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Building Accord Stone Irish Whiskey From Scratch: Jason Neri on Slow Proofing, Transparency and Surviving the Beverage Alcohol Grind · Ready To Drink Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Jason Neary.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the founder of uh Northern Courage, uh, which is uh kind of business with two wings.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, originally it started um to you know be the LLC that housed my whiskey brand, which is called Accordstone Irish Whiskey.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I've got a bottle near me at all times.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um we launched that um in July of this year was gonna work when we first had our sales for distributor start getting some e-commerce sales in May.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, that's been a really fun project working on for like two and a half years.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: In addition to that, Northern Courage also does consulting.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: And really specified with the kind of greater beverage alcohol space, my greater, I mean, anything that's kind of gonna go near those same shelves and be in those same sorts of accounts.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Non-alcoholics, I've had clients to spend hemp beverages.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, essentially it's something that I can, you know, do to help other founders grow, uh, but also pay the bills while I'm growing my whiskey brand because uh we're still funding that thing.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I don't have it in the PL to take a salary for about three years.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I gotta keep the lights up.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: I and uh I I feel for you, man.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: I did I've done that and continue to do that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta balance both things in order to get the other thing off the ground.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh it's the back, it's the darker side of entrepreneurship that people don't talk about is uh, you know, you might be known for one thing, but there's a lot of other things taking your time and attention behind the scenes.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, for sure.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, behind the scenes too, uh, we also have four children, my wife and I, ages seven, seven mix, three, and eight months.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: So um there's really little sleep around here.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of running around.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's such an exciting time in my life.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think most people would say I was nuts to you know go out on my own while I have all the news around me, but I have a very, very supportive wife who is um a partner as well in the whiskey end of the business.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she has a great marketing background, she brings an incredible lens to um what we're doing with that and helps keep my kind of off-the-wall tangents and ADHD brain uh focused on the task at hand.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, uh all the things behind the scenes, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh absolutely yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: My girlfriend and I are blended family with uh four for 11 to 20.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: So uh so it's uh and and I would say exactly the same thing.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Having so having a strong support system in your corner is the number one way to persevere in entrepreneurship.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: Every time I failed was when I when I tried to do everything on my own and I didn't have any support.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: That was when I fell back and slid back.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it's it's the classic I had is uh you can go fast alone and you can go far getting, right?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: You're exactly right.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: So talk to me about your uh so go back before the consulting and before the whiskey brand.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: What are you doing prior to that?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: And kind of let's let me give you a year.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go to you're 20 years old.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: What are you doing?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: And where are you?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, 20 years old, I was probably a harpoon's barn grill on the quarter draw nights in Columbia, Missouri, uh, which is pretty went to the college.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then uh on the night I was working, I was at Les Bourgeois Winery, uh, which is a uh local family-owned winery in Columbia, Missouri.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was kind of my first foray into the business.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was really on the hospitality end.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um I worked in the restaurant, I kept worked in the tasting bar.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then it came about my uh roommate and I, this guy who's actually still also in um the wine spirits business, but in a totally different tangent that I stayed on.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: He went to the farm first, he stayed on the farm.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: I went to uh hospitality and I stayed kind of in that consumer-facing, you know, front of the house sort of role.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: But um he and I lived together, and um one uh the head winemaker moved in above us.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: He was kind of going through like a messy divorce or whatnot.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we were sitting outside in the backyard having a called beers by a stick burner one night, and you know, we were eating ramen.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, You guys are like dead broke.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Do you guys want to work?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, absolutely.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, listen, uh come to the winery tomorrow and um we need some more hands on deck uh going into their uh apartments for having a busy season.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: So let's see how we can put you guys to work.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So my roommate Tim went to work in vineyards, um, and I spent the day in the cellar, which is underneath the highway, um, you know, capping or bottling uh their sparkling wine.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, it was like 40 and I got there and it was dark and it was cold and kind of sucked.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Can I do anything else?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Things like that.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: But catering event staff always need more people.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: We always need some more people in the tasting room.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, why don't you do that?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I fell in love with her just telling the story of you know what's in your glass, talking people through what they're tasting, um, helping them find what they like within whatever we have to offer.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, that that's that's what I was doing in my 20s, my first foray is the business.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so at this point, I'm almost 20 years.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: We we uh so I started when I was 19 and I'm 21 years in.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: So we're we're right there on the track in the same way as I assume.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: We so the other thing we parallel with is uh when you talked about before with uh with doing the story and talking through what's in your glass, you know, I was I was exactly what you're talking about, but on the craft beer side.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I was the one running these things called beer schools where we would work with restaurants and then do beer pairing dinners and all kinds of educational programs around our market.