Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #65 Bottle Service feat. Nick Storm
Transcript
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- 0:59Speaker 2: All right, guys, welcome back, earn you a Lisha. We
- 1:02Speaker 2: got a very special episode today. Yeah, these are my
- 1:05Speaker 2: favorite episodes me. You know, me and Troy we grew
- 1:07Speaker 2: up on music before anything, so anytime we get to
- 1:10Speaker 2: hear backstories on music, entertainment and the whole industry, like
- 1:14Speaker 2: it's always special for us man.
- 1:18Speaker 3: To tell you.
- 1:19Speaker 2: He was just telling Chris got the shout out to Chris,
- 1:21Speaker 2: shout out to Kenny Burns, shout to all the guys
- 1:23Speaker 2: that that came on and was giving us hilarious stories
- 1:26Speaker 2: and all that, but also also informational absolutely education. Yeah sure,
- 1:31Speaker 2: so yes, I say that to say, we have none
- 1:34Speaker 2: other than the legendary Nick Stormy. Thank you, yeah, one force.
- 1:39Speaker 2: And so if you don't know Nick, Nick is a
- 1:43Speaker 2: very interesting guy. He kind of the brain behind the
- 1:47Speaker 2: blow up of Sorak, is that safe to say?
- 1:49Speaker 3: Safe to say that?
- 1:53Speaker 2: Former national brand ambassador for Sarak. So he's a wizard
- 1:56Speaker 2: in the spirits industry and he got his start in
- 1:59Speaker 2: the music industry. So we on E Y L we
- 2:02Speaker 2: cover every aspect of business, and the spirits industry is
- 2:06Speaker 2: a billion dollars billion dollar industry and it's something that
- 2:10Speaker 2: we haven't coverage yet. And you have twenty years of
- 2:12Speaker 2: experience from working with him now, they from working with
- 2:15Speaker 2: rock from all over, so we thought she was the
- 2:18Speaker 2: perfect guest to bring on. So first and foremost, thank
- 2:20Speaker 2: you thank you for coming.
- 2:21Speaker 3: No, no, thank you for having me. He's the first
- 2:23Speaker 3: guest who brought his.
- 2:24Speaker 2: Own one, you know, and had a long day, and.
- 2:29Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, I don't know if
- 2:31Speaker 3: I can drink on the thing. I know, drink Champs,
- 2:34Speaker 3: you can drink, but I had to bring my own wine.
- 2:38Speaker 3: Just you know, the smoothing the night. I mean, it's
- 2:41Speaker 3: fitish's the spirits industry.
- 2:42Speaker 2: Yeah, my man Wall Street Trapper shot out to him.
- 2:45Speaker 2: He was like, you know, the one thing I like
- 2:46Speaker 2: about your podcast is you got just the guests just
- 2:48Speaker 2: comings they are. There's no dress code, there's no rules.
- 2:52Speaker 3: Comings you off okay, because you know I had a
- 2:53Speaker 3: button down on the Yeah I did. And Jay was like, now, Nick,
- 2:57Speaker 3: go just I was like, shout out to Jeff Tweety
- 3:00Speaker 3: because he's gonna have some Sean John on on the
- 3:02Speaker 3: on the shot.
- 3:03Speaker 2: Okay, yeah my favor Yes, shot shout to my man
- 3:08Speaker 2: j crew Love. Yes, Lesure in his own right, thank
- 3:13Speaker 2: you for putting this together. We appreciate you. So all right, Nick,
- 3:16Speaker 2: So can we get your backstory? So you started in
- 3:17Speaker 2: the music industry. Yeah, right, and that's when people was
- 3:20Speaker 2: actually making real money in music, right.
- 3:22Speaker 3: Whoa like real money? This is CDs? Yeah, this was
- 3:25Speaker 3: CD time, you know, like I interned at Sony and
- 3:30Speaker 3: it was passing out CDs at night, like at all
- 3:33Speaker 3: clubs that was popping at that time, Like.
- 3:36Speaker 2: You name, it was so all right you started as
- 3:38Speaker 2: an intern.
- 3:39Speaker 3: As an intern at Sony, I think I got my
- 3:42Speaker 3: real I want to say this, I got my real
- 3:44Speaker 3: movement in the music business to learn the music business
- 3:48Speaker 3: more importantly with a gentleman by the name of Dave Hall.
- 3:51Speaker 3: Because when Dave got me, he not only just had
- 3:55Speaker 3: me as like you know, like I was Dave's assistant,
- 3:58Speaker 3: but slash general man of his studio. And that was
- 4:02Speaker 3: that entitled a lot because Dave at the time, I mean,
- 4:05Speaker 3: mind you that day's discography was crazy. So you know
- 4:07Speaker 3: he did all of Mary like biggest first hits on
- 4:10Speaker 3: on her first one, right, So he did all of
- 4:12Speaker 3: those tracks and then he was like really his biggest
- 4:17Speaker 3: next movement was like from Brownstone, Mariah Carey, dream Lover,
- 4:22Speaker 3: did Fantasy Madonna, you know, Horace Brown intro Now I'm
- 4:30Speaker 3: Bringing you Back, Yes, you know, and you know, so
- 4:33Speaker 3: crazy Dave and Eddie f like even think of the
- 4:36Speaker 3: Living Color, like the song that yeah. Yeah, So Eddie
- 4:42Speaker 3: and them had the Intouchables and the Untouchables had the
- 4:45Speaker 3: producers that was under him, you know, because back then
- 4:47Speaker 3: my guys had like the you know, like you know
- 4:49Speaker 3: how bad Boy and so yeah, so Dave was a
- 4:53Speaker 3: part of the Intouchables with Eddie f and them. But
- 4:56Speaker 3: Dave really gave me like the full movement of like
- 4:59Speaker 3: knowing exactly studio time, knowing exactly on sampling, like that
- 5:04Speaker 3: was one of my jobs too. It was like when
- 5:06Speaker 3: he sampled the record, you had to get it and
- 5:08Speaker 3: then see what sample it was and then send it
- 5:09Speaker 3: off and see exactly how much it costs. That was
- 5:12Speaker 3: like a really big part of the business back then.
- 5:14Speaker 3: That was like honestly, I used to think it was
- 5:16Speaker 3: a fun part of my job. So that was when
- 5:18Speaker 3: you were entering it. Yeah, no, no, that's when I
- 5:20Speaker 3: got a job.
- 5:21Speaker 2: I was like a job, go with your title.
- 5:23Speaker 4: I was.
- 5:24Speaker 3: Actually Dave had talked to me as general manager of DMH.
- 5:28Speaker 3: So DMH was like Dave Michael Hall, like that was
- 5:30Speaker 3: his whole production company, you know, and and that was
- 5:33Speaker 3: like a thing of that and it felt good because see,
- 5:36Speaker 3: David was for my vernon. I was because it was
- 5:38Speaker 3: like that whole now, So yeah, so it was like
- 5:42Speaker 3: it was a good time, not only a good time
- 5:43Speaker 3: with him, but just a good time of being in
- 5:45Speaker 3: the business at the time.
- 5:46Speaker 2: So all right, so the music business, you kind of
- 5:50Speaker 2: scaled that up right at that point in time. At
- 5:52Speaker 2: some point you was working with nas.
- 5:55Speaker 3: No, actually no, I was working I was working for
- 5:57Speaker 3: a lot of the records like. So then it was
- 6:01Speaker 3: that's how when I got into the business. I took
- 6:03Speaker 3: like some of my musical background, and I always wanted
- 6:06Speaker 3: to be a promoter because like even in college, I
- 6:08Speaker 3: was like doing promotions right right, I was like doing
- 6:11Speaker 3: my little like at Sneaky Pete's, right to doing little
- 6:15Speaker 3: parties up there. And then I took I took some
- 6:19Speaker 3: of that knowledge and I went to I met a
- 6:20Speaker 3: gentleman by the name of John Vasquez over at Justin's.
- 6:23Speaker 3: And John was the one who was like, Nick, you
- 6:27Speaker 3: know what, I got a Tuesday night open, how about
- 6:29Speaker 3: you put something together. I was like, bat, let's do
- 6:31Speaker 3: it like a little industry Tuesdays. So what I was
- 6:33Speaker 3: doing was taking the little snippets of the albums that
- 6:36Speaker 3: was coming out on Sony and Colombia. So I would
- 6:39Speaker 3: take those albums bring them to Justine like on Monday
- 6:42Speaker 3: and start promoting like your industry Tuesdays and be like yo, yeah,
- 6:47Speaker 3: sneak peaking of Lauren Hill's album Tuesday Night at Justin's
- 6:51Speaker 3: Like Lauryn Hill's gonna be there, No but the snippets,
- 6:55Speaker 3: So I would I would do that. So any artists
- 6:57Speaker 3: on Columbia, So anything on Columbia, Fuji's Cypress Hill. I
- 7:05Speaker 3: mean the list goes on Riah, but the list goes
- 7:08Speaker 3: on any but anything out of not only Columbia. But
- 7:10Speaker 3: I was Sony as well. I was taking Epic was
- 7:12Speaker 3: big too, so I was taking anything from there as well.
- 7:14Speaker 2: So the promoter, so pretty much promoter.
- 7:16Speaker 3: I was a promoter.
- 7:17Speaker 2: So promoters always was curious about this. They get how
- 7:20Speaker 2: did they get paid? They get pieces of the bar.
- 7:22Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Well see back then you had a scalable
- 7:26Speaker 3: rate of the bar, right like today, everybody's promoter today,
- 7:33Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, Like Jesus, but but back
- 7:36Speaker 3: then it was like you could, you could, you could
- 7:37Speaker 3: just take. But back then the door was like a
- 7:41Speaker 3: big thing, right because that's when people had to pay
- 7:43Speaker 3: to get in the party. Right, those are the good days.
- 7:47Speaker 3: Let me just stop there. Okay, those were the good
- 7:48Speaker 3: old days, like pay for to get in the party,
- 7:51Speaker 3: go to the bar, buy a drink and dance your
- 7:54Speaker 3: ass off. Go back to the bar, get some water,
- 7:57Speaker 3: and go back on the Hans floor.
- 7:59Speaker 2: Those are those days about.
- 8:00Speaker 3: And come on, that was that? I mean, yeah, that
- 8:03Speaker 3: but that was vi P. That's when you when you
- 8:05Speaker 3: was VIP back then, you mean something oh god like that.
- 8:08Speaker 3: But beyond that velvet rope that was really really Now
- 8:13Speaker 3: anybody's in the velvet rope. My man Joe from the
- 8:15Speaker 3: block is on the velvet rope. But no, but but yeah,
- 8:19Speaker 3: so I think, but promoters get paid on bar sales.
- 8:23Speaker 3: So but back then when I was getting I mean,
- 8:25Speaker 3: how I was getting paid was just bringing a good
- 8:27Speaker 3: night to the venue. So they were just doing like
- 8:28Speaker 3: a flat ray like you do this, that's good that
- 8:31Speaker 3: this is what you're gonna get probably like make three
- 8:33Speaker 3: hundred four hundred bucks. I was good though, Like that
- 8:35Speaker 3: was like a good night for me. It was cool
- 8:36Speaker 3: and then and didn't really put the pressure on you
- 8:38Speaker 3: with you know, like bar guarantee, like everybody like a
- 8:41Speaker 3: bar guarantee, Like somebody give you a venue for a
- 8:44Speaker 3: bar guarantee of three thousand and four thousand dollars. You
- 8:46Speaker 3: better hope that you make that guarantee.
- 8:48Speaker 2: You that bar.
- 8:49Speaker 3: Guarantee is like, okay, I'm gonna give you I'm gonna
- 8:52Speaker 3: give you justice on a Monday night. Your bar guarantee
- 8:55Speaker 3: is four grand. That means my bar gotta make four grand.
- 8:58Speaker 3: Now you going there, and you better do your promotion.
- 9:00Speaker 3: Now your bar come up short at three grand, you
- 9:03Speaker 3: got cover. You better cover that thousand. Yeah, and now
- 9:06Speaker 3: you got to cover that thousand for that four even
- 9:09Speaker 3: to guarantee, are you just taking a percentage of it
- 9:10Speaker 3: or you getting the whole thing? The whole thing. Yeah.
