Building a $1 BILLION DOLLAR Whiskey Empire: How Fawn Weaver Turned Uncle Nearest into America's Fastest-Growing Spirit Brand
41:16 Share

Jack is not in the center of the photo. He cedes the center position to the African-American man in a photo taken in 1904. Do you know what that photographer must have been thinking? That is what drew me to the story, not just the ability to tell the story of "Near Screen," but the ability to tell the story of Jack Daniel, who may be our first ally, the town of Lynchburg that raised them both up and said, "Blacks and whites, we are going to be equal here. We're going to be friends. We're going to be family."

a company, Jack Daniel Distillery, that paid people on tenure, not based on race. It's a topic that is actually relevant today. What's up, rich friends? Welcome back to another episode of Net Worth and Chill with me, your host, Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF and your favorite Wall Street girly.

Today we're going to be talking a lot about booze, in particular whiskey. Today we are going to be chatting about one of the most popular whiskeys on the planet, Jack Daniels. So much so you've heard people replace the word whiskey with Jack, like a Jack and Coke at a bar.

Well, in fact, Nearest Green is the first known African-American master distiller and was the first master distiller at Jack Daniels. But I'm guessing you probably haven't heard his name before.

Unfortunately, his story has very frequently been erased from the history books. So today we are going to do our best to share his story, his legacy, and learn about how one woman founded a whiskey brand to honor his memory and his contribution to the alcoholic beverage landscape. She is the founder and CEO of Uncle Nearest.

A whiskey brand valued at over $1 billion with a B, and is one of the five black women in the U.S. to found and lead a $1 billion company. Everyone, please welcome Fawn Weaver. Hello. Fawn, thank you so much for being with me here today. I'm so excited to chat. But let's start with a really fun icebreaker. Okay. When you are at a bar, what's your order? Support for this show comes from Brooklinen.

Spring is upon us and rejuvenation is in the air. And if you're feeling the call to refresh your sleep essentials, Brooklinen has everything you need. You can upgrade your bedding with their Luxe Satine Core Sheets or add layers of comfort with their Dreamweave Waffle Blankets. And Brooklinen has incredible patterns and textures to match your spring aesthetic.

Plus, Brooklinen's customizable bundles make it easy to refresh your bed and bathroom by putting everything you need in one place. Shop award winners and fan faves in-store or online at brooklinen.com. That's B-R-O-O-K-L-I-N-E-N dot com. Get 15% off your first order today. Uncle Nero's neat.

Neat. Absolutely. I just had it. I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and I was doing an interview and they had a bottle. I said, well, I'll take some of that if you're pouring. Oh my gosh. So absolutely. If you had two glasses here, we would be enjoying that right now. I love that. I mean, that is a strong power move.

But before we get into the story of how whiskey became your life's work, let's roll it back to before you could drink just about anything. Yeah. Growing up, I'd love to know, what was your first memory about money? My first memory about money, you know what's interesting, is tithing.

Tithing, like at your church. At church is giving 10% back and something I stick to to this day. But I think I remember it because growing up, we would get our allowance and $20 a week. We would get our allowance and we would put...

$2 in one envelope. That was for savings. Okay. $2 in another envelope. That was for tithing. And so that's my memory. And then I'd have $18 to do whatever with. What did you usually do with it? I don't even remember. I probably saved it. Like gum and candy. Oh, really? You know what? I am a big candy person. I'm a big sweets person. Yeah. And I grew up in a household that was really strict where it was like you're eating Roman meal bread.

bread, like not even, you know, everything was very raisin bran. And I don't even know if we could have raisin bread because it has sugar on it. Right. So but we couldn't have any of the sugar cereals. We couldn't have any of that. And so I probably spent it on sweet stuff. Yeah. Now that I think about it. Yeah. I love that. That's a very like childhood. Yeah. I love that so much. But throughout your course of your lifetime, you have kind of always done the right thing.

