had a huge year because of the pandemic, and in part because there was a greater awareness around your brand and other black owned brands in the wake of, you know, massive social justice demonstrations around the country. Is that, is that true? Did that happen?

A I don't think so. I actually don't think that either one had to do with the propelling of our company. And the reason why I can say that is because we're craft spirits. We're independent. No independent saw big years last year because the big guys, once the pandemic happened, they've got to keep those shares up. Right. And so they took over the shelf space. There was very little shelf space that remained for craft distillers. And I think that we did something very different during the pandemic, which is what propelled us and continue to propel us through the summer, which is we had 13 open sales positions. And once we got shut down and were quarantined, I told the team, we are not changing our strategy. We are staying pedal to the metal. Our 13 positions were We are going to pick up people that have been furloughed and laid off rock stars all over this country, and what I want for all of us to do during this period of time when we are in quarantine and we can't get out in the field is everyone write a marketing plan for your specific market. I told my team, do not pay attention to what's going on in the world. We are going to hunker down and be ready for the moment that Markets begin to open up. So one of the ideas, for instance, was from my team member in Ohio, Ronica, and she had this idea of to-go cocktails. Now, to-go cocktails were not legal anywhere at the time she had th…

AI assessment note: “I actually don't think that either one had to do with the propelling”

Q And, I mean, you obviously got an incredible grounding there, because I read that at, like, the age of 18, you, you actually started your own business at 18?

A Yeah, yeah. It, it happened a little more serendipitous than that. I was an intern for an African-American PR firm in Los Angeles. The woman who owned it, Pat Tobin, very, very, very popular publicist. And I don't even remember how I met her actually, but she brought me in. I was in as an intern and they were Working on a bunch of a different accounts and there were these two accounts that they were working on and I had radically different ideas about how to garner PR for these two particular companies. So the way they were thinking about PR is you send out a press release and you see who picks it up and you, you pitch the story. And I was looking at PR as something that was fully experiential, something that was literally interwoven Into other things. So, um, now what they would call that is brand integration, but at the time that didn't really exist. And so, you know, brand placements and things of that nature, that wasn't something happening in the early nineties, but it was how I was looking at how you garner earned media. And so for these two accounts, I had come up with a plan and it was so unfamiliar to the way that they did business, but the two clients. Clients absolutely loved the pitch, and so Pat said, run with it, you know, and, and keep in mind, so I, I'm about to turn 45, and if you put side-by-side pictures up of me at 18 and 45, I do not look that different, wh…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, yeah. It, it happened a little more serendipitous than that.”

Q But still, Fawn, I mean, this all had to be challenging, right? I mean, I mean, I read a story that, uh, certainly in the early days, you actually had Keith, your husband, pretend like he was the CEO of the company. Is that In order to get, cause you weren't getting callbacks. Is that true?

A It wasn't just, I wasn't getting callbacks. My entire team, my entire leadership team are women, and we were having a call one day, and I realized that every single one of us had the same problem, which is whatever it was we needed. This was before the brand came out. We were trying to get things in place, the distributor, the bottles, corks, things that we have to have, things that you were talking about earlier, all All of these different things that we had to have to put this label out, no one was calling us back. Bottling partners, no one. And, and so I, I told Kate and Sherry, I said, let me test out a theory here. And then I called Keith and I said, babe, can you call all of these people and tell them that Uncle Nearest is your company and this is what, all these things are what you are looking for. I want to see, because this industry has never really had women Own a spirit brand, specifically whiskey, that really had not happened before, so is it just the fact that they're not used to this, that they're not taking it seriously? And Keith called every single person on our collective list, and he got through either immediately when calling, or they called him back by the end of the day. He didn't have to wait 24 hours to get in touch with any of those people that we had been trying to reach for three and four weeks.

AI assessment note: “I called Keith and I said, babe, can you call all of these people”

Q Hmm, and I mean, you obviously got an incredible grounding there, because I read that at, like, the age of 18, you, you actually started your own business at 18?