- 9:13Speaker 3: So it's just like that's but even now we have
- 9:16Speaker 3: a scalable right now, so now people are doing like,
- 9:19Speaker 3: all right, let's just say your bar guarantee was three thousand, right,
- 9:23Speaker 3: but now I'm gonna make the three thousand. But if
- 9:25Speaker 3: my ball makes four. So it's like if you if
- 9:28Speaker 3: your ball makes four thousand, you're supposed to get ten
- 9:30Speaker 3: percent your ball makes a See that's sometimes they do
- 9:32Speaker 3: this so they you can go between three thousand and five,
- 9:35Speaker 3: you're gonna get fifteen percent of the bar. You do
- 9:37Speaker 3: five to ten, you're gonna get twenty percent of the bar.
- 9:41Speaker 3: That's why, like everybody, that's why, of course you push
- 9:43Speaker 3: ball service so much, because you want your ball to
- 9:44Speaker 3: really ring numbers as a promoter so that you can
- 9:47Speaker 3: get paid out a lot more at the end of
- 9:48Speaker 3: the night.
- 9:49Speaker 2: So let me ask you this as far as if
- 9:50Speaker 2: you get ten thousand, Like once you reach that ten thousand,
- 9:53Speaker 2: do you get twenty percent of everything or just a
- 9:55Speaker 2: ten thousand twenty percent of five to ten? Like it's
- 9:59Speaker 2: you said it's ten.
- 10:00Speaker 3: Well, see most places, that's that's that's that's different place. Yeah,
- 10:06Speaker 3: it's different from everybody else, you know what I'm saying,
- 10:08Speaker 3: Like most places will do that off the ten or
- 10:10Speaker 3: most places will be doing off the twenty. So you know,
- 10:12Speaker 3: it depends on their account.
- 10:14Speaker 2: Okay, okay, all right, So then it's from there, all right,
- 10:17Speaker 2: So you got it. And then you say you got
- 10:19Speaker 2: the Monday Night football.
- 10:20Speaker 3: I had Monday Night Football popping. I had Industry Tuesdays popping,
- 10:25Speaker 3: and and I just I just wanted to be with it.
- 10:28Speaker 3: Like that's when like New York was like New York,
- 10:31Speaker 3: and it was like it was like a really good
- 10:32Speaker 3: scene and you and then and you just really wanted
- 10:35Speaker 3: to be a promoter at that time because it just
- 10:37Speaker 3: I mean there was a lot of promoters at the time.
- 10:39Speaker 3: I mean I think the biggest promotion company at the
- 10:41Speaker 3: time that you wanted to be a part of, but
- 10:43Speaker 3: they already had their crew was Black Diamonds. That was
- 10:45Speaker 3: like Derrick Carley, like from aj Callaway, like all of
- 10:48Speaker 3: them they had is like this grew and then and
- 10:50Speaker 3: it was like like they did really good events, but
- 10:53Speaker 3: it was really for like us. It was like African American,
- 10:56Speaker 3: you know, with jobs like like you know what I'm saying,
- 11:04Speaker 3: Like I remember this place, Derek Wild laugh if you
- 11:07Speaker 3: ever hear this, because a place called all bet on Tuesday.
- 11:11Speaker 3: All the women in there that were all women with jobs,
- 11:14Speaker 3: all guys. But you know it's funny. You couldn't even
- 11:18Speaker 3: come in there with sneakers. That's how crazy it was.
- 11:21Speaker 3: Like you had to have your shoe game on the people.
- 11:23Speaker 2: People forget about the like I remember that era where
- 11:27Speaker 2: you had to actually dress up hard bottoms and all that.
- 11:31Speaker 3: I had to have a college shirt. It was like
- 11:33Speaker 3: button down and some shoes and then if you didn't
- 11:36Speaker 3: have a shoe, like I remember one time he said
- 11:38Speaker 3: if you didn't have a shoe. You had to have
- 11:41Speaker 3: a sneaker. You know those sneakers like they almost look
- 11:43Speaker 3: like the shoot, like a Bally's something like that. You
- 11:46Speaker 3: were good with that, like the right on the prod yes.
- 11:53Speaker 2: Favor all right. So so so you became a big
- 11:57Speaker 2: name in the city from promoting parties.
- 11:59Speaker 3: Small name, but small name, but making big relationships. Yeah,
- 12:04Speaker 3: relationships was very a bit a bigger key.
- 12:07Speaker 2: So what's the next thing. Because you're a renaissance man,
- 12:09Speaker 2: you do a lot of different things. So you you
- 12:10Speaker 2: build a name for yourself in a party, then do
- 12:12Speaker 2: you go to the spirits industry after that or this?
- 12:15Speaker 3: Yeah? Well right then and there I met a me
- 12:19Speaker 3: and a partner of mine Ebone Brown. She was actually
- 12:24Speaker 3: a partner of mine that he was doing some summer
- 12:26Speaker 3: parties together and one of the she ended up meeting
- 12:31Speaker 3: a guy that wanted to meet me, and I ended
- 12:34Speaker 3: up meeting both of them, two gentlemen by the name
- 12:36Speaker 3: of Raphael and Solomon. And I met them at her
- 12:40Speaker 3: at a coffee shop on forty ninth Street and ninth Avenue.
- 12:44Speaker 3: And I didn't even know what the meeting was about.
- 12:46Speaker 3: She was just like Nick, meet these two gentlemen. I
- 12:48Speaker 3: think they want to sponsor our next party, but they
- 12:51Speaker 3: have this liquor brand. I was like, okay, cool, this
- 12:55Speaker 3: is me. This is the mean, this is this is
- 12:57Speaker 3: the pulp fiction me.
- 12:59Speaker 2: This is the mean.
- 13:00Speaker 3: When you have like the good brother which was Solomon
- 13:02Speaker 3: and the bad brother Raphael, and he was talking about
- 13:06Speaker 3: what they had and this that, and they had a
- 13:08Speaker 3: briefcase on the table. So every time he would say, so,
- 13:13Speaker 3: do you think you can get this product to puff Daddy?
- 13:17Speaker 3: And I'll be like, well, I promoted at his restaurant,
- 13:21Speaker 3: so maybe. So the brother will be like, oh, yeah,
- 13:24Speaker 3: so we want to show you, and as soon as
- 13:25Speaker 3: he lifts up the briefcase, his brother will slam it
- 13:28Speaker 3: down boom.
- 13:29Speaker 2: Not yet.
- 13:31Speaker 3: Do you think you can get this product into the
- 13:33Speaker 3: hands of the African Americans consumers? Yeah? I think I can.
- 13:40Speaker 3: You want to open up that suitcase and let me see. No,
- 13:41Speaker 3: not yet. And it was like a really funny meaning,
- 13:44Speaker 3: but it was like, okay, let me step back. So
- 13:48Speaker 3: I got the product in my hand and I didn't
- 13:51Speaker 3: know anything about liquor. I knew how to drink it,
- 13:55Speaker 3: but that was it. But then he took it and
- 13:57Speaker 3: then the funny story is, uh, I got a call
- 14:01Speaker 3: that week from a friend that was doing a party
- 14:05Speaker 3: at a mansion and he asked me, He said, Nick,
- 14:09Speaker 3: do you have any you know, anybody I can get
- 14:12Speaker 3: some liquor from. And I was like, you know what,
- 14:14Speaker 3: I got six cases that I could actually give you.
- 14:18Speaker 3: It's a good story. And he gave me the six cases,
- 14:21Speaker 3: and I brought it up to Bedford, New York and
- 14:23Speaker 3: was a mansion party and had everybody there from music
- 14:27Speaker 3: execs on down to the whole industry, from fashion, sports,
- 14:34Speaker 3: a lot of I would say, stylists. It just was
- 14:38Speaker 3: everybody that you can imagine. And I brought it down there.
- 14:42Speaker 3: We were having a good time, and I remember the
- 14:44Speaker 3: creative the catering lady came to me within inside the party,
- 14:48Speaker 3: mid into the party and said that I'm a need
- 14:51Speaker 3: more product of that blue stuff that you had. I
- 14:56Speaker 3: was like, what is it? I mean you couldn't have
- 14:57Speaker 3: because wait a minute, I gave you six cases, six
- 15:01Speaker 3: in the case six times? How many how many in
- 15:04Speaker 3: the case six cases? It's six in the case, six cases.
- 15:08Speaker 3: That's thirty six. No way in the world that someone
- 15:10Speaker 3: went through half that product already and the party is
- 15:13Speaker 3: just like two hours in. So she's like, no, you
- 15:15Speaker 3: need to come with me. So I came to her
- 15:18Speaker 3: and it was like a beautiful deck but over deck,
- 15:20Speaker 3: overlooking the deck was the pool and like the area,
- 15:23Speaker 3: and there was two bars set up. And as I
- 15:25Speaker 3: looked over, you know, and she was trying to show
- 15:28Speaker 3: me what the bar was doing, I noticed that everybody
- 15:30Speaker 3: in their clear cup. Everything was blue. But I'm not
- 15:36Speaker 3: talking but I'm talking about like this everybody. I'm not everybody.
- 15:39Speaker 3: I'm trying about male, female, Latino, white, black unit like
- 15:44Speaker 3: everybody and just enjoying it and having a good time.
- 15:47Speaker 3: And I remember walking up to one of the guys
- 15:48Speaker 3: and I said to him, I said what you drinking
- 15:50Speaker 3: and he was like I don't know, man, but this this,
- 15:52Speaker 3: this is good. I think it's like some alis a
- 15:56Speaker 3: And I was like, oh okay. But then I went
- 15:59Speaker 3: around and asked girls. Everybody was like yo, listen, yo,
- 16:02Speaker 3: this is fire. So I was like, oh okay. So
- 16:05Speaker 3: I went to the car and never said nothing in
- 16:07Speaker 3: that car. I remember calling around Phael and I was say, hey,
- 16:10Speaker 3: I need to see you monday. So yeah, ever I
- 16:13Speaker 3: feel was like back. So I met him on Monday.
- 16:15Speaker 3: I told him that I'm in. I said, I'm gonna
- 16:17Speaker 3: give this to go and and and let's go and
- 16:20Speaker 3: and and and I don't want to stop with this.
- 16:22Speaker 3: And he said, listen, I just sold my condo. I'm
- 16:26Speaker 3: living with my parents. Now I took the money. I'm
- 16:30Speaker 3: gonna put it into this brand and and then we're
- 16:33Speaker 3: gonna write, don't I don't have money to pay you
- 16:36Speaker 3: very key, but if you believe in it, that there'll
- 16:42Speaker 3: be money to come. And I said, all right, well,
- 16:44Speaker 3: I'm gonna need a couple of dollars just to move around.
- 16:47Speaker 3: He said, no, I got that, but I know you
- 16:50Speaker 3: don't have money for a salary. But you know what
- 16:52Speaker 3: I'm in. So I took we took on the brand
- 16:57Speaker 3: and it was called Hypnotic. It's very right. So it's
- 17:00Speaker 3: called Hypnoteak. So for the first three months, I sat
- 17:03Speaker 3: in the car and drove with him around the city
- 17:07Speaker 3: for three months with hypnoteak. For three months, guys, and
- 17:12Speaker 3: went around for every club, every bar, every restaurant, you
- 17:15Speaker 3: name it. And we sold nothing. Ninety days ninety days
- 17:23Speaker 3: of nothing, and I mean we couldn't sell anything. And
- 17:28Speaker 3: one night we were about the FDR drive because he
- 17:32Speaker 3: was getting ready to go back home to the Queen's
- 17:35Speaker 3: and I had a paper with me and I was
- 17:38Speaker 3: writing down. You know, he was listening to Gypsy Kings
- 17:42Speaker 3: and the music was melolic. He's he's feeling himself. He's like, man,
- 17:45Speaker 3: I don't know if I could do this anymore like
- 17:47Speaker 3: and he's, you know, he's like feeling down and depressed
- 17:50Speaker 3: because you know, he's we've been rocking and rolling and
- 17:52Speaker 3: we just don't know what's going on. And he said, uh,
- 17:56Speaker 3: I was writing down something. I said, you know, is
- 17:59Speaker 3: it possible if we could just change the H to
- 18:01Speaker 3: the Maybe we could put an I in front of
- 18:03Speaker 3: the P, or maybe we could put a Y, and
- 18:06Speaker 3: maybe we could change the que to a K. Maybe
- 18:08Speaker 3: like try like a hypnotic. He was like, no, he can't.
- 18:13Speaker 3: But he paused. He said, you wait a minute. Barrows
- 18:20Speaker 3: is called sparrows, but he ain't spelt like, wait a minute.