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh really cool to also I want to ask you, because I don't get to ask this often, how what people realize of uh being that age and working in this industry.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, can you repeat that?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, being being that age, like at that age in 20, 21, 22, and then working in this industry, like how how do you think that affected the trajectory of your life after that?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, I I think it helped because it you know gave me a foundation at least of you know, kind of um what people are expecting um in a hospitality setting and kind of different ways to talk about it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, listen, it was a big learning curve though, growing going from that environment where um a lot of people come in their college students, they're on dates.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the wines we have are super sweet, um, you know, sugared up, which is you know what they were looking for.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: And um a lot of things I would do was like uh be at like fraternity parties, you know, maybe drive around a hay ride in the tractor, or you know, be just torn them, you know, huge glasses, like no, no, I'm more in the cup of uh Riverbelt Red, is what we had, and red belt white and pink fox.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then going into like a more professional setting was um a lot different.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: That was so fast and loose there.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: My next job in the industry was working for Wurtz beverage, now breakthrough beverage in Chicago.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that is a long-running, you know, legacy business was run by Rocky Werts, who transformed like three family businesses.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Very unfortunately, like my first professional paychecks.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's like someone I admire a lot.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: But then going into having those conversations differently with um, you know, people who are you're trying to, you know, not sell uh college give a drink um at a bar, you're trying to sell someone um a case of wine or a case of spirits to the liquor store that they own, and they're you're asking them to you know hand over their own money in hopes of making some money on those product these things really.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: I uh so yeah, so then at 2019, that's how I started, was it with that in the on-premise, but then it was a Riglio Beverage in Philadelphia, and then I ended up running the craft division for Ace distributing over in York.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: So there we go again.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: We're tracking in the distribution world too.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's a fun industry.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's usually where you can touch them all and kind of figure out where you um are really the most comfortable and where your skill sets are sued the best.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think it also changes kind of throughout a life.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: I meet so many people now that um have been in on on the hospitality side for 20 years, but you know, maybe some of them have kids or young families and they're looking to transition into roles either with a supplier uh or the distributor because um that there's no longer hours than working in a restaurant on a bar.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and they're odd hours, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have kids in school, it's like, well, your place of business may not open until 11 a.m.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: They may open until 4 p.m.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, they're kind of looking to get something that's gonna help them spend more time with their families.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's always that transition too.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that that's the the one of the chat most challenging parts about the industry, I think, is it's such it depends on what age you come into and what stage you are in life.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's a completely different experience.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and and and it's uh, you know, even for my for mine, it's it's kind of funny because like like even now the industry is a little different.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like my kids grew up sitting on the pallets of beer while I was working in the office.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I got tons of photos of them on pallets of Miller Light and all kinds of stuff.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: And like that's you know, that was the way they grew up.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: And and they they grew up in in breweries running around with the breweries working and stuff like that.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: So their their interpretation of the world and alcohol is a little bit different.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: And but at the same time, it's also interesting to talk to somebody like yourself that's been in it so long because talking to let's talk a little bit about you said about you know fast and loose and stuff like that.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go back 15, 20 years in our industry versus now how we're operating.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it's um it's a it's a much different ballgame.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um the professionalism is I don't want to say is it's required more, but um people just don't get away with kind of bad behavior as much anymore.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also the best.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it's gosh, I remember going on my first few incentive trips.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and we go out to like wine country, and it's like I see my bosses just getting flushed after a hot tub, and they're, you know, it's kind of I was like, man, I mean you're my boss when there's men and women, we're all this hot tub together.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's like midnight, it's like this doesn't seem very professional, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, seeing my boss's boss carry out a casino in Las Vegas.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a nutty, and I don't really think that happens anymore.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's glad that it doesn't, especially for younger people going into the business, like, man, that's the way to turn someone off pretty quick.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um as an owner of a brand now, um, I don't want anyone representing my brand and my name um and behaving like that, right?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: No, and and and uh I'm glad you brought it up because it's something I do talk about in here.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm uh three years sober.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And uh one of it was that reason.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I very I went through different professional stages, but then I also can't went in and leaned in hard on the party side of the of the business and made a life out of out of throwing parties and things got out of hand.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't blame anything at the industry, but we can all know like if you're in it with a problem and then all that's going on, then there's no guardrails, it's easy to kind of it's gonna slide off the rails every once in a while.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: I've always went in there myself.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, not gonna share a code alive, like you know, it's um it's tough to kind of keep your pen on it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: I did think that um I it it is different because I've worked in wine, beer, and spirits, and I've worked for um you know, a large wholesaler, I've worked for uh large suppliers, I've worked for smaller suppliers, and I found that the consistency of consumption uh was higher in craft beer than it was in spirits or wine.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I might have just been my personal experience, might have been even my stage of life.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's the same as mine.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same as mine.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you we know that because I I mean for mine, I was working on commission and I was watching my rate of sale.