At least for our parents, you know, being an executive in the restaurant industry, having a corporate entertainment job. Like, you kind of followed the standard blueprint. Not at all. Really? I left home when I was 15. I dropped out of school when I was 16. I tried to commit suicide twice by the time I was 20. I lived in three homeless shelters by the time I was 18. So I don't know whose normal path that is, but that's not mine. That is very fair.

I think it's more so from the success. My end result. Yes. My end result. I think people think that an end result is indicative of where someone began. And one of the reasons why I think that my story in Love & Whiskey is so powerful is because I proved that the end result has nothing to do with where you begin.

You can make a decision at any point in your life to move forward differently. And so even when, like I was just the commencement speaker for one of the universities back east. Yeah.

And when they give the description, it is she graduated summa cum laude from University of Alabama, and she has her certificates from Harvard. And the first thing I said when I took the podium is I said, listen, I know that that's what they like to lead with are all these success stories. But you've got to know I was a high school dropout for about 30 years before I went back to University of Alabama and graduated summa cum laude. And so those are the parts of the story that people tend to sweep under the rug. And it's the part of my story that I highlight.

Because I don't want for people to think that you have to take a direct path to success. You can take any path to success. I started my first company when I was 18 years old. I started a PR firm. Well, through all of the ebbs and flows throughout my career, the way that I built Uncle Nearest, the way that Love & Whiskey is New York Times bestseller like 12 times over, the way that that happens is it's still on PR. Right.

So what I began with at 18 years old, that came natural and innate to me, even though my path here has been crooked as hell.

Once I got to where I am, if I look at every single step along the way, it's things I learned when I was really young, how to lead. You know, that's something I learned really young. Now, obviously, you hone it, you refine it, you get better at it. But if you go back and you look at yourself when you're seven years old, you'll pretty much see who you are if you don't allow the world to mold you into someone else. And I simply didn't allow the world to mold me into anyone other than who I am.

I feel like that was a sermon in itself. I love that. That's amazing. I guess what gave you the belief that you would be able to succeed when you did face so much hardship? You know, I think, well, going back to I mentioned that I tried to commit suicide twice when I was 20 years old. It was that moment in my life. And thank you for being so candid about that. I think that's true.

People don't really talk about that. Do you know how many people have gone through that, thought about that? So the fact that that topic is still taboo is crazy to me. Yeah. It's a conversation that people need to understand that this has been so common for so many people, especially people who don't feel as though they fit in. And

Most leaders, most really people that really change the world, that do extraordinary things, those are the people that growing up didn't feel like they fit in. And the difference between the ones who we know and the ones we don't is the ones who had those thoughts of I don't fit in and I want to move on either didn't work or

and they're still here or they were over able to overpower those thoughts and still push forward or they had an infrastructure but leaving home at 15 years old I didn't have the infrastructure to remind me that listen yeah life has been tough for the first 20 years of your life but you know

But you have the power to make it better for the next 60 years, right? But at 20 years old, I'm looking at it and going, my God, do I really want to work this hard for the rest of my life? Like, it was hard to get to 20. Do I really want, you know, do I really want to keep doing this?

And I think a lot of young people have that thought. What I love about when I have this conversation, and to me it's a beautiful part of my tapestry of my life. There's nothing about it that I feel shame about or bad about. And what I love is the number of people who reach into me, and they're in their 40s, they're in their 50s, and they'll say, you have no idea that those were my thoughts last week. Mm-hmm.

And just having the conversation and reminding yourself

Y'all, this is a moment. It's a moment in a lifetime. And so my path to success is anything but a straight line. But the fortitude I have to have to build in an industry like this where no woman or person of color has ever succeeded, the number of times I have, you know, I'm patted on my head and given advice that I know would kill this company and I just, you know.

But it doesn't bother me because I've developed this fortitude through all those times.