- 18:24Speaker 3: You know what liquor store you got tomorrow? I said,
- 18:26Speaker 3: I got a store in Harlem, And he said, you
- 18:28Speaker 3: know what, try it. I don't just try it, just
- 18:31Speaker 3: just see what happens. So the next day I go
- 18:34Speaker 3: up to a store in Harlem and uh. Guy comes
- 18:38Speaker 3: in and had to model with me and a minute
- 18:42Speaker 3: the girl said, excuse me, would you like to try
- 18:44Speaker 3: some hypnotic? And the guy turned around and said, oh,
- 18:48Speaker 3: I'll try something. He tried it, He's like this is cool.
- 18:52Speaker 3: I came to buy something else. She was like, oh,
- 18:54Speaker 3: no problem. Next guy came in, young black guy. She
- 18:57Speaker 3: was like, would you like to try some hypnotic? He
- 18:59Speaker 3: was like gnadic? Oh man, what's that like? Alise? She
- 19:04Speaker 3: was like, oh no, it's different.
- 19:05Speaker 2: You know.
- 19:05Speaker 3: It's made with fine grapes. It's Kangniac with a little
- 19:08Speaker 3: touch of vodka.
- 19:09Speaker 1: You know.
- 19:09Speaker 3: She did a little spiro. She gave it to him.
- 19:12Speaker 3: He was like, Yo, this is this is good.
- 19:14Speaker 2: How do you like the name?
- 19:16Speaker 3: And I looked at him and like the name? Yeah.
- 19:20Speaker 3: So I walked back called Raphael. I said, Raphael, the
- 19:24Speaker 3: brand's called Hypnotic period and he was like, Yo, how
- 19:29Speaker 3: many boles you saw? I said, man, I just sold one,
- 19:33Speaker 3: but yo, I'm gonna rock with this. So yeah, so
- 19:35Speaker 3: we rocked and we changed your name and we went
- 19:38Speaker 3: with Hypnotic. And that's not the good part yet, guys,
- 19:43Speaker 3: because I still only sold three bottles that day and
- 19:47Speaker 3: about a fifth month. It's a good story right here,
- 19:51Speaker 3: I'm and I hope you'll understand this. It's like when
- 19:56Speaker 3: you take a risk in life and you and you
- 19:58Speaker 3: take a leap. You got understand that leap and you
- 20:01Speaker 3: got to stick with it. Because five months and I
- 20:06Speaker 3: was probably like two months behind on my rent car
- 20:09Speaker 3: insurance is probably three months lapsed. I'm still working on
- 20:13Speaker 3: my dream. I'm still going out every day, and I
- 20:16Speaker 3: can't sell anything. And I was gonna give it all
- 20:19Speaker 3: up on that. I was like, you know what, guys,
- 20:23Speaker 3: I don't think I can do it anymore. And I
- 20:26Speaker 3: had a long talk with my child's mom at the time,
- 20:29Speaker 3: and I just had to figured out I was probably
- 20:32Speaker 3: just gonna go back with my degree and just you know,
- 20:34Speaker 3: and go out and get a job, you know. And
- 20:38Speaker 3: I was sitting at home. It was late. You know,
- 20:40Speaker 3: when you when it's home at late, you put that
- 20:42Speaker 3: bottle of wine out. You just start watching movies and
- 20:47Speaker 3: you know your brain is going all over the place,
- 20:49Speaker 3: like you know, because you broke and you're just trying
- 20:51Speaker 3: to figure it out. And movie came on, Sure Shank Redemption,
- 20:58Speaker 3: Classic Classic classical Life, and I was watching it and
- 21:04Speaker 3: the minute Morgan Freeman said it's either I'm gonna go
- 21:07Speaker 3: and do one or two things. I'm gonna get busy living,
- 21:10Speaker 3: I'm gonna get busy dying. And that right there sparked me.
- 21:15Speaker 3: I was like, oh man, I'm going to get busy living.
- 21:22Speaker 1: That was it.
- 21:24Speaker 3: And I got up that morning and I thought like
- 21:26Speaker 3: I was fifty percent of not giving up yet but
- 21:29Speaker 3: going in that morning, I got in my car because
- 21:31Speaker 3: in hallowed me at the movie Your Car, Ultimate Side
- 21:33Speaker 3: of the Parking or Early in the morning, Jay Crew
- 21:35Speaker 3: love you, you know oh so well about that early
- 21:39Speaker 3: morning and now yeah he got money now. But but
- 21:48Speaker 3: then I got up and yo, guys, Fellas I turned
- 21:52Speaker 3: on the radio BLS, I was getting ready to move
- 21:55Speaker 3: my car and Michael Jackson and the Jackson five, I've
- 21:59Speaker 3: never heard this record for my life, had a record
- 22:02Speaker 3: call We're almost there and when the horns start with
- 22:07Speaker 3: the music, and then when the music starts with it,
- 22:10Speaker 3: it just I didn't know what it was. It touched me,
- 22:14Speaker 3: and Michael says the first lines of it says, it's like,
- 22:19Speaker 3: no matter how hard times may seem, don't give up
- 22:23Speaker 3: on your plan, don't give about your dream. Yo. Yo, Yo.
- 22:28Speaker 3: He's talking to me yo, and then yo, it's like
- 22:32Speaker 3: and he's talking about yo. We're almost there. And I
- 22:35Speaker 3: was like, oh, man, and I remember that I found parking,
- 22:39Speaker 3: put my outfit on. I went to the store and
- 22:42Speaker 3: the guy said, you know what, I don't know anything
- 22:44Speaker 3: about you right now, but I got my bag with me.
- 22:47Speaker 3: He said, but the glow that you got, I'll buy
- 22:50Speaker 3: a case. I said, serious, because I usually hear nose
- 22:54Speaker 3: like I used to walk in. Excuse me, sir, you
- 22:56Speaker 3: have a chance. I want to show no, ma'am, I
- 23:00Speaker 3: just want to tell you something on ma'am, you look
- 23:02Speaker 3: good today, thank you. But ma'am, you want to know
- 23:05Speaker 3: I've been hearing that so many times. I got a
- 23:07Speaker 3: black book that I always laugh about, but I always
- 23:09Speaker 3: show my friends. And I had forty one nose until
- 23:13Speaker 3: I had I spelled like Jackie Robinson, right number forty two.
- 23:17Speaker 3: But on the forty second one, I felt like that
- 23:21Speaker 3: was the one that was the key, and that lady,
- 23:23Speaker 3: I mean. The guy in the store was like, yeah,
- 23:25Speaker 3: but listen, I'm gonna take this case. But if I
- 23:28Speaker 3: don't sell us over the weekend, you're gonna have to
- 23:31Speaker 3: come back in here on Monday and buy it back.
- 23:34Speaker 3: And I was like, damn, all right, how much this
- 23:37Speaker 3: case is going for? Oh back? I think we were
- 23:40Speaker 3: probably at like one twenty two five, Like we weren't
- 23:44Speaker 3: that expensive because they're talking about like a seventeen eighteen
- 23:47Speaker 3: Alabado Times about that. Yeah, about that, that's what we're
- 23:52Speaker 3: selling at. So we went yeah. So I got the
- 23:56Speaker 3: case and he said, listen, you're gonna have to come
- 23:59Speaker 3: back here on Thursday. No, he said Friday and do
- 24:04Speaker 3: it tasting. So I was like, okay, you know when
- 24:07Speaker 3: you're happy because I sold the case. So I'm just happy.
- 24:09Speaker 3: I'm just running out, like, yo, thank you a liquor
- 24:12Speaker 3: store tasting got you Friday back. I slammed the door
- 24:15Speaker 3: about going to the car, and I said, what the
- 24:18Speaker 3: hell is it tasting? The tasting that he kind of
- 24:23Speaker 3: wanted was different the ones that I was doing was
- 24:26Speaker 3: just regular. He wanted something a little bit more uplifting.
- 24:30Speaker 3: So I was like, man, you know what, I know
- 24:32Speaker 3: how to take this to the next level. So I
- 24:34Speaker 3: went and got my I was like, ya, I'm gonna
- 24:35Speaker 3: spend a couple of dollars. I had to buy a
- 24:36Speaker 3: beautiful table, beautiful cloth. I even bought some flowers from
- 24:40Speaker 3: the guy at at at the count at the corner.
- 24:43Speaker 3: And so that Friday when I decorated my area, I
- 24:46Speaker 3: made it feel so appealing, you know. And I even
- 24:49Speaker 3: had like mic and ikes. I remember bought like like
- 24:51Speaker 3: light blue mic and nikes, like the spread of them
- 24:53Speaker 3: like in a candy jar. This when the customer came
- 24:56Speaker 3: in the he just felt like a different vibe.
- 24:57Speaker 2: So what is tasting? It tastes like a hosting tasting
- 24:59Speaker 2: is like, yeah, so you have a you.
- 25:00Speaker 3: Have a table, you have a model, and you do
- 25:03Speaker 3: it for two hours inside the liquor stores. So someone
- 25:06Speaker 3: comes in and you're going to offer them a sample
- 25:08Speaker 3: of it, and you just pull them that one out
- 25:10Speaker 3: you said it.
- 25:10Speaker 4: I was thinking like when I go into SAMs, like
- 25:12Speaker 4: the people like they asked you for like, yo, you
- 25:14Speaker 4: want to sample?
- 25:14Speaker 3: You want to sample? Yeah. The presentation wasn't like yours
- 25:17Speaker 3: obviously yeah, yeah, but nowadays they stepped it up. I
- 25:20Speaker 3: was just sitting, like Stuart Lennard said this, they were
- 25:23Speaker 3: sampling some meat and had like a whole barbecue going on.
- 25:26Speaker 3: I was like, what these tastes have changed? I take
- 25:30Speaker 3: that uh what's that bacon? I take it. I'm just kidding,
- 25:33Speaker 3: but no, but yeah, no, so that's what the tasting
- 25:35Speaker 3: really is. So I did that and uh so, But
- 25:39Speaker 3: the thing is, guys, this is this is this is
- 25:41Speaker 3: marketing one on one. How do you get a case
- 25:45Speaker 3: that is sold in the liquor store in Harlem? And
- 25:49Speaker 3: he says to me, if I don't move these six bottles,
- 25:51Speaker 3: I gotta buy it back out of there. What do
- 25:54Speaker 3: you do?
- 25:55Speaker 2: Well, you know what you do?
- 25:57Speaker 3: You call your cousins, go six, said So I called
- 26:01Speaker 3: my cousin that was a kind of big time at
- 26:04Speaker 3: the time at one of the projects in Harlem, and
- 26:09Speaker 3: I told him, I asked him, Yeah, I said, I
- 26:11Speaker 3: need a favor. And I went to him on Thursday
- 26:14Speaker 3: and he could not wait to do this favor. He
- 26:16Speaker 3: thought that this was like a mission, impossible thing because
- 26:19Speaker 3: I told him what I wanted you to do is
- 26:21Speaker 3: I need you to bring in six friends every half
- 26:25Speaker 3: hour to this store and buy this bottom And he
- 26:29Speaker 3: just thought like this. He's never had a job, so
- 26:31Speaker 3: this was like a job for him. So he was
- 26:32Speaker 3: so happy. He's like, bet I got this. So king
- 26:35Speaker 3: five o'clock that day at five point fifteen. One guy
- 26:39Speaker 3: walks in and Buza balla hypnotic walks out, only looked
- 26:46Speaker 3: at me the thing and goes yeah. Twenty minutes late, no,
- 26:51Speaker 3: fifteen minutes later, two girls walk in, Hey, what's up? Oh,
- 26:54Speaker 3: we come here to get Aliza and the girl like
- 26:57Speaker 3: they doing the whole show. Whole show, all right, and
- 27:02Speaker 3: I know they're from the block. That's the funny part,
- 27:05Speaker 3: not Damn Brendan and tay Shall. Yeah, come on now,
- 27:08Speaker 3: but they're doing a whole skit. And all of a
- 27:11Speaker 3: sudden it takes in and saying, oh this is good,
- 27:13Speaker 3: what all girl? We gonna buy this. They buy two bottles.
- 27:18Speaker 3: Now I got three more to sell. I'm like, oh please.
- 27:22Speaker 3: So now about a third bottle manager comes over to me.
- 27:24Speaker 3: Yo owner said, you know, I'm actually a let me
- 27:28Speaker 3: buy another case. I said, hold on, I don't know.