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was I was it was always that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's yeah, it's one of those things that uh it's I a lot of times I look at um the different industries and stuff like that, and it's it's interesting.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: We have all everything from NA as well as as uh functional beverages and stuff.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's always fun to watch the data and the turn rates and how they change on each category, and then within alcohol the same, like you said.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, nobody's sitting around drinking uh sippy cups anymore wine.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So not so much.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like kind of since you've been in it for a long time as well, like what are your kind of suggestions as far as if somebody is kind of graduating high school or even in their 20s and stuff like that?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: And let's say, to be honest, let's say they sell the bear on Fox or FX and they they want to get into the hospitality industry.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what do you think uh are some good benchmarks for people to say, hey, if this if you got these skill sets and stuff like that, then then you'll the rest will kind of fall into place or anything like that.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um you gotta be controlled with chaos.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you you have to be able to spin 10 plates at once, probably figuratively and literally.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and um you need to have a really good coping mechanism that doesn't involve substances and substance abuse.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it's uh that that that's what I recommend because it is hectic.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the bear, I think, has been influential and great in a lot of ways.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's been great for the city that I love, Chicago.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: I can put so many great independent makers on a map.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's highlighting some things that are beautiful and great about the city.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um it also highlights about how um much that industry can break you down.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I will say though, when you're in your 20s, um you should be able your risk tolerance should naturally be higher because your responsibilities are just fewer.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um certainly there's exceptions to that.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's people in their 20s, all of a sudden they have to take care of their parents or take care of their siblings, you know, financially, health-wise, everything.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but you know, it's um it's in your 20s, you're gonna have getting your lowest earning potential because you have the least amount of knowledge.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and especially if you went to you know a university, I would suggest getting into it before even before going into a university and maybe putting that on pause, seeing so many people take on mountains of debt.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And if I have a middle management job to show for it, and still have mountains of debt, and those jobs are being replaced by AI very quickly.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I mean, throw yourself into it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: It it's it's a decade where you should find yourself, find out what you truly love, um, and take those risks.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I wish I had taken more risks in my 20s.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, I was able to build a great foundation.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I built up a skill set to where I can serve myself a Swiss army knife.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not the best at cutting, you know, with the best pair scissors, best little magnifying glass, but I can do all of those things uh to a pretty decent degree of capability.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm able to pro myself into a wide variety of situations.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of my consulting um to really be pretty effective because I can look at a lot of different aspects of someone's business um and give them sound advice based on experience.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's also helped me um, you know, start my own brand from um a concept to bottles on the shelf at um one of the most competitive retailers in in the Midwest, which is Biddies, uh wait within a short amount of time, and that was without having to hire any consultants to tell me how to get it done.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: I just you know was able to figure out.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: So let's talk a little bit about that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like you have your own brand now, and let's talk a little bit about the the other piece that people don't realize is our industry is very hand-to-hand sales, and especially when it comes to craft liquor and craft wine and craft beer.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: So let's talk about the challenges of that and how if you're a brand, let's say, that's getting ready to open up a new market or things like that.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Some advice is as far as understanding from a capital-intensive standpoint and also from an ROI standpoint and setting expectations.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it is hand-to-hand combat.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, um, big distributor, small distributor, you have to sell the product.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you have to be your first salesman, you have to be your best salesman.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: At some point, you can move yourself to part-time, but I don't think you can ever fully fire yourself from that role.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I hope to fire myself from marketing.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: I hope to fire myself from you know, um, some of the operational planning that are, you know, put the blending.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: I want to fire myself from logistics, but um, you know, I can't yet.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: But um and the reason I say big distributor or small distributor, it doesn't really matter.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: All of their books are so overburdened right now.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that they've mostly taken on everything they can take on.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and there's been such a massive shrink just in the last five years in that you know critical last mile that the distributor fulfills in terms of getting your product um from your warehouse to the retailer shelves or the restaurant shelves, wherever said, Yes, we believe in it, we're gonna carry it.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and um, you know, when I was going to seek out my distributor for uh example in Illinois, on the floor of the companies that I had worked with before that really wanted to work with were gone.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh pure wine was gone.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh tensing um, you know, had been absorbed into breakthrough.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: They some of the folks broke off to their new things kind of different.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: So tensing was no longer there.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Momentum beverage um just you know had kind of uh closed their doors.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, the consolidation is only speeding up.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I used to even big houses like RTC, just as last week got bought by or getting acquired by Reus in six markets.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: There goes the dedicated wine and spirits distributor into a giant beer house, and they're not gonna be picking up crack brains.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um they're gonna be picking up things that uh already have built-in demand that fill trucks.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in most states, there's not um self-distribution opportunities.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're they're really tough to kind of find.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's the first thing.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, do you do you know distributors?