Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Fawn Weaver On Building A Black-Owned Liquor Empire, The Story Of Nearest Green + More

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INTERVIEW: Fawn Weaver On Building A Black-Owned Liquor Empire, The Story Of Nearest Green + More · The Breakfast Club

0:00
Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club
0:04
Speaker 1: Morning everybody. It's the j Envy Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy.
0:09
Speaker 2: We are the Breakfast Club. La La Rosa is feeling
0:11
Speaker 2: in for Jesson. We got a special guest in the building.
0:14
Speaker 2: We have Fawn Weaver.
0:16
Speaker 1: Welcome the book. Here you guys, somebody, Okay, here we go,
0:23
Speaker 1: there you go four wea Ladies and gentlemen.
0:25
Speaker 2: New book out now called Love and Whiskey, The Remarkable
0:29
Speaker 2: story of Jack Daniel, his Master Distiller Nearest Green and
0:32
Speaker 2: the Improbable Rise.
0:34
Speaker 1: Of Uncle Neris. How are you feeling this morning? Dollars?
0:43
Speaker 3: This has to be here?
0:46
Speaker 4: What do you Why did you call the rise of
0:48
Speaker 4: Uncle Nearest improbable? Because when you was up here with
0:50
Speaker 4: maybe a couple years ago.
0:51
Speaker 3: Seven years ago, it's improbable because no black person, no
0:56
Speaker 3: person of color, and no woman has ever succeeded in
1:00
Speaker 3: this industry ever, not as a founder. And so it's
1:04
Speaker 3: improbable because I shouldn't be here, This Uncle Nearest should
1:09
Speaker 3: not be where it is when you look at it.
1:12
Speaker 3: Most come into an industry, and even if you come
1:15
Speaker 3: into an industry like the whiskey industry where it's ninety five,
1:19
Speaker 3: one hundred percent dominated by white men. You come in
1:23
Speaker 3: and you already know that you're going to have to
1:25
Speaker 3: play offense and everybody's going to ignore you. Well I
1:28
Speaker 3: had to come in play defense. I was telling a
1:31
Speaker 3: story in the middle of what was then a twenty
1:33
Speaker 3: four billion dollar company, and I was going right in
1:36
Speaker 3: the middle of it and saying, I'm going to add
1:38
Speaker 3: Nearest Green to your story. That put a lot of
1:42
Speaker 3: arrows at me. Well, really put a lot of grenades
1:44
Speaker 3: on me.
1:45
Speaker 4: But it felt like when you all was here telling
1:47
Speaker 4: the story seven years ago, it was almost like, no,
1:49
Speaker 4: Uncle Nears is actually the beginning, yeah, of the story.
1:52
Speaker 1: It was like now bringing everybody back home.
1:54
Speaker 2: That's what it felt like to me, because people might
1:56
Speaker 2: not know what you're talking about because you're seven years
1:58
Speaker 2: old with seven years when you came up here. So
2:01
Speaker 2: break down what Uncle Nearest is it and explain what
2:03
Speaker 2: Charlamage is talking about.
2:04
Speaker 3: It all right, it's got the bottle, So this is
2:07
Speaker 3: the bottle. So this is Uncle Nearre's premium whiskey. It
2:10
Speaker 3: is the most awarded bourbon of the last five years
2:13
Speaker 3: in a row worldwide. It's about to be six. That
2:15
Speaker 3: also is improbable because we're coming into an industry that's
2:19
Speaker 3: been dominated by the same people for hundreds of years,
2:23
Speaker 3: and it became the fastest growing still is bourbon or
2:26
Speaker 3: American whiskey in US history. And Uncle Nearest is the
2:30
Speaker 3: first known African American master distiller. His name is Neares Green.
2:34
Speaker 3: His legal name was Nathan, but we don't use Nathan
2:37
Speaker 3: because he didn't use Nathan. Any document on him that
2:40
Speaker 3: he was involved in post slavery, he didn't use Nathan,
2:43
Speaker 3: which it was very common if you were given a
2:46
Speaker 3: name that after you were free, if you didn't like
2:49
Speaker 3: the name, you changed the name. So he went by Nearest.
2:52
Speaker 3: His kids called him Nears, his grand kits called him Nears,
2:55
Speaker 3: So we call him Nearest Green. But now, when this
3:00
Speaker 3: came out, it was the first time an African American
3:02
Speaker 3: was ever commemorated on a spirit bottle. And when we
3:05
Speaker 3: opened Nearest Green Distillery, it was the first time ever
3:08
Speaker 3: that a distillery had been named after an African American.
3:11
Speaker 2: Now, seven years ago, you explained it a lot. What
3:14
Speaker 2: got you into doing this with people that don't remember
3:16
Speaker 2: the interview.
3:17
Speaker 3: When you get yeah, yeah, it really was cementing the
3:20
Speaker 3: legacy of Nares Green. So my mother's a teetotler, so
3:23
Speaker 3: she said she really wished he made lemonade, and quite frankly,
3:26
Speaker 3: if he had made jeans or like Lucille's down in Houston.
3:29
Speaker 3: I don't know if you all have been down there,
3:31
Speaker 3: but Lucille's down in Houston. Her family argues, her descendants
3:35
Speaker 3: argue that Pillsbury is using her recipe, that they reverse
3:39
Speaker 3: engineered it because she refused to sell it to them,
3:43
Speaker 3: And so you have those types of stories that have
3:46
Speaker 3: been in American history forever. Now we actually had a
3:49
Speaker 3: company that was willing to admit that they're founding that
3:55
Speaker 3: there was an African American, an enslave man that would
3:58
Speaker 3: was at least the teacher of Jack Daniel. And then
4:02
Speaker 3: after that became, after he was free, became the first
4:05
Speaker 3: master distiller.
4:06
Speaker 4: Can you break down the whole Jack Daniels of it all?
4:09
Speaker 4: Everybody knows Jack Daniel, YEA, yeah, down.
4:12
Speaker 1: Like why he's.