So that strength continues to power you. Absolutely. I'm almost 50 years old now, so good luck knocking me off of this. You mentioned being a woman of color in this industry. I mean, it is not easy to build in alcohol. It is a very, very dominated industry by some of these massive conglomerates. Mm-hmm.

You didn't have whiskey background. You didn't have alcohol background. How'd you get into whiskey? You know what? I believe that any person can do anything in any industry if they're willing to do the work, they're willing to study and understand the business.

And they don't give up. That's really the key, the don't give up part. Because when you look at every single one of our American titans, they had a million reasons to give up along the path. If you look at anyone now, I think NVIDIA, someone just sent me their recent book, and they almost went bankrupt twice, one time within 48 hours of it, right? And people look at that story, and they're so inspired by it. And my response to it is, is,

That's everybody's story that has grown something extraordinary. It's what set America apart. It's what allowed us to become the superpower to begin with.

was our entrepreneurial spirit. Our belief, the folks in Europe used to tease us because we patented and trademarked so much, but it was our patents. They're like, they get every crazy, you know, harebrained scheme and they'll patent it. And that was something that across the pond, they actually laughed at us about that.

And it ended up being what built this country is we believed in the power of bringing something to life that was just a thought. And that's what this is. Yeah. But like, how did you get interested in whiskey? It wasn't the whiskey. It was the story. So when you're talking about Nearest Green and him being the first known African-American master distiller, and I like the way that you actually partially –

stuttered a little bit when you were getting the first known out. I loved that pause there. I know it wasn't intentional, but I love the pause there because the reason why I'm so clear in saying the first known instead of saying the first, there are others. And my hope is, is that other spirit conglomerates are

They all know they had African-American master distillers or at least African-American distillers that they'll go through their files. They will find the names because what this has done for the Green family, they walk into any bar, any restaurant, anywhere in America, and they say who their ancestor is, and they're treated like royalty. I want other families to feel that about their ancestors as well.

What drew me to it was that we know that African-Americans have been a part of this country's history and building. But because we couldn't patent, because we couldn't trademark, then a lot of the things that we created, we can't prove it. A lot of the things that we were at the beginning of, we couldn't prove.

So in the story of Nearest Green and Jack Daniel, you literally have an ally who he may, Jack may be our first known ally. You have an ally that said, not only am I going to make sure that the world knows who you are, I'm going to make sure that they can never forget who you are, that your legacy could never be wiped out. So when someone looks at the photo on Facebook,

the cover of this book, if you open up to the first pages, the reason why I begin with not the cropped version, but the full version, is you will see that this is the only photo that Jack Daniel took with other people in his lifetime. Now, mind you, Jack was a walking, talking PR guy. He and I would have gotten along really, really well. Walking, talking PR guy. He knew the power of taking photos. He took one photo with other people

And that photo, he's surrounded by his leadership team. And if you look closely at the photo, you'll notice two things that I think are very important and really encapsulate what this story is about.

The first thing is you will notice that Jack is not in the center of the photo. He cedes the center position to the African-American man in a photo taken in 1904. Do you know what that photographer must have been thinking? Right? Think about this. That photographer, I guarantee, had never taken a photo of white men

with a African-American man in the center. I guarantee it. So you have that as the first thing. The second thing that most people miss is everyone in the photo is seated except Jack.

Jack never grew to be more than 5'2". He would wear lifts. Shark King. He's a Shark King. Almost all of them were. Carnegie was. Like, if you go back. Wow. The only one of our Titans that was tall was Rockefeller. Everybody's short. Everybody's short. But if you look at Jack, he wore lifts, and so maybe 5'4 with his shoes on, right? But in that photo, he actually, his right leg is amputated.

Oh, wow. People don't know that. So he's standing, but only on one leg. What George Green, Nears Green's son, is doing, and his nephew, Lin Motlow, who's in front of him, they're both strategically positioned to cover his amputated leg. Do you know how much trust he had to have had in the African-American man sitting to his right to entrust him to cover his infirmity? Hmm.