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know someone that's gonna be able to bring that last mile?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you're gonna have to really lean on DTC.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and um that's complicated too.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: It depends on how your product is priced.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you have a$20 bottle of wine, no one's gonna pay$24 to ship it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, kind of learned that uh company with Orthodox before I started my brand.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was demand was there, but um again, no one's gonna pay the same amount of product as they shipped.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of um in terms of the capital expenditure, once first things first is the liquid rate.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's really the most important thing.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to love the customer that you plan on selling it to.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that like really you have to love them, you have to care about them, you have to want them to be so happy that they spent their money on your product.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: People have less money to spend uh you know the county is uh not been very easy for so many people uh past them.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know what it might be our entire since we grab since we kind of get finished high school shortly after.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, where's uh oh boy, that's when I got out of college in uh first half.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was graduated.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, we we definitely thought that uh yeah, go to college, you're gonna get a job and all that horseshit they set us.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, my my first job so before I got together, it's trivial and I was waiting to hear back.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: I ate six months working at uh a uh bank investment bank.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think have you seen like the boiler room or just thought about boiler room.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh dude, so yeah, it was uh, you know, um probably three, four hundred poll calls a day to hear no and help you in very creative uh ways.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, got me some tough skin, but it was you know 78 plus hours a week, straight commission.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: So there'd be some weeks I'd make I don't mean like two grand, there'd be some weeks I'd make$75.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and now it was really tough.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, anyways, uh digress.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, no, it's a valid point though.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: People need to realize that that that exists still.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like we still, I mean we still have to do that.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: And and and in our line of work, nothing's easy.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like you you are gonna call 10 people and nine people are gonna tell you to go fuck yourself, or they're gonna hang up, or they're gonna call.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: I've even had them call the F uh TC or FCC agency and and threaten to file things just because I called to say hi.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't even selling anything.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: So like I think people need to realize that because a lot of times we hire people for tell sale and we have to really be explicit about the reality of what it is.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like sales, sales is one thing, walking in the door, and over the phone, they have no they have no emotion.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're just a you're just a voice on the phone and they will say anything to make you feel horrible.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: My gosh.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh, does your father know what you do for a living?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, he's not very proud, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm working on it.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yum.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: That was a quick thing in uh during COVID when we realized uh all of us realized really quickly we can't tell sell alcohol.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, not not so much, but I mean, man, it's easy to sell things then because we were buying so much.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was less it was less touch points.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: You're right, more volume, less touch points, yeah.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: But and and that's another thing that people should realize uh if they want to start a brand now.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I started dreaming of this brand, you know, two and a half years before I launched it, and things looked a lot different on you know, in the middle of 2022.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Trends were up on so many things.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: We were just riding that wave, and there's like manyone is drinking a lot, and people are just continuing to stock up, and it's gonna go on forever.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then you know, at the back half of 2023, the other foot started coming down.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: 2024, it stopped down, and 2025, the other foot stomped in the first foot.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it's uh here we are, and I think there's some signs that it's a camel back, and we're maybe kind of coming up a little bit from it.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's still plenty of brands and companies that are up versus their 2019 numbers.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: But there's so many people that are in financial dire straits because they produced like that illustrates were going to keep going.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: And distributors stock that they're going to continue going.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: Store stock that they're going to continue to keep going.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there's just a lake of unpurchased booze out there that's not in consumers' homes.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, that that's the thing to watch for.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I was I was in it um by the time this came up.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was um I I wasn't I just let the whiskey sit in the barrel until it all evaporated.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: And someday with one year old, a little bit of 20-year-old whiskey and try to sell a very unknown thing at hundreds of dollars.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: But um, you know, it was time to to make the leap.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And fortunately we have seen some piece of velocity on it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: But um, if you're going in, you know, you can manage um what your spend is, what your ROI by how much you produce and what your expectations are.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I I would advise people to not expect to be to go national and expand so rapidly, very quickly.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's some companies that have been able to do it, but if you look at I'll give a good example of like the RTD world.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Two brands that have like exploded over the last few years that I really mind that um did it so differently.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: One is Carlos, you know, husband and wife team, they started thing during COVID.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they focused just in Wisconsin, and they did what I really think brands should focus.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna tell you, they uh Adam was one of the first five guests that I had on this episode three or four years ago.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, really?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's so crazy you just brought that up.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Adam was yeah, Adam was one of my first five guests or so, yeah.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he he followed a really smart playbook, which is like with no one's a profit in their hometown, right?