4:14
Speaker 3: Because Nearest Green was the teacher of Jack Daniel. He
4:18
Speaker 3: was a teacher, He was the mentor before this story
4:21
Speaker 3: came out, before I did the research and brought the
4:23
Speaker 3: researchers together, Jack Daniels, the company didn't realize that Distillery
4:27
Speaker 3: number seven ever existed. Their records only went back so far,
4:31
Speaker 3: and so they're looking at it and looking at their distillery number.
4:34
Speaker 3: I said, no, no, no, you got to take that back.
4:36
Speaker 3: Old number seven was the actual distillery and Nearest Green
4:40
Speaker 3: is the only known master distiller for Distillery number seven.
4:45
Speaker 3: So when I came to this story, the very first
4:47
Speaker 3: thing that I did was by that original property where
4:50
Speaker 3: Distillery number seven was, where Jack grew up, the three
4:53
Speaker 3: hundred and thirteen acres above Lynchburg, Tennessee. Because that allowed
4:56
Speaker 3: me to start piecing the story together and and to
5:00
Speaker 3: be able to I mean, coming into a story that
5:02
Speaker 3: is so iconic. Jack Daniels is an ubiquitous brand around
5:06
Speaker 3: the world, and I was coming in and saying, not
5:09
Speaker 3: only was an African American there at the beginning of it,
5:13
Speaker 3: but Jack treated him fairly. And you're talking about the
5:16
Speaker 3: south Lynchburg, Tennessee, and for a person to be treated
5:21
Speaker 3: as an equal that was a black person, that was
5:24
Speaker 3: unheard of. But here was this this So this is
5:27
Speaker 3: in the nineteenth century, so everywhere from about fifty six,
5:31
Speaker 3: eighteen fifty six into until Jack died in nineteen ten.
5:34
Speaker 3: Because I know what prohibition too, because a lot of
5:37
Speaker 3: people will hear this story and say, who if he
5:39
Speaker 3: treated him nicely, why did you have to go back
5:41
Speaker 3: and say, check out the stillary number seven? But were prohibition,
5:43
Speaker 3: there were so many different things that happened where they
5:45
Speaker 3: made it where like after the like with when Harlem
5:47
Speaker 3: Renaissance came along, and like just the political powers that
5:50
Speaker 3: black people couldn't say, oh I did that, well in
5:54
Speaker 3: this instance it was a little different. So in this
5:56
Speaker 3: instance during prohibition, prohibition was twenty years in our country
6:00
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty years, but in Tennessee it was thirty. They
6:03
Speaker 3: started ten years before, so most people don't know that
6:06
Speaker 3: Jack Daniels moved to the loop. Jack Daniels was in
6:09
Speaker 3: Saint Louis for ten years, gotcha, and leading up to prohibition.
6:12
Speaker 3: So on the other side of prohibition, it reopens, but
6:17
Speaker 3: it's in so much trouble. Jack's nephew is in trouble.
6:20
Speaker 3: So they eventually had to sell it to another company.
6:23
Speaker 3: It's under that company's watch, gotcha that the story disappeared,
6:26
Speaker 3: But under Jack and his descendants they made sure. So
6:30
Speaker 3: when you look at this photo. The reason why I
6:32
Speaker 3: started this book with this photo is Jack Daniel didn't
6:36
Speaker 3: just put a black man to his right in nineteen
6:38
Speaker 3: oh four, he seated the entire center position of the
6:41
Speaker 3: photo to the black man. So that was Jack's way
6:44
Speaker 3: of saying, America's gonna try to write you out. I'm
6:46
Speaker 3: not gonna allow him to wow. And then his biography
6:49
Speaker 3: written in nineteen sixty seven, high to the civil rights era,
6:52
Speaker 3: and you have Nears and his boys mentioned more times
6:54
Speaker 3: than Jack and Jack's own family. And so you knew
6:57
Speaker 3: that Jack wanted us to know. So not only was
7:01
Speaker 3: he here at the beginning, don't ever forget it. And
7:05
Speaker 3: so that's the reason why the story mattered to me.
7:08
Speaker 3: If this was another one of the stories where African
7:10
Speaker 3: Americans were done wrong and we were like pushed to
7:13
Speaker 3: the side, this story would have had no interest to me.
7:15
Speaker 3: We have enough of those stories. Yeah. What interested me
7:18
Speaker 3: about this story is I felt as though it was
7:20
Speaker 3: a story that we may have been treated right, and
7:24
Speaker 3: I wanted to prove it if it was true, because
7:26
Speaker 3: if we don't have any hope, like if every story
7:29
Speaker 3: we hear, we don't have anything to go toward, If
7:32
Speaker 3: every single story lacks hope, then we just walk around
7:35
Speaker 3: here thinking, well, it's always been terrible, It's always going
7:38
Speaker 3: to be terrible. But if every generation we can find
7:41
Speaker 3: those glimmers of hope that move us forward, then we
7:44
Speaker 3: know where we're going.
7:45
Speaker 1: Well, got you into spirits.
7:47
Speaker 3: Nares Green so cementing his legacy originally book movie, right,
7:53
Speaker 3: super simple. But if I were to, well, you all
7:56
Speaker 3: in this room, you might know. But if I go
7:58
Speaker 3: in and I have a room, and I have a
8:00
Speaker 3: thousand people in that room, and I'm talking to them
8:02
Speaker 3: and I say, how many people saw Hidden Figures? Ninety
8:05
Speaker 3: nine percent of the room hands up right? If I said,
8:09
Speaker 3: name for me the three women who were the hidden figures,
8:12
Speaker 3: played by Taraji p Henson, Otavia Spencer and Janelle Monnet,
8:18
Speaker 3: you were the first person to ever sot why because.
8:22
Speaker 4: My daughter wants to be an astronaut.