A Yeah, yeah. It, it happened a little more serendipitous than that. I was an intern for an African-American PR firm in Los Angeles. The woman who owned it, Pat Tobin, very, very, very popular publicist, and I don't even remember how I met her actually, but she brought me in. I was in as an intern, and They were working on a bunch of a different accounts and there were these two accounts that they were working on and I had radically different ideas about how to garner PR for these two particular companies. So the way they were thinking about PR is you send out a press release and you see who picks it up and you, you pitch the story. And I was looking at PR as something that was fully experiential, something that That was literally interwoven into other things. So, um, now what they would call that is brand integration, but at the time that didn't really exist. And so, you know, brand placements and things of that nature, that wasn't something happening in the early nineties, but it was how I was looking at how you garner earned media. And so for these two accounts, I Had come up with a plan, and it was so unfamiliar to the way that they did business, but the two clients absolutely loved the pitch, and so Pat said, run with it, you know, and keep in mind, so I, I'm about to turn 45, and if you put side-by-side pictures up of me at 18 and 45, I do not look that different, which I'm…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, yeah. It, it happened a little more serendipitous than that.”

Q This is 2016 when you buy the place. You permanently relocate to, to Tennessee from LA. Did any of your friends say, like, what are you guys doing? What, are you, are you nuts?

A No, because it was so remarkable the way things unfolded. The, the, the realtor who helped us, so this is, you know, Jack's lineage, as it turns out, as we Continue doing the research, and I'm bringing my research into the property. She comes to me, and she says, hey, you know, I know you are, you're focused on a book and a movie, but if you ever decide to honor nearest with a bottle, I'll come out of retirement to make sure you get it right. Well, she was in the family business for 31 years. When she left Jack Daniel Distillery, she was their head of whiskey operations. Just the serendipitous nature of everything Every aspect and element that has happened, you could not convince me that this is completely natural, that there's, I have been convinced from very early on that there was something supernatural at play here, and so when I would share with our friends and family the different things that had happened since we arrived in Lynchburg, no one had any question whatsoever that we were to complete this mission.

AI assessment note: “No, because it was so remarkable the way things unfolded.”

Q This is 2016 when you buy the place. You permanently relocate to, to Tennessee from LA. Did any of your friends say, like, what are you guys doing? What, are you, are you nuts?

A No, because it was so remarkable the way things unfolded. The, the, the realtor who helped us, so this is, you know, Jack's lineage, as it turns out, as we continue doing the, the research, and I'm bringing my research into The property , she comes to me and, and she says, hey, you know, I know you are, you're focused on a book and a movie, but if you ever decide to honor nearest with a bottle, I'll come out of retirement to make sure you get it right. Well, she was in the family business for 31 years. When she left Jack Daniel Distillery, she was their head of whiskey operations. Just the serendipitous nature of every aspect and element that has happened, you could not Convince me that this is completely natural. That there's, I have been convinced from very early on that there was something supernatural at play here. And so when I would share with our friends and family the different things that had happened since we arrived in Lynchburg, no one had any question whatsoever that we were to complete this mission. No one.

AI assessment note: “No, because it was so remarkable the way things unfolded.”

Q Wow. All right, so you're running this PR firm for a few years, and was it just you running it?

A No. So this is why my PR firm failed. It wasn't just me. So what I, what I understood was, you know, how to get clients, and how to do this integration, and how to do all these things. What I did not understand, and I think this kind of comes back to what we were talking about before, where there was, you know, my father and mother were majorly downgrading, but they Didn't want anyone to know they were downgrading, so they still had this very big persona, even though they didn't have a lot. Well, that was me in business, so I hired a ton of people, and, uh, and, and so I could have grown that thing pretty big, but where I got in trouble was this whole larger persona than what it was, and so I hired far too many people For what was needed at that time and ran out of money. No one really knew I was having, my company was having these financial challenges. I knew that there was only a matter of time before it would fold, but nobody else really knew that. And let's just say I do business different now, by the way.

AI assessment note: “No. So this is why my PR firm failed. It wasn't just me.”

Q But at the time in, in 2017, and did they send a cease and desist letter? Did they?

A No, no, no, no, no, no. We had interesting conversations, but I mean, for me, and I said it to them from day one, That my job in cementing Nearest's legacy was about building up the legacy of one person without harming the legacy of another. And, and so that was a tightrope that only I had to balance on. And so I've always been very transparent with them. I've never asked permission, uh, because, well, I don't have to, But I've always been very transparent with them because I want for both of our brands and companies to continue to grow at astronomical rates. I want to see Jack's legacy continue to rise because the only reason we know of nearest his legacy versus all the other African-Americans who did work for so many of the, the bourbon distilleries whose names we still don't know. The only reason who that we know the name uncle nearest, the only reason that That Nearest Green distillery exists is because Jack Daniel's family made sure Nearest Green would never be forgotten. That's the only reason.