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: But you have to own where you are first because there are gonna be drinkers for that product.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, just expand the radius now a little bit, but they focus on Wisconsin.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: And they won, oh, so winning Wisconsin.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we won Wisconsin.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: They beat them.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: They also high new in Wisconsin.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: They also Galloway is the mightiest, you know, beverage company uh around, and they beat them.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um and only then would they expand to another market.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, they're in the top five, you know, whatever it is, and in that category, and they're you know, doing their job, but they're doing it slowly and smartly, going deep, getting entrenched in communities, um, figuring out where exactly their product works by channel, by account type, uh by maybe demographic of the area, even, and using those learnings to replicate the playbook in another market.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one story, and that's the one I think people should follow the most because it's not like they started with a mountain of cash, you know, to go out.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's honestly like I've actually messaged him and his wife multiple times because I just love what they've been doing since then.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it's funny because I did, you know, being being in the business line, every once in a while you check the pulse and be like, hey, when you're ready to come to Pennsylvania, you know, you know, you do the same thing.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, when you're coming to my state, you know, let me know, I'll help you lay out your distribution.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: And every time, exactly what you just said verbatim almost, it was like we're doing this like slowly, we're building the home base first.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: It was like it was so strategic and meticulous, and I I just I respected it so much.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Naturally, and and then you know, on the other side of things, there's another you know, independent brand that you know, so by independent, I mean um not owned by a constellation or gallop, yeah, or whoever.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's good boycott, uh, another RTV brand that's had crazy explosive growth.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, things are really good, but they spent a lot of cash to get there in terms of acquiring a really big sales team, expanding state by state very quickly.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they're doing you know, speedboat sponsorships, race car sponsorships.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: They have celebrated partners with John Daly and Travis Pastrana.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: The Pratt family has a lot of cash to start with, and Brad Industries is a very, very successful company, does great things, employs a lot of people.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: But don't think that you could go out and do that unless you have their sort of cash and you're willing to burn it and you're willing to operate in the red for a while.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: For us and what we're doing, I want a cordstone to build more organically.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I want to get to profitability as quickly as possible.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that means um I am the celebrity face behind the brand, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: And um and we're gonna expand slowly.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: We we had a goal of opening three states in our first year, and that's really based on the geography of where I have relationships where I kind of know where the bodies are buried, so to speak, um, and where I can drive to and travel to efficiently stay at some you know, friends' houses, family's houses, whatever.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: So Indiana, Illinois, and uh Michigan.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: We live in South Bend, Indiana right now, so it's kind of a nice, easy start point, two and a half hours to Indianapolis, about 90 minutes to Chicago, two hours to Grand Rapids, you know, about two and a half to Detroit.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, okay, I can easily get to those areas.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now I put 3,500 miles on my car every month, like seven months, but uh it's not unmanageable, right?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: No, not at all.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, uh, we're almost tracking the same with our mileage every month.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you're good, you're good to get there.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: The last time I was out in that area, we did uh uh annual business planning meetings uh with uh we had Laganitas, uh New Holland, and uh Bells and uh another brand up there.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to I'm losing my name real quick.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, so it's uh in that area.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: I know that Midwest uh corridor very well, and uh especially up in Michigan and stuff like that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: It is dodgy as well.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Hell this time of year to get out and see it bounce.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: I suppose you know like, all right, did the other day I was going to Chicago and we just had this big storm in South Bend, and um between our exit and then like the next kind of big oasis or you know, truck stop is 22 vehicles in the ditches worth it today to go see these.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is let's go.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: I uh I I sometimes when I'm doing those drives, I I remind myself of all the different experiences I had while pitching retailers while they were still working and they were operator retailers, like while customers are going in and out.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: And like a couple weeks ago, I had a situation where the toilet, uh the customer went in and clogged up the toilet.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I came home from from work and everybody was like, Oh, how was the job today?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Well, I did my first pitch in a bathroom while somebody was on the so literally the owner is like plunging the toilet, the thing is going everywhere, it's sewage, and then he's like, he's like, I only have five minutes with you before the next guy comes, and I'm like, all right, we're doing this.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm handing them towels while I'm going for memory.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: And and I and I I tell the story and I mean it like not as a gripe, but actually that's the difference.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna say this, and some people take it out of contest and say it's egotistical, but that's the difference of what we're talking about, the resilience and like the difference of who can handle every situation.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you're when you work for a distributor now, sometimes, like you said, they have a lot of brands.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes in a distributor realm, it's order taking, so speak, so to speak.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a whole lot of time for sales.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: You go in, what's in the inventory, what's out, what's the high items, hot hot priorities, etc.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: But now with with you go when you go in as a brand manufacturer, you have to tell a story.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're not just I need three, I need two, I need four, I need two six, I need four sevens, you know, whatever it is.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that's I think what's what sometimes is two things is number one, for brands, you just nailed it, it's the be comfortable with the risk that you signed up for.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: And and and I say that sternly to, and I say that to every client that comes on, is the clear expectation is you're not gonna pay for 30 days of sales work and then get 30 days worth of sales work returned in the next 45 days.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's not anything of a reflective of the work that was done in the market.