8:25
Speaker 3: That's why counted in the story. Because he always has
8:31
Speaker 3: this wealth of information. That's but in a room like that,
8:34
Speaker 3: nobody can never name. So we all walk into a
8:37
Speaker 3: movie theater and we walk out remembering the same people
8:40
Speaker 3: we knew before we went in. And so if we
8:43
Speaker 3: wanted to make sure that this story one hundred years
8:45
Speaker 3: from now, someone wasn't having to uncover it again. Then
8:49
Speaker 3: we had to do with Johnny Walker, Jim Bean and
8:52
Speaker 3: Jack Daniel. Why why do we all know who those
8:55
Speaker 3: people are because we're watching them every time we go
8:59
Speaker 3: into a bar, we see that.
9:01
Speaker 4: I mean, that's how I feel about Uncle Nears now,
9:03
Speaker 4: because I'm walking through the airport and i see big
9:05
Speaker 4: Uncle Nera's signs and I'm just like, oh wow, I
9:08
Speaker 4: wanted to ask you, like, the fastest growing whiskey in
9:10
Speaker 4: history US history, right, You've been named on the fours
9:13
Speaker 4: listen is the richest self made woman in America for
9:15
Speaker 4: tween twenty four. Uncle Nera's has a one point one
9:18
Speaker 4: billion dollar valuation. What do you contribute to success? Because
9:23
Speaker 4: you know, we live in the era of everybody want
9:24
Speaker 4: to be an entreprene everybody want to be a boss.
9:26
Speaker 4: You actually did it in a very successful way. What
9:29
Speaker 4: do you contribute to success?
9:30
Speaker 3: I contributed it to one real, real simple thing, God,
9:35
Speaker 3: That's right. So a lot of people they want to
9:37
Speaker 3: write God out of the story of alcohol because during
9:41
Speaker 3: Prohibition the Temperance movement decided to tell people that the
9:46
Speaker 3: Bible said that alcohol was wrong. Bible never says it.
9:50
Speaker 3: I would love to go toe for toe to toe
9:52
Speaker 3: with any pastor that claims it. There is not a
9:55
Speaker 3: single scripture that it ever says it. What it talks
9:58
Speaker 3: about is drunkenness. Right, So everything in moderation, including alcohol.
10:05
Speaker 3: But the foundation of this company, the foundation of Uncle Nears,
10:09
Speaker 3: it's God. It is doing what we believe we were
10:11
Speaker 3: purposed to do, which is cement the legacy of Nears Green.
10:14
Speaker 3: But also to show how you can come, how our group,
10:18
Speaker 3: women and people of color can come into an industry
10:21
Speaker 3: that has always locked us out and not only opened
10:25
Speaker 3: the door, but opened the door for everyone to come
10:27
Speaker 3: right behind us. When we came into the industry in
10:30
Speaker 3: twenty and seventeen, the entire industry about ninety percent of
10:35
Speaker 3: the alcohol. Six spirit conglomerates they run everything, Diageo, LVMH, Bacardi.
10:39
Speaker 3: Every time y'all have an alcohol in it, it's mostly
10:42
Speaker 3: one of those. Well, there were no women. It was
10:45
Speaker 3: all every single one of them founded by, owned, by
10:49
Speaker 3: led by white men. When we came in, then Uncle
10:52
Speaker 3: Nearest began to have such a level of success that
10:55
Speaker 3: we weren't supposed to. That all their boardrooms, the conversations
10:59
Speaker 3: were about us as much as it was about their
11:01
Speaker 3: own company, and they started trying to reverse engineer their success,
11:04
Speaker 3: and they realized, wait a minute, this country is fifty
11:06
Speaker 3: percent women. If there are no women in these rooms
11:11
Speaker 3: where the decisions are being made, we're missing a huge
11:14
Speaker 3: part of the buying population. So all of a sudden,
11:17
Speaker 3: three of the women of the six spear conglomber I
11:19
Speaker 3: mean three of the six spear colombers all had women CEOs.
11:24
Speaker 3: What was your fight like? Because I used to work
11:26
Speaker 3: with a Sequila brain and we worked a lot with
11:28
Speaker 3: the distributors and having that relationship, like the people who
11:31
Speaker 3: take it to those bars and we see it is important.
11:33
Speaker 3: What was your fight like in the beginning, just trying
11:35
Speaker 3: to make distributors like make it where they think it's
11:38
Speaker 3: important because you were like, you were kind of like
11:41
Speaker 3: a unicorn in the space. Yeah. So going back to
11:43
Speaker 3: your question, that's probably the smartest thing that we did
11:46
Speaker 3: coming out the gate. Number one. I didn't go with
11:50
Speaker 3: one distributor, the largest distributor in this country asked to
11:54
Speaker 3: take us national. I said absolutely not. I'll give you
11:57
Speaker 3: eleven states. And they're like, it's either all or nothing,
12:01
Speaker 3: and I said, well, that's the easiest decision I've ever made.
12:03
Speaker 3: It's nothing because nobody puts the baby in the corner.
12:05
Speaker 3: And I've seen every black brand that come before me
12:09
Speaker 3: sit in a corner, and I have to believe it's
12:11
Speaker 3: catch and Keell, it doesn't make sense. We can't keep
12:14
Speaker 3: saying that there's not a market for us, And so
12:17
Speaker 3: then we have to ask the question of if the
12:19
Speaker 3: buyers want it, if the consumers want it, then why
12:24
Speaker 3: don't they get it? And so I determined it was
12:26
Speaker 3: the distributor tier. So I told the team number one,
12:30
Speaker 3: I want to be in all fifty states within the
12:32
Speaker 3: first two years, which we did unheard of. But the
12:35
Speaker 3: other thing was I built a distributor network of seventeen distributors.
12:39
Speaker 3: That's so smart. So I could say, hey, California, why
12:42
Speaker 3: are you being outsold by Georgia New York? Why are
12:45
Speaker 3: you being outsold by Tennessee DC. Why in the world
12:48
Speaker 3: are you being outsold by Alabama? Like I can literally
12:52
Speaker 3: it gets them going. But also, and this goes back
12:55
Speaker 3: to your question, is I think the smartest thing that
12:59
Speaker 3: we did, beside having seventeen distributors, where we could do
13:02
Speaker 3: it that way, As I told the team, if we
13:05
Speaker 3: do not hit our goals. Distributors cannot be the reason
13:09
Speaker 3: because everyone complained about distributors. Fifty is going through right now,
13:13
Speaker 3: puff through his lawsuit. Jay did it with his Everyone
13:17
Speaker 3: complains about the distributors. I said, they will not be
13:19
Speaker 3: the reason we don't succeed. So I went to every
13:21
Speaker 3: distributor and I said, I have no expectation from you
13:25
Speaker 3: that except that you will be a high price FedEx.