That's powerful. That is an enormous amount of respect. And so that is what drew me to the story was not just the ability to tell the story of Nearscreen, but the ability to tell the story of Nearscreen

And who may be our first ally, Jack Daniel, and the town of Lynchburg that raised them both up and said, blacks and whites, we are going to be equal here. We're going to be friends. We're going to be family here. And a company, Jack Daniel Distillery, that paid people on tenure, not based on race, that hired people on merit, on hard work, not based on anything else.

And I think that even it's a topic that is actually relevant today. Yeah. Which is I feel like Jack and Nearest would be like, really, y'all? We're still talking about this? Exactly. And I have a question. So, like, can you just walk me through really quick, like, how whiskey is made? I hope that's not silly. That's not silly. No, no, it's not silly at all. You start off with cereal grains.

And so cereal grains are going to be your rye. For us, we use rye, we use malted barley, and we use majority of it is corn. But you'll see some that will use wheat. So all cereal grains, that's what the mash bill is made of. So essentially your recipe. You get some boiling hot water, you get some yeast in there, and that's really what makes it up.

A lot of people get stuck on the mash bill and they think, do you have a proprietary mash bill? No, we all use similar stuff. That's not really what creates the flavor profile. What creates the flavor profile is 100% of the color and 70% of the flavor comes from our barrels.

So what's unique about bourbon versus scotch, I don't know how much you know about the different whiskeys. No, no. To be entirely clear, like in college I was drinking like whatever was the cheapest thing. And now, you know, when I go out, like I might have a nice cocktail, but I don't know the difference. Okay. So you have really three major wines.

whiskeys, maybe four major whiskeys that we drink here. One of them I don't count, which is Canadian whiskey because it's the Wild Wild West. They have no regulation. So you could be drinking colored vodka and they could still call it Canadian whiskey. So we're going to bump Canadian whiskey out. And then we have really the three majors. You have bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, which is a straight bourbon whiskey. That's American. That's homegrown, right? Then you have scotch, which is whiskey that's made in Scotland. It could be highlands, lowlands, but it's made in Scotland.

Scotland. And then you have Irish whiskey, which is made in Ireland. And then you have Japanese whiskey made in Japan. You get the picture, right? But in America, the bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, the requirement is it must be at least 51% corn.

Okay. That's the requirement in order to be considered one of those two. And so you're making that product, but the other requirement is you must use a new barrel, a new charred oak barrel every single time. Why? It's absurd. You want to know that nobody knows, nobody talks about this. The reason that that exists is because the timber industry was in trouble.

I'm not kidding you. They needed your help. They needed our help. So we saved the timber industry. It's expensive as hell. So I'm like, now the timber industry is having no problems. Could we please reuse our barrels? To me, it's the greatest waste because we spend a lot of money on these barrels. But then they get shipped overseas to be used in Japanese whiskey, cognac, scotch. Everybody else uses used barrels. We're the only ones. Mm-hmm.

who use new barrels. So we take the hit on the cost. Everyone else benefits from it. The upside to that is that the 70% of the flavor that comes from the barrels, we're able to develop whiskey beautifully in four years that it takes them 20 years to make it in Scotland because they're using barrels that have been used 10, 12 times before. And so for us,

We get all of the best flavors out of the wood. So when you're looking at something like Uncle Nearest, Nearest Green, it's naturally, believe it or not, it's naturally sugar-free, naturally fat-free, naturally carb-free, and naturally gluten-free. And you're tasting it and going, how's that possible? It's got so much flavor. It's got so much depth. All of that comes from the wood.

So think about it this way. When you are, if you are looking at a tree, right, you'll see the sap. If you've ever tasted sap, it's sweet. Yeah. So the sweetness is literally, it's pulling it out. But because we distill it so high, it pulls out the properties that are gluten, carb, sugar, and fat. Genius. It is genius.