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's the fact that the market is so jammed and packed with so many SKUs and distractions, let's call them.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: And the retailer themselves has a million distractions, not to mention what's going on culturally today and what whatever it is.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I deal with a lot of a lot of different cultures in my line of work, as I'm sure you do as well.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you add in external factors and internal factors.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: If you can't pitch a story and connect emotionally with that retailer, like you said in the very beginning, you've got to love your retailer, and that has to be reciprocated and felt.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: And if you can't do that and you're just another order taker, there's not a long longitude in the craft world for you.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: There's a there's a big future in in like order taking.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that never existed before.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I think you could get away with a good story and a good quit, but now you have to emotionally be vulnerable and connect.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: You do, and and you have to go into understanding what what they're gonna do in the day.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said, clog toilets.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if it's a restaurant, like, okay, well, we didn't get our beef delivered today.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: We can't make burgers, that's the thing that we do.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Or our broiler's broken, you know, our heater's broken, our four employees called off sick.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna have to run the whole show by myself.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's the reality of you know, being a restaurant there, probably up to 1 a.m.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: closing the joint the night before.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a whole other thing, yeah.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it's um you gotta go in with that level of empathy, and you know, you gotta matter, you gotta figure out how you're gonna manage them.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is it gonna be uh emotionally, is it gonna be financially?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: You you gotta make that connection and you gotta follow through with it.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um you can't be everywhere at once, so under promise, over deliver.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I'd also like to say you gotta pick the accounts that you're just gonna really babysit.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be your key accounts, you are gonna own the relationship for as long as you own your brand.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Go and make it really special for them.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Go and make it something like, do you know what, like, this place just isn't the same if we take that product off the shelf.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: It becomes a fabric of the place, and that's because you show that you care as much about their business, and that's the only way that they're gonna want to give a shit about yours.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because there are plenty of other whiskey RTD, non-alcoins that were just on and on down the line, it goes.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's it's uh, I would say also you you nailed it too with the follow-through.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I survey, I hire companies to survey anonymously my retailers and stuff like that.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the number one thing is is follow-through, as whether is whether or not they choose if they're going to bring a brand in.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: And that when you have then there's a there's a deeper question that gets asked, and it's it's why.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: And the why is because when the shit hits the fan, they want to know they can trust everybody and be able to call them and get what they need, and not that that per because a lot of times we've all seen it.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of sales reps are and other account managers and things like that.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: When the conflict begins and the stress begins and it's not a wave anymore, they tend to pull the old meme like uh homer backing into the bushes, you know what I mean?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, not my baby, not my problem, you know what I mean?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh that's not that's not the the way that we build business partnerships.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: And and I appreciate the way that you present it because it's the way I've been trying to drill into any sales rep I've trained or coached is uh you're a consultant of sales rep.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're not you're not a sales rep, you're a consultant.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: And your job is to understand when you walk in the door what's good, what you you would need to anticipate what could be going on in their life before you pull that doorknob.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because you don't have time when you walk in the door to figure it out.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: You need to have all the scenarios and all the mind mapping done before you pull that door.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, and and you also gotta understand too that um it's um your product is not gonna be right for every account.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes, you know, uh we were told not my sales training.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: I had Gallup microcheck a long time ago, and the two sales called.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know if there's an analysis of Bush microcheck.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's another one.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's another one.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: I got a lot I'm like a NASCAR driver with chips all down, though it's fine.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we're taught a lot in in those sales banks like, well, no means you know, not right now.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's like no, I mean no, a lot of times means no.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it means f no.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: You don't try to you know shove a square pack and a round hole, like walk on.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's other places out there your product could fit.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, take your time to like really survey accounts and be sure that your product can actually be successful and add value um to what they have in there.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, going back to the risk, the industry has through guys coming away, but it's like 90% value rate for new brands, probably higher now because there's so many brands and understand that risk.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, don't bite off more than you could afford to lose financially.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want to start with no money, so finding an investor early on, which is harder to do now than it has been in the past.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, that that could be key.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: And get the idea of the glamour kind of uh out of your head, you know, because like you mentioned, like you're gonna go into your sales pitches and you might be punching a toilet uh while you do it.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, it's not all um parties in Miami, you know, with fancy cocktails and the rock is very I don't even see does he do that or um you know that that's not what this business is.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's very much uh your hands are dirty, um, you know, doing hard work.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's I appreciate you saying that, and I I try to drill that into people as well.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, I want to as we're closing out, uh, I want to make sure if there's anything else you want to you want to talk about that's going on before we kind of close out here.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um I look I'd love to tell people a little bit more um codestone, uh what we're trying to do with it.