- 27:33Speaker 3: He said no, no, no, no, For some reason, I
- 27:35Speaker 3: feel this. I was like, oh yeah, I feel it too,
- 27:38Speaker 3: So I get him another case. So the all of
- 27:41Speaker 3: the story was my cousin had operation shut down. He
- 27:46Speaker 3: not only sent six, but he sat like twelve people
- 27:49Speaker 3: were coming in that store buying a bottle, walking out
- 27:51Speaker 3: buy the bottle. But the crazy part about it was
- 27:54Speaker 3: it was a good summer, like it was a good
- 27:56Speaker 3: Friday night. So they were going back to the block drinking,
- 27:59Speaker 3: having a good But now everybody was coming back. My
- 28:02Speaker 3: promotion was only two hours. I got a call. I
- 28:05Speaker 3: left him with three cases, which was eighteen bottles. He
- 28:09Speaker 3: went through eighteen that night around nine thirty, and now
- 28:12Speaker 3: he called me and said, I need five cases by
- 28:16Speaker 3: tomorrow morning. Again, I was like, I got three now,
- 28:21Speaker 3: but I'll be back in the morning. The crazy part
- 28:24Speaker 3: is not only did I sell out in that store,
- 28:27Speaker 3: he said, yo, I called my brother who has a
- 28:29Speaker 3: store on one hundred and forty fifth Street up on Broadway.
- 28:33Speaker 3: He wants five cases as well on Saturday. So now
- 28:38Speaker 3: I did go there. We had to drop off uptown
- 28:41Speaker 3: and then I had to call my other cousin. I'm
- 28:43Speaker 3: gonna blow him up in Saint Nick Projects because he's
- 28:45Speaker 3: closer to that niquor store and do the same operation
- 28:48Speaker 3: and blow up that store. And the crazy part is
- 28:51Speaker 3: like by the end of the weekend, we were fifteen
- 28:53Speaker 3: cases in and all of a sudden, the buzz started
- 28:56Speaker 3: like hitting around the Projects. And now was the like
- 29:00Speaker 3: that we just started. That was like the start of it,
- 29:02Speaker 3: you know what I mean, it's just visually appeasing. Man,
- 29:05Speaker 3: when you first see that blue liquor, it was like
- 29:08Speaker 3: for us, when I first saw it, I was like,
- 29:09Speaker 3: damn they drinking kool aid? What did they really drink it?
- 29:12Speaker 4: Because like when we see it, it's like, yo, that
- 29:13Speaker 4: looks like the fruit punch plate or the raspberrying.
- 29:16Speaker 2: And it was like so but all right, so now
- 29:19Speaker 2: you okay, so but we're really skyrocketed. The whole thing
- 29:24Speaker 2: was a placement fab tablished, right, that's what really.
- 29:30Speaker 3: So after the fifteen are you calling Raphael like, yo,
- 29:32Speaker 3: we got this? After yeah, we got this. We got this.
- 29:39Speaker 3: Then we started knowing that we noticed that the name
- 29:43Speaker 3: change was very key, and then we just started working
- 29:48Speaker 3: really hard, right and then now was the beginning of
- 29:51Speaker 3: the summer. And then I got my first big break
- 29:55Speaker 3: in November. Before we get to that one, which was
- 29:57Speaker 3: about to say, I want to bring you a little
- 29:59Speaker 3: bit closer, just one. This is a good story. I
- 30:02Speaker 3: got many stories. Get ready, we uh, I get a
- 30:09Speaker 3: By the end of the summer, I got a few accounts,
- 30:11Speaker 3: but not that many. We're about to go to Labor Day,
- 30:15Speaker 3: weekend and my partner John at the time for promotions.
- 30:18Speaker 3: He was like, Nick, I got some good news. I'm
- 30:21Speaker 3: doing Puff Daddy's Party, White Party, Hampton's. That was the
- 30:26Speaker 3: remember the Hamptons scene. Yeah, doing that Labor Day weekend.
- 30:31Speaker 3: Good way to put your brand out there. I need
- 30:33Speaker 3: about you know, six cases eight k I'm like whatever
- 30:36Speaker 3: you need, John, I'm there. We went out to the Hamptons.
- 30:40Speaker 3: Party was hot, blew it up. John had made a
- 30:42Speaker 3: concoction he called it the Biggie Hypnotized, So he had
- 30:47Speaker 3: like the hypnotic, a Malibu and a pineapple and man,
- 30:51Speaker 3: that joint was off the chain and everybody was like
- 30:54Speaker 3: rocking to it and had a little menu placement. At
- 30:56Speaker 3: the end of the night, John said, yo, were gonna
- 31:00Speaker 3: gonna do We decided to take it in and we're
- 31:03Speaker 3: gonna do the release the following Tuesday of that week.
- 31:09Speaker 3: I was like, bet, I'm at Justin's finally perfect. Can't wait.
- 31:13Speaker 3: Justice Restaurant. Yeah. Justice was Puffed Addy's Restaurant, twenty first
- 31:17Speaker 3: Street between fifth and six. That's right, and it was
- 31:22Speaker 3: it was one of the It was it was the
- 31:23Speaker 3: who's who of who in New York was always at Justice,
- 31:27Speaker 3: you know, so I was like, you know, I was happy.
- 31:30Speaker 3: Everything was good. Let's let's rock. Monday comes and Monday
- 31:34Speaker 3: I can't wait. I'm doing everything I possibly can. I'm
- 31:37Speaker 3: getting like flyers done, I'm getting everything ready. So my
- 31:41Speaker 3: man works like all the way down by Wall Street
- 31:44Speaker 3: and he's you know, he's gonna make my menu cards
- 31:47Speaker 3: because I ain't even have no money. Like we didn't
- 31:49Speaker 3: even have money for Staples. Okay, there was no like, yo,
- 31:52Speaker 3: go to Kinko's. I had to go to a friend
- 31:54Speaker 3: with a copy of machine okay that we had that
- 31:57Speaker 3: type of money, So we had to go. I had
- 31:59Speaker 3: to go there. I had to. About eight o'clock in
- 32:00Speaker 3: the morning, Ed Lover was on the radio at Hot
- 32:04Speaker 3: ninety seven and I begged at Lover to, you know,
- 32:08Speaker 3: like to come to the party. He's like, nick, I
- 32:09Speaker 3: got you. So I got up at morning seven o'clock,
- 32:13Speaker 3: got downtown at eight o'clock Wall Street. Mind, you got
- 32:16Speaker 3: to Hot ninety seven around like eight thirty, walked out
- 32:19Speaker 3: of the building. Everybody's happy. It's a good day, sun
- 32:23Speaker 3: is out, beautiful day, gonna launch my brand. This is
- 32:27Speaker 3: like my turning point in my life. It's that following Tuesday,
- 32:32Speaker 3: two thousand and one, eight forty six in the morning,
- 32:37Speaker 3: Tower one is hit on my day, on my day,
- 32:45Speaker 3: this is this is this hit can happen any other day.
- 32:48Speaker 3: Actually I didn't want to have it never Oh my god,
- 32:52Speaker 3: but damn on this like nine eleven, he's supposed to
- 32:56Speaker 3: launch hip now on nine to eleven, adjustice and whose party?
- 33:01Speaker 3: Whose record release that we were going to listen to
- 33:04Speaker 3: Fabulous Boo fabulous drop at the same year, So we're
- 33:11Speaker 3: gonna listen to the albums, like hey, that was like
- 33:14Speaker 3: an important thing. Of course that never happened. And then
- 33:18Speaker 3: so then we had to really sit back and we
- 33:21Speaker 3: had to wait, and then we waited, and then I
- 33:24Speaker 3: had to figure out another launch day for New York
- 33:26Speaker 3: as New York was down, and I chose November one.
- 33:32Speaker 2: That year.
- 33:33Speaker 3: Michael Jordan was coming back to Madison Square Garden and
- 33:36Speaker 3: then he was playing with the Wizards and he was
- 33:39Speaker 3: coming back to New York and just as it was
- 33:41Speaker 3: like actually it was on a Tuesday, and we started
- 33:43Speaker 3: that night and we did a promotion at Justin's Lost
- 33:46Speaker 3: It that night. But the biggest thing was the biggest
- 33:49Speaker 3: club in New York on Tuesday night was Club Cheetah.
- 33:53Speaker 3: So Club Cheetah was the after party. That's it. We
- 33:58Speaker 3: did the after party Club Cheetah, and I remember going
- 34:02Speaker 3: in with the manager and the manager and I believe
- 34:04Speaker 3: in me, and he's like, I'll take six bottles, but
- 34:05Speaker 3: I doubt it's gonna sell and lo and behold, like
- 34:08Speaker 3: we killed it that night, and here came a rapper
- 34:13Speaker 3: named Fabulous Brooklyn. He bought two bottles, but Treell Spreewell
- 34:19Speaker 3: bought two bottles. Yeah, Clarence Weatherspoon. On the next they
- 34:23Speaker 3: bought another bottle, like, yo, we sold out to the
- 34:25Speaker 3: manager was like, yo, I need another case, but I
- 34:28Speaker 3: didn't have another case at that time. I was like,
- 34:30Speaker 3: I gotta come back, you know tomorrow. He was like, man,
- 34:33Speaker 3: I wasn't sold out. But it was a good feeling.
- 34:35Speaker 3: But then I ended up getting to meet fab which
- 34:38Speaker 3: was even better, you know what I'm saying. So then
- 34:41Speaker 3: I then so that was like a really like good
- 34:45Speaker 3: start of the movement going into next year, because going
- 34:47Speaker 3: into next year, we started to like really like start
- 34:51Speaker 3: like a real grassroots marketing plan, hitting as many bars
- 34:54Speaker 3: and clubs and restaurants we could, was getting a name
- 34:57Speaker 3: for ourselves. We still was growing a little bit. Then
- 35:00Speaker 3: came spring of that year of O two, and I
- 35:04Speaker 3: was able to put a little bit of my budget
- 35:06Speaker 3: together two do a video with Fab. Trade it All,
- 35:13Speaker 3: Trade it all, and trade it all. Guys, when I
- 35:17Speaker 3: tell you, when I tell you, Jagged Puff Daddy Jagget
- 35:20Speaker 3: as Barber SOPs soundtrack, Ice Cubes first movie, you know,
- 35:24Speaker 3: like whoa to do that? And then to come back home?
- 35:32Speaker 3: And mind you, we didn't even have a distributor in
- 35:35Speaker 3: New York yet.
- 35:36Speaker 2: So how did you? All right, you put the you
- 35:37Speaker 2: put the product place, when you put the bottle in
- 35:40Speaker 2: the video, this legendary whole situation. How much did you
- 35:43Speaker 2: have to pay Fab for that?
- 35:47Speaker 3: I wish I could just pleate the fifth ones, But
- 35:50Speaker 3: I'm gonna be honest with you. Guys. You you you
- 35:56Speaker 3: probably will be like you wouldn't believe it.
- 35:58Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I don't know.
- 35:59Speaker 3: I mean I could probably tell. I mean it was
- 36:01Speaker 3: years ago, I mean whatever, Like, all right, so we
- 36:03Speaker 3: paid under ten grand, how about that? Under ten under
- 36:06Speaker 3: ten right for a video of that magnitude under ten thousand?
- 36:10Speaker 3: All right, something for him, something for they manager. Hey,
- 36:16Speaker 3: we're good.
- 36:16Speaker 2: The whole team.
- 36:17Speaker 3: Hey, let's just you know, give me one second. But
- 36:21Speaker 3: he gave me that one second. You know, they gave
- 36:23Speaker 3: me the whole, the whole thing.
- 36:25Speaker 2: Yeah, and to the point.
- 36:27Speaker 3: Where first commercial. Yeah, and to the point where we
- 36:30Speaker 3: got remember by telling you, like we started, we still
- 36:33Speaker 3: was rocking. We only had an import license and we
- 36:36Speaker 3: was working out of a place out of Long Island.
- 36:40Speaker 3: We didn't have no distributor. And when that video hit, Yeah,
- 36:44Speaker 3: I'm imagine being in a small office with three people.
- 36:50Speaker 4: And this episode is brought to you by P and
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- 39:39Speaker 1: all you need.
- 39:41Speaker 3: In the guys art, which is probably like seventy years old,
- 39:44Speaker 3: is answering the phone and she's like, hello, okay, hold on,
- 39:53Speaker 3: we have Delaware on the phone, Georgia.
- 40:02Speaker 2: Hello.
- 40:03Speaker 3: Not what that video did was not only for clubs
- 40:08Speaker 3: and restaurants. The distributors in cities were calling, so.