It's so genius, but also, like, that's actually really interesting. I don't think, obviously, whiskey would sell as well if we called it corn-oak juice. But, like, that's essentially what it is, right? That is so, so interesting. I say whiskey sounds a little sexier than corn-oak juice. Yeah.

So you learn all of this information. You learn about Uncle Neer's story. You learn the process of how to actually make corn oak juice. And then what? How did you start your company? So the beautiful thing is I needed to know very little about any of that. I only needed to know enough to be able to speak in the press. Yep.

But really, my focus was a story. My focus was cementing the legacy of Nearest Green. So what I had to do is what every great entrepreneur has to do, which is to find the people that know what you don't know.

And get the hell out of their way. And so putting together the right team, Master Blender, head of operations, head of whiskey operations, finding the right distillers to partner with, all of those things, I didn't need to know how to do that. I just needed to know how to find the right people who knew how to do that. And our first head of whiskey operations was actually Jack Daniels' descendant.

And she had been working for the family business for 31 years. When she retired from Jack Daniels, she retired as the head of Whiskey Operations. She came on board with us as the head of Whiskey Operations. Nearest Green's great-great-granddaughter. Whiskey's in her blood. She is our master blender, and she's the reason why Uncle Nearest is the most awarded bourbon ever.

and the most awarded Tennessee whiskey six years running in the world. That's astounding. I mean, we've only been around less than eight years. And six of those years, we've taken the top prize at almost every competition around the world. So I didn't need to know how to do it. If you asked me how to make bourbon, like literally to make it,

Put me in a distillery right now and ask me to operate a single thing. Good luck. I might be able to label the bottle, and that is still a might. That is a might. Obviously, hiring all of this incredible talent is not free. Oh, God. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you and—

I read your story about how you and your husband had moved and also you changed your career. How did you fund all of this? Was it self-funded? Did you raise from VCs? Where's the money coming from? We raised nothing from VCs or PEs. We raised all from wealthy individuals. And one of the things that I think people forget is

is entrepreneurs begin and almost instinctively, and I don't know why we've started doing this because this wasn't the case before, but over the last, I'd say, decade to 15 years, instinctively we began pitching VCs and PEs. But why? We're in a country with almost 24 million millionaires.

all of them trying to grow their portfolios, all of them trying to figure out how to be a part of growing this American dream. So you're standing next to them in a Starbucks. You're at a restaurant, any place where you're excited to talk about your business and your brand, there's a likelihood that someone within an earshot

either has the ability to invest in your company or they know someone who can invest in your company. So what most people look at is they think, my God, I need to bring in all these investors. That's not how I looked at it. I looked at it as I only needed one. And if I have one that's super excited, the one thing about investors, and you know this, you talk to a lot of them,

We all run in packs. Yep. We all, like, deal flow. Exactly. Exactly. Who's got a deal? Who's got a deal? The number of calls I got from the back nine, from investors in my company that are like, hey, Fawn, you still raising? You got anything left? So-and-so that I'm golfing with. Yeah. Like, people don't understand. You don't need a ton of investors to believe in you. You only need one. Right.

That one, if they're excited, they will bring to the table more. And if they bring to the table, let's call it four. Those four have the ability to bring to the table five more. That's how I that's how I grew my my investor network is each person.

became excited about being invested. And that's my job as the leader is no matter what is going on in the industry is to be able to look around the corner and to make sure my investors are confident in my ability to weather any storm, to pivot if a mistake is made or if something doesn't work and that no matter what, I will not quit.

And for those entrepreneurs that are looking for investment dollars, the irony is most investors are not investing in the product. And you already know this. They're investing in you. They're investing in the founder. What that means is, is if an investor knows no matter what, you will not quit. Yeah. Doesn't matter what your product is. It's the same way valuation is determined. When people look at it and they're like, well, how did you come up with that valuation? Because that's what it's worth.