13:28
Speaker 3: My team will build it. I will be on the
13:30
Speaker 3: ground every single day. But there will come a day
13:34
Speaker 3: where I will let you know when I do expect
13:37
Speaker 3: you to work. But we did all the work for
13:39
Speaker 3: like the first four and a half years, and the
13:41
Speaker 3: fifth year, I said, now is the time I need you.
13:44
Speaker 3: I need you. And so by then we had proved ourselves.
13:49
Speaker 3: Nobody had us in a corner, nobody could put us
13:51
Speaker 3: in a corner, and we had proved ourselves to be
13:54
Speaker 3: valuable enough to them that they would then invest in us.
13:58
Speaker 1: Wow.
13:58
Speaker 4: I saw for the book that you interviews some people
14:00
Speaker 4: that were one hundred and six years old.
14:02
Speaker 3: Nearess's granddaughter was still alive.
14:05
Speaker 1: Wow.
14:05
Speaker 3: When nearest his granddaughter was alive, and Jack's great niece
14:09
Speaker 3: was alive. She died at one oh four and nearest
14:13
Speaker 3: his granddaughter died at one o eight. Did they drink whiskey?
14:18
Speaker 3: So here's the deal is. You will find in that
14:21
Speaker 3: book a lot of the African American elders that I
14:23
Speaker 3: interviewed were ninety ninety five and so yeah, whiskey might.
14:29
Speaker 1: Be the key man.
14:30
Speaker 4: You know, when you're down South, it's crazy right because
14:32
Speaker 4: they eat everything they say you're not supposed to eat.
14:34
Speaker 4: Her South Carolina eat everything you're not supposed to eat.
14:36
Speaker 4: It's me and they drink kanyak every day or whiskey
14:39
Speaker 4: every day.
14:40
Speaker 3: That's me, you know what I'm saying. Bisky every day
14:43
Speaker 3: every day. But it's a moderation. It's a moderation. Listen,
14:46
Speaker 3: if you had poorn to glass, I'd be drinking and
14:48
Speaker 3: it's like ten o'clock in the morning. You no, I'm good.
14:51
Speaker 3: I'm good. But the thing is is that I don't
14:53
Speaker 3: ever drink to a point of being tipsy. Got you.
14:55
Speaker 3: I love to I love it. I love how it
14:58
Speaker 3: brings inhibitions down. I love how you're able have great conversations.
15:01
Speaker 3: But the moment I even feel my head buzz, I
15:04
Speaker 3: will put it down until until it doesn't anymore. So
15:08
Speaker 3: I don't like tipsy, I don't like drunk, but I
15:10
Speaker 3: do love I have I have Uncle Nerris every night.
15:13
Speaker 1: How were memories.
15:16
Speaker 3: His grand His granddaughter's memory was not great, but everyone
15:19
Speaker 3: else's memory was great. And the thing that I love
15:22
Speaker 3: about being able to capture their interviews both I had
15:25
Speaker 3: a crew with me so on video and tape tape recording,
15:29
Speaker 3: and that kind of thing was that so many people
15:32
Speaker 3: between the time I started the research and the time
15:36
Speaker 3: that Uncle Nears came out, or at least the distillery opened,
15:38
Speaker 3: so many of them passed away. And it's almost like
15:41
Speaker 3: they were just holding on to tell their piece of
15:44
Speaker 3: this story and then they're like, Okay, I'm done. And
15:46
Speaker 3: it got to a place where almost every couple of
15:48
Speaker 3: weeks there was another funeral, and so people held on
15:53
Speaker 3: and so I got to capture all of their all
15:56
Speaker 3: of their words in this book.
15:59
Speaker 2: Wow, you know, this story is amazing, but your story
16:03
Speaker 2: is even more amazing. Where you came from and the
16:06
Speaker 2: fact that you left home at fifteen, the fact that
16:09
Speaker 2: you live in homeless shelters, the fact that you decided
16:12
Speaker 2: to start your own is a real a testament to
16:15
Speaker 2: who you are. Because your dad was a writer and
16:17
Speaker 2: producer from Hotown, and you know you could have stayed there.
16:20
Speaker 1: But what made you leave home at fifteen?
16:23
Speaker 2: And what said this is what I want to do.
16:25
Speaker 2: I know you said it was a book project and
16:26
Speaker 2: you said, you know, this is what it was. But
16:29
Speaker 2: you didn't get a four hundred million dollar loan or
16:31
Speaker 2: a million that alone, like Donald Trump, like you did
16:33
Speaker 2: this from the dirt in the grond. So break down
16:36
Speaker 2: your story a little bit, because that's the story. I
16:37
Speaker 2: don't think people understand because you didn't get a loan.
16:41
Speaker 2: You didn't say, Dad, let me borrow a couple million,
16:43
Speaker 2: like you grinded for this. And that's what's really impressing.
16:46
Speaker 3: Well, they look, people look at my confidence and they
16:49
Speaker 3: assume that it's because I went to some ivy league,
16:53
Speaker 3: and this is sort of the assumption, right, And so
16:56
Speaker 3: when people open up this book and they learn I
16:59
Speaker 3: left out home at fifteen, it was an ultimatum that
17:01
Speaker 3: wasn't necessarily it was my choice, but my parents it
17:05
Speaker 3: was an ultimately.
17:05
Speaker 1: Why did you have to leave? Why did they want you?