- 40:14Speaker 2: How quick everybody saw right? So they saw the blue
- 40:17Speaker 2: looker in the video. Nobody really knew what it was,
- 40:19Speaker 2: but it was just the whole vibe. And then how
- 40:22Speaker 2: quick did that turn into people just asking it?
- 40:27Speaker 3: Yeah it was. It seemed like it was wildfire overnight.
- 40:30Speaker 3: It seemed like it was overnight because we signed on
- 40:33Speaker 3: with a distributor who jumped on it like asap. We
- 40:37Speaker 3: signed on with them like within a week, and then
- 40:39Speaker 3: they had a sales force of like fifty to sixty.
- 40:42Speaker 3: So we were able to like start flooding the gates
- 40:44Speaker 3: in New York, not only in not only in clubs,
- 40:48Speaker 3: but the most important thing was the stores. Stores were
- 40:51Speaker 3: more than anything, and they were taking twenty kse drops.
- 40:54Speaker 3: They were taking ten case drops because people were looking
- 40:56Speaker 3: at videos and going into the store and being like, Yo,
- 40:58Speaker 3: I need that bottle, that blue bottle what I don't
- 41:00Speaker 3: even know what it was, that blue bottle that was
- 41:03Speaker 3: in the video.
- 41:03Speaker 2: So you did the influence to marketing before influencer marketing was.
- 41:09Speaker 3: Before there was product placement, especially in oh.
- 41:12Speaker 2: Yeah, well and influence marketing that's real big now social media,
- 41:15Speaker 2: but influences, but I mean, rap video has always been
- 41:19Speaker 2: a product placement.
- 41:21Speaker 3: Has always been a product placement. But it was like
- 41:22Speaker 3: nobody was really like on top of it to be like, yo,
- 41:25Speaker 3: this is what I want because that's what like everybody
- 41:27Speaker 3: was like putting a brand in it, but they were
- 41:29Speaker 3: using it. Nobody was really getting paid. That was a
- 41:32Speaker 3: good thing too. They were just using I mean, they
- 41:33Speaker 3: was putting Crystal Is probably in all the videos probably
- 41:36Speaker 3: before that, you know, that was like the number one,
- 41:38Speaker 3: like hey Crystal, you know, until you know that was
- 41:41Speaker 3: a status symbol, right, you know, But I tell you
- 41:45Speaker 3: the video that put me on status symbol when we
- 41:47Speaker 3: had to work a deal deal out was making sure
- 41:50Speaker 3: that it was like you know, when you really want
- 41:52Speaker 3: to work with the artists, but you really want to
- 41:54Speaker 3: put it up and make sure that it was like prominent.
- 41:57Speaker 3: Was when I got I did a video with Billy
- 41:59Speaker 3: Woodruff in Miami Short Club Who sixty Bottles on the Wall? Director? Yes?
- 42:06Speaker 3: Who exactly? I men do the song I did. I'd
- 42:11Speaker 3: rather do the song and say the name. At this point,
- 42:13Speaker 3: like is everybody going to back? Why can't no bash me?
- 42:15Speaker 3: I don't want he was hot. I don't give a
- 42:17Speaker 3: damn R Kelly Oh yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, ignition.
- 42:26Speaker 3: I'm ya, sixty bottles, damn sixty bottles on the wall.
- 42:33Speaker 2: So so how how? How? All right?
- 42:35Speaker 3: So what was it?
- 42:36Speaker 2: What was the numbers that y'all was selling before the
- 42:38Speaker 2: fab and what was the numbers like a year later?
- 42:40Speaker 3: Like how did we I mean, we probably were selling
- 42:44Speaker 3: maybe be like five hundred cases. Maybe we maybe we
- 42:47Speaker 3: were close like six hundred k total total until the
- 42:50Speaker 3: video comes out. Video came out, we was up to
- 42:52Speaker 3: five thousand, five thousand cases. I saw I read someone
- 42:55Speaker 3: that the price point changed to like you the bottles, yeah,
- 42:58Speaker 3: because at one point it was that sixteen ninety nine.
- 43:00Speaker 3: And then when you get with a distributor, so I
- 43:03Speaker 3: keep hering distributed. Can you just elaborate on the role
- 43:06Speaker 3: of a distributor. They're they're the real salesforce when you
- 43:09Speaker 3: don't have a sales team. They're the salesforce. They're the
- 43:12Speaker 3: ones with the backing, you know, they have they have
- 43:16Speaker 3: a they have what you call a real salesforce team.
- 43:21Speaker 3: And then they have what you call a pamphlet of
- 43:25Speaker 3: everything else that I'm going to sell with your product,
- 43:29Speaker 3: a portfolio, right, so they have a portfolio of things.
- 43:32Speaker 3: And at that time the distributor we went to probably
- 43:37Speaker 3: only had like two or three. I think we had.
- 43:40Speaker 3: They had patrol, which was rising back then. Back the year,
- 43:43Speaker 3: they had patron, which is like a key, and then
- 43:47Speaker 3: they had like I think they're like piers you had.
- 43:50Speaker 3: They had like a Champagne and then they had like
- 43:52Speaker 3: something else. I think they had like a I think
- 43:56Speaker 3: they had a cognact, but nothing like really big. But
- 43:58Speaker 3: it was a small distributor. Actually, it's funny because it's
- 44:01Speaker 3: up here. It's up in Prochester. Yeah, they were called
- 44:03Speaker 3: Eber Brothers.
- 44:04Speaker 2: So five thousand, that's for the year or five Yeah,
- 44:07Speaker 2: for the year, So you were from five hundred to
- 44:09Speaker 2: five thousand, five thousand, it's like a thousand percent increase
- 44:12Speaker 2: something like that.
- 44:12Speaker 3: Yeah, but the thing was down. But the thing, well,
- 44:15Speaker 3: I'm just talking about New York. We got opened up
- 44:17Speaker 3: in five states. That's the real big key thing. Like
- 44:21Speaker 3: now we had to now we had to move a container,
- 44:24Speaker 3: which a container you know holes that's coming from France
- 44:28Speaker 3: all the way over here, you know, by water. So
- 44:30Speaker 3: we was figuring out like, yo, you gotta get that
- 44:32Speaker 3: ship excuse my language over here quickly. But of course
- 44:35Speaker 3: it's gonna still take time because it's by freight. But
- 44:39Speaker 3: we're looking at places that was taking in containers. So
- 44:41Speaker 3: a state was calling in like y'all need a container.
- 44:44Speaker 2: So you wasn't making a liqu in America. The liquor
- 44:45Speaker 2: wasn't made in America, was made in France.
- 44:48Speaker 3: What's that? What's that process like from getting it? Obviously
- 44:51Speaker 3: for me, it's a lot. It's a process that when
- 44:54Speaker 3: people always say, yo, you need to come up with
- 44:55Speaker 3: your own liquor. You needed you need to do your research,
- 44:58Speaker 3: you need to really go back over and really see
- 45:01Speaker 3: exactly a lot of the there's a lot of there's
- 45:03Speaker 3: so much movement inside of getting a product done in
- 45:07Speaker 3: France and bringing it over from France to the US.
- 45:10Speaker 3: And there's so many like laws and there's there's things
- 45:12Speaker 3: that you've got to tackle, and there's red tape, and
- 45:15Speaker 3: there's a.
- 45:16Speaker 2: Lot it can't be made in America.
- 45:17Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, there's oh yeah, well now now of today,
- 45:22Speaker 3: I mean you can see there's distilleries and there's things
- 45:25Speaker 3: that's popping up all all around the country now, which.
- 45:27Speaker 2: Is like, you know, great, So I have to peak
- 45:29Speaker 2: how how big was Hypnotic like at its peak?
- 45:31Speaker 3: What was the oh million cases easily a year. Yeah,
- 45:37Speaker 3: because we did in the stretch that I was in
- 45:41Speaker 3: there in three years, we did a million cases.
- 45:46Speaker 2: How much money? How much money is that?
- 45:47Speaker 3: Like in the millions, in the double millions, Like, yeah,
- 45:53Speaker 3: in a double millions, you could. You could sometimes everybody
- 45:56Speaker 3: always says that you can. You can do the numbers right,
- 45:58Speaker 3: so you can times either times, but the case would be,
- 46:03Speaker 3: you know, whatever the case is. So let's just say
- 46:05Speaker 3: a case was a one thirty right times that by
- 46:09Speaker 3: a main cases do it that way. But that ain't
- 46:12Speaker 3: the like, that's not overall. There's so many other cuts
- 46:16Speaker 3: that you have to do. But it's a lot of money.
- 46:18Speaker 3: So it's Raphael and his brother, then it's you. Yeah,
- 46:21Speaker 3: it's Raphael. Solomon really wasn't a part of it. He
- 46:25Speaker 3: just was like helping out in the beginning. But it
- 46:26Speaker 3: really was just Raphael and me, and it was a
- 46:29Speaker 3: gentleman by the name of Jim Goldstein who had an
- 46:31Speaker 3: importer's license that really helped us with the importance of
- 46:35Speaker 3: everything outside of it in Long Island.
- 46:37Speaker 5: So you got up to at the peak, you said
- 46:39Speaker 5: a million no, no, So up to the peak when
- 46:43Speaker 5: we we sold in two thousand and.
- 46:45Speaker 2: Three, the company.
- 46:47Speaker 3: We sold the company. Yeah, okay, we sold the company
- 46:49Speaker 3: in two heaven hell out of Kentucky.
- 46:53Speaker 2: That's a that's a liquor company.
- 46:54Speaker 3: Yeah so that Yeah, so they're they're they're like they're
- 46:57Speaker 3: like the fourth biggest family and bourbon in the country.
- 47:01Speaker 3: There we Yeah, so they're the biggest one is like
- 47:03Speaker 3: you know, Evan Williams, like they're like huge, how much
- 47:06Speaker 3: you for sixty million? I know, right, well it was
- 47:12Speaker 3: your cut. I had a lot, you know, I always
- 47:15Speaker 3: tell everybody's things that I got. I got broke off
- 47:20Speaker 3: pretty nice. Wasn't as nice as everybody were like, oh
- 47:23Speaker 3: my god, you should have got no, because at that
- 47:26Speaker 3: time I took I took a point. Not disappointed, but
- 47:31Speaker 3: I took a couple of points, but really wasn't adapted
- 47:34Speaker 3: to the knowledge of that I have today, Like you know,
- 47:37Speaker 3: you know, yeah, like just learning, just learn, like you know,
- 47:41Speaker 3: just like any like producer, like yeah, you know, I'll
- 47:44Speaker 3: give up half of my whatever on this track and
- 47:48Speaker 3: the track becomes so great and you're like, oh, I
- 47:50Speaker 3: didn't know, but you know, you you live and you learn.
- 47:52Speaker 3: But it was, like I always say this, it was
- 47:54Speaker 3: it was good enough for me to at least say,
- 47:57Speaker 3: I bought my mom and dad the condo that they
- 47:59Speaker 3: kind don't want it for a long time. And I
- 48:03Speaker 3: wasn't a ballplayer, and I wasn't a rapper, and I
- 48:05Speaker 3: didn't sell drugs, okay, so hey, I accomplished a lot.
- 48:10Speaker 2: The fact where Fabulous sees you, now, does he ever
- 48:14Speaker 2: feel a way that he got paid less than ten
- 48:16Speaker 2: thousand dollars a company?
- 48:18Speaker 3: No, fab is like, oh, I mean, fab is like been.
- 48:22Speaker 3: I mean, he's been my friend for god knows how
- 48:25Speaker 3: many years, Like he's been the biggest support of me,
- 48:28Speaker 3: not only from Hypnotic. But remember we went on to Sorak,
- 48:30Speaker 3: and we're gonna get that.
- 48:33Speaker 4: That's what makes it legendary, is right, Like if you
- 48:35Speaker 4: can do something once, great, if you do it twice,
- 48:37Speaker 4: that legend it is, right.
- 48:39Speaker 3: So yeah, so you've done that twice twice.
- 48:42Speaker 2: With Rak, So can we talk about Sarak?
- 48:46Speaker 3: So we finished with Hypnotics because that was I mean,
- 48:49Speaker 3: and I didn't even get to tell my incredible Haalk story.
- 48:51Speaker 4: But we're doing because a legendary drink because it has
- 48:55Speaker 4: two classics in the black culture, Hennessy Hypnotic.
- 48:59Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it changes the color of the drink. It
- 49:02Speaker 3: changed the color and and and how I did it.