No, seriously. I mean, if you look at all the different valuations when DeepSeek, right, they came out and said we can do it for using less chips and all the rest of that. And all of a sudden, how many, you know, billions, trillions of dollars got shaved off of the AI market? Because everyone started second-guessing those valuations. Well, how'd you come up with them anyway? Yeah. Right? So people get so stuck on...

on valuations they get so stuck on and don't understand who's they're investing in is you if they know you are going to get them to that value come hell or high water they will take the risk

I love that. And obviously you took this risk. They took this risk on you. And things have gone swimmingly, but has it always been that way? Like how quickly were you guys able to ramp? How quickly did you see success? Yeah. I don't know what swimmingly means in the context of this. It's been hard as hell. That I can tell you. I'm looking at the end result again with the billion dollar

I'm saying swimmingly, but...

His valuation was not small at that time. So what people don't understand is valuation has nothing to do with the challenges that one might be experiencing in building a company. It is hard, hard. When you go back and you look at Phil Knight's shoe dog and everyone's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he put it in a book. But every entrepreneur is going, he told the truth. This is how this stuff actually gets built. And

And so it's a, it is, swimmingly is definitely relative. It has been a, an absolute challenge. And the way that I've done it each time I've raised is I've waited until I almost ran out of money before I raised again, because I had a true belief in my ability to increase the valuation every day that I'm given a shot. And so I would literally wait until we basically were

Almost out. Now, there's a couple of times I probably waited a little too long. Right. And I went a little too close to the line. Right. But for me, because I believe in my ability to grow the valuation, I knew every day early that I would raise. I'd be losing. I'd be losing money. Yeah. And so or losing more equity than I needed to.

So I waited. And that is, I mean, that takes quite resolve and fortitude. And you better have the stomach for it. And most I'm discovering, it's not that they don't have great ideas. There's so many people, especially in America, with really great ideas.

They just don't have the stomach to see it through. Is there anything that advice wise you would give to those people to like learn how to have the stomach or grow the stomach? Support for this show comes from Brooklinen. Here's a question. What makes the perfect spring bedding for you? Is it cool, breathable sheets, quilted blankets for those cool spring nights? Or is it the perfect color and texture to match your room's aesthetic?

However, you're looking to upgrade your bedroom, Brooklinen has what you need, high quality comforters, cotton throw blankets, and luxe sateen sheets, all in colors and textures to match your taste. My new bedding is amazing for spring and it fits perfectly in my bedroom. I love being able to put away my heavy winter sheets and make the transition for spring. Plus with Brooklinen bundles, I was able to upgrade my bedding for spring without breaking the bank or sacrificing my comfort.

Plus, Brooklinen's products are made to be lived in and loved for years to come.

Their super high quality products have been tested and awarded by experts, including Good Housekeeping, GQ, Wirecutter, and more. Brooklinen sheets are tried and true with more than 200,000 five-star reviews and millions of happy customers. Shop award winners and fan faves in-store or online at brooklinen.com. That's B-R-O-O-K-L-I-N-E-N.com. Get 15% off your first order today.

The only way you get the stomach is you have to keep, you have a challenge, you overcome a challenge. There is no innate ability to do that. It is work.

every small challenge, when you look at it beginning, I can go back so far back and I can look at the challenge and the fact that I overcame that challenge gave me more confidence when the next challenge came and the next challenge came in that. And now I'm probably 10,000 challenges in to this thing. Right. And so with every major challenge that I get through,

I have more confidence for the next one. And it's funny because Biggie said more money, more problems, right? And that is in business. The bigger you grow, the more challenges you have. And a lot of entrepreneurs, younger ones think, well, the bigger you go, the easier it is. There's not a single person at the top that would confirm that statement. Not unless they're close to retirement age. But if they're still in the grind,