17:07
Speaker 3: What was the ultimately strict Christian household? And I just
17:11
Speaker 3: wasn't a child where you could say do it my way,
17:14
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't question it. I questioned everything. I got
17:18
Speaker 3: kicked out of the ninth grade because my teacher told
17:21
Speaker 3: my parents. My English teacher told my parents that she
17:24
Speaker 3: didn't know what kind of day she was going to
17:26
Speaker 3: have in her classroom till I walked through the door. Now,
17:28
Speaker 3: mind you, I was not a popular kid ever. I
17:31
Speaker 3: was never a popular kid growing up, but somehow I
17:34
Speaker 3: will did some level of influence even with people who
17:39
Speaker 3: I wasn't in the popular crowd. Never was. But according
17:43
Speaker 3: to my teacher, if I had questions, and I think
17:46
Speaker 3: what it was is is if the topic we were
17:48
Speaker 3: talking about, I was challenging it and she didn't have
17:51
Speaker 3: an answer, it made her uncomfortable. So then she felt
17:54
Speaker 3: like she lost control of the room. That's really what
17:57
Speaker 3: that was about. But my parents felt the same way.
18:01
Speaker 3: So they would say they're authoritarian. That's normal for African American,
18:05
Speaker 3: especially our parents, our parents, and so they would just
18:10
Speaker 3: say this is what it is, and I'd go, but
18:12
Speaker 3: why is it what it is?
18:14
Speaker 1: And how are you talking back?
18:15
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, to them, but to me, it was a
18:19
Speaker 3: it was a question, right.
18:21
Speaker 1: Legitimate question.
18:21
Speaker 3: It was a legitimate question. And if I hadn't been
18:24
Speaker 3: asking that those questions about the Bible then. I don't
18:27
Speaker 3: think I would know what kind of front to backwards
18:29
Speaker 3: now because I dove in myself because they couldn't answer
18:32
Speaker 3: the questions for me. But they were the Christian leaders.
18:36
Speaker 3: And so it was our way or the highway, and
18:38
Speaker 3: I chose the highway. So that was fifteen. I moved
18:40
Speaker 3: to Jordan Down's, I moved to Watt's home in the
18:42
Speaker 3: Grape Street Cryps, and I was dating a guy from
18:45
Speaker 3: Nicholson Gardens. And I think when I think back of
18:48
Speaker 3: my me growing up, I remember, and that was a
18:52
Speaker 3: bloody war. I mean we're talking about this was the nineties,
18:55
Speaker 3: the bloods and the Cryps. It wasn't you know? It
18:58
Speaker 3: was great saying what Kendrick did and I ruined all
19:00
Speaker 3: the rest of it. I was like, that's amazing because
19:03
Speaker 3: all of them would have shot that place up when
19:05
Speaker 3: I was coming up and Watts and so I would
19:08
Speaker 3: go back and forth between Jordan Downs and Nickoson Gardens,
19:11
Speaker 3: no issues, like I never once felt like I was unsafe.
19:17
Speaker 3: I was very comfortable in those environments, which helps me
19:21
Speaker 3: in the liquor industry. By the way, you to walk in,
19:25
Speaker 3: and so I go there. It's super cutthroat. But also
19:30
Speaker 3: the current liquor industry was essentially founded by the mob,
19:33
Speaker 3: so there's a lot of mob elements that are still
19:36
Speaker 3: a part of the industry to this day. And so
19:39
Speaker 3: that was, you know, being in Watts, and then I
19:44
Speaker 3: was there. I was super comfortable at Jordan Down's. And
19:47
Speaker 3: then I went to a hip hop concert. They called
19:50
Speaker 3: it rapped in, But I went to a rap concert
19:52
Speaker 3: and there was a DJ, and there was a guy
19:54
Speaker 3: who's rapping, just local Watts rapper, and I'm in the
19:59
Speaker 3: crowd right in the kind of front middle. And I
20:03
Speaker 3: will never forget it to this day. Is he literally
20:05
Speaker 3: tells the DJ, stop the music. Stop the music. DJ
20:08
Speaker 3: cuts the music, and he looks at me and he
20:10
Speaker 3: points at me, and he says, we have a half breed.
20:12
Speaker 1: In the house, said me every morning.
20:15
Speaker 3: But ahead, yeah, I've seen all the lights kin jokes.
20:18
Speaker 3: It's so many of them. It's half breathed.
20:21
Speaker 1: I might bring that back.
20:23
Speaker 3: No no, no, don't bring back to do not bring
20:27
Speaker 3: back to Havre on my account. But for the first time,
20:30
Speaker 3: when all those eyes turned to me, I felt unsafe.
20:34
Speaker 3: So I left home because I didn't fit in there.
20:37
Speaker 3: I felt like I fit in and Jordan Down's and
20:40
Speaker 3: that happened, and I was like, oh, I'm not safe here.
20:43
Speaker 3: So I spent the next pretty almost three years living
20:47
Speaker 3: in homeless shelters. I spent my eighteenth birthday at Covenant House.
20:50
Speaker 3: I think y'all have one here in New York. Amazing organization,
20:54
Speaker 3: but that was that was my kind of my upbringing.
20:58
Speaker 3: The thing that's great about Covenant Houses you'd go out,
21:00
Speaker 3: you work. I had four jobs, and you give them
21:03
Speaker 3: your paychecks and it goes into an escro account. And
21:06
Speaker 3: when you had a certain amount of money, you use
21:08
Speaker 3: that money you go and get your own place. So
21:10
Speaker 3: Covenant House allowed me to build the foundation of being
21:14
Speaker 3: able to live on my own. And once I was
21:16
Speaker 3: able to do that, it was kind of off to
21:19
Speaker 3: the races. But I also still didn't know what I
21:22
Speaker 3: was doing. I mean, I was still a kid, so
21:24
Speaker 3: I didn't feel like a kid, but I was still
21:26
Speaker 3: a kid. And I got to twenty years old and
21:29
Speaker 3: I was like, this life is hard, and do I
21:31
Speaker 3: really want to do this for the next twenty years?