- 49:05Speaker 3: Guys like it, Oh the homework. Can I check these notes? Yes,
- 49:13Speaker 3: But I'm gonna tell you the true story. I did
- 49:16Speaker 3: the marketing of it. Well, I said I created it,
- 49:19Speaker 3: like when I when I was in double XL magazine
- 49:21Speaker 3: when they wrote me up and talked about how I
- 49:24Speaker 3: blew this drink up. It was really somebody, Anahonymus, that
- 49:28Speaker 3: was in Brooklyn. Okay, no true story. Kid walked in.
- 49:34Speaker 3: He told my model sampling girl that said, nah, baby,
- 49:39Speaker 3: we know how to do this. So he grabbed a
- 49:41Speaker 3: Hennessy bottle and then he grabbed a hypnotic bottle. He
- 49:44Speaker 3: brought it to the table and he poured the hypnotic first,
- 49:49Speaker 3: and he pulled the Hennessy after it. And I was
- 49:52Speaker 3: sitting behind these boxes because I didn't want to, like,
- 49:54Speaker 3: you know, because you know, I'm just doing some like
- 49:56Speaker 3: store reports and like just seeing who's coming in, and
- 49:58Speaker 3: I'm working with the girl, and I didn't notice that
- 50:04Speaker 3: both of them stood together. But he put his finger
- 50:10Speaker 3: in the drink and made it turn around and made
- 50:14Speaker 3: it turn green. But the crazy part about it is
- 50:16Speaker 3: that after he did it, he was like so amped
- 50:20Speaker 3: about it. He called it the money shot, and he's
- 50:24Speaker 3: about to walk away. And he went back to the
- 50:26Speaker 3: girl and he said, yo, Ma, can I get your number?
- 50:30Speaker 3: And she's like, no, you know, I can't do that.
- 50:32Speaker 3: And he's like, all right, no problem. You know it.
- 50:35Speaker 3: Sometimes it turns, you know, the Green sometimes makes me
- 50:38Speaker 3: feel confident, just like make me feel like the Hulk.
- 50:42Speaker 2: And I was like.
- 50:44Speaker 3: The Hulk. Green liked the Hawk. So I wrote it down.
- 50:49Speaker 3: Green liked the Hawk. I sat with it for an hour.
- 50:53Speaker 3: Called my friend Mark in La. I said, Mark, you
- 50:55Speaker 3: always talk about Tupac because Alise is my that's my
- 50:59Speaker 3: arching assist. And I'm like, I can't beat Alixe and
- 51:05Speaker 3: I'm trying to And Mark, what's that song? He said, Yo, Nick,
- 51:09Speaker 3: it's a thug passion record. He says, passed me at
- 51:12Speaker 3: Alex and at Hennessy. I was like, you know what, Mark,
- 51:17Speaker 3: I'm gonna do the Hulk. He said what I said,
- 51:20Speaker 3: he is, if you put Hennessy in hypnotics, it turns Green.
- 51:24Speaker 3: I'm gonna do the Hulk. So he was like, oh okay.
- 51:28Speaker 3: So I went back told Raphael my plan. He thought
- 51:31Speaker 3: it was ludicrous. He thought you were spending the money
- 51:33Speaker 3: on marketing money for so I'm stupid, right, what are
- 51:37Speaker 3: you doing? I was like, Raphael, just trust me on this.
- 51:40Speaker 3: I went to Aberkadava on twenty first Street. I ranted
- 51:43Speaker 3: the incredible home costume. I'm about to put somebody's name
- 51:47Speaker 3: on blast. I had to call my cousin, Raheem just
- 51:52Speaker 3: came home from doing college time, you know what I mean.
- 51:58Speaker 3: And Raheen came home big as a house. And Raheen
- 52:02Speaker 3: was looking for a job. And I said, Raheen, meet
- 52:05Speaker 3: me here at a place called Baba Loo's and I
- 52:10Speaker 3: need you to meet me here. He couldn't wait. He
- 52:12Speaker 3: dressed all in black, he got his outfit ready and
- 52:15Speaker 3: he met me there and he was like, what do
- 52:17Speaker 3: I gotta do? And I was like, what you gotta
- 52:20Speaker 3: do is wear this costule. He was like, yoah, I'm
- 52:22Speaker 3: not wearing this castle. I was like, nigga, you gonna
- 52:25Speaker 3: wear his castle. He was like, I was like, listen,
- 52:27Speaker 3: you want this two hundred bucks. That's what we're paying
- 52:29Speaker 3: for the promotions. You want this two hundred He's like,
- 52:31Speaker 3: I you know, I'll wear it, but that's it. The
- 52:34Speaker 3: funny part of the story is that I had him
- 52:36Speaker 3: dressing in an incredible Holt costume and walk around with
- 52:39Speaker 3: a Hennessy bottle and Hipnolic bottle for all night. The
- 52:42Speaker 3: manager told me that I was only going to sell
- 52:44Speaker 3: at least ten drinks, was not going to come close
- 52:47Speaker 3: to the thug passion. I ended up selling forty five
- 52:50Speaker 3: drinks that night. The manager told me, if I could
- 52:53Speaker 3: bring this incredible Hult guy in here for the next
- 52:55Speaker 3: four fridays, he'll take in ten cases a week. And
- 53:00Speaker 3: that's what we did. I blitzed out New York from
- 53:03Speaker 3: Justin's Baba Loo's all the way to Jimmy's Brons Cafe
- 53:07Speaker 3: on an incredible Hul costume for three and a half
- 53:10Speaker 3: months until I embedded it inside of New York. That's
- 53:14Speaker 3: how an incredible Hulk was really made.
- 53:16Speaker 4: If you've ever been to a party in New York
- 53:17Speaker 4: City in the two thousands, and that drink was in
- 53:20Speaker 4: the environment, that changed the entire envire, changed the entire.
- 53:26Speaker 2: All right, So we're gonna talk about the rack situation.
- 53:29Speaker 2: So I remember the first time I saw Sarak did
- 53:31Speaker 2: he had like a New Year's Eve commercial and He's like,
- 53:34Speaker 2: what ad tuxedo want's drinking. So I'm like, what the rock?
- 53:37Speaker 2: I never heard of Sack before? And then fly.
- 53:41Speaker 3: Let's Fly.
- 53:44Speaker 2: Six months later he's on a jets with man. It
- 53:46Speaker 2: has like a tightal way.
- 53:47Speaker 3: So all right, up until that point, we were drinking
- 53:51Speaker 3: Greg Goose.
- 53:52Speaker 2: Greg Goose was the champion of the champion, Champion, and
- 53:55Speaker 2: that Goose was a champion, and Rack changed the whole dynamic.
- 53:59Speaker 3: So sitting with the reason, yes, yes, yes, so all right, yes,
- 54:03Speaker 3: what is what is?
- 54:05Speaker 2: Yes? What's the deal with? Well?
- 54:08Speaker 3: I mean it actually is crazy because it started at
- 54:12Speaker 3: It started when I went to a party at a
- 54:18Speaker 3: mansion on like sixty second Street and it was actually
- 54:21Speaker 3: a release for Unforgivable the Colone. Yeah, I forget what
- 54:25Speaker 3: it was the release and I went there and I'm
- 54:30Speaker 3: walking down and as I'm walking down the block, I
- 54:33Speaker 3: hear this two women screaming like not Nick next Storm.
- 54:40Speaker 3: Look over and I know one of the ladies because
- 54:44Speaker 3: I knew her from another company, and she'll tell a
- 54:48Speaker 3: story better than me and Erica Pittman, who's like a
- 54:50Speaker 3: powerhouse in the business. She'll tell her like I was
- 54:54Speaker 3: running down in to Lettos and I jumped over the
- 54:56Speaker 3: car just to get some but yeah. So she jumped
- 54:59Speaker 3: over and the XT there was an Erica and d Sims,
- 55:03Speaker 3: both powerhouse women up today, that's right, and she they
- 55:09Speaker 3: both said, hey, Nick, we need you to come and
- 55:11Speaker 3: meet with meet with Sean. And I was like, okay,
- 55:15Speaker 3: I didn't know anything what was going on. He was like,
- 55:16Speaker 3: we're going to give you a call this week. We
- 55:18Speaker 3: need we've been we've been looking for you, were trying
- 55:20Speaker 3: to find you. We got to find you today. But yeah,
- 55:23Speaker 3: we need to come and sit with him. I was like,
- 55:25Speaker 3: all right, just let me know. And uh. The next
- 55:28Speaker 3: day I got a call from a woman by the
- 55:31Speaker 3: name of Jackie Lee who was at Diagio at the time,
- 55:33Speaker 3: very powerful black woman, African American woman. Sorry, and uh
- 55:38Speaker 3: she was, uh, you know, she was like, Nick, there's
- 55:42Speaker 3: some things happening up at Diagio, but you're going to
- 55:45Speaker 3: get a call, so just be prepared for it. And
- 55:47Speaker 3: I was like, okay, cool. So, anyway, is a company
- 55:52Speaker 3: that owns the Rock right exactly. Yeah, And they own LVMH,
- 55:58Speaker 3: which is Hennessy m Mowatt and and everything from Johnny
- 56:01Speaker 3: Walker on down from Crown Ray, you know, all the
- 56:04Speaker 3: way across the board. So there. So I ended up
- 56:10Speaker 3: getting a call and to come meet with mister Koombs.
- 56:13Speaker 3: So my first day I'm like, oh, okay, I don't mind,
- 56:16Speaker 3: but I have no idea what it really is entailed.
- 56:20Speaker 3: But when I get there, I get to the office
- 56:23Speaker 3: and he's like, yo, what's up. I was like, Hey,
- 56:26Speaker 3: what's going on? I sit on the couch now mind you.
- 56:29Speaker 3: At this time, this is like Puff Daddy.
- 56:32Speaker 2: Did you know him before that?
- 56:33Speaker 3: Seven? Yeah, well, not knew him like chilling, but I
- 56:38Speaker 3: knew him like I would do like I was doing
- 56:40Speaker 3: like a lot of events, and a guy by the
- 56:43Speaker 3: name of Jeff Sanchez at the time worked for Puff
- 56:46Speaker 3: and he was plugging me wherever Puff was at. But
- 56:49Speaker 3: because Puff was like a hypnotic, so wherever Puff was at,
- 56:52Speaker 3: I was like, all right, I got your cases over here.
- 56:54Speaker 3: I got your cases over here, Like what do you need?
- 56:57Speaker 3: So Puff is funniest thing is like, and he was like, yo,
- 57:01Speaker 3: I just want to know one thing before this whole meeting.
- 57:03Speaker 3: I was like yo. He was like, how'd you do it?
- 57:09Speaker 3: A million dollar question? So I was like how how
- 57:13Speaker 3: I did what? He was like, No, how'd you do it?
- 57:17Speaker 3: How'd you how'd you get hypnotic everywhere? I was like, oh, well,
- 57:26Speaker 3: and then you you you go into a trance because
- 57:30Speaker 3: he's looking at you with those you know, like how
- 57:32Speaker 3: he looks at you on the floor when he goes
- 57:33Speaker 3: like this we've heard some story, right, like, and you
- 57:37Speaker 3: just get so and then mind you, he's got the
- 57:39Speaker 3: Biggie poster behind him Grammy's I mean his office. You've
- 57:43Speaker 3: ever been a puff's office. His office is a maculate
- 57:45Speaker 3: like it's like every picture from Quincy Jones on down
- 57:48Speaker 3: to the President's And so you already and like you
- 57:52Speaker 3: better like figure it out, right, But then you got
- 57:55Speaker 3: like your dad and like, you know, like nothing, you know,
- 58:00Speaker 3: the good cop, angel, you know, the devil, like you
- 58:02Speaker 3: don't know what to do. And then I said, you
- 58:04Speaker 3: know what, I did a little bit of this, and
- 58:06Speaker 3: I did a little bit of that, and I was
- 58:08Speaker 3: like and he was like, oh, good answer. I was like,
- 58:10Speaker 3: you know, I did some videos. I did some you know,
- 58:14Speaker 3: street marketing. I try to keep it really. He was like, Okay,
- 58:17Speaker 3: I'll see what you're saying. And he's like, listen, you
- 58:18Speaker 3: ever heard us a rock? I was like, oh, yeah,
- 58:20Speaker 3: I've heard it. We were about to do this. He
- 58:22Speaker 3: told me a little bit a he broke everything down.