Every day gets harder the bigger you get. Yeah. You have to have that resilience. You have to. And you can't develop it without simply going through the challenges. There's no other way around it. And speaking of challenges, I'm sure you've navigated quite a few correctly, but do you have like the biggest money mistake you made while building your business? Hmm.

the biggest money mistake, yes. Well, I don't know if it's the biggest, but I can tell you a big one. Yeah. Is when we first began, like literally when we first came out, we bought billboards. I think we spent a million dollars buying billboards and doing digital ads and all the rest of that stuff because we wanted to gain mindshare. Yeah. The product was

was nowhere. Like we were literally just in Portland. We concentrated in Portland. And then the next week we came out in Nashville and every week we were rolling out a different city. But we were, we were spending money marketing to really gain mind share and not thinking about the fact that yes, that is important.

But you need to do that and people need to be able to find the product easily at the same time. And so it was a huge missed opportunity that we did not have the product available everywhere we were marketing. And I think that that's a mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make because you want to get out there. You want the mindshare to be – You want brand awareness. You want brand awareness, but you miss the opportunity if you're gaining brand awareness –

and the product is not readily available, it's a little bit like how someone will be in, let's call it three markets. Yeah. And they go on the Today Show. Well, that's a waste. Yeah. Because the rest, the other 47 states can't get your product. And so it's important for, so that was a valuable lesson. That was a million dollars. And I wouldn't say it was wasted because it did grow Mindshare very quickly in terms of our brand.

but we could have done it much better. Is there any advice that you would like to look back and give Fawn day one of starting this? Oh, gosh. I would say I wish I were better prepared for the level of risk. You know, you always have the quotes of my level of success is based on my level of risk, right? And there's complete, absolute truth to that. But I think that you don't really realize that

how it feels to risk everything until you have risked

everything. No safety net, no backup plan. You burn the boats. I wish that I knew what it felt like, at least in concept, before I went through it. So if I were to go back and give fond advice, it's like, listen, that stuff's going to burn, but don't worry about it. Remember

go back to the origins of every industry in this country. And which I've started to do more recently is reminding myself, how did Vanderbilt build out those railroads? How did Rockefeller build out the oil empire? How did Carnegie build out the steel empire? And reminding myself

that every single Titan in America has had the exact same experience. And you just have to keep pushing through and be smart about it. Do not be distracted at all. I see so many entrepreneurs, they get distracted when a bad report comes out about the industry and they start believing that instead of looking at it and saying, how do I need to cut through the bad news in the industry? How do I...

Like all of the news coming out about the decline in spirits. I'm more excited about what we're doing this year than I have been in any year before this. Why? Because everybody is distracted. And I'm not. You're an outlier. I'm an outlier. And you're able to get a whole lot done when everybody is playing defense because they're distracted and you get to just play straight offense. Mm-hmm.

We talked about this a little bit before the interview started about how your day is scheduled back to back to back. Every minute is accounted for. You're very busy and being an entrepreneur is not easy. How do you balance the finances of your business, but also managing your personal finances and making sure that you and your family are set up for financial success? Yeah. You know, you really have to treat the two separate as quickly as you can. So I'm

I mean, we were funding the business, guaranteeing every loan because you have to for about the first six years of the business. So looking at everything as seasonal is really important. There are certain seasons where you're not going to see your spouse and your kids as much as you would in another season. And if you can look at those, and my husband and I are really good about this, and we're business partners, we're also life partners, we're really good about seeing things in seasons.

and saying, okay, this season, we are going to see each other probably once a week on the Sabbath. That's it. The other six days a week, we are going hard. We're saying, I love you over the phone, over email, but over email, listen, it's, you know, but, but we also understand it's a season. Yeah. Right. And so when it comes to your personal finances, you want to split it off

as soon as you possibly can. But during that period of time when you're funding the business and you're covering any shortfall, just remember it's just a season. It's not meant to be that way forever.