21:33
Speaker 3: And I decided no, and I tried to commit suicide,
21:37
Speaker 3: not once, but twice, and I remember, yeah, absolutely, I'm
21:42
Speaker 3: grateful I survived. But the second time, I was laying
21:46
Speaker 3: in the bed and the doctors were around me, and
21:49
Speaker 3: at that time, they would put a tube down your
21:51
Speaker 3: nose and they would pump charcoal into your stomach to
21:54
Speaker 3: absorb the impurities. It's the same thing we do to filter,
21:57
Speaker 3: that exact same thing, and so they would put in
22:00
Speaker 3: to absorb the pure impurities. But I remember laying there
22:03
Speaker 3: and thinking, Okay, I've tried to take myself out twice
22:07
Speaker 3: and I wasn't able to do it. So I came
22:11
Speaker 3: to two conclusions. Number One, I was here for a purpose.
22:15
Speaker 3: I didn't know what it was, but I was going
22:17
Speaker 3: to figure it out and I was going to live
22:18
Speaker 3: my life that way. The second thing was if I
22:21
Speaker 3: couldn't take me out, nobody could take me out. So
22:23
Speaker 3: when you see me walk into rooms, especially in this
22:27
Speaker 3: industry where historically we have done two things, either we
22:31
Speaker 3: shrink or we complain, and I walked into every single
22:35
Speaker 3: room and had every conversation with people in this industry,
22:38
Speaker 3: and they're looking at me like you have not earned
22:41
Speaker 3: your stripes to be able to have a toe to
22:43
Speaker 3: toe conversation with me, and I'm like, I earned my
22:45
Speaker 3: stripes when I didn't die. Beyonce talked about that in
22:48
Speaker 3: DQ when she shot at you out. First of all,
22:50
Speaker 3: how did you feel about that when she shout it you? Yeah,
22:52
Speaker 3: people have been tagging me when her whiskey came out
22:55
Speaker 3: last week. I think I was in London and doing
22:57
Speaker 3: literally because Love and Whiskey dropped in London and I
23:00
Speaker 3: was doing non stop interviews and so people are tagging
23:03
Speaker 3: me with Beyonce situation. And from what I understand from
23:08
Speaker 3: my husband, I have a really beautiful gift at home
23:10
Speaker 3: with her whiskey in it when I get back home,
23:12
Speaker 3: So I'm super excited about that. She gave you guys
23:15
Speaker 3: a really good shout out and talked about how good
23:16
Speaker 3: it was. Yeah, all that, but she also like literally
23:19
Speaker 3: the next question after they asked her about like just
23:22
Speaker 3: navigating business and industry, and she talks about how like
23:25
Speaker 3: when it comes to brands, women have always had to
23:27
Speaker 3: kind of be forced into the face of the brand,
23:28
Speaker 3: but you never like the strategy, the planner and the
23:31
Speaker 3: like the boss of the CEO. So to hear you
23:33
Speaker 3: say that is in line with like she really identifies
23:36
Speaker 3: with your story. Oh no, absolutely, and she's the queen,
23:39
Speaker 3: so you know, we kind of all bow down there.
23:41
Speaker 4: There's a few things I got to go back to,
23:43
Speaker 4: at least why did he call you a heavy?
23:45
Speaker 3: Just the crazy part is is at that time it
23:49
Speaker 3: sounds funny now, but at that time is when black
23:52
Speaker 3: people we thought we had enough natural SPF where we
23:54
Speaker 3: didn't have to wear it. So I was dang near
23:57
Speaker 3: your complexion at that time. But it was the eyes
24:01
Speaker 3: because because I would literally sit in the sun to
24:04
Speaker 3: get my skin darker because I love that. My eyes
24:07
Speaker 3: were so bright, the darker my skin was, and so
24:10
Speaker 3: my skin was actually much darker complexion, but my eyes
24:13
Speaker 3: were bright green when when my skin was darker.
24:16
Speaker 4: And the second question, you mentioned niggas and gardens, right, yeah,
24:19
Speaker 4: and you know the niggas and gardens. Did you when
24:22
Speaker 4: you were launching Uncle Nearyth, did you reach out to
24:23
Speaker 4: anybody there, like like a top.
24:25
Speaker 1: Dog or a j Rock?
24:27
Speaker 4: You know those people had capital like when you No.
24:30
Speaker 3: So when I began, first of all, I was there,
24:33
Speaker 3: but I like in high school, I wasn't popular, so
24:38
Speaker 3: nobody would know, nobody would know who I am. And
24:41
Speaker 3: and but when I began, she.
24:43
Speaker 1: Was probably out of it, but she was out of
24:44
Speaker 1: there before before all that.
24:46
Speaker 3: So you're talking. I mean, we're talking about ninety four,
24:49
Speaker 3: ninety so I would have been there around it's gotta
24:52
Speaker 3: be ninety two, right. She was there in ninety two.
24:55
Speaker 2: Definitely, but they didn't have to label successful like they did.
24:57
Speaker 2: She was probably around one time talking about.
24:59
Speaker 3: That, but the connection let me let me let me
25:02
Speaker 3: tell you I had I had no, I wouldn't have
25:09
Speaker 3: known like I literally, but I can tell you this.
25:13
Speaker 3: For my Seed series, every black person I pitched turned
25:16
Speaker 3: it down. For series A, every black person except for uh,
25:21
Speaker 3: there's I only have one Devin Johnson, which is mav
25:24
Speaker 3: and Lebron's COO. Yeah, only person, only black person. Series B.
25:31
Speaker 3: I think maybe I picked up maybe one or two.
25:34
Speaker 3: But unfortunately for US, we tend not to believe in
25:40
Speaker 3: US and so we won't invest in US until we've
25:45
Speaker 3: already succeeded. And one of the most frustrating things for
25:49
Speaker 3: me is the only reason I even have African American
25:53
Speaker 3: investors in Uncle Nearst is in one of the series,
25:57
Speaker 3: I gave us a two month head start, get through
26:00
Speaker 3: all the paperwork, look at before I before I opened
26:03
Speaker 3: it up to everybody else. It's the only and I'm
26:06
Speaker 3: so grateful I have incredible investors that I was able
26:10
Speaker 3: to go to them and say, listen, y'all are white,
26:13
Speaker 3: and I actually want my community to also make money
26:17
Speaker 3: off of this. So do you mind standing down on
26:20
Speaker 3: this next investor around and allowing them so they had
26:24
Speaker 3: such a head start, still didn't take the majority of
26:27
Speaker 3: the round.