- 58:24Speaker 3: He was very animated. He was like getting up. I
- 58:27Speaker 3: was like, ooh, I feel the energy. I feel a vibe.
- 58:29Speaker 3: And he's like, Yo, you just got Yo. I'm telling
- 58:30Speaker 3: you you got to get on this train. Like, Yo,
- 58:32Speaker 3: you got some good ideas. Yo, you got to bring
- 58:34Speaker 3: him over here. Let's let's rock and roll. Talk to deer.
- 58:38Speaker 3: I was like, all right, cool. So like the next
- 58:40Speaker 3: week I spoke the deer and then was like, Yo,
- 58:44Speaker 3: bring you on. I was like, you know what, perfect timing.
- 58:48Speaker 3: I'm ready to go. And I went on board. And
- 58:53Speaker 3: two thousand and eight was like the real official, like
- 58:56Speaker 3: we're gonna make this thing happen, and uh yeah, and
- 59:00Speaker 3: I got on and I put some programs together. These
- 59:04Speaker 3: are very key programs in anything that we've done. The
- 59:09Speaker 3: number one key program was the Ambassador program. And the
- 59:12Speaker 3: key about Ambassador is what I did with Hypnotic and
- 59:16Speaker 3: I never wanted one company for us to give the
- 59:20Speaker 3: marketing budget to one company and have them run the promotions.
- 59:22Speaker 3: I mean there's companies out there now like Team and
- 59:25Speaker 3: these other companies that like they just do the promotions
- 59:28Speaker 3: for the company. But there's nobody that's living and breathing
- 59:32Speaker 3: the brand. And when we were at Hypnotic, they were
- 59:35Speaker 3: going to give our money to like one promotional company
- 59:37Speaker 3: and then I would fly in and be with them.
- 59:40Speaker 3: But I was like, I want somebody that lives and
- 59:42Speaker 3: breathes the brand every day. I want someone who knows
- 59:45Speaker 3: that Fab is doing a party of tonight, Meek Mills birthdays, tomorrow,
- 59:50Speaker 3: the Nike releases at the Nike store. Like, I need
- 59:52Speaker 3: that person that's in the market every day, breathing, living
- 59:56Speaker 3: the brand. And that right there is what a real
- 59:59Speaker 3: ambassador is about. Now. I did that with Hypnotic, and
- 1:00:02Speaker 3: I was like, well, I'm gonna do it with We're
- 1:00:03Speaker 3: gonna take that same blueprint and we're gonna bring it
- 1:00:06Speaker 3: over here. We're gonna do it over here. And that
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: was very key to the brand success. Not only that.
- 1:00:11Speaker 3: One second part was doing a DJ program DJ program.
- 1:00:16Speaker 3: I had Hypnotic, but I only had three DJs. You know,
- 1:00:19Speaker 3: I had like S and S Clue of Big Tigger, right, yeah,
- 1:00:25Speaker 3: he was saying, yeah, I had Big Tiger, I had
- 1:00:28Speaker 3: Clue Tigger and Clue Tay. I was the first person
- 1:00:30Speaker 3: we went to Hawaii together because we was doing like
- 1:00:33Speaker 3: Hypnotic at the Naval base, baby, you know. But and
- 1:00:36Speaker 3: then I had Camello and Puerto Rico when he first
- 1:00:39Speaker 3: was coming up. But when we got over to Siraq,
- 1:00:43Speaker 3: you know, Sean Press shout out to Sean Press. He
- 1:00:46Speaker 3: was able to really because he had like a lot
- 1:00:47Speaker 3: of DJs for the musical side of so he was
- 1:00:49Speaker 3: able to put the program together to able to do
- 1:00:53Speaker 3: it on the Sirox side. And that's when we had
- 1:00:55Speaker 3: kind of like actually created the Sarraq Boys and the
- 1:00:59Speaker 3: Iraq Boy's name. I will always still tell you it
- 1:01:02Speaker 3: was a puff Daddy thing. But I think that I
- 1:01:05Speaker 3: have to give just a little bit of credit to
- 1:01:07Speaker 3: Terrence J for some odd reason, because yeah, man, because
- 1:01:12Speaker 3: it was one he was on one on six and
- 1:01:14Speaker 3: Park he was the young boy. He was rocking. And
- 1:01:16Speaker 3: we was actually at the forty forty getting ready to
- 1:01:18Speaker 3: do the Rock Boys video, and I was putting product
- 1:01:21Speaker 3: placement in there and Puff Nas Jay and everybody was
- 1:01:24Speaker 3: getting ready up in their rooms and this and that,
- 1:01:26Speaker 3: and I was getting something for the guys, and I
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: remember Terrence J walking in and he was like, yo,
- 1:01:32Speaker 3: we're here, and you know, he slapped with father puff
- 1:01:34Speaker 3: and this and that. He's like, yo, you know, you
- 1:01:36Speaker 3: know we here man, you know rock boys is here, Yo,
- 1:01:38Speaker 3: Nick we Sirocki.
- 1:01:39Speaker 2: Oh oh come on.
- 1:01:40Speaker 3: I remember I was giving him the bottle just to
- 1:01:42Speaker 3: joke around and her It's like, you know it was
- 1:01:43Speaker 3: a rock boys. Oh good, Yeah, that nigga. Puff was like, nah, Nigga,
- 1:01:51Speaker 3: we all sir, rock boys and Puffa was like, na,
- 1:01:53Speaker 3: we rock boys and we just was rocking with it.
- 1:01:55Speaker 3: And then the next week, I mean that next week
- 1:01:58Speaker 3: we had to come up with a name for the DJ,
- 1:02:00Speaker 3: and beholds like yo, rock boys and there it was.
- 1:02:05Speaker 2: So why did you choose the DJ? That's interesting? Why'd
- 1:02:08Speaker 2: you choose the DJs? Because DJ's kind of get left
- 1:02:11Speaker 2: looked over a lot.
- 1:02:12Speaker 3: Yeah, because the DJ is very important.
- 1:02:14Speaker 2: Very important.
- 1:02:15Speaker 3: They went from breaking records and now listen. So I
- 1:02:18Speaker 3: always say this, I utilized my bartenders as DJs when
- 1:02:22Speaker 3: I was really was trying to break a brand at
- 1:02:24Speaker 3: the bar. The bartender is going to tell you what
- 1:02:28Speaker 3: to drink. Sometimes he will change you, sometimes he will
- 1:02:31Speaker 3: influence you. Bartender is very important inside of the business
- 1:02:36Speaker 3: of the bar. The DJ to me was very important
- 1:02:41Speaker 3: at that time for the people to know what we
- 1:02:45Speaker 3: were drinking tonight, what were listening to, what we dancing to,
- 1:02:49Speaker 3: what we're rocking tonight. If you ain't got that rock
- 1:02:52Speaker 3: in your part, if you ain't got that with that's
- 1:02:54Speaker 3: the rock bart with rock boys. And it just kept
- 1:02:57Speaker 3: going on. I mean, when you got people like Flex
- 1:03:01Speaker 3: and Clue and Enough and Camillo Pro Style self just
- 1:03:08Speaker 3: in New York Cologne, you're looking at almost five six
- 1:03:11Speaker 3: nights of none stop in your ear in your face promotions.
- 1:03:16Speaker 3: Then you go across the country up in Chicago and
- 1:03:18Speaker 3: you got Ferris Ll. I mean, I l a fairly
- 1:03:21Speaker 3: fell Atlanta drama like like we like, you know, like
- 1:03:25Speaker 3: DC Quicksilver. We had them all the way across the board.
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: And when whether whatever city you was at, it was
- 1:03:32Speaker 3: like a stamp. We had a stamp on the Serac
- 1:03:34Speaker 3: boys across the country. And then and then, and that's why,
- 1:03:37Speaker 3: that's why when you said me earlier, was everybody in
- 1:03:40Speaker 3: a rock boy. I mean, if a guy was in
- 1:03:42Speaker 3: the club and he probably five six bars of hey, he's.
- 1:03:46Speaker 2: Then people started calling themselves rock boys.
- 1:03:49Speaker 3: They were.
- 1:03:51Speaker 5: It's no promotion, they just yeah. Some of them became
- 1:03:56Speaker 5: bad because we had to call from local market.
- 1:03:58Speaker 3: Like one of us, a rock boy showed up and
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: took two bottles and said he was a sack boy.
- 1:04:04Speaker 3: There was nowhere and bridge for Connecticut. That wasn't me.
- 1:04:13Speaker 3: We got DJ.
- 1:04:15Speaker 2: So you said something that was interesting with the hypnotic
- 1:04:18Speaker 2: that I just realized because I see, like even with
- 1:04:20Speaker 2: fifty cent with his thing, that he's going to like
- 1:04:22Speaker 2: different states. So when you roll out a liquor, it's
- 1:04:26Speaker 2: like it's not it doesn't just go nationally like it
- 1:04:29Speaker 2: has to go like different markets, like one market at
- 1:04:31Speaker 2: a time.
- 1:04:32Speaker 3: No, it can go nationally once you go with a
- 1:04:34Speaker 3: national distributor, it'll go nationally once you go to it.
- 1:04:37Speaker 3: Like so Diago of course has distributors all across the country.
- 1:04:42Speaker 3: Once you know, when you were with Diago, it's it's
- 1:04:44Speaker 3: flooded across all fifty states, you know, like that's how
- 1:04:48Speaker 3: it is. You know, whether you were Southern Wind of
- 1:04:50Speaker 3: Spirits or whether you were Empire or what you know
- 1:04:53Speaker 3: with Young's market in l A like each each n
- 1:04:57Speaker 3: DC down in DC, like each state has its own distributor.
- 1:05:00Speaker 3: So once if I was to bring a brand tomorrow,
- 1:05:04Speaker 3: and it's called evolution and Diadre got this new brand
- 1:05:08Speaker 3: called Evolution. We're not going to do one state at
- 1:05:10Speaker 3: the time. It's going to be actually be flooded out
- 1:05:12Speaker 3: all all the way across the board. That's why you
- 1:05:14Speaker 3: got to come up with a national plan, and you
- 1:05:16Speaker 3: got to come up with a national marketing plan to
- 1:05:18Speaker 3: make sure that you'll be able to, you know, move
- 1:05:21Speaker 3: the product inside the states. So the first part right
- 1:05:25Speaker 3: in eight when the rock takes off, that the plan
- 1:05:28Speaker 3: was like we have the guy, right puff is the guy? Yeah?
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: In my mind I'm thinking, like this guy is James Bond.
- 1:05:35Speaker 3: Was that the vision? Like I seen him he was
- 1:05:37Speaker 3: on jet skis, He's jumping out a helicopter. Yeah he was. Yeah,
- 1:05:41Speaker 3: he he knew how to It's one thing about him
- 1:05:46Speaker 3: is in being around him and working when I'm like
- 1:05:48Speaker 3: you're you're very you're very on your toes. But he
- 1:05:53Speaker 3: he always has a vision that you'll be like wow,
- 1:05:55Speaker 3: like I can see what you're saying, like you know,
- 1:05:58Speaker 3: like it's just it's it was really a really incredible
- 1:06:02Speaker 3: time to be around a man like that. To be
- 1:06:04Speaker 3: honest with you, like he motivated, He motivates you from
- 1:06:06Speaker 3: every aspect.
- 1:06:07Speaker 2: Right.
- 1:06:09Speaker 3: But the plan was we wanted just to celebrate life
- 1:06:13Speaker 3: and we wanted to have a celebration moment about it,
- 1:06:15Speaker 3: and we wanted to be about life, about the celebratory
- 1:06:18Speaker 3: side of it, Like no matter whether you know, if
- 1:06:21Speaker 3: you if you lost your job, we're gonna celebrate because
- 1:06:23Speaker 3: you don't get a new one. When you got a job,
- 1:06:25Speaker 3: we're gonna celebrate because you got a job. Like it
- 1:06:27Speaker 3: was just we're just trying to find bright moments within everybody.
- 1:06:30Speaker 3: And even when it was just like a circle like
- 1:06:32Speaker 3: we had did a campaign like circle, Like a step
- 1:06:34Speaker 3: into the circle was like a step into the circle
- 1:06:36Speaker 3: of friends and friendship and love and love your friends
- 1:06:39Speaker 3: and hang out with your family more and and just
- 1:06:42Speaker 3: you just try to figure out a lot of things
- 1:06:44Speaker 3: that we wanted to come up with. But the most
- 1:06:46Speaker 3: part about of it was mostly thing about it was
- 1:06:50Speaker 3: about being celebrated and to celebrate life. And that that's
- 1:06:54Speaker 3: what the main thing about the whole branding about Sarraq was.