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um so you know, uh I got into making this Irish whiskey, which um I'm not Irish.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was raised in an Italian house, right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: I found out later in life uh my mom was like a quarter Irish from the Mitchell's Python family, which you probably should have figured um already.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: I was just gonna call you out on that.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: Our last name was O'Reilly, but we thought we were from uh Cyprus.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, you know.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I but I kind of always like kind of growing up around Irish people in Irish culture.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Catholic schools in the Chicago suburbs.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when you do that, everyone you meet is gonna be Irish, Italian, Polish, Mexican, maybe not gonna fail in that order, but that's that's a mix of people you're gonna be around.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I'm married into a really big Irish Catholic family, and I'm just kind of you know, enabled by a lot of things in the culture.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and my brothers-in-law love both kinds of Irish whiskey.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: They love Jameson and Jameson Black Girl.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and while those are great, um, I came from freaking bourbon, and I came, you know, it allows many perfect triggers to kind of get your palates destroyed.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: My high-approved bourbon's my favorite bourbon is well to be rare breed.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like kind of perfect for the price point everything you get, all it delivers, and I wasn't really finding that sort of intensity of flavor, boldness of flavor, um, and texture uh from Irish whiskeys I was trying.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, okay, well, maybe there is a hole in the market um to make something that kind of fits my bourbon drinker's palate, to make an Irish whiskey that could be interesting for a bourbon drinker.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: I started researching the category a lot and you know, kind of uh, you know, was funny.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, if this Irish whiskey wants to grow, it's gonna have to start pulling drinkers from other categories.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna have to pull in some scotch drinkers, you have to pull in some bourbon drinkers.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: Most Irish publicans I talk to, they carry, you know, the spots and red breasts and tealing and some other cool stuff.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, it doesn't say James isn't on the bottle.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Most people aren't gonna order it.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: People come in wanting Irish pub experience, which is uh point of Guinness and a shot of JMO, right?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh gotta go back a little bit.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, before that, even I was working for uh just as the head of sales and then a sole salesperson before I was able to hire some people for a couple of different wine brands.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, one of them grew from a small footprint to nearly um doing about 5,000 cases to doing close to 40,000 cases, um, and being in six states to being in like 42 states, no, 38 states.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: I did it in about eight months.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so close to me is like, okay, you you know what you're doing, uh you're capable.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Would you ever consider doing it for yourself?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think uh I didn't really have the hornets to do that before when I got that vote of confidence.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, yeah, actually I I think I could I uh I can take that leap of faith and take that risk.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I'm not getting any younger.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll let's go for it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um I kind of came across this Irish tradition that I thought was incredibly beautiful.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's called the the Stones of Accord, and basically there are these old stones that you go to Ireland, you go to uh Scotland, you know, rather than the Gulf of France, and you're gonna find sanding stone monuments all over the place.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I love ancient people and studying that sort of thing.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: These were kind of special to me because they were meeting places, they're places where people came to agree on important things.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there were swearing oaths of loyalty, treaties, even trade deals, marriages.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, that's such a beautiful concept because that's how I always uh that's how I enjoy uh beverages.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's coming together with people, it's it's enjoying them with my friends, it's um using it as an excuse to to catch up with something that's like, hey, I got this great bottle, you can't find anyone else.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you come by and give it a shot?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's kind of the um spirit behind the brand.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also like I mean we're Catholics, we're really into traditional values, but um, you know, it's uh kind of getting back to people uh honoring their work, um, you know, following through their commitments doing what they say they're gonna do.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what we came up for the spirit of the brand.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it was um there's a million stories kind of go into getting us on the shelf, but I was fortunate enough to have the wherewithal to kind of figure out all the compliance and logistics of it.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um we partnered with a great label agency.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: They turned us on to this oil painter who painted the label.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um I found out after he was done, and probably why it costs so much, he did the original, you know, Captain Morgan, uh, which is really cool.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if she would have told me that.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe we'll have the next um icon on that.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: But um uh what really solid solidified it with me was uh getting into the blending process, going to find this liquid that was gonna be what I wanted it to be, and working with the people in Ireland.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and just actually going away because they just want they don't care about Irish.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: We want you to succeed because we want Irish whiskey to be spread all over the world.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um just last week, two weeks ago, I was in Ireland and I was meeting with John Thieling, um, who is an absolute iPod on the ministry, in my opinion, the most important person in Irish whiskey in the last two centuries.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um he brought distilling in Ireland back to Irish home.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um when he started the Cooley Distillery in 1987.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think there were any distilleries in Ireland that were owned by the Irish.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um Bruno Record, you know, or uh purchased um Milton distilleries.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: So he kind of brought back to Irish Home, um, started his brands, eventually sold that.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, it's kind of uh he started getting into them as his drink um at all.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: He might, you know, sip he knows but taste good.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but he kind of got into it and he was doing his um thesis, I think, at at uh Harvard or Panna, I forget which, and kind of finding that Ireland at one point was 70% of the world's whiskey supply.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, after famine and economic struggles and um you know a lot of oppression, which led to great emigration out of Ireland, um, you know, Ireland was 90 disabilities became four.