AI assessment note: “No, no, no, no, no, no. We had interesting conversations”

Q That's, that's the thing about like, so when, so is, is Tennessee whiskey smoother? Like, does it not have that like burning sensation that you get?

A It just depends because Because keep in mind, there's so many elements, uh, that go into it. How much you char the barrels is going to determine more than that initial filtration, but also how you filter on the other side of it after it's aged is also going to have a lot to do with it. And so you can have two different Tennessee whiskey makers using the exact same mash bill and process before it goes into the barrel and And it can taste completely different coming out based on where they, they age it in the warehouse, top floor, bottom floor, based on how they, how much they char. So we have for us, I can't speak for all of the whiskey companies are ours. We use triple filtration. So we obviously have the process that nearest taught to Jack and to other distillers that, and that process that was passed down to him from a Other enslaved people. This filtration that happens before it goes into the barrel, but then we do two additional filtrations when it comes out of the barrel, but it's already been filtered once before it goes into the barrel, so it's already starting off ahead.

AI assessment note: “It just depends because Because keep in mind, there's so many elements”

Q Wow. And that was the approach that, that your sales reps took?

A Absolutely. Because we had to understand that white males represent 30% of this country and a hundred percent Of the whiskeys up until uncle nearest, 100%. And so I would ask the question and then I'd go, I'll wait. And it was always amazing to see the enlightenment of those who look at there and they just one by one would look at every bottle and go, holy cow, this entire time, a country that was built and With blacks and whites, and this is our native spirit, and we know without question that African Americans, specifically the enslaved African Americans, were involved in every bit of the process from manufacturing to barrel making and barrel rolling and charring, and, and they would go home to, to whatever home they had covered in smoot, and, and just black from top to bottom because of all of the Hard work. And not one bottle on any shelf represented someone who was not white male.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. Because we had to understand that white males represent 30% of this country”

Q Wow. All right. So you're running this PR firm for a few years, and, and was it just you running it?

A No. So this is why my PR firm failed. It wasn't just me. So what I, what I understood was, you know, how to get clients and how to do this integration and how to do all these things were What I did not understand, and I think this kind of comes back to what we were talking about before, where there was, you know, my father and mother were majorly downgrading, but didn't want anyone to know they were downgrading. So they still had this very big persona, even though they didn't have a lot. Well, that was me in business. So I hired a ton of people and, uh, far too many people for what was needed at that time and ran out of money. Let's just say I do business different now, by the way.

AI assessment note: “No. So this is why my PR firm failed. It wasn't just me.”

Q that we've already discussed, totally dominated by a few major corporations. And, um, there are not a whole lot of women and there are not a whole lot of black women in this industry. I mean, I have to imagine, you know, whether it's intentional or not, There's kind of a network of people who know each other, and you know, call Jim, and how did you break into that?

A Without question, there was a lot of blockage coming into it, but the way that I look at it is, is that you just keep turning over every stone until you get it done, and so for me, it's not that I didn't have just a ton of hurdles, and I am, you know, positive some traps set. But I was absolutely determined and I truly, truly, and still believe that I had both Nearest and Jack in my sales. And so I would walk into situations with absolute abandon, believing without question that Nearest and Jack both wanted this story to be told and they wanted Nearest's legacy to be cemented. And for whatever reason, I have the great honor Of being the one who was chosen to do that.

AI assessment note: “you just keep turning over every stone until you get it done”

Q Okay. So, I mean, presumably, Fawn, Joanne needs to start thinking sort of broadly about how to structure this, right? Because now you can't build a business just on an Instagram. I mean, you can, but it's hard to build a business on just one Instagram profile and Direct messages.

A It is. Your story reminds me a lot of, I was just with Tito Beverage, who was built easily in America, the most successful beverage maker of a single bottle, just with his one vodka flavored vodka. But he began by making flavored vodkas for all of his friends, and which is the irony is, is now he refuses, under no circumstances will he make a flavored vodka. But how it began is he was making all these flavored vodkas And so he became known as the flavor vodka guy that show up at all the parties. It's like, where's Tito? And you know, uh, so, so your story reminds me of that, which, which I love because you have a great story. You do have to figure out how to pull out the, the, the best gems of that story and to also not make people think about boogers when you're about to tell them a story about your pie. So you, you do want to, you do want to figure out how to share that story in such a way that you don't gross people out. Leading up to you talking about your pie. But what I love about the time that you are calling in right now is we don't have to undo anything.

AI assessment note: “It is. Your story reminds me a lot of, I was just with Tito Beverage”