26:28
Speaker 4: I wish you thought we had money back then.
26:35
Speaker 1: Do you think that.
26:35
Speaker 2: People didn't invest because they didn't believe or at the time,
26:38
Speaker 2: quote unquote, whiskey wasn't as popular.
26:40
Speaker 3: Oh no, whiskey was at its height when this came out.
26:43
Speaker 3: So it wasn't It wasn't whiskey. It was that you
26:47
Speaker 3: have a woman in an industry in which never succeeded,
26:52
Speaker 3: a black person, an industry in which never succeeded, not
26:55
Speaker 3: as founder and CEO. And then you have a person
26:59
Speaker 3: who knew nothing about this industry that was about to
27:03
Speaker 3: go toe to toe with a twenty four billion dollar
27:06
Speaker 3: heavyweight in the industry. And so it was such a
27:10
Speaker 3: huge risk. But also I think that a lot of
27:13
Speaker 3: times we just don't believe in us. So if I
27:16
Speaker 3: had been If I had had this exact same story,
27:19
Speaker 3: had this exact same brand, My business plan was fifty
27:22
Speaker 3: pages deep. The swat analysis was no joke. I think
27:25
Speaker 3: if that had landed on desks and it wasn't a
27:29
Speaker 3: black woman, there's a really good shot that black people
27:32
Speaker 3: would have invested. And that's the crazy part. But because
27:36
Speaker 3: we're so new to business, we're so new to succeeding
27:39
Speaker 3: in business, and because we're first generation money and so
27:43
Speaker 3: we feel more comfortable in the things we can see
27:46
Speaker 3: in our garage than we do in a portfolio that
27:50
Speaker 3: is completely on paper.
27:52
Speaker 2: Always say a lot of times we look at I
27:53
Speaker 2: don't want to say low hanging fruit, but a lot
27:55
Speaker 2: of times we invest in what we can see.
27:57
Speaker 1: Right, you always see people investing. It was the everywhere. Yeah,
28:00
Speaker 1: but Crown Royal.
28:02
Speaker 3: But you don't understand it really whiskey. Let's talk about that.
28:06
Speaker 3: That is vodka that is colored and flavored?
28:10
Speaker 4: You think it?
28:10
Speaker 3: Ask me, has that sat in a barrel? Is it?
28:12
Speaker 3: Because it's so saturating now like it's everywhere that it?
28:15
Speaker 3: Did it start out as a whisky? What are you
28:17
Speaker 3: are you talking about? Crown Row? Yeah? I don't know.
28:19
Speaker 3: I can tell you what it is now. We're taking
28:22
Speaker 3: flavored and colored vodka is what we're having right now.
28:25
Speaker 3: Those in that purple bag.
28:27
Speaker 2: Any of these celebrities, especially the ones that you named earlier,
28:30
Speaker 2: reached out to you for advice because you've you've conquered you,
28:33
Speaker 2: you're working you, you you put your foot in these
28:36
Speaker 2: people's asses where they're having a bunch of problems, whether
28:39
Speaker 2: it's a Diddy back then or a Ja or a
28:41
Speaker 2: fifty or Kevin Hard or everybody else that has their
28:44
Speaker 2: own liquor snoop, Has anybody ever reached out to you
28:46
Speaker 2: for advice or help?
28:48
Speaker 3: So none of those, uh, the people who have reached
28:51
Speaker 3: in to me are generally those who want to start
28:53
Speaker 3: a brand, and their response is always when I say why,
28:57
Speaker 3: it's always Clooney And I'm like, okay, so what is
28:59
Speaker 3: you know about the Cloney deal? And that's it. They
29:04
Speaker 3: don't know. They don't know why that one worked, why
29:07
Speaker 3: that was one out of like easily ninety nine percent
29:11
Speaker 3: plus celebrity brands fail easily in this industry, And everyone
29:16
Speaker 3: keeps pointing to that one, and I'm like, if you're
29:19
Speaker 3: going to point to you have to know why he succeeded.
29:22
Speaker 3: It wasn't just his celebrity and just kind of So
29:25
Speaker 3: I usually spend the whole conversation breaking down for them
29:29
Speaker 3: why that customer goes actually succeeded, And by the time
29:33
Speaker 3: we get to the end of the call, I usually
29:35
Speaker 3: don't see them come out because they don't want to
29:37
Speaker 3: do It's a lot of foot Like when I used
29:40
Speaker 3: to be in the market, I used to always see
29:42
Speaker 3: you in all of my accounts, and I always wondered, like,
29:45
Speaker 3: how did you get It's hard to get an account.
29:48
Speaker 3: I was in those accounts. Yeah you were, and you were.
29:50
Speaker 3: People don't understand there's a business. And when you sit
29:52
Speaker 3: at the bar, you front and center at the bar,
29:54
Speaker 3: people can see you. That means your people are out
29:56
Speaker 3: there doing the work. Absolutely, it's a lot of work.
29:58
Speaker 3: It's a lot of work. Yeah, this is not a
30:01
Speaker 3: this is not posted on social media and hold up
30:04
Speaker 3: your bottle, hold up your glass, and you think that.
30:06
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're a big celebrity, a really big celebrity,
30:10
Speaker 3: that will allow you to have a great launch. But
30:13
Speaker 3: the work is not in the launch. The work is
30:16
Speaker 3: how you grow it after the launch. And that's where
30:19
Speaker 3: almost all of them fail.
30:21
Speaker 4: Did Beyonce they reach out?
30:22
Speaker 3: No, well years years years, not Beyonce. Let me say that,
30:31
Speaker 3: not Beyonce. Ye.
30:32
Speaker 4: I couldn't tell because the way I mean, the way
30:33
Speaker 4: she shout it out, I couldn't tell if she had
30:35
Speaker 4: spoke to y'all prior to launching her brand or not.