I love that attitude. And it's also like a little bit of temporary sacrifice allows you to hit your dreams. Absolutely. And if you don't make that temporary sacrifice, the thing that you do sacrifice is the dream. Exactly. I love the way you said that. Yeah, that's beautiful. I'd love to know, you know, you guys have some award-winning different like labels and flavors now, especially now that I know they're from the Oak Barrels. Yes, yes.

What's next for Nearest Green? So Nearest Green, so Uncle Nearest has always been a whiskey company. But if you, if I were to say Bacardi, right, you probably think of a rum. Yeah. But if I say Bacardi in the industry, none of us think of rum.

Because rum isn't their biggest seller. When you say Bacardi, what we think about is Patron Tequila, which they own. Do you say Cognac, which they own? Grey Goose Vodka, which they own. That's what we think of when you say Bacardi.

And so right now, when I say Uncle Nearest, people think whiskey. But because we just purchased Square One and we're about to roll that back out in the marketplace this year when everyone is retreating, we're coming hard. And so now we have a vodka company. And then later this year, our cognac company will release. We bought the Martell Estate and all the vineyards and are now the largest Grand Champagne vineyard owner in the city of cognac.

And that was all to bring a cognac brand forward. So now Uncle Nearest becomes a portfolio company with a whiskey company and a vodka company and a cognac company. And that's all happening in 2025 when the market is down. What gives you this faith that you are going to succeed, especially with all of this like chatter around the industry, like, you know, receding? Yeah, it's, I'm seven and a half years into this and I should have failed in year one. Mm-hmm.

So you have to at some point believe in your ability to move something forward and you have to have the faith. For me, I know without question, every bone in my body, that every experience I've had in my lifetime has built me to do exactly what I'm doing in 2025. Wow.

That just gave me chills. It's giving that scene from Slumdog Millionaire where he wins. I love that movie! He wins the game show because every little moment of his life has led up to this. Every moment. You feel like it's destiny? It is destiny. There's no question about it.

And the way that we treat it, the way that even my leaders, when we're dealing with obstacles and to hear my leaders talk about 2025, you can talk to any other leaders in the industry. They don't sound like mine because ours looks at mine are looking at 2025 as this is the greatest opportunity we've ever had. Everyone else is looking at it and going, we're going to have to do layoffs this year. And so we are just, we are approaching it so differently. And, and,

Again, level of success based on the level of risk. And 2025, we're risking a hell of a lot. And we're doing it because we're confident in our ability to come out on the other side so much stronger than we are today. You have that preparation mindset.

Opportunity. Yeah. Equal success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a little bit of good timing, luck, smart marketing along the way. Along the way, for sure. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. And tell everyone where they can find you and find their favorite Nearscreen products. Yes. If you go to UncleNearest.com, then you just put in your zip code and it'll pull up where we are and there's...

Tons of thousands, 50,000, however many that are on there. It's pretty easy. Love and Whiskey, you can buy the book anywhere that books are sold. And you can find me, I'm terrible on LinkedIn, but I'm really good with my DMs on fawn.weaver on Instagram. That's the best place to find me. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you liked the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode? Write to us via podcast at yourrichbff.com. Follow Net Worth and Chill Pod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcast related news. And you can follow me at yourrichbff for even more financial know-how. See you next week. Bye.

Support for this show comes from Brooklinen. Does your bedding need an update? Maybe it's time to get cooler blankets for spring and summer, or maybe you just realized you've had the same sheets and rotation since college. Whatever your bedding needs, you can turn to Brooklinen.

With incredibly comfortable textures and stylish colors and patterns, Brooklinen can help refresh and personalize your bedroom so it's perfect for you and your tastes. Plus, their customizable bundles make it easy to refresh your bed and bathroom, putting everything you need in one place. Shop award winners and fan faves in-store or online at brooklinen.com. That's B-R-O-O-K-L-I-N-E-N dot com. Get 15% off your first order today.