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they became, you know, not even so much important on the on the world map.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, if I can start a company that helps proliferate Irish whiskey, then um that'd be a good thing to do to kind of bring back to Ireland what started in Ireland.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um Scotch people, Scotland will argue with that probably violently, and I don't want to have that fight, but it's best as I know it.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we created this whiskey, and uh the ways that we did it to well, first of all, we're transparent about employment components.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Whiskeys come from two distilleries, the Cooley Distillery and the Great Northern Distillery, both in um County Louth, both in Dundalk and County Louth in Ireland.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I felt the category is missing, was transparency.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: You see new blend Irish whiskey on the shelf, and it's 80-proof.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what the hell it is, and there's no way of finding any information where we're an open book on that.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we don't add any caramel color.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the biggerprints do to get give it a to make it look a little bit darker, but um no, that what you see is what you get.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: We're non-chill filtered, you're gonna get some kind of little charcoal y hazy bits in the bottom of your bottle here.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we slow proofed our whiskey, which is the page I took from Nancy Fraley's playbook.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I think uh what she's doing is still Austin, and which you don't have, you know, just the magnets and Wyoming whiskey.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: There's probably no hotter blender to talk about in the market than Nancy Fraley.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um both the distillery and my bottler had never heard of slow proofing, so I sent there her articles from him, talked about the cognac method of what we're just gonna drip in water over 30 days, get from 63% to 50%.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: And my bottler was game for it.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: They actually got really into it.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: It is a new challenge for them, and it absolutely knocked it out apart.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, most Irish whiskies are triple distilled.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: The base of our blend is double the stilled, which gives it uh a little bit more kind of neat, a little bit rougher edges.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Texturally speaks closer to a uh American uh distilled whiskey than it does to kind of a broader Irish whiskey.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: So our blend is uh it's 85%, it's gonna be 12-year-old uh grain whiskey or also cherry cast, the balance of seven-year-old single malt Asian ex carbon gas, bottle is a hundred-proof.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we are doing something that's a little bit different than what you're gonna typically find on the shelf.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: And on our first batch, which is only 3,400 total bottles, we won double gold, um, and then best in class with London Irish Whiskey at the New York World Security Competition, which I was floored about.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I believed it was good, I thought it was good, but to get that sort of award I don't really get is um W shot of the arm, you know, for sure.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: I love um I appreciate that transparency piece.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: I really do.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I know a lot of a couple people that have brands that that I wish they would do that.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um just because I feel not because of like anybody's hiding anything, as much as what you just said is sometimes that actually they that's a customer won't pull it off the shelf because there's no paper trail.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's no paper trail, and uh people begin to expect it, especially when you see across other categories, people pull in fast ones.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh to key is a really good example where you know companies are getting um fines for having additives and saying they're additive free, um, you know, things of that nature.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: So people want in the age of AI, people want authenticity, they want to know what they're getting, they deserve to know what they're getting.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that's hoping to go over that.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I can already tell, Jason, I want to have you on.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we're gonna have some roundtable things down the road in the next few months, if not over the course of the year.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm gonna definitely keep you posted on that.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we'll get like a brand in and your end, and we'll kind of all talk through everything.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, I just really want to thank you for taking the time today.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: But most importantly, as I close these out, I I want to remind people there's no script and there's no agenda.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: Jason and I never met in person.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: We never shook hands, we never shared a drink together.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: We literally just met.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to remind everybody, too, that the world is a crazy place, and this is how easy it is to make a friend.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: There is more in common than than people think.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you're walking down the street, look people in the eye, hold a door for somebody, ask them how they're doing, and actually take the time to listen when they tell you what it is that's going on in their life.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: You can't have a conversation without being civil, you know.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: You're exactly right, man.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: And for you personally, I want to thank you because it is uh it is, I would say that more often than not, the rejection comes because I don't have a script and I don't have an agenda and there are no questions in advance.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: And most people say, hell no, I'm not coming on.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: But guess what?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's my filtration system for assholes and people that don't know what they're talking about.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so I appreciate you coming on, and I want to give you credit publicly because it is a ballsy thing to get on and not know what it was gonna be.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: And this world is full of gotchas and all those moments, and it I appreciate the vulnerability and the openness to coming in and telling your story and trusting me that we're gonna tell your story out there.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I just I would I can't thank you enough for that, Jason.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: That means a lot to me.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Nate, thank you so much for having me.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: This was a lot of fun.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't think about going to go for another hour on it here.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: I actually was gonna I was gonna keep us going and then I realized that at 4 30, so I can't.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, listen though, hopefully the the next one can be in person, you know, or grab a cup of coffee and hang out.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, man.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, man.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: Jason, you have a good rest of your day.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: Take it easy, man.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: You take care.
• 47:27
  unknown: See ya.