30:37
Speaker 3: But I can say this, and it's and it's because
30:40
Speaker 3: the person who reached into me had me sign an NDA.
30:43
Speaker 3: That's why I possed. But it was. It was quite
30:45
Speaker 3: a few years ago, and I gave my advice on it.
30:48
Speaker 3: I said, these are the things that will need to
30:52
Speaker 3: happen if it's going to succeed. And and I said,
30:56
Speaker 3: and by the way, I'm around, so any person in
30:59
Speaker 3: this industry who was a woman or personal color will
31:01
Speaker 3: tell you if they reach out to me, I give
31:04
Speaker 3: them all the keys. Everything that I know, I share
31:07
Speaker 3: freely because it's not mine to keep. It's not mine
31:10
Speaker 3: to hold. If the information came to me and it's
31:12
Speaker 3: going to help you succeed, I'm going to give it
31:14
Speaker 3: to you. But you better still do the work right.
31:16
Speaker 3: And so I told them this was probably about four
31:18
Speaker 3: years ago. I told them, as you're working on this project,
31:22
Speaker 3: feel free to reach out to me at any time
31:25
Speaker 3: and I will share with you whatever I know. And
31:27
Speaker 3: I didn't hear anything, so.
31:29
Speaker 1: Woww man, you got a story.
31:32
Speaker 2: That's why you got a book for congratulations on everything.
31:38
Speaker 3: Is one point one B.
31:39
Speaker 1: I need to I want to taste whiskey.
31:41
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna lie, all right, And I've never thought
31:43
Speaker 4: about drinking it before because whenever I think whiskey, I
31:47
Speaker 4: think cowboys.
31:48
Speaker 3: Yeah right yeah.
31:50
Speaker 4: But then when y'all got Uncle Neir's, I was definitely
31:53
Speaker 4: appreciative of it and supportive of it, but I just
31:54
Speaker 4: never hasted it, like.
31:56
Speaker 3: Really, it took your time. Let me tell you so,
32:00
Speaker 3: I personally I love to drink a neat but it
32:02
Speaker 3: just depends. That's with no ice snow. But a lot
32:04
Speaker 3: of people will put it on a single cube. A
32:06
Speaker 3: lot of people will fashion a cocktail. Old fashion is I.
32:09
Speaker 1: Was gonna say with meat, but it does old fashionation everything.
32:12
Speaker 3: But because there are certain liquors, you drink it when
32:15
Speaker 3: you're eating. Say he look at him, he just goes
32:16
Speaker 3: to the So here's the thing. So here's the thing.
32:18
Speaker 3: I when I did research and I learned how oysters
32:22
Speaker 3: gave us freedom being able to. I determined I was
32:26
Speaker 3: going to find oysters that I like. Now I still
32:28
Speaker 3: don't like most oysters, but I found like two varieties
32:30
Speaker 3: that I like. Because it was so important to pulling
32:33
Speaker 3: us out of poverty. So was whiskey so unlike cotton,
32:39
Speaker 3: unlike tobacco. This was such a highly skilled job that
32:45
Speaker 3: you're talking about. Nearest Green immediately following the Civil War
32:49
Speaker 3: had more money than his white neighbors. It's because he
32:54
Speaker 3: was a distiller. And when you're looking at uncle nearest
32:57
Speaker 3: near St Green, so I should say this, and then
32:59
Speaker 3: I know y'all have to wrap the only difference between
33:02
Speaker 3: Kentucky bourbon and which every single person on a bottle.
33:05
Speaker 3: I don't care who it is, white, male, founded, or
33:09
Speaker 3: led owned all of that. But the only difference between
33:13
Speaker 3: Kentucky bourbon and tennessee whiskey. Number one. This takes longer
33:17
Speaker 3: to make, it's more expensive to make. But it's the
33:19
Speaker 3: process that Nearest Green tot jack. It's the process of
33:22
Speaker 3: taking a traditional bourbon, distill it, running it through sugar, maple,
33:26
Speaker 3: charcoal before it goes into the barrel to purify it.
33:29
Speaker 3: Same thing that was pumped into my stomach, except that
33:31
Speaker 3: wasn't sugar maple, but you know, same thing charcoal, and
33:34
Speaker 3: so that happens beforehand, it goes into the barrel. That
33:39
Speaker 3: process was brought here by the Africans. Wow, that came
33:42
Speaker 3: with us. And so when we're talking about spirit brands
33:45
Speaker 3: in America, if African Americans are going to drink anything,
33:49
Speaker 3: our roots are in whiskey and not Crown Royal Canadian vodka.
33:55
Speaker 3: But like legit whiskey.
33:57
Speaker 1: And people drink I drink old fashion.
34:04
Speaker 3: Whiskey is bourbon. It's legally it is bourbon. The only
34:08
Speaker 3: thing is is we have to do an extra step.
34:10
Speaker 3: So since we have to pay for that extra step,
34:12
Speaker 3: we like to make sure people know it's also legally
34:15
Speaker 3: Tennessee whiskey, but this is bourbon.
34:17
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, thank you for for everything.
34:21
Speaker 4: Congratulations again whiskey. Uncle Near's everything that's right. You are
34:26
Speaker 4: very very inspiring and so many differently and it's not
34:29
Speaker 4: and to me, it's not because of the one point
34:31
Speaker 4: one billion evaluation. It's just because you had a dream
34:34
Speaker 4: and you did not give up on your dream, and
34:36
Speaker 4: it's a dream connected to the ancestors. Because of you,
34:39
Speaker 4: Uncle Near's story will continue to be told. Yes, that's incredible.
34:43
Speaker 4: I feel like that's what we're here to do.
34:45
Speaker 3: Yes, because it is. We're not here to be reservoirs.
34:50
Speaker 3: We're here to be rivers. And my life is a river.
34:54
Speaker 1: Forn weave of ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much
34:56
Speaker 1: for joining us.
34:56
Speaker 3: Thank you dj V.
34:58
Speaker 1: It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Wait to add up
35:00
Speaker 1: to her in the morning. The Breakfast Club, MHM.