- 1:06:58Speaker 3: So how quick did the rock from WHOA I can
- 1:07:01Speaker 3: tell you those numbers, they went quick. They went from
- 1:07:03Speaker 3: like I mean, this was a brand that was out
- 1:07:05Speaker 3: for five years between two thousand and two and two
- 1:07:08Speaker 3: thousand and seven until you know, mister Combs basically took
- 1:07:13Speaker 3: it over. Sixty thousand, sixty thousand case brand up for
- 1:07:17Speaker 3: five years. Two when we got it, I think we
- 1:07:22Speaker 3: I mean, we doubled the numbers in one year. So
- 1:07:24Speaker 3: we did like we did from sixty to like one
- 1:07:27Speaker 3: seventy in one year, and then yeah, one year, and
- 1:07:30Speaker 3: then in two thousand and nine we really killed it
- 1:07:32Speaker 3: because we came out with the flavors and the first
- 1:07:34Speaker 3: flavors we came out was with Coconut and Red Verry.
- 1:07:38Speaker 3: So two thousand and nine we really took the movement
- 1:07:42Speaker 3: crazy because one, it was a good time because we
- 1:07:45Speaker 3: was coming out with a Last Train of Paris, which
- 1:07:47Speaker 3: was an album, and he was coming out with album.
- 1:07:49Speaker 3: Good album, like very underrated. Yeah wow, yeah, good album.
- 1:07:53Speaker 3: But we was like we was coming out with the
- 1:07:55Speaker 3: album and we was doing album release in certain markets,
- 1:07:58Speaker 3: and we were releasing the brand at the time, so
- 1:08:01Speaker 3: it was very key. Timing is is very key in
- 1:08:03Speaker 3: a lot of things. So we were coming out with
- 1:08:05Speaker 3: the album and branding the brand and coming out with
- 1:08:09Speaker 3: the Coconuts, the rock and the red Berry in certain states,
- 1:08:13Speaker 3: it just everything was moving.
- 1:08:15Speaker 4: Yeah, So the first three years, I think I read
- 1:08:18Speaker 4: a million cases. Yeah, first three you with a million.
- 1:08:23Speaker 3: Again? Did it again, so being a part of it.
- 1:08:27Speaker 2: But so you do that and then so what's your
- 1:08:31Speaker 2: vision now as far as like I know, you said,
- 1:08:33Speaker 2: now you do your consultant. So yeah, you did it once,
- 1:08:38Speaker 2: you did it twice. Like where do you see yourself
- 1:08:41Speaker 2: in the in the in the spirits industry moving forward?
- 1:08:43Speaker 3: I think I could do it again. I could do
- 1:08:49Speaker 3: it again. But I think now is I'm at a
- 1:08:52Speaker 3: point in my life where I can look back and
- 1:08:55Speaker 3: reflect and and and be happy. And one of the
- 1:08:57Speaker 3: things I can I can really be happy about is
- 1:09:03Speaker 3: I had got a phone call the other day from
- 1:09:05Speaker 3: a young lady that really gave, like really told me
- 1:09:10Speaker 3: about working up under me. You know what she learned
- 1:09:15Speaker 3: where she's at today would have never been there because
- 1:09:18Speaker 3: of me. And then I look back at about eleven
- 1:09:21Speaker 3: or twelve people right now withinside the business and inside
- 1:09:24Speaker 3: the liquor industry right now with jobs that look back
- 1:09:28Speaker 3: and say, I came up undernixt door. And if you
- 1:09:31Speaker 3: can't point someone in a direction, and I always feel
- 1:09:35Speaker 3: like you really look good when you can really point
- 1:09:38Speaker 3: somebody to make money, Like I always feel like that, right,
- 1:09:41Speaker 3: Like I feel good to know that I put certain
- 1:09:44Speaker 3: people in good positions to really make some money and
- 1:09:47Speaker 3: feed their families. You know. In my job now, I
- 1:09:49Speaker 3: think is really educating the youth and understanding about hard work, dedication,
- 1:09:55Speaker 3: and most importantly, it's like getting a lot of more youth,
- 1:09:59Speaker 3: I mean more of us. I'm sorry with being Latin
- 1:10:02Speaker 3: American and African American, as I said, my mother's Puerto Rican,
- 1:10:07Speaker 3: in my father's book African American. So I'm both, I'm
- 1:10:09Speaker 3: best of both for us, how I say, yeah, But
- 1:10:13Speaker 3: I would say as educating them on the business of
- 1:10:16Speaker 3: the wine and spirits business. You know, I had stayed
- 1:10:19Speaker 3: it before. I've been in the game twenty years, making
- 1:10:22Speaker 3: six figures for twenty years. There's so many good jobs
- 1:10:25Speaker 3: withinside the wine and spirits business that people don't know about,
- 1:10:28Speaker 3: whether it's marketing, whether it's advertising, whether it's public relations,
- 1:10:32Speaker 3: whether it's salespeople, you know, Like you know, a girl
- 1:10:35Speaker 3: told me the other day, and this is a good
- 1:10:36Speaker 3: one too. She was a bartender at a strip club
- 1:10:42Speaker 3: and I'm sorry, a gentleman's a gentleman's club. And she
- 1:10:49Speaker 3: was really good at sales and she would say to me,
- 1:10:52Speaker 3: you know, I wish I could blow this night life.
- 1:10:54Speaker 3: One day and I said, you know what you are,
- 1:10:57Speaker 3: and when you're really serious, you let me know. And
- 1:11:00Speaker 3: I think a week later she was very serious. She
- 1:11:04Speaker 3: asked me for advice. She put a blue suit on
- 1:11:07Speaker 3: with her shirt. I told her what to wear. I
- 1:11:10Speaker 3: told her what to say. She went for a job
- 1:11:13Speaker 3: at a distributor, at a sales position. She got it.
- 1:11:17Speaker 3: The reason why I'm telling the story is last two
- 1:11:20Speaker 3: weeks ago she said, I wanted your address because I
- 1:11:23Speaker 3: wanted to send you a gift. Because for a year
- 1:11:25Speaker 3: and a half she's been doing really well. But this year,
- 1:11:29Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen, she made Sales Girl of the Year.
- 1:11:35Speaker 3: She changed her life from the night life of what
- 1:11:38Speaker 3: she really didn't want to do and really became a saleswoman.
- 1:11:41Speaker 3: And it's so happy and proud. But that made me
- 1:11:44Speaker 3: feel proud because she was able to change your whole
- 1:11:46Speaker 3: lifestyle and really, like you know, and she had a
- 1:11:49Speaker 3: daughter and she's doing really well, and that's like a
- 1:11:52Speaker 3: like that right there, you could change one person's life.
- 1:11:55Speaker 3: Sometimes when I speak in front of kids, and if
- 1:11:57Speaker 3: two kids come up to me, after it kick king
- 1:12:00Speaker 3: to the other day and said, you really get paid
- 1:12:02Speaker 3: the party, like yeah, but not but but you know,
- 1:12:08Speaker 3: and but I always feel like, you know that that's
- 1:12:13Speaker 3: my mission now because I'm no good without giving the
- 1:12:15Speaker 3: knowledge that that what I was doing. One there it
- 1:12:18Speaker 3: is and that's so that's where I'm in my life.
- 1:12:20Speaker 3: I want to consult with from brands on down to
- 1:12:24Speaker 3: the younger generation and and I want to and I
- 1:12:26Speaker 3: want to speak. I want to do public speaking with
- 1:12:29Speaker 3: inside of schools and and trying to educate them on
- 1:12:32Speaker 3: jobs withinside the business. So how would they find those jobs?
- 1:12:34Speaker 4: Right to the young lady, that's incredible that she did that,
- 1:12:37Speaker 4: but she knew, yeah, she knew me. So how would
- 1:12:40Speaker 4: the average person say, you know what I want to
- 1:12:41Speaker 4: get in the spirits industry?
- 1:12:43Speaker 3: You know, I'm looking lately and then a lot of
- 1:12:45Speaker 3: people have been hitting me up. But it's it's a
- 1:12:47Speaker 3: lot of people, like a lot of a lot of
- 1:12:48Speaker 3: jobs like online now, like you know, you can go
- 1:12:51Speaker 3: on d Augio's website, you can go on put over
- 1:12:54Speaker 3: Cards website, which is another big look a brand. But
- 1:12:59Speaker 3: you can on these websites and honestly, do you do
- 1:13:03Speaker 3: your knowledge like a friend of mine went at liquor store,
- 1:13:06Speaker 3: went in the back of a bottle, found where the
- 1:13:11Speaker 3: bottle was being imported from, and wrote the company up
- 1:13:14Speaker 3: in Connecticut and found the website to it and then
- 1:13:18Speaker 3: found the hr person to it. Like people are really
- 1:13:21Speaker 3: like knowing how to do that. They're hungry enough to
- 1:13:23Speaker 3: do the work now, which is good and it's funny.
- 1:13:25Speaker 3: I'm really only telling the story because he got the
- 1:13:27Speaker 3: job's crazy, but yeah he got and there he's working
- 1:13:31Speaker 3: in Connecticut right now. But but yeah, so that's that's
- 1:13:34Speaker 3: that's where I'm at now.
- 1:13:35Speaker 2: That's dope.
- 1:13:36Speaker 3: Man.
- 1:13:36Speaker 2: Well, thank you for joining us, man, I appreciate it.
- 1:13:39Speaker 2: How can it? How can the people contact you? Can
- 1:13:41Speaker 2: they contact you?
- 1:13:42Speaker 4: Or yeah?
- 1:13:43Speaker 3: Yeah, contact social Yeah, you can DM me. Listen, I
- 1:13:49Speaker 3: answered everybody. My email is nixt Storm twenty nine at gmail.
- 1:13:54Speaker 3: Can email me. But my I G is I am
- 1:13:58Speaker 3: next Storm meaning content me or my manager. His name
- 1:14:01Speaker 3: is ja Cool. His instagram I don't know. His instagram
- 1:14:07Speaker 3: is Jake Cool Love. Yeah, d M him. He'll get me,
- 1:14:11Speaker 3: you know, at any speaking engagements, you know whatever. You know,
- 1:14:14Speaker 3: my manager's right there side to the town of Greenberg. Yeah,
- 1:14:17Speaker 3: lovelands on for a little bit. We call him Stephen
- 1:14:23Speaker 3: a j.
- 1:14:26Speaker 2: That's a good one. That's actually a good one. That's
- 1:14:29Speaker 2: a good one. Troy House housekeeping item.
- 1:14:31Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:14:31Speaker 4: Man, shout out to everybody on patreon dot com. We
- 1:14:33Speaker 4: have hit one hundred on it. We had a goal
- 1:14:35Speaker 4: to hit one hundred people and that's our proudc pay program.
- 1:14:38Speaker 4: We hit one hundred. We got something special for those
- 1:14:40Speaker 4: those people. Like we said on the site, we're gonna
- 1:14:42Speaker 4: do something real special till five or six. Y'all also
- 1:14:45Speaker 4: be on the lookout for that and keep supporting.
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: Man.
- 1:14:47Speaker 3: We have five tiers.
- 1:14:48Speaker 4: We're actually gonna do some remodeling on our Patreon. We're
- 1:14:51Speaker 4: gonna change some things up. But keep supporting that and
- 1:14:54Speaker 4: everybody that's supporting the Merchre dot com. It is hoodie
- 1:14:57Speaker 4: season here in New York, so it might be hoodie
- 1:14:58Speaker 4: season on the East Coast. So our sweatshows are up there.
- 1:15:02Speaker 4: We have their assets overliability Sweatshare. We're also going to
- 1:15:04Speaker 4: have a hustle for your last name, and we're gonna
- 1:15:07Speaker 4: have some new merge coming.
- 1:15:08Speaker 3: Man. Shout out to all our.
- 1:15:09Speaker 4: Earners, that is, you know, the people that follow an
- 1:15:11Speaker 4: Allsia and support craziest community. And if you'll see you
- 1:15:16Speaker 4: shall see Nick after this episode is what the earners
- 1:15:20Speaker 4: are all about them.
- 1:15:21Speaker 3: They are allsion of supporters.
- 1:15:23Speaker 2: Shout out to them, Yeah, shout out to them for
- 1:15:26Speaker 2: showing patreons the community. And that's it. Ah, see you
- 1:15:29Speaker 2: guys next week.
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